Chromatophobia

by W D County

  “You sure about this?” I asked while cinching the cuffs on her wrists, trapping her arms behind the head rail of the bed.

  She nodded. “The post-hypnotic commands might still be active. I don’t want to kill you in the middle of the night.”

  “Very considerate.” Damn trusting of her as well. Did she have any idea how attractive she was? I slipped her room key into my pocket. “I’ll be back at 0600.”

  She bit her lip nervously. “Miles... you could stay if you want. You can sleep in the chair.”

  She trusted me a lot more than I trusted myself. “I have to keep watch. I’ll sleep in the security office and get up every couple hours to check status on Barry and the explorers.”

  “Okay.” She sounded disappointed. I knew the feeling.

  Chapter 44

  The Awareness could now access these human minds during dreams or consciousness with hardly a difference. For humans the difference was far greater; dreams provided a clearer sense of alien presence. Paradoxically, humans disregarded such semi-conscious experiences. This made communication difficult, although the Awareness strove with increasing vigor to make itself understood.

  Intrigue and manipulation filled Gordon’s dream. The game of thrones he played against Barry had progressed to life and death stakes. Barry’s powers, initially intriguing and potentially valuable, were now formidable and threatening. The man’s megalomania swelled with those powers. Unless stopped, the illustrated man would establish a new world order, a theocracy with himself at the head. If the taint reached full converge, no power on Earth could harm Barry or stop the miraculous imposition of his will. Barry must die.

  Miles would be the triggerman, of course. The Marine was a natural killer. But Gordon couldn’t issue an outright order for execution; Laura, Zita, and Doc would raise a stink that could jeopardize his promotion. Even if he could squash dissent from the bleeding hearts, the other team members presented problems. Nathan’s mind-reading was a two-edged sword, and prudence dictated it be kept sheathed—perhaps permanently. Matter permeation presented a danger as well, for if the secret escaped, physical security for banks, prisons, homes, and everywhere else would cease to exist.

  In short, everyone on the team presented a threat.

  The memory of the tesseract came to his mind, its colored facets flashing as they turned in and out of other dimensions. It seemed to call to him, but Gordon ignored the distraction.

  What next?

  He needed a grand finale as a diversion, a location at which he controlled events and the actions of the team. Miles would shoot and kill Barry. Zita would either attack Nathan or collapse in mourning for her fallen hero. Everyone else would be momentarily immobilized by shock. During those crucial minutes he would dash to the security office and activate the destruction of the facility, killing everyone but him. He’d erase the final hour of the surveillance recordings.

  He would then contact Hauser and proceed to the elevator. He’d spin the story of those final minutes, with him as the hero, with nothing and no one to contradict him. Nice. Neat. Final.

  The dream could have ended there, but the Protected One extended it a few more seconds. The elevator door became a massive stone wheel, which rolled away to reveal Barry standing inside. The messiah glowed in a suit of taint that covered every inch of his body, the radiance almost blinding. The newest son of God opened his arms in welcome. “I am the resurrection and the life.”

  Gordon jerked awake, dissipating the dream.

  The Awareness felt the strain of several competing futures. Resolution to a single outcome must come soon, to the dissolution of the others. The probability of any particular future being born remained random so long as the participants remained unaware of their ability to interact. The Awareness moved on.

  ***

  Sonja dreamt of attending a hearing in the US Patent Office. The US government challenged her right to patent the permeation device, claiming that a) it was developed at a government facility while she was working as a contractor, b) that the device discloses classified and top secret information, and c) the device could be utilized as a weapon of mass destruction, at least as dangerous as a nuclear bomb, and therefore cannot be patented as it is contrary to public order and morality.

  Sonja argued that although the device was built at a government facility, it was not at the request of the government, nor did her contract specify that all devices designed or built by her would be considered works-for-hire. Furthermore, the peaceful uses of the device far outweighed the potential for misuse. Therefore, her ownership of the intellectual rights to the invention should be recognized by awarding the patent.

  The arbitrator at the Patent Office found in the government’s favor. She would receive no patent and no recognition. The government seized her notes and prototype. There would be no renaissance of science and technology to bring prosperity to the entire world.

  She fled the room, tears blurring her vision as they caught the light and refracted into endless flowing rainbows. It reminded her of the tesseract and its ability to move between dimensions, able to explore an infinity of parallel worlds. Abruptly she found herself back at the facility, floating over her sleeping body.

  What next?

  The future failure hadn’t yet come to pass. She could change the outcome. But there was a problem. The device required at least a gram of grayed matter to act as a catalyst for the permeation process. Only the taint could produce grayed matter, and Barry was the only source of the taint. Abruptly she found herself floating over Barry, who lay in bed in the vault.

  “Barry, I need a few kilograms of grayed material. Can you help?”

  “In this cave? In the dark? No.” His smile made her shiver.

  She stared at his glittering body and pondered the future. “What do you need of me?”

  “Use your device to free me.”

  She saw no alternative. But once she had enough grayness for a few thousand devices, Barry was redundant. Worse than redundant, since his vision of utopia clashed with hers. Science sometimes required sacrifice. Marie Currie died to advance our understanding of radioactivity. Galileo was condemned by a Pope. Socrates drank poison for insisting on truth. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for daring to believe that the universe had other habitable planets. It was altogether fitting that Barry should join that list of brave martyrs.

  “Such dark dreams,” Barry said in a voice filled with sadness. “Martyrs and saints. Kings and peasants. Death comes to us all, but eternal life comes only to true believers. Your actions add another brick to the edifice called reality. Tell me, Sonja, are you building a temple or a tomb?”

  Time grew short. The quantum probability wave function for this microcosm would soon collapse to a single solution. The Awareness moved on.

  ***

  Nathan dreamt of being a Dominican priest of the Roman Catholic Church during a modern-day Inquisition. He entered the cell of the accused heretic, ostensibly to perform last rites and to offer the man a final chance to recant the false beliefs. The heavy iron door clanged shut behind him. The room stayed perpetually dark. No window broke the cold concrete walls, no light shone from ceiling. Flashlights were forbidden. None of that mattered. The man chained to the wall emitted an unholy blue glow that permeated the enclosed space.

  “Hello, Barry,” he said to the prisoner.

  “I’m not a false prophet, Nathan. I’m the messiah, sent by God to save the world.”

  “Your powers come from Satan, the great deceiver.” Neither of them believed such drivel. These words were for the guards, who sometimes pressed their ears to the door hoping to hear some impropriety that might be sold to the paranoid leadership of the church.

  “The world is blind. No one sees the love of God infused within these abilities.”

  You woke the dormant part of my brain, thought Nathan. I was blind, but now I see. “Will you recant?”

  “Recant? You want me to renounce the mission given to me by God hi
mself?” People see only what they want to see. Even you, Nathan. Before tomorrow ends you will deny me. The audible words carried outrage. The thoughts carried sadness.

  “Then you are to be burned at the stake tomorrow at noon, when the light of God’s sun dispels your shadow, and the fire of man consumes your body.” You really believe you cannot be killed?

  “God protects his faithful servants.” The multitude of fractal patterns covering Barry’s body seemed to come alive, emphasizing those words, and yet implying something more, some meaning that remained tantalizingly out of reach.

  Nathan sighed.

  What next?

  Nathan paused at the thought. It came from him but seemed to have an echo. Barry must be wondering the same thing. Nathan didn’t believe Barry would rise from the dead. The powers of telepathy, telekinesis, and the rest came from unexplored areas of the brain. When the brain died, the powers died with it. He kept these beliefs buried, least he incur Barry’s wrath. Truth be told, he looked forward to having the fanatic out of the picture.

  “Shall I hear your confession?”

  “I am without sin.”

  What about pride? thought Nathan.

  I follow God’s will. As do we all, knowingly or not.

  “Then there is nothing further I can do for you.” He then carefully formulated a silent lie. When you are tied to the stake and burned, the fire will provide the light and color you need to finish your transformation. The miracle of your survival will ensure your acceptance to the masses. The blessed millennia of your reign will start.

  Barry nodded.

  Nathan knew there would be no fire. When he came to deliver the last rites to Barry, he would also bring a dagger to plunge through the man’s heart. Barry would die in darkness, preserving the world as it is, and leaving Nathan as the sole practitioner of paranormal abilities. Telepathy in particular would enable him to rise through the ranks of this hierarchal society. In less than a year he could be Pope. St. Peter’s Square would swell with five hundred thousand people cheering for him... worshipping him. Millions more would line the streets of Rome. Billions more would watch on television.

  As he turned to leave, the keyhole in the door caught his attention. The internal design of the lock should have prevented light from entering the room, yet he saw in it a glittering jewel of great brightness, a diamond that captured a thousand rainbows and gave each one its own polished facet. The incredible beauty filled him with fear.

  The imposed isolation and the human capacity for deception kept the future of this world indeterminate but distinctly bleak. Nearly every final state of the probability function ended in a variant of death and destruction. The Awareness moved on.

  ***

  Laura spooned against her husband and closed her eyes, falling asleep happy for the first time in months. She dreamt of a circus; she sat on a bleacher under a huge tent and watched in wide-eyed wonder the three rings of hectic activity on the sawdust floor.

  In the center ring, a group of three men and two women surrounded a multicolored clown chained to a wooden post. The team wore white lab coats. Black blinders covered their eyes. One person touched the clown’s gigantic shoes. Another touched a bulbous red nose. Another touched the spiked orange hair. One touched buttons that squeaked. Another gave a handshake to an inflated green glove. Each person made annotations on their clipboards and argued loudly. A keystone cop with a six-foot Nerf pistol ran in circles around the team, threatening to shoot everyone, most often the clown.

  The clown pulled a toy fishing rod from a pocket far too small to have housed it. A glimmering oversized hook swung from the end of the line. He cast it into the adjacent ring.

  Spotlights dimmed on the center ring and brightened on the right where the hook had landed. Like the center ring, this one had a center post to which was tied a clown, but the clown wasn’t real. A cursory examination showed a scarecrow dressed in a clown costume, an old one that had faded to gray. Around this facsimile of a clown floated six gray helium-filled balloons, each one tethered by an elastic cord to an anchor on the ground. Each balloon bore a face of a team member. One of them was John.

  The fishing hook snared the cord of John’s balloon, and the clown began reeling it in. A spotlight captured the balloon’s journey between ring worlds, its cord stretching and thinning, growing taut all the way to its unmovable anchor. The clown grasped the string and laughed.

  Now the lights reversed, dimming on the periphery and brightening in the center. The Keystone cop went berserk, pointing at the clown and ordering the thief to return the stolen soul. The colors of the clown flared, pulsing with a life of their own. Laura wanted to stare at those colors—they held some sort of message—but her attention shifted as the clown’s arm stretched toward her, growing longer and longer, a hundred feet at least, to dangle John’s face mere inches from her own.

  A spotlight fell on her, a second one on the clown. An expectant hush replaced the murmurs and giggles of the crowd. All activity stopped.

  What next?

  The whispered question boomed within her mind. Loudness lacked meaning when no other sound disturbed the absolute silence.

  Her intuition screamed out for her to take the balloon, tie it to her wrist, and cut the cord that tried to pull it back. She didn’t know how to cut the cord, but Barry the clown knew. She had to protect him, had to keep the crazy cop from shooting him and sending John reeling back to his own world.

  The balloon spoke in John’s voice. “You have to let me go.”

  The clown said, “You have to let me go.”

  She shook her head violently and awoke in her bed shouting “No!”

  John wrapped his arms around her. “Bad dream? Let it go. Doesn’t mean a thing.”

  The Awareness wondered how conscious creatures survived without acknowledging the connectedness of all things. The Awareness moved on.

  ***

  Doc dreamt of patients filling every room of the clinic, and the clinic took up every room of the forty-story building in Manhattan. Offices had been converted to treatment rooms furnished with nothing more than an examination table and a chair. Overnight stays were never required. Gray goo worked instantly. The clinic operated 24/7 and employed a staff of five hundred. Fees were based on ability to pay and had thus far proved sufficient to cover all expenses.

  He studied the crystal ball on his desk. Inside it hovered a tiny tesseract, immune to gravity and every other force known to humanity. A symbol of life and life’s tenacity. The future should have been bright, just as bright as the tesseract. He wanted to stare at it, to ferret out the secrets it held, but duty called. He took pride in his clinic, pride in the thousands of lives and limbs saved. The greater his pride, the deeper his shame. He couldn’t have one without the other.

  What next?

  More of the same. He descended to the basement to collect more goo.

  No lights pierced the gloom of this subterranean prison. Elaborate 3-D goggles guided his steps, updated by ultrasonic echolocation sensors. He made his way to the triple-locked door and let himself in.

  Barry lay face up on the bed, unable to move due to the titanium stake piercing his chest and wedged into the bed frame. He looked like an executed vampire, but the stake missed his heart. The rod penetrated at the boundary of the taint, where the ever-present injury balanced the never-ending healing.

  Barry glared. Doc didn’t blame him. The admonition “Do no harm” took on a distorted meaning here. The patient could not die and felt no pain, only pressure from the oversize pin that held him like a butterfly on display.

  It wasn’t fair. Doc didn’t dispute that. But neither was it fair to condemn thousands, even millions of people to death, disability, and illness when such maladies could be cured by a drop of Barry’s miraculous blood.

  “Let me die,” Barry said.

  Doc often considered wearing earplugs to shield himself from those words. He never did, refusing to add cowardice to his guilt and shame. “Oth
ers live because of you. I’m... sorry.” He reached under the bed where blood drained into a collection bag. A brief exposure to a flashlight’s narrow beam turned the red fluid into gray goo. A one-hundred-cc beaker could treat a thousand patients. IV fluids and Barry’s amazing healing ability easily kept pace with these daily withdrawals.

  “What if you had another source?” Barry asked.

  Doc froze. Barry had never hinted at an alternative source for the goo.

  “My blood is not unique.”

  Doc croaked out a single word. “Who?”

  “The explorers. Their minds are gone, but their bodies endure. Their gray blood has the same healing properties. Moreover, they have no taint; you need not fear contagion.”

  “Dear God... what I’ve done to you... all those years...”

  “This future need never be born,” Barry said. “If you let me go.”

  Doc considered that option. Barry was powerful, and should he ever achieve total coverage by the taint, his powers would become all-powerful. He’d be a god among mortals, much as he claimed now. That could not be allowed to happen. And yet…

  The Awareness moved on.

  ***

  Zita considered staying up all night. It wasn’t concern over the hypnotic suggestions; not with her arms handcuffed to the bed rail. No, it was the prospect of dreaming that filled her with misgiving. The lingering effects of drugs and hypnosis may have slowed her thinking, and without speed of thought how could she escape if the dream taint gave chase?

  She fought sleep. She reviewed the occurrences of the past few days, arranging and rearranging facts in her head in an attempt to build a coherent understanding. She counted prime numbers, losing her place after 1,076,477. She thought about Miles, a killer with such courteous manners, even after she’d tried to kill him. Rock-hard muscles. Deep, dark eyes. Baritone voice full of power.

  Zita Ferrari.

  Her eyes snapped open. Had someone called? She cursed herself for falling asleep. But the room was empty and normal. The voice didn’t repeat. She worked on calculating how much sand were held by all the beaches of the world. Only a very rough approximation. Maybe she could get with a billion tons. So many assumptions, though. She estimated the average size and weight of a grain of sand, the number of beaches, and the volume of each beach. She figured about a billion grains of sand per cubic foot. At 120 pounds per cubic foot, that meant ... ninety trillion tons? Her eyes drifted closed.