Chromatophobia

by W D County

  Nathan approached the last person, Laura. The image of John Dubov displayed prominently on her paper under the headline “Dead or Alive?” The article read, I have to stop torturing myself. The taint produces hallucinations and delusions. The Pavlok proves it. But what if John is alive in some other dimension? It’s possible, isn’t it?

  Another article came into focus. Got to get those MMPIs delivered. Find proof that our neurological pathways are being remapped. Need to look at my EEG, too.

  An image on the page showed her hand dropping a booklet into one of the interoffice mailboxes affixed to each residential room. Wonder if Nathan’s ready to collaborate?

  The room number caught his eye: 5. His room.

  The scene vanished as Nathan opened his eyes and dashed across the room in his stocking feet. He hammered his fists on the door. “Laura! Laura!”

  “Nathan? What on earth is the matter?” came a muffled reply. The door handle rattled.

  “I’m locked in. That fucking soldier did it. Get Gordon. Now!”

  Chapter 28

  “I’ll handle it,” Gordon said in a deliberately gruff voice. As hoped, Laura didn’t follow him to room 5. The growing friction between Reardon and Lee annoyed him, and quashing the feud might require threats that he’d rather not have her overhear. Neutral witnesses tended to complicate the spin he put on “he said, he said” arguments. Gordon swiped his keycard on the reader and punched in his override code. He entered without bothering to knock.

  Nathan looked up from tying his shoes. He stood and scowled. “Soldier Boy locked me in here.” He grabbed a pair of handcuffs from atop the nightstand and rattled them in the air. “Cuffed me, too.”

  Gordon restrained a smile, finding the man’s outrage a refreshing change from his usual condescending smugness. “Reardon has a reason for everything he does.” He closed the door and took the seat at the small desk. “What happened?”

  “He’s out of control, Gordon. A menace and a distraction to all of us.”

  “Cut the bull. What were you up to?”

  “Nothing! Conducting experiments. Which is exactly what we are supposed to do.”

  “Miles just waltzes over and slaps a pair of cuffs on you? Were you making a move on Zita?”

  Nathan plopped down on the bed, momentarily flustered. “Of course not. Zita wasn’t even in the vault at that point. She became dizzy and Miles helped her to leave.”

  “At which point you took advantage of their absence to feed the taint. Again. Right?” He favored Nathan with a deep frown. “Perhaps I should recommend Miles for a medal. At least he respects the rules.” He had no intention of praising Miles—the Marine was a bigger pain in the ass than Nathan—but the cocky showman needed the wind knocked out of his sails.

  “It was necessary,” Nathan said sullenly. “Top priority.”

  “Only in your mind. I have final say on who does what. Didn’t I make that clear?” He had read the riot act to Nathan over this same issue yesterday, waiting until Miles left the room to spare Nathan some embarrassment. Maybe that had been a mistake. Some people needed public shaming before taking “Do Not Feed the Bear” to heart.

  Nathan’s eyes narrowed. A sly smile replaced the look of righteous indignation. “The words ‘in your mind,’ are so apropos. A few minutes ago you were thinking that I faked the card readings. You then considered which lines of research were most valuable from a military perspective. You decided filling an enemy’s mind with delusions ranked highest. Am I right?”

  A cold flush tightened Gordon’s scalp before spreading through the rest of his body. He managed to maintain the frown and suppress the surprise. He hoped Nathan hadn’t noticed the momentary loss of composure. “Lucky guess. One of your specialties.”

  “The second-place finisher was Sonja’s pie-in-the-sky promise of a teleportation machine.” Nathan’s smile grew more confident. “I can give you a weapon more powerful than either of those.”

  “You’re full of shit.”

  Nathan laughed. “Think of a weapon. Something deadly. Go ahead. Try.” Nathan’s eyes closed and began shifting beneath the lids as if in REM sleep.

  He loves to exaggerate, thought Gordon. Everything is a performance, a thrill for the audience.

  “You’re thinking about me, not a weapon of mass destruction,” Nathan chided.

  Gordon glared. Fine. A hydrogen bomb. Nothing beats a nuke.

  “Fine. A hydrogen bomb. Nothing beats a nuke,” Nathan said, opening his eyes. They shone fever bright. “Go ahead, think of something else. Anything.”

  Nathan repeated Gordon’s thoughts aloud, again and again, until all doubts vanished. The magician-turned-telepath sidled up to Gordon and spoke earnestly. “I discovered that paranormal abilities become more numerous and exponentially stronger as the taint grows. Certainly you can assign limits, but they need to be set much higher than they are now if we’re to understand and master these new powers.”

  “It needs to be fed,” he agreed, still stunned by the possible uses of telepathy. “But you should have come to me first.”

  “Without proof? And you believing I’m a fake? You never would have allowed it.”

  He grinned. “You’re right.”

  Nathan chuckled and slapped Gordon’s back. “So, what are you going to do about the jarhead?”

  ***

  Zita and I sat in the empty mess hall. “You need to tell Gordon immediately,” she said. The critical look on her face matched the tone in her voice and made me uncomfortable. She shook her head in obvious frustration. Her hair followed a half second behind, unfettered by the top hat since she hadn’t worn it today. “Some men are so stubborn.”

  She was right. Hell, she was almost always right, but I wanted to tell my story to Colonel Hauser first. When I nabbed Slick the first time for feeding the taint, Kingpin treated the infraction as being on a par with spitting on the sidewalk. I needed the colonel to reinforce the gravity of the matter. Unfortunately, Hauser hadn’t returned the call I placed an hour ago.

  Zita continued, “You need to get ahead of this thing, Miles. If Nathan gets to Gordon first, he’ll spin a story the way a spider spins a web and you’ll be stuck like a bug in a rug that’s being walked on.”

  “Yeah. I know.” I stood, ready to head over to Kingpin’s office. My cell rang. Finally. “Colonel, thanks for—”

  “Report to my office immediately,” Kingpin snapped, loud enough to make Zita wince. He rang off without waiting for a reply. I tucked the phone in my pocket along with my emotions and headed to Kingpin’s office.

  This wasn’t my first time being called on the carpet, but it was the first time a civilian did the flogging. Kingpin sat behind a massive metal desk like a judge about to pronounce sentence. A hanging judge who didn’t need details like testimony or evidence to render a verdict. He stared at an open laptop, probably showing sentencing guidelines in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, before turning to me.

  I stood at attention and waited for him to speak. A minute or so ticked by. Kingpin probably wanted me to sweat, but tin-hat dictators didn’t scare me. Few things did. The color monster in the vault was one of them.

  “Sergeant Reardon, explain why you placed Mr. Lee under house arrest.” His neutral tone and matter-of-fact style seemed like a good thing to imitate.

  “I observed him placing colored sticky notes on the bed of the patient, a violation of standing orders. I immediately shut down the vault’s interior lights to prevent spread of the taint. I then entered the vault and placed Mr. Lee under arrest. This was his second violation of the standing order and therefore warranted a more severe response. Accordingly, I placed him in handcuffs, confiscated his phone and keycard, and locked him in his room.”

  “Why didn’t you notify me immediately?”

  I’d wrestled with that question for the past hour. Lacking a credible excuse, I opted for the truth, lame as it was. “I wanted to tell Colonel Hauser first. Your response to Lee’s earlier infracti
on lacked punitive action and failed to prevent recurrence of the offence. I feared you’d go easy on him again, unless the colonel backed me up in convincing you how serious this is.”

  Gordon glanced at the laptop again. A slight bend at the corners of his mouth suggested a smile. “Even though I am in charge of the team... and in charge of you?”

  Pompous ass. “I’m responsible for security in this facility. That responsibility was assigned to me by Colonel Hauser, not you, and you cannot revoke or countermand my decisions that bear directly on the safety and security of this base.” I’d drawn a line in the sand. My steady voice and outward calm belied the tension in my gut. Sometimes a person just knows when the shit’s about to hit the fan. Kingpin’s face said this was such a moment.

  “I’m not disputing your authority to enforce the rules, Sergeant. But I’m not sure you understand that I make the rules.” He paused, I suppose to let it sink in, but the sinking felt instantaneous. I knew about rules and how they could get twisted.

  He continued, “I’ve modified the rule on feeding the taint. Daily, controlled feedings will be conducted and monitored until Barry’s taint coverage reaches eighty percent.”

  “You can’t do that! You have no idea what might happen.” I took a step forward and Kingpin flinched. Bad move on my part.

  He turned the laptop around. Colonel Hauser’s face filled the screen and his voice filled the air. “Stand down, soldier!” I froze. Hauser continued, “Gordon, do you want me to replace Reardon?”

  Kingpin grinned. Happy but not friendly. It was the smile a lion might give when a gazelle strolls into a clearing. “No,” he said. “Better the enemy you know than the one you don’t, so to speak. But revoke his override authority.”

  Which meant I couldn’t confine anyone to quarters, and this facility lacked a holding cell. “Mr. Maxwell, Colonel Hauser—don’t do that. It would impede my ability to maintain the integrity of the facility and the safety of the team.”

  Kingpin’s eyes narrowed and locked on mine. Definitely predatory. “Oh, my code can lock someone up if necessary.” He spun the laptop back to face the colonel. “Better give me access to the security office, too.”

  That room was my domain. Hauser would never let a civilian share it.

  “Done,” said the colonel. “Your print has been authorized. I think we’re finished with the sergeant. There’s still the other matter we need to discuss.”

  “Right.” Kingpin dismissed me with a wave of a hand, and I slunk from the room feeling lucky the lions hadn’t been hungry.

  Chapter 29

  An air of excitement permeated the mess hall. Side conversations seemed charged with wild expectations. People ate quickly, as if impatient to give their after-dinner reports. Not me. I sliced my roast beef slowly and chewed each bite twenty times, knowing each swallow brought closer to hand Kingpin’s latest petty jab.

  Steampunk sat next to me and tried to cheer me up. “Hey, you didn’t lose a stripe. That’s something.”

  Before I could explain that a lighter shade of bad doesn’t make it good, the boss called for reports, and wonder of wonders, asked me to go first. He’d already told me what to say. I stood, fished a cell phone out of my pocket, and turned to Slick.

  “Mr. Lee, I apologize for placing you under arrest earlier today. I was unaware that the restriction on feeding the taint had been eased. Here is your phone.” My voice lacked inflection; Slick and Kingpin probably thought I was hiding the pain of embarrassment, but there was nothing to hide. I’d simply turned off my emotions.

  With an air of theatrical graciousness, Slick took the proffered cell and slipped it into his pocket. “Apology accepted.”

  As I sat down, Kingpin announced, “That’s right, people. I have raised the taint limit to eighty percent. That doesn’t mean each of you can paper the vault with red, green, and blue stickies. Color absorption needs to be monitored and done in small, precise doses and only in conjunction with experiments that I’ve approved. Got it?”

  Nods all around except for Steampunk, who said, “The taint will gain power and complexity as it spreads. Barry is the primary recipient of that power, and he’s slipping into megalomania so I don’t think feeding the taint is wise.”

  Kingpin nodded. “Tom?”

  The doctor cleared his throat. “The taint currently covers sixty-two percent of the patient’s body. I don’t see a compelling need for an eighteen percent increase.”

  “We need more leeway to run experiments,” Kingpin said patiently. “I understand you adjusted Barry’s medication?”

  “Laura and I started Barry on a cocktail of psychotropic medications to ease his anxiety and suppress the delusions associated with paranoia.”

  Mopes added, “We’ll adjust dosages to keep him comfortable and harmless to himself and others.”

  Right, I thought. The way snake charmers keep cobras harmless.

  Brainiac spoke next, bragging that she’d discovered teleportation. Kingpin’s eyes lit up like Christmas tree lights. She said, “I knew there was a connection between the taint and magnetic fields. I decided to start with Doc’s grayed clothing, subjecting them to the field produced by the electromagnet in the physics lab. The experiment was partially successful, but resulted in failure of the magnet.”

  “And a fire,” I muttered.

  She continued, “Armed with the results of the initial test, I resumed experimentation using the MRI in the infirmary. I achieved another milestone, simultaneously teleporting a rat and a monkey a short distance. The monkey passed through the steel bars of its cage without injury.”

  “Tom, can you confirm that?” asked Kingpin.

  The doctor nodded. “The monkey’s fine and back in its cage. But what happened to the rat is even more—”

  Kingpin cut him off. “Let Sonja finish. Then we’ll hear from you.”

  Brainiac, the somber, no-nonsense scientist, giggled. “The implications for technological advances are staggering. We, quite literally, are about to enter a Star Trek era. Once I finalize the calculations, I should be able to teleport an object from any point A to any point B with complete safety and accuracy. Imagine what this will do for commerce, for exploration, for humanity’s expansion into the cosmos!”

  For the military, I thought. Who needs a sniper when you can teleport a bomb onto your enemy’s lap? The gleam in Kingpin’s eyes told me he also saw the military and intelligence gathering potential of teleportation. “How soon will that be?” he asked.

  Sonja shrugged. “Maybe as soon as tomorrow.”

  Doc said, “You omitted some rather serious limitations, Sonja. Teleportation requires a magnetic field at the departure point, and we’ve only tested it on grayed objects and organisms. Furthermore, you only managed to move them a few inches.”

  “Trivial factors that I will soon solve.”

  “Not to mention the rat, which became embedded in the solid bed of the MRI and had to be cut out,” Doc said, shoehorning his way into the conversation. “My results don’t have such limitations. First, thanks to the use of a Cray supercomputer, I’ve completed a preliminary analysis of the taint’s patterns. The level of complexity and information density are comparable to the DNA of living things, and the continual changes in those patterns are consistent with metabolic activities. The taint is alive.”

  Doc must have expected applause or similar acclaim but received only expectant stares, the same looks awarded a comedian whose joke just bombed. He did a fair job of hiding his disappointment by plunging ahead. “Second, and even more important, I have isolated the healing component of grayed organic matter. I am confident, no, I am certain, that this material can heal any wound, cure any disease, and even prevent aging.”

  That got Kingpin’s attention. “You’re sure?”

  “I’ll have proof tomorrow, when the rats finish healing.”

  The boss looked happy. He beamed at the team, at least until he looked my way. His face clouded as if reminded of an unpleasan
t chore or an overdue bill. His gaze swept past me, and most of his smile returned.

  Steampunk said, “The taint may or may not be alive, but it’s certainly trying to communicate and it uses three modes to do so. The first uses Barry as a mouthpiece. Convenient, but the taint’s meaning is distorted by Barry’s thoughts and beliefs. The second mode is through dreams, which get distorted by our own thoughts and beliefs. The third mode channels information directly to brains at both conscious and subconscious levels, which makes it difficult to tell reality from imagination, or its thoughts from our thoughts. All three modes carry meaning, but fragmentation and distortion make interpretation difficult. We can’t even tell if the taint is hostile or benign. I’m working on it though. The more I study its patterns, the closer I get to translating its meaning. Another day or two and I should be able to achieve two-way communication.”

  Her words made me uneasy. Survival 101: Don’t try to reason with a monster who’s trying to eat you.

  Steampunk kept going. “As I said before, feeding the taint is a bad idea. Until we know its intentions, we could be making an enemy force stronger than it already is. Let’s work with the amount of taint we already have.”

  “Your concern is already noted.” Kingpin turned to Mopes. “Laura?”

  Mopes fidgeted in her seat, opened her mouth to speak, shut it again. She finally blurted out, “The taint seems to act through Barry, so keeping him drugged should put an end to the unusual dreams and the mass hallucinations we’ve been experiencing. The taint can detect and amplify our conscious and subconscious desires and then broadcast them back as realistic hallucinations. I’ve seen John again. Maybe my grip on reality is slipping. Today, in the observation room, he was solid. He spoke to me, held me. If not for the Pavlok, I’d already be completely delusional.” A look of desperation filled her face as she leaned toward Kingpin. “Have the missing watches been found? We need them more than ever.”