November 25, 2009

She spread her files out before her on the table and consulted her pad one more time before speaking.

"Hello, Nicholas."

"Hi."

Belinda glanced toward Gerhardt, but his face still revealed nothing. The briefing she had received had informed her to expect the use of a speech synthesizer. Her mouth worked slightly.

"My name is Dr. O'Connell," she said, working to make her voice sound more casual and reassuring. "I'm a psychologist. I've been asked to talk to you." She paused for a moment. "You can call me Belinda, if you'd like."

There was only silence from the room's speakers.

"Can you hear me, Nicholas?" she asked after several moments.

"Yes."

"Oh, okay," she said, feeling slightly sheepish, and hoping that the faint burning of her cheeks was not visible. "That's good." She took a slow, quiet breath before continuing. "Dr. Gerhardt and Dr. Kincaid are here with me," she said. "Do you want them to leave?"

"No."

She looked up, expecting to see at least a hint of smugness in Gerhardt's eyes. Instead, she received only his intent gaze. Hell of a poker player, I bet.

This was going to turn out to be a bit more difficult than she had originally thought, she decided. The briefing materials she had been provided had told her that, for the time being, Nicholas could only communicate using a limited vocabulary of one-syllable, single-sound words. There should be improved communication in the future, the report had said, but it did not define when. Why couldn't they have waited until then to bring her in? Belinda wondered. It would have made her job easier. That was not the point, she recognized. For reasons that were still unclear to her, they had wanted her to begin this now.

Ideally, she wanted to ask open-ended questions, but those tended to be difficult to answer with single words. She was going to need to do a lot of verbal exploring to get anywhere, she realized. Already, she could tell that it was going to be tedious. She had dealt with a small number of limited functioning patients before, but she had always been allowed in their physical presence. Being able to read their facial expression, and even subtle changes in body language, often provided her with as much—if not more—information than what they said, however they said it.

Belinda leaned back slightly in her chair, her eyes tracking down the list of her standard opening questions. Almost none of them could be answered simply. She needed to devise an entirely new approach. She would preferred to postpone this session and came back after having had a chance to prepare again, but she suspected that they might choose another psychologist and, for some reason she could not define, she did not want to lose this opportunity—even given its restrictions on later publication of her findings.

She looked down at her tablet and then at her notes. It was possible, she decided, that she could postpone the usual preliminaries and return to them later after she had a better feel for how this method of communication was going to work. Glancing quickly up toward Gerhardt and Kincaid, she saw that they seemed to waiting for her patiently, but she did not know how long that patience would bear out.

"Nicholas," she started again. "Are you aware of you what has happened to you?"

There was a short pause before his voice answered her.

"Yes."

"Are you in any pain?"

The pause was longer this time.

"No."

Nearly everyone she had talked to on the project—and a few others outside it—had reassured that her that Nicholas should be feeling no direct physical discomfort at all. Any pain or sensations he might be experiencing would like be similar to the familiar "phantom limb syndrome", as he currently lacked any means to carry pain signals to his . . . brain.

Belinda sighed. It was truly an unusual way of thinking. The briefing materials had been very specific about this aspect of the situation. She could even remember the faintly squeamish sensation she felt upon reading it for the first time. (It had, in fact, taken her several readings to produce her desired level of objectivity on the subject.) Some of those feelings returned now, being faced directly with the being that had once been the young man Nicholas Jorgensen.

She forced herself to focus on the immediate problem of having a meaningful conversation with him. Although open-ended and leading questions would have made getting information from him much easier, she would have to work with what she had. She skimmed the list of opening questions again, mentally transposing them into ones that could be answered more simply with either a "yes" or "no".

Eyeing Gerhardt and Kincaid, she saw what she thought might be faint bemusement in Gerhardt's eyes. Kincaid seemed either bored or frustrated with her lack of activity; she was not entirely certain which.

With a look of renewed determination, she began again.

"Nicholas, are you sad about what happened to you?"

"Yes."

"Are you sometimes angry about it?"

"Yes."

"Are you frightened?

"Yes."

#

[much later]

Cynthia remained crouched near the security guard's body. He was not moving, but she was not certain whether or not he was dead. His heavy uniform jacket made it difficult to tell whether he was breathing and she had no intention of turning him over to find out. She was afraid what she might find if she did so.

This section of the corridor was blocked off at the end by a large, complex door that looked like an airlock from some science fiction film. The doors on either side looked far more traditional, but mounted next to each was a security access panel. Cynthia did not hear any footsteps, but that did not mean that whoever had shot down the guard was not nearby and that they would not be back.

She spied the corner of his ID badge clipped to his waist. It was attached to a metal spool that would extend the badge if needed and then return it to its place. Cynthia grabbed the badge and yanked on it, pulling it toward the door to her right. The thin cable ran out several centimeters short of the security panel, preventing the badge from entering the pickup range of the sensor. She tried again with the door on the left side, but the guard had fallen almost in the center of the hallway, making both panel out of reach.

Taking a deep breath against a rising wave of queasiness, Cynthia reached under the man's belt and unfastened the clip. She breathed easier when she encountered nothing but fabric, none of the slippery gore that she had feared.

Sliding across the floor on her legs, wanting to stay low and hopefully out of sight, she made her way back to the left access panel, as it was now the closer of the two. She waved the badge in front of it rapidly. A moment later, she heard a reassuring click and began to relax. She reached up and pulled the handle. This time, it moved easily, and the door opened.

Ducking inside the room quickly, she remained crouching low, and waited until the door closed and locked itself again before daring to stand up. The light flickered on around her and she looked frantically around for the switch, afraid that they would reveal her presence. She finally located it and slapped at it with her hand, returning the interior of the room to near darkness.

She was glad that the small room was not completely dark. There seemed to be some indirect lighting coming from above somewhere, probably exactly for that reason. From what she could see, it looked like an empty office, lacking even a telephone. There was almost nothing else in it except for some chairs, a workstation, and what looked like a microphone sitting on the room's single table. She wondered what the microphone was connected to and whether she could use it to call for help.

Searching until she located its power switch, she turned it on, relieved to see a small green light begin to glow near the base. She hesitated, not entirely sure what to say, or who might hear it. Before she could gather her courage to try, she heard someone at the other end speak.

"Hi."

Cynthia stared at the microphone as if it were a sleeping cobra come to life. She was not certain if what she had heard was a word or a sound. It could have been an accident, a burst of static that sounded like a word.

"Hi."

She froze, still staring at the microphone. At that moment, it would have surprised her less to see something gaseous and evil issue forth from the microphone mesh. Too many horror movies, she scolded herself silently. Swallowing, she forced herself to respond.

"Hello?"

Her voice came out even more tremulous than she had feared it would.

"Hi."

Cynthia began to wonder if she had stumbled on some kind of strange recording. The word was coming out exactly the same every time. There was no inflection in it, so she could not telling it was simply responding to her or also asking the same question of her existence and identity.

"Do you work here?"

"No."

Cynthia's heart sank. Was it some child somewhere in the complex? Part of one of their experiments?

"Are you okay?"

There was a long silence. Cynthia thought they had gone away when the voice returned again.

"Yes."

"Do you know where you are?"

"Yes."

"Are you in this building?"

"Yes."

To her surprise, Cynthia found that this answer reassured her. Whoever it was, they were somewhere inside the complex as well, but seemed to be unaware of what was going on. Or were they?

"Do you understand what's going on?"

"Yes."

Relief filled her, but it was short-lived. The voice returned a moment later.

"No."

Now she was puzzled. Which was it? Maybe it really was a child. If that was the case, she did not want to frighten them.

"Are you in a safe place?"

"Yes."

"Do you know where?"

"Yes."

Cynthia began to feel better again.

"Where are you?"

The answer came quickly.

"Here."

Instinctively, Cynthia glanced around the room. Even before she completed the action, she almost laughed at herself. She already knew that the room was empty, except for her own presence and its small amount of furniture.

"Can you be more a little more specific?" Cynthia asked, unable to keep all of the amusement out of her tone.

"Here."

Cynthia sighed. She was getting nowhere quickly with this conversation and, for a few moments, had actually forgotten why she was hiding in this room in the first place. It was probably no safer than almost anywhere else in the building, she knew. If she could get her hands on an access badge and get in, so could whoever else was roaming the halls taking down security guards.