November 8. 2009

His mind returned once more to the examination of his state of being. He had finally decided that he was definitely not dead. It was far too boring and it was unlikely that people who try speaking to him if he was. The voice, and what it had said, sounded nothing like a séance, but a deliberate attempt to communicate with as a living being. He wondered if he were in a coma, but somehow doubt that his mind would function so clearly in that state. It did not feel like he was hallucinating. Since he saw nothing, there was nothing to hallucinate about. He would have welcomed a bizarre display of dancing lights, melting clocks, or even a white rabbit running by carrying a pocket watch. Instead, all he faced was complete and utter darkness. And he had begun to wonder just how long he could stand it before he did go mad.

He was certain that the intermittent voice had not been a hallucination—was it still a hallucination if it was only sound?—although it had been days since he had last heard it. Had it been days? he wondered. Still lacking of any frame of reference for measuring time, he had no idea. It might not have truly been days, but it had to have been at least several minutes, or not hours. He realized that he could count off seconds in his head, but wondered what length of time they truly measured. What was the speed of thought?

Nicholas stopped, suddenly and truly frightened for the first time since his ordeal had begun. His thoughts were shooting off in random directions, much as they did when he was completely fatigued or the one time he had sampled a small amount of a psychoactive drug that a friend-of-a-friend had brought to a party. He could not remember the name of the substance, but he had been very glad that he had not tried more than the minute amount that he had. While the semi-hallucinogenic visions had not particularly frightened him—they had been fairly benign—the loss of control over his own consciousness had. Getting buzzed on beer or wine coolers was one thing; sending your brain off on unfamiliar drugs was another.

He suddenly heard that strange buzzing noise again. Whoever controlled it had apparently learned how to control its volume. It no longer threatened to blast through his mind. Now, it built softly, just at the edge of awareness, and then increased in strength until it was a clear, steady sensation. There is stayed for several moments. Nicholas waited for it to fade and for the voice to appear, but it never did. The sound did finally die away, but no voice ever followed it to address him as it had in the past. Nicholas felt disappointed and, he was surprised to notice, lonely. He did not realize how much he had clung to the existence of that voice, as infrequent as it was, as an anchor for his own sanity.

Again, he remembered the tales of solitary isolation used as a form of torture. But why? He was no one special—certainly no one that terrorists or kidnappers would be interested in. His father was . . . his father was . . . what? Who? The image of a face floated indistinctly at the edges of his memory. It refused to resolve into more detail, but he was certain that it must have belonged to his father. The visage certainly seemed familiar, but the feelings that surfaced along with it seemed increasingly complex. Nicholas did not understand why. He found that he could not focus on any single memory involving his father before it evaded him, vanishing out of his reach.

He wanted to lash at whoever was responsible for whatever had been done to him—was being done to him. A peculiar rage began to build from somewhere deep within his thoughts. It surfaced, becoming a mental scream of anguish and fury. Having no outlet, it seemed to echo endlessly within Nicholas’ mind.

#

“Dr. Kincaid?” Patel called out. Although her tone was quiet and respectful, the undertone of urgency in it made Kincaid give her his immediate attention. She was one of the newer members of his staff. A short, compact Indian woman, her reserved demeanor hid a fierce intelligence. He had hired her almost instantly without an interview after reading her two most recent papers on memory storage and sensory triggers in the brain.

“What is it, Sheetal?” he asked, his eyes turning toward the display at her workstation.

“There are severe spikes in the Beta waves again, Doctor,” she reported.

Kincaid saw immediately that what she reported was true. Under normal hospital conditions, significant changes in the readouts would have caused audible alarms to sound. Here, through, there were only alerts set for basic physical and environmental readings. Beyond those, none of them were yet sure what a “normal” range was in situations like this.

His lips formed a grim line. “Sedation,” he said. His tone, while quiet, clearly conveyed his disappointment.

One of the other technicians moved to respond, but he countermanded himself before she could complete the action.

“No, wait,” he told Patel. “Gary,” he instructed the young researcher to his right. “Activate the vocoder again.”

The tall young man obeyed, handing Kincaid his headset. Kincaid slipped it on with a practiced motion and nodded to Gary to activate the system.

“Nicholas,” Kincaid said in a calm and even tone. “Nicholas, can you hear me?” He paused, glancing toward Patel, who nodded her affirmation: the Beta wave spikes were easing. Breathing a slow sigh of relief, he hesitated, not at all certain what he said say at this point. Simple instructions were best, he decided, and spoke into the microphone of the headset. “I need to remain calm,” he said. “We having trouble communicating with you, but we are working on it.” He tried to think of something he could suggest that would help Nicholas pass the time, but feared triggering some new kind of mental trauma.

“I want you to think of the last film you saw, Nicholas,” Kincaid went on. “I want to you try to remember every scene, every line of dialogue from the beginning.” He took a quick breath, glancing up at his staff standing around him. “I’ll be asking you about it when we talk again.” He waited a moment, almost asking automatically whether the boy understood, but then remembered that he could not respond.

Kincaid nodded quickly to Gary, who turned off the vocoder. His sigh was audible this time. “We can’t keep him sedated all the time,” he said by way of explanation. He leaned back, turning to one of the female team members. She was a young woman fresh from her Ph.D., with sandy blonde hair that she usually wore pulled back into a single ponytail. “Anything yet from Cambridge?” Kincaid asked.

The young blonde woman grimaced slightly, shaking her head slightly. “Nothing yet, sir,” she replied. “They’re not returning my calls.”

Kincaid scratched at the back of his head, noting absently that he seemed overdue for a haircut. On Adamson’s authority—which, in his opinion, was occasionally worth something—he had contacted the researcher who had constructed the original speech synthesis device for Dr. Steven Hawking. This project required that kind of expertise. It was both annoying and frustrating that their inquiries had not been answered. Damn Brits are probably on holiday or something, Kincaid concluded with only minor amusement.

He glanced once more at the displays and then at the chamber beyond. There really was nothing more he could do now. “I’ll be back shortly,” he told his team. “Let me know if you see any changes.”

There were murmurs of “Yes, Doctor” and “Yes, sir” as Kincaid left the room. In the hallway outside he paused for a moment, thinking. He had a bad feeling—a very bad feeling—that if they did not establish two-way communication soon, this project would very rapidly spiral downward into failure. It was not a possibility that we wanted to accept. This project needed to succeed—would succeed, he told himself. He just wished that he could believe it was true.

#

Cynthia and Diana finally made it inside the Bar and now stood in the line to actually place their orders at the grill. Cynthia tried to ignore Diana as she attempted to engage Bryan (according to the name on his badge) in what her friend considered to be witty conversation. She was also aware that Bryan seemed to be trying to get her attention, but Cynthia made a point of keeping her eyes almost anywhere but behind the grill. Fortunately, a pale boy with rough-cut hair that hung almost to his shoulders, and piercings in the corner of his lower lip and one eyebrow, asked to take her order. He, at least, was easy to ignore, and the feeling seemed to be mutual.

The two girls waited together at the cashier, with Diana fidgeting impatiently most of the time. Cynthia paid for Diana’s lunch because, as was often the case, her friend had left her money back in her dorm room. Cynthia added this to her mental tab, with every expectation that the tab would most likely never be paid. Still, having it had it uses on occasion, usually when Cynthia didn’t feel like doing her own laundry.

Cynthia had settled on a grilled chicken salad and a bottle of flavored water. Diana had selected some kind of beef patty, hamburger-like thing dripping with a yellowish-orange-colored sauce, along with onion rings and a diet soda. Cynthia opined silently that her friend had more to worry about with her arteries than whether she gained an ounce or two from drinking non-diet beverages.

Their orders came up ready almost as soon as Cynthia had finished paying for them. They ended up at a small table outside because, as usual, all of the inside seats were taken and, as usual, no one seemed about to vacate any. Cynthia had often wondered if some students came and claimed seats as soon as the Bar opened at ten o’clock and then never left until it closed at nine. It reminded her of one vacation she had taken with her family, seeing people at their hotel claiming the choicest seats near the pool right before breakfast, but then being rarely seen there throughout the day.

It took her a moment to realize that Diana was talking to her. It sounded like it was about her friend’s third attempt to get her attention. She nodded thoughtfully, as if she had been listening intently throughout, but Diana was evidently not fooled by the charade.

“You’re just out of it lately, Cyn,” Diana remarked with a sigh that would have seemed profound, had her mouth not been full of meat, cheese, and sauce. “What’s going on with you?”

Cynthia picked at her salad without taking a bite. She really did not know what was bothering her recently. Classes were tough, but she thought she was doing okay. Things with her father seemed little different than normal. He was, he had told her, deeply entrenched in some new project at work, but she knew that he would soon come up for air and realize that he had neglected keeping in touch with her. As occasionally frustrating as she find that, she did have to admit that he had always been there when she had really needed him—and even sometimes when she did not.

“You know what you need?” Diana went on in the absence of a response from Cynthia. She held up an onion ring for emphasis. “You need to stop looking for Mr. Right and make some time for Mr. Right Now.”

Cynthia stared at Diana without smiling. “You stole that from a movie.”

Diana shrugged, and then grinned. “Yeah, probably.” She bit into the onion ring and chewed for a moment. “I don’t remember which one, though.”

Trying not to roll her eyes, a single, faint laugh managed to escape from Cynthia. This, she realized, was why she had remained friends with Diana for so long. She often took herself far too seriously and she needed the balance that Diana offered. But, as her aunt had often told her, everything in moderation. Which is why she could only handle Diana in short doses any more, without feeling a growing need to hide somewhere from her friend’s perpetual perkiness.