by W D County
He headed for the kitchen. I didn’t want to follow, but neither did I want to go hungry.
Chapter 13
Laura needed to warn Barry of the craziness Miles advocated. She preferred to tell him in person, but didn’t have the access code for the airlock. The closed-circuit televisions would have to do. In fact, it would work even better that way. He’d be able to read her facial expressions and body language.
As she hurried through the concrete passageways, the oddness of the base, of the whole situation, made her wonder again if it was real. Would the military really turn an active, specialized base over to six civilians, especially those with such odd and diverse expertise? Did tesseracts exist? If so, could one of them make people vanish and cover Barry with a color-absorbing film? Top it off with Doctor Gray, and a soldier who could see only gray. Suddenly the situation seemed so fantastical that maybe it was fantasy. She and possibly the entire team could be experiencing an externally induced hallucination.
The government wasn’t above testing chemical and psychological weapons on unsuspecting subjects. They’d done it with LSD, with radium, and with hypnosis. Immoral and illegal acts never stood in the way of “national defense.” But she couldn’t blow the whistle, not without proof. And even then, the government had the means to make inconvenient people disappear. She needed to play along for now.
She reached the observation room and sat down at the console. The video controls were simple—she’d watched Gordon operate them. Barry lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Laura put on her best professional smile and turned on the mic and camera. “Good morning, Barry.”
He sat up and seemed to focus directly on her. Swirling colors covered most of his face, neck, shoulder, and one arm. She’d never been attracted to tattoos, but these weren’t tattoos. They were chips of a rainbow, full of light and hope.
“Hello, Laura. Did you enjoy our dream?”
What did he mean by our? “Listen. Miles and Zita are spouting nonsense, and it might lead to, well, they want to cut you.”
“What are they saying?”
“They claim the piece of broken mirror passed through your arm without cutting you.”
A half-smile played on his lips. “That would be miraculous, wouldn’t it?”
“They’re trying to talk Gordon into allowing a test. They want to deliberately cut you, Barry. Just to see what happens.”
He shrugged. “Doc cuts me all the time.”
“This is serious. You’re a person. A human being. You have rights.”
“Your dream was beautiful. Such depth of emotion.”
Why this obsession with dreams? She sighed. “I dreamt of my late husband. Barry, let’s get back to the point.”
“You wanted to join him in the tesseract.”
Shivers danced down her spine, as if silent, invisible sprites chased one another along neural pathways. “How... how did you know?”
“What if he joined you here instead?”
“Barry...” She had to be careful, lest the wily patient draw her into his delusions.
He stood and spread his arms. “Is this not a coat of many colors, very like the one worn by Joseph, the interpreter of dreams? The coat drove his brothers to such jealous rage that they sold him into slavery. But things worked out for the best. God has a plan for each of us.
“Genesis chapter 41, verse 15: ‘And Pharaoh said onto Joseph, I have dreamed a dream, and there is none that can interpret it: and I have heard say of you that thou canst understand a dream.’ You know what happened then, Laura. The dream foretold a future famine, and gave Egypt time to prepare. Joseph was a hero. A savior. Verse 41 states, ‘Pharaoh said unto Joseph, see, I have set thee over all the land of Egypt.’”
“Barry, you are not Joseph. This isn’t Egypt.”
“And later, when the world turned to Egypt, to Joseph, for survival, his brothers also came, and bowed down before him.” Barry peered into the camera with hypnotic intensity. “I know your dreams, Laura. I will know the dreams of the others. Soon all of you will seek my counsel, for dark times are coming, and only God can light the path to salvation.”
“What dark times? What do you know?”
Before Barry could answer, Miles entered into the room, followed by the rest of the team.
***
Mopes held out a warning hand. “I won’t let you, any of you, cut him just to see if he bleeds. It’s barbaric.”
Kingpin strode past me. “It’s not up to you, Laura.”
The team surrounded the console where she sat, and I wondered if the shrink was partly right. Like spectators at a gladiatorial game, we wanted blood. Or at least I did. The self-awareness stirred neither guilt nor shame because the unseen taint scared me at the primal, brain-stem level. The Taser could hurt him temporarily, but guns were my weapon of choice. If bullets harmlessly passed through Choirboy—I seized that thought and flushed it down the shitter.
Doc rested a hand on Mopes’s shoulder. “The cut won’t be serious; at most it’ll take a couple stitches afterward. It’s really just another tissue sample for analysis.”
She shrugged off his hand.
Steampunk said, “Laura, I’m sorry but this is something we have to do because if the taint is protecting him it must be intelligent or at least able to anticipate future outcomes—”
“Predict,” Slick said, “as in precognition.”
“—as well as manipulate matter and space in ways beyond our ability,” continued Steampunk. “The stakes are too high not to do this test, however barbaric it may be, unless you have an alternative to obtaining the same information without cutting him.”
Mopes regarded Steampunk with a gaze hard enough to carve granite. A couple seconds later she turned that gaze on me, then Kingpin, Slick, and finally, Doc. “Don’t any of you have compassion for the man?”
Brainiac said, “The patient is our only path to the greatest scientific breakthrough of our lifetime. Sacrifices must be made.”
“We’re not going to kill him,” assured Doc. “Not even close. I’ll use a topical anesthetic as well, so he won’t feel a thing.”
“No,” I said. “The anesthetic might alter the response of the taint. He might need to feel pain to trigger the protection.”
Mopes said, “Of course you’d advocate torture as well as blood-letting.”
“I don’t think torture is necessary,” Steampunk said, “because the taint protected Barry when he was unconscious so we don’t know if Mr. Lee’s conjecture about the taint being predictive is correct. To replicate yesterday’s event Doc should administer anesthesia and then perform the cut to see if the taint responds. Barry won’t feel a thing.”
“Which presents a problem,” said Slick. “If Barry has the ability to see into the future, the threat needs to be real. He’ll ignore any pretense by the doctor.”
Kingpin said, “I will not authorize a deliberate attempt to harm or kill the patient.”
Choirboy’s voice came from the console speaker. “I must prove myself worthy,” he said. “Come then, and do what you will. I shall suffer willingly the torment from those I come to help. Asleep or awake makes no difference, for God watches over me.”
Kingpin jabbed a finger on the console to mute the mic. If looks could kill, Mopes would be ready to bury. “You left the intercom open.”
She grinned in haughty rebellion. I liked her better when she was depressed.
Doc muttered, “Let’s get this over with,” and pulled on protective coveralls. I dressed as well and snapped on the name tag, though my gun belt provided unambiguous identification. I held out Doc’s tag, but he didn’t take it. “Hurts when I wear it. Probably has a burr on it.”
When we entered the vault, I immediately checked with Doc to make sure Choirboy’s left arm remained clear of taint. Then I slapped the cuffs on him and slipped the key into my pocket.
Doc hovered over the patient, who lay face-up on the bed with a resigned expression on his face. I pointed to th
e spot where the glass shard had been. Doc draped the arm with sterile pads except for a small area much lower, where the wrist joined the hand. Doc wanted the sample to include both tainted and untainted skin.
He made a few short, shallow swipes, lifted a severed flap of skin with tweezers, and dropped it into a Petri dish. He applied a bandage to the oozing wound and then used a syringe to extract some of Choirboy’s blood, which he added to the Petri dish. The procedure looked unremarkable to me and apparently to everyone else.
Doc said, “No abnormality with the sampling procedure with the patient awake.” He covered the dish and set it aside. “Now, Barry, I need to put you to sleep for a few minutes.”
Doc taped some leads to Choirboy’s chest, placed a breathing mask and hose over the patient’s face, and opened a valve. “Just breathe normally.”
Choirboy lost consciousness in seconds. Doc adjusted the sterile pads to expose the area where the shard had been. He picked up a scalpel, leaned over the patient, and repeated the sampling procedure. Again, nothing unexpected happened. The lack of a disappearing blade worried me more than ever. Not only could the taint hide from me, it could hide from others when concealment suited its unknown purpose.
After removing the breathing mast and electrical leads from Choirboy, Doc picked up the sample dishes and turned toward the airlock.
“Aren’t you going to bandage the second cut?” I asked.
“Tainted areas heal fast,” he said. “Really fast.”
A glance at the patient showed no blood, no wounds, and no scars. Choirboy stirred and sat up, recovering from anesthesia much sooner than I expected. He favored me with a mocking smile that made my skin crawl like a nest of centipedes. “Doc, can’t you just cut off the taint? Give him a skin graft or something?”
“Interesting idea, but no. You can’t see it, but the taint immediately reclaims an excised area.”
We left the vault and Doc scurried to place the samples inside the mini-airlock to the biolab. He then stripped off his protective clothing and rushed out of the observation room, apparently eager to start his analyses. Slick and Brainiac also left. I remained near the airlock, still in protective clothing, as Steampunk suited up. Meanwhile Kingpin and Mopes squared off in a heated discussion and left the room while still arguing. Steampunk sauntered toward me, looking like a white cocoon. My anxiety worsened with the crazy thought of her emerging as something different.
She stopped in front of me. The glasses, hood, and mask prevented me from reading her expression. “Where are the cameras?” she asked.
She wanted privacy? The vague fear of the taint vanished as wild thoughts sprang from my subconscious. Two cameras were mounted in the observation room, and they covered ninety-five percent of the space. The five percent not covered by surveillance also happened to be out of sight from the entrance. The three-by-eight-foot sliver of space behind an unused console seemed a bit too public for my taste, but if Zita wanted to risk it, I wasn’t about to object.
“There’s a blind area behind the secondary console. Nice and private.”
She cocked her head. Regarded me for a few seconds in silence. Then she giggled. “The digital cameras that Sonja used. I need them both.”
I wanted to slink away. Thank God she couldn’t see my face. Miles Reardon, village idiot.
Chapter 14
Zita liked Miles but his behavior sometimes puzzled her and although she like solving puzzles, she had a bigger puzzle to solve and so she put Miles in a pot on one of the back burners of her mind. Other back-burner puzzles included the dream she had, the multiplicity of plausible explanations for the taint, and the mystery of how Barry’s untainted skin could appear normal yet have a gray reflection. Related to the last issue was the malfunctioning camera that probably wasn’t malfunctioning since the equipment here seemed very well maintained if not brand new.
“Miles, wait in the airlock, please.”
He objected, but not strenuously, an anomaly that might be explained by his fear of Barry although more likely by the faux pas over the cameras. She didn’t waste time determining which. I need to focus. She smiled at the spontaneous unconsciously intentional pun as she held both cameras and pondered their operation.
The Nikon D90 wasn’t broken. She snapped a couple photos and they turned out fine, better than fine, because her artistic side had a highly developed aesthetic sense.
Once she was inside the vault, Barry’s gaze followed her approach from the airlock to his bed. “The puzzle solver is herself a puzzle,” he said, “for running from the solution.”
“Maybe I’m shy when learning new dance steps.”
His brow raised. “You can’t learn without a partner.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” She set the cameras atop a metal cabinet and then pulled a mirror from the pocket of her coveralls. “Unbreakable acrylic.” She angled it to see his reflection, which showed his whole body as gray. “You and the taint are fascinating, and please don’t take offence at that word or misconstrue my curiosity because I know this experience is hard on you. All of us are working hard to determine what it is and how it functions, which isn’t easy since the taint represents something totally new and exhibits contradictory properties like right now, for example, I see you as skin tones and colored taint, but I see your reflection as entirely gray.”
“Take a breath, Zita. Slow down. It’s hard to read you.”
The choice of the word “read” seemed odd, and she added a new back burner where the word and the reason he’d chosen it could simmer. The number of burners kept growing, and soon she would need a different analogy on which to place the pieces of this puzzle. Probably a three-dimensional spider web, which allowed for better positioning of the facts, as well as wrapping each one in new layers of meaning. The primary drawback was she didn’t like spiders.
“I talk fast. I think even faster.” She pocketed the mirror and lifted the Sony a6000, sighting Barry in the viewfinder and noting that he appeared exactly as he did to her naked eye—the same swirling, patterned taint, same boundaries, same flesh tones. She snapped a couple photographs. They matched her naked eye observation. “As a photojournalist, you must know a lot about cameras,” she said.
“Photography was a means to an end, not an end in itself.”
Was. Past tense. She snapped a few pictures with the Nikon D90. “What is the end point you’re working for, or is the point that there is no end point, the way Zen masters might say that paths are made for journeys, not destinations?”
“My goal has always been to convince the world that God exists. The awe-inspiring beauty of nature, the coherent complexity of the universe, the intelligence and emotions and interactions that define our lives... all that cannot be the result of random chance. God exists, and my photographs tried to show that.”
The viewfinder showed Barry in grayscale, just as Sonja had noted yesterday. Odd. Zita snapped a picture and looked at the digital result—which showed the expected taint and skin tones. “When this is over, aren’t you going back to photography?”
“Photographs aren’t enough. God has chosen to reveal His truth through me.”
Budding megalomania? She’d talk to Laura about this, though the shrink probably already knew, but did she suspect that the taint might have a psychosomatic component? Did Barry’s thoughts affect the patterns displayed by the taint? “May I change the subject? What are the major differences between these cameras?”
Barry sighed. “Dancing around issues, avoiding insights; such behavior doesn’t suit you, Zita. But perhaps it’s all you can absorb for now.” He took the Nikon with his free hand, studied it for a few seconds, and handed it back. He then examined the Sony. “The Nikon is a reflex camera. The Sony isn’t.”
“Which means?”
“Reflex cameras have a mirror inside, angled so that it reflects the incoming image to the viewfinder. When you click the shutter release, the mirror lifts out of the way letting the light go directly to the image se
nsor. The design ensures that what you see is what you get.”
Except it didn’t work that way for the taint. “The other camera doesn’t use a mirror,” she ventured.
“Correct.”
She took her remaining minutes in the vault to discuss Barry’s thoughts on the missing explorers and the tesseract, occasionally snapping more photos. She tried very hard not to think, although cultivating a blank mind always presented problems even during meditation. Still, she did her best so as not to contaminate the pictures, which tended to display patterns in the taint that she expected to see and not necessarily the ones that ought to be there. That tasty tidbit bubbled on a front burner.
***
Doc’s hands trembled from excitement as he entered the biolab. Past biopsies of the taint had immediately turned gray, but he had an overwhelming notion that these samples would be different. The sealed dishes sat atop a stainless-steel tray inside the sample airlock. Magnetic induction moved the wheeled tray through the airlock and into the “hot” side of the biolab, an antiseptic room of white walls and sterilized equipment. The recently blackened windows, reminiscent of the vault, forced him to depend on remote cameras. Using robotic arms, he opened the first dish, the one containing the compound sample doused with blood.
His anticipation evaporated. My luck’s as bright as a new moon. The entire sample had grayed, including the blood. Why did the taint turn gray when separated from the patient? Why had the patient’s normal skin turned gray as well? Previous blood samples retained color. Why did blood turn gray when mixed with the patient’s skin? There had to be an explanation. A biological explanation.
He moved the second sample to the mass spectrometer before opening the dish. He’d recalibrated the machine to increase its sensitivity. Maybe, hopefully, it would find a trace of the elusive transformative gas.
It didn’t.
Spend the rest of the day brooding and bitching? Or start over from square one? The taint produced a bleaching effect, and he had focused almost exclusively on that. Most likely the taint also affected other biological processes.