“Who are
you?”
“Tiza…Tiza
Mullins. It’s an honor to work with you
Doctor Sousa.”
“Work with
me? Who said you were working with me?”
“Oh…um, I’m
sorry sir. I’m the new technician.”
“New
technician!? Where’s Clement?”
“I don’t know Doctor. My supervisor just called me last night and
told me to report to your lab this morning.
I was naturally very excited. You’re
a legend. Your breakthroughs in
holographic psychology put this research center on the map and…”
“Yes, yes.” Waiving his hand. “I assume you’ve been instructed to run the equipment…Liza?”
“It’s Tiza,
sir. Of course. I was the next alternate.”
“The next
what?”
Clearing her throat. “Alternate, sir. When your first two technicians…um…left in less than a month, my
supervisor began training backups.”
“So you’re
telling me I’m a crotchety old man who’s hard to work with?”
Nervous and
a bit shocked. “No sir! Of course not. I meant…”
He
interrupted. “Prepare the
equipment. The first session begins in
fifteen minutes.”
*
* *
The janitor arrived early to lab
S9-A. Friday was normally his day off,
but who could pass up five hundred credits to let the white coats ask a few
questions. He wished he could be a lab
rat full time. Cleaning toilets sucked.
The door was open and a nice
woman greeted him. She seemed very
young. Barely in her twenties. If he were thirty years younger…’What? What if I were 30 years younger? She’d still think I’m an animal from the old
city.’ He smiled.
The janitor spent five or ten
minutes signing release forms while the nice young woman ‘what did she say her
name was…Tanya?’ fiddled with some equipment on the other side of the
room. He had never cleaned this room
before.
As the janitor was finishing, a
tall white coat entered the room. This
one seemed thinner and more arrogant than most.
“Good morning.” He began.
“I’m Doctor Sousa. I believe
you’ve already met Liza. Do you have the
release forms? Good. We’re just about ready to begin. As I’m sure you read on the sign-up sheet,
we’ll be testing a relatively new invention of mine called the Holographic
Cerebral Quantum Spectrometer. We’ll be
showing you a series of images on the screen there. The device will record your cerebral response.”
The janitor
nodded without understanding.
“Now, on your application, you
listed no bio enhancements…no implants.
Is that correct?”
Huh…like he
could afford that. “Yes, that’s right.”
“Good. Any questions?”
“You’ll be
here…in the room?”
“No, actually, we’ll be behind
the mirror there. In the control
room. I’m afraid it’s necessary in
order to record a clean data stream.”
“Okay.”
“Do you have
any other questions?”
“Um…am I the
first person to do this?”
“No…no, of course not. We’ve tested the equipment on thirty-one
previous subjects. It’s perfectly safe,
if that’s what you’re worried about. As
you can read on the yellow release form, we’ll only be recording your
responses.”
“Okay.”
“Anything
else?”
“No.”
“Good.”
After collecting and checking
the release forms, Dr. Sousa and Tiza left the room. Tiza closed the door and followed the Doctor into the adjoining
control room.
Clearing her
throat. “Doctor…I’m not sure he
understands what we’ll be doing.”
“What’s your point?” He paused long enough to read the puzzled
look on her face. “He signed the
release forms. I never explain the
procedure in detail. The subjects would
never understand it anyway.”
“But Doctor,
you didn’t tell the man we’d be reading his mind.”
Irritated, “I didn’t tell him
we’d be reading his mind because we will not be reading his mind. I told him we’d be recording his responses
and that’s exactly what we’ll be doing.
Years of research and engineering allow me to interpret those responses
with a high level of accuracy.”
Becoming more irritated, “Do you
have any idea what a powerful tool this will be for the field of mental
health? Of course you don’t! Now shut up and do your job before I request
the next alternate!”
Tiza silently retreated to her
console and began the session. She
played with the settings to avoid eye contact with the Doctor. He leaned, unnecessarily, into the mic and
announced to the janitor “All right, let’s begin. Please focus on the large screen in front of you. All you have to do is watch. We’ll do the rest.”
Images began appearing and
disappearing on the screen in five second intervals. Nothing particularly exciting.
A green field. A starving
child. The New Dallas space lift. A cute puppy.
“Volume! Turn up the volume!”
Tiza winced and adjusted the
volume. A sterile computerized voice
began speaking the subject’s thoughts.
~ Trapped. The light burns. Sharp splinter in my eye.
I would eat the light. Cool
darkness has such a sweet smell. ~
Dr. Sousa slammed his fist on
the console. “What are you doing?! I thought you said you knew how to run the
equipment!”
“I do! The session is running fine.”
“Running fine!? We’re getting gibberish! Do you honestly think looking at a picture
of a puppy has caused that man to think ‘I would eat the light’?!”
“But Doctor,
the readings are all within normal parameters.
Check it yourself.”
He couldn’t really do that if he
wanted to. Dr. Sousa had always relied
on technicians and engineers to handle the hardware. “Are you absolutely sure?
We’ve never gotten this kind of nonsense before.”
“Yes
sir. Absolutely sure.”
Dr. Sousa leaned into the mic
again. “OK. We’re going to have to restart the session. Just sit back and relax and please focus on
the images. Think about what you
see. What thoughts do they bring to
mind. Give us a few minutes to reset.”
The janitor
nodded.
“Reboot the
system and let’s try this again.”
Once the system was up, Tiza
began the session from the top.
Field. Child. Space lift.
Puppy. The thoughts droned.
~ So hungry. I want the piece. The piece I found. Big
animals are wasteful. The burning. Splinter in my eye. ~
“I’m sorry
Doctor. Maybe we could…”
“Shhh! Could this be real? Maybe this guy is an outlier. Keep it running.”
Dr. Sousa
leaned into the mic once again. “Are
you concentrating on the images as I instructed?”
“Yes.” The janitor responded.
“Are you
hungry? Did you have breakfast this
morning?”
Puzzled. “Um…I didn’t eat this morning.”
Dr. Sousa
stepped away from the mic. The thoughts
continued to drone inside the control room.
~ I would eat the light. The piece is mine. She knew that. I had to
kill her. She was soft, but the piece
is mine. ~
Tiza shifted
in her chair and mumbled. “Outlier? More like a psycho.”
Dr. Sousa reached for the
nearest phone. “Yes, I’m calling for Doctor Barker please.” Pause.
“Hi Karen. It’s Juan. I’ve got a session running here you might
want to see. Yes, S9-A. Bye.”
He hung up the phone and rubbed his hands together. “What have we got here?”
*
* *
By mid afternoon, the janitor
was starting to get annoyed. This thing
was supposed to go for about an hour.
He had spent the better part of six hours in this bright, sterile room. The first two he watched the monitor. Since then, they had not asked him to do
anything, just let them observe him. Of
course, he would have left long ago if they had not offered to double his
pay. He had missed his kid’s boola
game, but it was worth it for the extra credits.
Two large men dressed in white
stood outside of lab S9-A. There was
now quite a crowd inside the control room.
Several doctors were conferring in the corner while Dr. Sousa discussed
the janitor with the center’s director, Dr. Thayer. The computerized voice continued its paranoid, often incoherent
ranting in the background.
~ Squeezed it. Others know the way. Get the piece. Back to the pile. Must
hunt. Can’t let big-fast get us. Must be sneaky. ~
“This is tremendous, Doctor
Sousa. It would’ve been months…maybe
years before we could begin field trials.
And bam! This gift falls in our
lap.”
“I know, sir. I can’t believe it. We’re calibrating the system on indentured
staff and it just so happens one of them is a clinical case. He’s clearly paranoid, delusional, possibly
schizophrenic. To say nothing of his
homicidal tendencies.”
“Do you
think he’s actually killed anybody?”
“It’s
difficult to say at this point. At the
very least, we’ll have to call the police.”
“Yes, definitely. Have someone do that right away. I’ll begin the paperwork to have him
committed. Good work Doctor. I never dreamed we could have clinical
results this quickly. This will allow
us to accelerate delivery to market and come in well under budget.”
Dr. Sousa followed Dr. Thayer
out of the control room and into the hallway.
As Dr. Thayer walked away, Dr. Sousa motioned to the two large men. They entered the lab carrying restraints. One of them snarled at the janitor “Come on,
sicko. You’re gonna be staying for a
while.”
*
* *
Late that night, Tiza was
locking up the lab and control room.
The police were gone. The
Doctors were probably out celebrating.
She had a clammy, nauseated feeling in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t stop thinking about the way the
janitor was screaming and crying as he was dragged from the room. But, he clearly needed help. He was a danger to himself and others. She thought about his family.
“Lights.” The room darkened as she closed the door.
Tiza headed for the elevator to
the surface. The shuttles were fewer
and far between this time of night. She
hoped she wouldn’t have to wait long.
The elevator arrived with a ding.
She paused for a moment as she tried to remember turning off the control
room equipment. “It won’t hurt
anything,” she said and stepped into the elevator. As the doors slid together, she let out a sigh, “Surface.”
In the empty darkness of lab
S9-A, a small scratching noise came from behind a maintenance panel. Squeezing through a thin ventilation slit,
the rat fell several inches to the floor.
~ No more bright
burning. Cool darkness has such a sweet
smell. So Hungry. ~
It scurried across the room to a
small crack in the wall. Inside, it
began to nibble the crust of bread it had found a few days earlier.
~ The piece. ~