by W D County
I nearly choked on my steak. Choirboy’s words echoed in my mind. Nor can Gordon, whose promotion is the will of God.
The rest of the team offered congratulations. They seemed heartfelt, with no hints of jealously. I guessed everyone expected similar rewards.
Kingpin sat down. “Thank you. Now it’s time for introductions and bringing John up to date. Doc, you start.”
Could the boss be that stupid? “Mr. Maxwell,” I said, “is it wise to discuss these matters in front of an outsider? This project is top secret. He doesn’t have clearance.”
“I’m giving him clearance,” Kingpin said. “Nathan tells me John was a member of a team like ours in a parallel universe. We can use his expertise here.”
Doc leaned forward and said, “I’m Tom—”
“Your skin is gray,” John blurted.
Doc’s brow arched. “I’m not gray in your world?”
“Only Barry is gray. Partially. Color drains from his skin for no apparent reason.”
The members of the team exchanged surprised glances. Doc recovered first. “Our Barry is covered with a complex colored rash, which we call the taint. The taint seems to grow by leaching color out of the immediate environment. We’ve halted its growth by confining Barry to the vault, and preventing the introduction of any color.”
“Remarkable,” John said. “That’s not the case in my world.”
Everyone leaned closer. “Tell us more,” Kingpin said.
“When Barry was rescued at the ice cave there was a small patch of gray on his face. At first everyone believed it to be frostbite, but the doctors soon ruled that out.”
“What about the explorers?” Doc asked.
“All fine. They had finished their measurements, packed up the instruments, and left. Barry was packing up his own equipment when he claims a tesseract appeared, glowing like the biblical burning bush. His words, not mine. It flared up and vanished, accompanied by a tremor that triggered a cave-in. Miracle he survived long enough to be dug out. His words.”
“The gray patch on your Barry has been growing, I bet,” Zita said. “Although not at a steady rate and nothing cures it or affects it, and the gray now covers about eighty percent of his body.”
John looked stunned. “How did you know? Never mind; you’re the savant. Zita Ferrari, puzzle solver extraordinaire.”
He turned to Doc. “Tom Harrison, medical doctor from the CDC, where you specialize in infectious diseases, although your expertise extends over several other branches of medicine and biology.”
Doc gaped. “How...” The word trailed away as surprise covered his face.
John addressed the rest of the team one at a time. “Nathan Lee, world famous magician and paranormal investigator. Sonja Kapoor, clinical psychologist. Sergeant Miles Reardon, United States Marine.” He regarded Kingpin. “You’re familiar to me because you’re all on the team in my world.”
“Fascinating,” Kingpin said. “Only one mistake. Ms. Kapoor is a physicist. Your wife is our psychologist and psychiatrist.”
“Ah, of course.”
“How did you get to our world?” Brainiac asked. “One of Barry’s miracles?”
“Barry said the messiah was opening a portal to reunite Laura and me.”
“Then you’re a believer,” she said dismissively.
“I believe what I see with my eyes and feel with my hands. Aren’t scientists in this world trained to trust their observations?”
Mopes spoke in a soft voice. “Sometimes our experiences are not to be trusted.” She clutched her husband’s hand, and in a firmer voice said, “And sometimes they are.”
“Hmmm.” John looked around the table. “Tell me, what have you learned about the ah, taint? That’s what you’re calling Barry’s rash?”
Brainiac responded. “There are competing theories about its nature and the source of the coloration. Personally, I believe it is a gateway composed of quantum entangled particles and K-radiations, through which we can access parallel worlds, as obviously happened in your case.”
Nathan snorted. “You can’t deny the paranormal aspects of John’s resurrection.”
Brainiac ignored him. “I proved that the taint can be controlled by a magnetic field to teleport objects from one location to another.”
I said, “The monkey vanished. The three lost explorers appeared. That wasn’t the expected outcome. How can you claim to have control?”
She glowered at me. “In my haste to set up the demo, I neglected to factor in the interference generated by Barry’s taint, which affected how the K-rays interacted with the magnetic field. I’ve adjusted the equations accordingly and found perfect correlation with actual results.”
Zita piped in, “It wasn’t interference. The taint controlled the event.”
“Nonsense, my dear.”
John’s expression said he agreed with Brainiac’s opinion. “I’m the physicist on my team,” he said to her. “Perhaps we can compare notes after dinner.”
Mopes elbowed him. “You’re busy after dinner.” Her voice held an edge.
John nodded. “Another time, then, Sonja.” His smile seemed a bit too broad.
Brainiac’s eyes narrowed. She said stiffly, “Of course.”
It occurred to me that I should have a nickname for John. Revenant came to mind. A person who has returned from the dead. I wondered if I’d have to send him back.
Doc broke the tension that threatened to dampen the jovial mood. “In our world the explorers vanished along with the tesseract. Until today, when they reappeared. They remain completely unresponsive. I have them on IV feedings. The most unusual thing is that not only is their hair and skin gray, but their blood and internal organs are as well.”
“How can you know that?” Mopes asked.
“I made incisions and then applied the healing goo. Worked perfectly.”
Kingpin said, “Will they recover mentally?”
Doc shrugged and turned to Mopes, who said, “Their EEGs are flat lines. Clinically they’re brain dead. They shouldn’t be able to walk. I’m surprised they’re alive at all.”
Nathan cleared his throat. “Barry says their souls have moved on to a better place. He kept them alive to show us his mastery over life and death.”
“Fletcher isn’t God,” I said.
Mopes stared serenely at her husband. “Are you sure, Mr. Reardon?”
Slick’s face broke into a stage smile, the one he often hid behind. “An interesting proposition. Paranormal abilities are often seen as proof of either divine or satanic forces.”
“Let’s stick to facts,” Kingpin said. “Not religious mysticism.” He scanned the table. “Zita, tell us how your research is coming along. Why do you think the taint took control of Sonja’s demonstration?”
She shrugged. “The patterns on the taint change in response to what’s happened or about to happen around it or maybe it changes reality to fit what it wants to happen, or maybe we’re all sharing an illusion orchestrated by the taint, but if so it’s highly interactive.” She looked worried but tried to cover it with a nervous smile. “The taint’s patterns change in a deliberate manner that implies intelligence, and I believe it’s trying to communicate with us.”
Kingpin frowned. “You’ve been telling us that from day one. Have you deciphered its language?”
She shook her head and then abruptly stopped as if frozen by an internal epiphany. I intended to find out more when we had a moment alone.
Kingpin turned his attention back to Revenant. “John, tell us more about your team. It sounds like our worlds have some significant differences as well as amazing similarities.”
Revenant spoke for a while, but nothing in his world compared to the shit happening in ours. I ate in silence as conversations grew more open and cheerful. Kingpin seemed happiest of all. He had reason to celebrate, but Rome could be burning while Nero fiddled. The squad of Army Rangers would arrive in less than twelve hours. I prayed for a quiet night.
Chapter 43
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br /> Zita wanted to resume her study of surveillance videos, so we returned to the security office. While queuing up the clips she wanted, I mentioned that Hauser was sending in a squad of Army Rangers to assist me.
“Fantastic,” she said. “People you can relate to.” She turned her attention to the recordings.
“You looked at these before, Zita. Why view them again?”
“I’ve been so focused on translating the language of the taint that I’ve overlooked the possibility that the taint has already deciphered ours.”
“You think the taint is intelligent? I thought it was just some, I don’t know, rash, like Doc says. Or an inanimate film. Or a message in a bottle.”
Her face twisted like an image in a funhouse mirror. “A message in a bottle? Really?”
“Well, it fits. You’re trying to understand an alien language initially written on the tesseract. The hypercube was just a fancy multidimensional bottle.”
“Except the message isn’t static. It changes. It acts and reacts.”
“Like a scrolling banner?” I suggested.
“No. It’s responding to what we say. Or think. Or do. At least, I think so. Look.” She loaded the original video, the one Choirboy had made in Antarctica. She fast-forwarded to the start of the prayer.
They listened to Barry’s voice. “The light of God surrounds me. The love of God enfolds me.”
“Look at the tesseract,” Zita said. “Got your colorimeter?”
“It’s spinning too fast,” I said lamely. “And the pattern has too fine a detail to pick up on the meter.”
“Oh. Tomorrow I’ll give you a new one. Sonja helped me build it. You’re gonna love it. Anyway, the patterns on the cube have changed. They’re going to change again right now. Hit pause.”
I did, and then I zoomed in and studied the pattern before resuming play.
“The power of God protects me,” Barry prayed. “The presence of God watches over me. Wherever I am, God is.”
“There! Pause it,” Zita said.
The pattern had changed. I looked at Zita and shrugged. “So?” The pattern had been changing all along. No big deal. Except for the colors I knew were there, and I’d seen this video often enough to get past the fear. Almost. I turned off the recording.
“What is God?”
The question caught me off guard. “God?”
She nodded. “Define God in general terms.”
I scratched my hair and wondered if she was serious. The impatient rolling of her hands said she was. “Okay. A divine being. Immortal. All powerful. All knowing. I guess that’s it.”
“Suppose for a moment that the taint is immortal, omniscient, and omnipotent.”
“Whoa! You’re saying the taint is God?”
“No. But maybe the taint thinks that we think it is.” Zita spoke quickly as excitement added momentum to her words. “The taint recognized itself from Barry’s thoughts about God. Then it complied with his prayer. Correction, it’s still in the process of compliance. It surrounds him, protects him, watches over him.”
I tried to swallow but my mouth lacked moisture. “It’s still following his orders. Making him stronger. Turning him into Jesus. Or the equivalent.” I moved toward the kill switch. Cyanide gas followed by an all-consuming inferno would end the threat.
Her hand covered mine. Warm. Soft. “Don’t kill him,” she said. “The taint hasn’t fully covered him, and it can’t as long as the vault stays dark.”
“He’s too dangerous. There are too many loose cannons on the team.”
“Once the Rangers are here you’ll be able to control things. The people, at least.”
“I suppose.”
She raised a brow. “You sound glum. I thought you’d be delighted to finally get reinforcements.”
I forced a smile. “I am.” Or I would be, if Choirboy hadn’t messed with my mind, making me distrust Hauser for no good reason. And Zita, too.
She turned back to the monitor. “I’m sure if I review the right videos, I’ll hear statements made in the presence of the taint, or Barry if he’s acting as an agent for the taint, that correlate to the discoveries made by the team.” Her words sped even faster than before. “Gordon wanted a promotion. Nathan wanted paranormal abilities. Laura wanted her husband. Doc wanted a healing elixir. Sonja wanted a major scientific discovery.”
“You wanted a puzzle to solve,” I said dryly.
“And I’m solving it!” she said with a chirping laugh.
Her lightheartedness filled me with foreboding. It would take only a couple seconds to flip up the protective cover and depress the kill switch. “Does it just listen to our words, or does it read our minds, too?”
She straightened in her chair and swiveled to me, suddenly serious. “Good question. I think it can read our thoughts since it’s been probing our dreams each night.”
“Not mine.”
She cocked her head and gazed thoughtfully at me. “I think you’re invisible to the taint. You can’t see color, so it can’t see you.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It does to me. The taint is patterns, and it senses patterns around itself. I bet it can recognize its reflection in the thoughts of other beings. That’s how it gets into our dreams! It pokes around in our memories for its reflection, and uses that as a starting place for translating our thoughts and language.”
“Zita, you’re...” I wanted to say scaring me, but I was the soldier, the brave one, the protector. “Probably on to something. We should notify Gordon.”
She snickered. “He’ll do nothing to jeopardize his promotion. I need to gather more proof and then we can present it to Colonel Hauser.”
I agreed. This matter belonged in the secure hands of the military. I put aside the temptation of the kill switch. Surveillance in the vault confirmed that Choirboy remained in the dark and I set an alarm to sound if the ambient light level increased. The infrared camera showed him sitting on his bed. The observation room remained deserted. The wall clock said 2100 hours. Ten hours until the Rangers came.
Zita stiffened in her chair and said, “Oh, no.”
“What?”
“Not just reading our minds. The taint is changing them. Maybe that’s part of how it satisfies our desires.”
“Zita, you lost me.”
“The latest set of MMPIs and EEGs show changes in everyone’s personality and brain function. Except for yours.”
“You looked at Laura’s tests?”
She nodded. “It makes understanding the taint difficult. It’s changing. We’re changing. Reality is changing.”
We stayed in the office another hour while Zita searched for snippets of other videos that supported her theory of an intelligent taint that granted wishes like a genie from a lamp. Or made us believe that it did. I felt a growing unease. Most stories about wishes didn’t have happy endings. Especially when people returned from the dead.
Zita printed a few screen shots before turning off the monitor. I walked with her to the conference room, where she spread out the printouts. She turned on a laptop, opened a graphics program, and used a camera to transfer the images into the program. Several of her hand-drawn sketches lay on the table and hung on the walls.
“The intensity of your colors is off.”
She looked up from the computer and frowned. “You can’t see colors.”
“When I see Barry, there’s only uniformly gray skin. When I look at your sketch, I see fifty shades of gray.”
Her frown deepened. “Quit joking. Or making a pass. Whatever.”
“Well, maybe not fifty. But I see each separate patch. If you want to be accurate, I can help with getting the intensity right.”
She pursed her lips and regarded me warily. “All right.”
We started with one of the drawings on the table. She pulled out a bunch of pencils and pastel chalks and proceeded to apply my advice to each inch of Barry’s image. She played around with the shading until much of the d
rawing appeared uniformly gray, at least to me. Did she actually value my comment or merely pretend to do so? Her generally kind disposition suggested that she pitied me for being color-blind. She couldn’t possibly see me as a fully competent, capable, whole, and healthy man. Or could she? I felt her attraction to me, but also a standoffishness. I couldn’t read her, not that I could read any woman with any accuracy. Steampunk wasn’t just a puzzle solver, she was a puzzle.
She stared at the finished product and shivered. Her face screwed up and she spoke without looking at me. “You ever read Nietzsche?”
“No.”
“He said, ‘Beware when fighting monsters that you do not become one yourself, for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.’ The warning applies here.”
The words, or maybe the way she said them, sounded ominous. She turned to me and the expression on her face worried me more than her words.
“You found something?” I asked.
“Maybe. I need to think. And sleep.”
We walked side by side down the empty corridor to her room. She invited me in. I wasn’t sure how to take the invitation; I’d made a fool of myself too many times. I simply nodded and followed her lead.
“I want you to cuff me to the bed,” she said.
“What?” I’d rarely been so surprised.
“Like you did last night, when I tried to kill you.”
“You were hypnotized. You didn’t know what you were doing.” Did she like restraints?
“Wait here.” She placed the room key on the nightstand before disappearing into the bathroom. Was this a prelude to a B&D romance? I wisely kept my clothes on. Her room displayed a few personal belongings. A Rubik’s Cube with its white and gray faces, a combination lock with a cubed base and dials on four faces, a set of handcuffs with no key or keyhole. A faded stuffed animal lay on her bed, a tiger with a patch over one eye. An odd collection for an odd lady.
Zita reappeared wearing plain flannel pajamas. Definitely not an indicator of sexual intimacy. I released a sigh of equal parts relief and disappointment. She crawled into bed and lay face up with most of her body under the covers. She stretched her arms above her head.