by W D County
“I don’t follow.”
“You fear being trapped inside a false mental construct, a mass delusion orchestrated by some external entity. But you have the means of distinguishing truth from falsehood. The real problem is accepting the existence of multiple truths.”
The strange conversation came to an end when the minister walked into the room. Instead of a suit, robe, or vestments, he wore a skin-tight coat of many colors, almost identical to the hypercube casket.
“Hello, Laura,” Barry said. “Have you peeked inside the box?”
“How can you joke at a time like this?”
“It’s fun piggybacking on your dreams. Seriously, look inside the tesseract.”
She stepped slowly to the far end of the room. Rotation of the hypercube revealed a man inside, a man who pounded the walls, kicked the sides, and called for help in screams that could not be heard by those outside.
“He’s still alive!” Laura shouted.
Barry shrugged. “Could be a Schrödinger’s cat event. Hand me Occam’s razor and we’ll cut to the chase.” He grinned. “Do you recognize him?”
She looked closer. John. John! “Let him out!”
“The tesseract won’t help you,” Barry said.
The hypercubic coffin began to fade, taking the dream with it. The widow vanished. Laura clung to the dream, willing it to go on.
“But I will.” Barry rapped sharply on one of the cubes still solidly inside this reality. “Arise, John, and be with your wife!”
A face of the cube sprang open. John emerged and ran to Laura’s arms. Now she could let the dream slip away, while the kiss of his lips and the embrace of his arms lingered.
The Awareness moved on.
***
Zita dreamt again of fog. She didn’t want a repeat of the previous night’s dream, so she envisioned a bright, warm sun to burn away the fog. The departing mist revealed a yellow brick road, which she found much more to her liking. She followed it, wondering if it led to the Emerald City, but after a few miles the road ended at a library. Not just any library; this was a treasury of knowledge larger than the Library of Congress, more diverse than the internet, more profound than Egypt’s lost library of Alexandria. This temple of knowledge held the answers to all questions and the solutions to all puzzles.
Tingles of excitement rippled through her body—followed by nail-biting frustration. The books and scrolls were in a language she could not read.
Attempting to grant herself the knowledge failed. So did trying to conjure up translated versions. Clearly the dream wasn’t fully her own, but it wasn’t hostile, so she wandered the halls, senses on high alert, searching for a primer, a translator app, or a Rosetta stone.
Up one stair, down another, taking a left fork to check out a room, then a right turn to another passage and still more rooms. Somewhere in this maze, a key waited for her, a key to translating all this knowledge. The mega-library lacked signs, but she mentally kept track of her steps and built an internal map to prevent getting lost.
She stopped at the entrance to a rotunda because the shifting colors on the floor reminded her of Christmas lights and she didn’t like the implication that the library represented a gift—not that gifts were bad, but accepting gifts from strangers could lead to cultural misunderstandings, dangerous assumptions, and decisions that ended poorly. Bad karma, too.
She peeked into the room. Sure enough, the tesseract hovered in the center of the room, glowing in all its many glorious colors and myriad patterns.
What knowledge can you reveal?
She sensed that the tesseract offered the ability to translate the secret texts without asking for anything in return... but what if the act of accepting the gift was itself sufficient for the tesseract to get what it wanted? And because she didn’t know what it wanted or why it wanted it, she resolved not to touch the thing, not to take the knowledge, even though the desire to do so burned with inner fire. Dreams being what they are, she belched a small fireball.
A sequential pattern of colors on the tesseract caught her eye, something both familiar and disturbing: a map of her movements through the library. She felt an alien awareness traipsing in her mind and realized the tesseract was translating her.
She spun and ran, faster and faster until the presence could no longer keep pace with her, and she burst through a window (transparent, not colored, because this was still partly her dream) and landed in a sunlit field under a blue sky with no library in view.
The adversary hadn’t given up. Millions of butterflies took flight from the field, their twinkling colored bodies becoming tiny hovering tesseracts as they spread out to search for her. She considered dreaming up a place to hide, but feared the more she dueled with the taint, the more it learned about her. A flutter of air raised the hairs of her neck and triggered a ripple in which all her hairs stood tall on goose-bumped skin. She spun to face a squadron of butterflies with multifaceted eyes reflecting a hundred views of her wide, terror-filled eyes.
She woke herself.
The dark, silent room welcomed her back to reality and for a while she took comfort in the absolute solitude of the room and the imaginary courage of Shere Khan. She loved her stuffed tiger, named after the fiercest creature in Kipling’s Jungle Book. Then she thought of Miles and decided she didn’t want solitude after all.
The Awareness withdrew.
***
The ringing of my cell snapped me fully awake.
“Reardon here.”
“Miles, there’s a delivery at the elevator,” said Colonel Hauser. The call disconnected.
The clock read 0200. Must be important. I slipped on my shirt, pants, and shoes, not bothering to comb my hair. I slipped the .45 in my waistband, walked to the elevator, and gave the camera a thumbs-up. The doors opened to reveal a medium-size cardboard box labeled “Pavlok Alarm Watches.” Shit, this could have waited until morning.
I stowed the box in the mess hall and headed to my room for a few more hours of shut-eye.
Steampunk waited at my door. She wore satin pajamas outlined with an inch of very dark material. Buttons down the front looked like rivets. Upside-down pockets covered each breast, with the bottom swell of each just visible. I stared at her, too surprised to talk but certainly appreciating the view. Little private Miles was ready to do a happy dance.
“Miles, I’m so sorry to intrude but the dreams I’m having are more than a little scary and they might not even be my dreams at least not fully because the tesseract was in them and I only dream about things I want to dream about, which isn’t that.” She took a breath. “May I sleep in your room tonight?”
Not “May I sleep with you” or some variant thereof. So much for my dreams. Anxiety screwed up her face in a way that almost left me feeling ashamed. “Sure. I’ll sleep in the chair.”
Relief flooded her face and triggered a smile from me. I grabbed an extra blanket and pretended to find a comfortable position by leaning back in the office-style chair with my feet up on the small desk. It took only a few minutes for her breathing to turn slow and even. The clock reached 0315 before I realized the floor might be a lot more comfortable than the chair.
Chapter 22
The team drifted into the mess hall as I chowed down on a traditional military breakfast of shit on a shingle. Everyone seemed preoccupied, chewing their thoughts more than their bacon. Zita came in last, but the steam in Steampunk had lost pressure, leaving her moving slow and looking haggard. It couldn’t be morning-after remorse, since we hadn’t done anything.
“Morning, Zita,” I said, hoping to spark a conversation.
Her lips twitched in an attempt to smile. She mouthed, “Thank you,” and quickly turned away. She poured a cup of coffee, plopped into a chair, and said, “Anybody else having bad dreams?”
When no one spoke up, I said, “Not me. Slept like a baby.” Which was true if the baby tossed and turned all night.
Slick said, “I had a great dream. A prophetic dream. Did
you know dreams are often associated with psychic powers? Sleep gets the conscious mind out of the way, clearing the path for insight and psychic growth.”
Brainiac snorted. “Insight, maybe. Supernatural powers? Stop fooling yourself.”
“Just following the evidence, Professor, until your awareness catches up to mine.”
“I dreamt about John,” Mopes said in an apologetic tone. “Not surprising, considering all that went on yesterday.”
“We ought to talk about that,” I said. Her husband’s appearance, visible on video for everyone except Steampunk and me, freaked me out worse than anything I’d seen in Afghanistan.
Doc leaned toward her and gently said, “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Actually, yes,” she said. “John’s appearance was an illusion. That’s clear because he vanished when my Pavlok went off. The problem is that the video recording shows my husband. How could such a thing be possible? I’ve wracked my brain trying to figure it out.”
Nice to know I wasn’t the only one worried about it.
“And what did you determine?” Kingpin asked.
“A shared hallucination cannot occur spontaneously. Something external is directing it. Something or someone clever enough to broadcast subliminal signals into our brain and to embed those signals into video recordings. We can’t trust our senses with respect to any observation of the taint, direct or indirect.”
My appetite disappeared. Apparently so did Kingpin’s. His fork stopped halfway to his mouth and then descended to his plate. “Not possible,” he said. “That kind of brainwashing would require hidden speakers to be embedded in all our rooms. This is a secure military facility. It’s impossible for any hostile force to compromise its integrity.”
Steampunk said, “Unless our government is the hostile force.”
Maybe wearing tin hats wasn’t such a crazy idea after all.
Kingpin stared at Steampunk as if she were a moron. “We’ve been down that road already. You still believe it?”
She smiled sweetly. “Of course not. The government doesn’t possess the intelligence needed to pull off a stunt like that.”
Mopes reclaimed the floor. “The Pavloks offer protection. Gordon, have they arrived?”
Kingpin seemed reluctant to break eye contact with Steampunk, as if he were composing a zinger to leave her completely deflated. Personally, I didn’t think his mental arsenal had anything that powerful.
He finally turned to Mopes. “They should have come in last night.” He cast an impatient glance toward me. I nodded and walked to the far table.
The box wasn’t there. I looked under the table and checked the storage cupboards. Nothing. Kingpin glared. “Damn it, Miles, how could you lose it?”
“They were right here.” Someone must have taken the box. I scanned each of their faces but couldn’t pick out a guilty look.
“Find them,” snapped Kingpin, “and if you can’t, call Hauser and tell him you lost the shipment.”
“We need a way to protect ourselves until the Pavloks are found,” Mopes said. Her brow furrowed in concentration. “It’s possible a suitable post-hypnotic command could prevent the illusions from taking root in our minds.”
Slick grinned. “I’m quite good at hypnosis.” No one accepted the implied offer.
“So am I,” Mopes said. “I occasionally employ it in therapy. Never for entertainment.”
Slick mimed being wounded. “Touché, madam.”
“I can’t guarantee hypnosis will work, but anyone who wants to try can see me.” Mopes paused. “There’s something else. Doc has a portable EEG. I plan to wear it and ask Barry to bring John back again. It might provide a clue as to how the hallucination manifests.”
A thoughtful silence followed, broken when Steampunk said, “Laura, yesterday I asked about readministering the MMPI tests. Will you do it? I think the results would complement your EEG results in showing if our thinking patterns have changed.”
“Good idea. I’ll put a blank test in everyone’s mailbox.”
I bitched silently. The thing took hours to fill out and seemed designed to trip people up by asking the same questions twenty different ways.
Kingpin leaned back in his chair and spoke to the group in a fatherly manner. “Each of you is an expert in your field, and your government is blessed to have you on the team. However, I have a concern that this level of expertise comes with a corresponding level of ego. If each of you insists that your field is the only path to understanding the taint, then our chance of reaching a consensus is poor. To remedy that, I’ve decided to assign partners.”
Everyone groaned.
“Each of you will be in two teams of two people. The partnerships are daisy-chained to link each of you with individuals most likely to understand and complement your expertise. Each of you need to spend at least two hours today with each of your partners.”
Muttered complaints followed as Kingpin continued. “Sonja, you will partner with Doc, who will also partner with Laura, who will partner with Nathan, who will partner with Zita, who will partner with Sonja. The assignments form a loop, hence the name daisy chain.”
I wasn’t keen on Zita being partnered with Slick, but that was just my sense of propriety at seeing a nice girl get stuck with a jerk. Steampunk could take care of herself. Usually. I hadn’t figured out what happened last night to send her running to me. Anyway, the proposed circle-jerk, excuse me, daisy chain, left me out. “Mr. Maxwell, what about me?”
Kingpin’s condescending smile tipped me off to expect salt in an open wound. “Sergeant, your skills are in security, not research. When not escorting team members into the vault, you could be most helpful in an expanded support capacity. In addition to kitchen duty, you’re now on laundry detail, both for used protective clothing and the team’s personal clothing.” His smile compressed into a thin, grim line. “Other duties may also arise... such as finding the missing shipment of Pavlok watches.”
“You’re the boss,” I said. Asshole. I gave myself an additional task: reviewing each day’s video records for anything unusual, such as Mopes talking to an invisible man.
Chapter 23
As breakfast ended, Laura asked the doctor if they could start their collaboration immediately. He agreed and they walked to his office. She sat in a semi-comfortable chair in front of his desk. He took the probably less comfortable one behind it. She wasted no time getting to the point.
“We need to consider our options in handling Barry. What anti-psychotic drugs do you have in the pharmacy?”
“A few. And whatever we don’t have can be here in hours if not minutes.” Doc sighed. “But why bother?”
What a question, she thought. “He’s delusional and also showing an exaggerated sense of self-importance and abilities. Could be narcissistic personality disorder, could be bipolar schizoaffective disorder, or something else entirely, but whatever it is, it’s getting worse.”
He raised a brow. “I haven’t seen any evidence of that.”
“Come on, Tom. He was depressed enough to attempt suicide a couple days ago. Now he believes God has chosen him for something special, and I don’t mean taking photographs for inspirational journals.” She didn’t mention Barry appearing in her dreams.
“Okay,” Tom said. “Prozac?”
“I’d rather start with Pimozide or Clozapine, but his behavioral changes are so radical that we may need something stronger. It may take time to figure out the right cocktail and dosages.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “The taint provides phenomenal healing ability. It may well give Barry resistance to drugs.”
“We have to try. Our dreams and hallucinations come from the taint, but Barry’s directing them somehow. Stop Barry, stop the hallucinations.”
The doctor’s face softened. “Bad dreams, visions of a lost loved one... have you considered the possibility that—”
Her face grew suddenly hot. “You saw John on the video! The problem isn’t me, it’s
the taint, and you know it. We’re all sharing a hallucination.”
He lifted both hands in apology. “Maybe so, maybe so.” He lowered his hands. “But the fact remains that you’re afraid of the taint. Not because it’s dangerous, but because you don’t understand it. The taint’s healing abilities argue that it’s benevolent. The taint could be the biggest boon to medicine since penicillin. We can’t risk losing that gift.”
“Treating Barry’s mental state won’t endanger the taint, just stop the illusions.”
“You can’t be sure. The drugs might contaminate the taint’s healing component.”
He’s protecting the taint, she realized. While I want to neutralize it. Neither of us care about healing the patient. The thought shamed her.
“Clozapine has fewer side effects.” She watched Tom’s face mirror an internal struggle from resistance to uncertainty to grudging agreement. She smiled in relief and with encouragement. “We’ll start the regimen tonight. Fifty milligrams.”
“Twelve and a half is recommended.”
“Not with the healing ability you’ve described. We need to ramp him up fast.” Seeing the worry on his face, she added, “Monitor him closely. We’ll back off the dose if needed.”
Professional ethics demanded they inform Barry of the medications being administered, but she worried about his reaction. If he balked and they had to force him to take the drug, she would lose the trust she’d managed to build up. “In his dinner,” she said. “And Tom... I think it’s best the patient doesn’t know.”
The doctor shook his head. “He has rights.”
“I’ll take responsibility.” Her gaze shifted to the portable EEG. “Help hook me up.”
He taped the leads to her scalp and tested the wireless reception and recording functions on the base station. “What do you expect to see, Laura?”
“I don’t know,” she answered truthfully. “Stay here and monitor the results.”
***
“Good morning, Barry,” Laura said. She sat at the main console watching Barry on the monitor while he watched her on his. Her voice sounded small in the empty observation room. “I thought today I’d stay out here so you can see my face while we talk.”