Project- Heritage

by Rob Horner

  He remembered her name.

  He knew this was more than a dream, just as he knew the strange things in the work center weren’t delusions or hallucinations.

  What did it mean? What was he supposed to do?

  What’s happening to me?

  Watchtower

  2:14 a.m.

  “Holy shit!” Harry exclaimed, reaching for his desktop phone. He dialed Chief Davis’ number from memory.

  “Yeah?” the voice that came through the line was thick with sleep.

  “I think you might want to come to Watchtower, Chief.”

  “What? Harry? Is this a joke?”

  “No, Chief. Something really weird is going on with our subjects, and you’ll probably want to report it.”

  Shuffling noises, like someone getting out of bed. “All right, Harry, I’ll be over there. It’ll take me about thirty minutes.”

  “All right, Chief. I’ll put a pot on for you.” Harry hung up the phone.

  On the monitors, Harry watched both subjects sitting up in bed, staring around their rooms. Their features, though stained a ghostly green through the night-vision lenses attached to the cameras, shared an identical look of shock, perhaps even fear. Whatever had woken them up happened simultaneously.

  The male subject rose from the bed, though on all three previous evenings he’d gone back to sleep. The female subject also kicked her covers free and stood. Wearing pajamas, she got out of bed and hurried to the attached bathroom. Opening a video editing program, Harry tagged a beginning and end point to each video feed, then dragged those sections over to his editor. He placed them in the program one on top of the other, so their timestamps were identical. He’d start playing from 2:13:00 when Chief Davis arrived.

  Minimizing the editor, he returned to his live cameras. On the male’s feed, he discovered the subject had left the barracks room. Motion on a second monitor showed him entering the men’s bathroom, stripping down and stepping into the shower. The female was already reclining in her bathtub, her petite body surrounded by white, frothy bubbles.

  Knowing he had a few minutes to kill, Harry left the control booth for the small break room in Watchtower. He washed the pot of day-old burnt brown acid, which might be strong enough to take motor oil off an engine block, then brewed a fresh pot. While the coffee brewed, Harry made use of the facilities. He didn’t know what was going on, but he was smart enough to realize that when two people sleeping miles apart woke up at the same time, something weird was happening.

  Returning to the control booth, Harry checked the small microphone the lieutenant had demanded be installed the same day the female arrived on base. It wasn’t to be activated unless something important happened. Harry figured this qualified. He turned on the microphone as his external camera caught Chief Davis entering the building.

  The door to his little surveillance room burst open and the chief rushed in. He’d thrown his khaki pants on—or maybe he’d fallen asleep in them—but he wore only a sagging off-white T-shirt above them. His hair was tousled, his eyes looked grainy and dry, and he had a mostly gray five o’clock shadow.

  “Better not let the kids see you like this,” Harry said.

  “Shut it, Harry.”

  “Jeez, so touchy today.”

  “Just show me what you dragged me over here for.”

  “You sure you don’t want some coffee first? I made it fresh.”

  The glare Chief Davis gave him required no words.

  Heaving a sigh, Harry pointed to the array of monitors in front of them. Most of them were recording different rooms in the female subject’s townhouse and showed no activity. Only the bathroom camera registered anything, and that showed the female garbed in a bathrobe, her back to the camera, brushing her teeth. There were only two cameras for the male. One in the men’s bathroom, and one in the barracks room. Neither showed the subject now, though as they watched, the door opened into the barracks room as he returned. On a separate monitor were the two segments of video Harry had isolated earlier. Drawing Chief Davis’ attention to them, he said, “Notice the times.”

  “I see them.”

  “Now…watch.”

  Harry started the videos and on the screen the figures went from peaceful slumber to agitation, tossing and turning, moving restlessly within the confines of their beds.

  “Interesting,” the Chief mumbled.

  “That’s nothing. It gets better.”

  At 2:13:45 the movements escalated in frequency, becoming frantic. Then the woman screamed, shooting up in her bed. At the same moment, the man sat up as well, clapping his hands to his ears and looking left and right as if he had, impossibly, heard the woman’s scream.

  “Well, whaddaya know?” the Chief mused softly.

  “That’s all, so far,” Harry said.

  “Where are they now?”

  Harry indicated the monitors. “At first, they both went to the bathroom. She took a bath, and he grabbed a quick shower.” At that moment, the male was getting back into bed. The room was empty except for him; his roommate was spending the night out. He appeared to be trying to go back to sleep, but his eyes were open. They looked like glowing white orbs thanks to the low light lenses. He tossed first one way, then the other, trying to get comfortable. The female was sitting at her kitchen table, still in a bathrobe, wet hair hanging over the collar.

  “I thought you said the man always went back to sleep.”

  “Well, tonight he changed his mind, I guess, though it looks like he’s trying.”

  “I wonder what it means.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Harry said.

  “Well, keep watching them, and thanks for having me come in. I needed to see this.”

  “Sure thing, Chief.”

  Heading out the door, Chief Davis added, “And call me back if they start doing anything else.”

  “Like what?”

  Chief Davis didn’t answer. Down to his car and back to his home, he pondered how he would report the night’s events to Lieutenant Barnes, and what the possible reply would be.

  Lieutenant Barnes

  Also not sleeping at 2:15am was Lieutenant Barnes. After his meeting with Agent Bassett, he’d spent several hours impatiently waiting for Agent Frazier to meet him at a food court in Pembroke Mall. The agent arrived just as the mall was closing, appearing competent and confident despite his rangy and homely appearance.

  Agent Frazier was recognized as a consummate professional, unlikely to have established any emotional connection to the subject of his assignment. During this meeting, however, he flatly refused to have anything more to do with X-104, citing personal reasons that “hindered his ability to perform in a rational and professional manner.” Lieutenant Barnes was unprepared for such a refusal and had no leverage he could bring to bear against the agent.

  “This is my final report on the matter,” Frazier said, “which I will type up and submit later tonight. The subject started acting differently towards me today. I don’t know if my cover has been blown, or if something else happened. It’s my opinion that remaining in the vicinity will only serve to undermine the operation. I’ll submit myself to my superiors for reassignment.”

  The way he said ‘my superiors’ carried an obvious inference that grated on the lieutenant.

  After Agent Frazier left the food court, Barnes returned to his office, logged into the base personnel files, and began to research the two subjects, X-22, and X-104. Some would call it a personal fault, this need to know everything, while others might say it was a positive attribute. Right now, he didn’t know which it was and didn’t care.

  His only concern was how minimized he felt, just one cog in a chain of cogs, relaying information up but never learning anything from the men above him. How did they expect him to do his job properly if he didn’t have all the facts? How could he protect anyone? And more importantly, how could he advance himself?

  That was the real challenge in this operation. Call it a project or an experim
ent, at the end of the day, some people would be promoted, and others would be studied. If you thought about it more like an experiment, those being studied would probably be dead. In general, the best a lab rat can hope for is a clean death before the autopsy.

  He made incidental notes as he perused personnel files. X-22 hailed from South Carolina. X-104 came from Virginia. A local then, with a Home of Record on the other side of Virginia Beach. X-22 scored a 99 on his ASVAB test; X-104 wasn’t far behind with a 96. They were similar in age, with X-22 only two months older than X-104.

  He found his something in the pay records of both subjects.

  Pay as a Boot Camp E-1 began for both in June of 2012. Pay for both was suspended in July of 2012. X-22’s pay resumed approximately eighteen months later, in January of 2014. X-104’s pay didn’t start back up until much later, in April of 2016.

  Why the pauses in pay? That made no sense. Even if a sailor was on restriction or being processed for discharge, he was still paid.

  Switching to the duty log for X-22, he began working backwards. Assignment to NAS Oceana AIMD Shore Duty in January of 2015. Assignment to Radar Training School F/A-18 NAS Oceana in September 2014. Assignment to Aviation Electronics Technician (AT) A-School, Naval Air Technical Training Center, Pensacola, Florida in January 2014. Assignment to Recruit Training Command Great Lakes, Illinois in June of 2012. So, he joined in June 2012, then stopped receiving pay in July. The duty log showed him remaining at RTC Great Lakes until January 2014, which was also when his pay resumed. No mention was made of any leave or break in service. He didn’t come in as a reservist then switch to full active duty, as that would also have been in the service duty log.

  X-104’s duty log was even more suspicious. She’d languished at RTC Great Lakes for almost four years until suddenly resurfacing in Pensacola, Florida in April 2016.

  Whatever was going on with those two, it occurred during those lapses in pay. And if their duty records were to be believed, it happened in Great Lakes, the recruit training facility just outside Chicago, Illinois.

  Saturday

  Chapter 7

  Sherry

  1

  Sherry was unsettled by the dream, and it wasn’t only because Travis showed up at the end. Every part of it left her rattled. Many of the doubts and fears plaguing her during the day were present. Dreams had a way of doing that, incorporating unresolved problems and giving new perspective. She remembered every detail of the dream, which was unusual for her.

  Was it all coincidence?

  She doubted her marriage, saw an attractive guy, and suddenly he’s a focus for her attention?

  Before getting out of bed, Sherry listened. She was pretty sure she’d screamed as she awoke. Her throat felt raw; her breathing was fast and ragged, only now beginning to slow. Why hadn’t Stan woken up? Looking to her right, she saw an empty bed. Reaching her right arm under the cover revealed no heat. Had he never come to bed at all? That was different.

  Rising from the bed, Sherry padded softly through the darkened room into the cramped master bathroom. She turned on only the sink lights, leaving the overhead light off. Reaching down to the bathtub, she ran the water, adding a dollop of essential oils bubble bath, not wanting to be too exposed if Stan came into the room.

  What a difference a day made. Yesterday morning she’d been thinking of ways to get the man she loved out of bed earlier, and today she couldn’t stand the thought of him seeing her naked. The saddest thing was, as far as she knew, he hadn’t done anything different.

  So, what changed?

  She started feeling better almost as soon as she stepped into the hot water. Allowing herself the luxury of sinking into the suds, feeling some of her tension bleed away, Sherry tried to understand what was happening.

  Your marriage is…

  It was easy to disregard that voice now, but its persistence frightened her. What did it mean, that some part of her wanted to ignore all these signs and return to the ignorance with which she’d lived before yesterday? Was she a coward at heart? Was she that afraid of the strange connection she seemed to share with Travis?

  No, better not to think about Travis for the time being, though there was something about his presence in the dream and how he was presented that screamed for examination. That could wait until later. First and foremost, she needed to analyze the contradictions in her memories. She needed to understand what was happening with her marriage, her husband, and her life.

  Though it had been disjointed at first, the dream brought back many memories of her childhood, things she cherished, even though not all were pleasant. Growing up with an older sister, losing her father, growing closer to her mother—these experiences had shaped her, molded her, and furthered her growth as a woman.

  So why hadn’t she given any thought to her past lately?

  She could remember, vividly, the multiple visits to the Cancer Treatment Centers of America in Tulsa, Oklahoma during 2006 and early 2007. She could recall the sights and smells of her father’s hospital room where he endured rounds of chemotherapy. Then came the final hospitalization later that year, when he lost his battle. The dream presented that memory to her, and she felt the wave of grief anew, despite the twelve years since it happened. It wasn’t a crushing sensation anymore, not like when she was twelve, but it was there.

  More importantly, the memory of his loss produced not only a resurgence of grief, but a memory of grief.

  Why was that so important?

  Because the dream also presented a memory of her mother’s death, though it came in snapshots like a slide-show presentation. Sherry felt grief at the memory but had no memory of grief.

  Did that mean it hadn’t happened?

  The last clear memory she had of her mother was being kissed good-bye as Sherry walked through a terminal door in Norfolk International Airport, tromping down the ramp and across a short stretch of tarmac to the waiting military plane. She remembered arriving in Chicago and calling her mother, telling her about the short flight and reassuring her that she was safe.

  Despite those crystal-clear memories, some part of her believed her mother died in a car crash. Closing her eyes, seeing again those still-life images, Sherry set them free to roam in her mind. Picking at them, tasting the memories like samples at a Dippin’ Dots, she tried to find something—a date, a day of the week—specific enough to identify when it happened. She could remember every detail of her father’s death, so why should the loss of her mother be any different? And why were these memories so different from the memories she had before boarding the plane?

  No date or time came to her. Did that mean it hadn’t happened?

  Those memories weren’t specific to the dream; they existed within her mind separate of it, so why hadn’t she thought of them before? Why hadn’t she noticed the differences before?

  Some of her memories were clear, complete with picture, sound, smell, texture, emotion. She could as easily recall watching Stan walk up to the car yesterday afternoon as she could see her mother’s face before she left her at the airport. She could remember the feeling of hopelessness yesterday at the realization that she wasn’t attracted to her own husband as clearly as she felt regret at leaving her mother mixed with the anticipation of starting a new part of her life’s journey. She felt the car’s air conditioning blowing into her face yesterday with the same clarity that she heard the boarding calls coming from the airport’s overhead speakers. But her mother’s death was stark, devoid of any emotional attachment, almost like it had been scrubbed clean.

  Or made up entirely.

  Sherry’s breath caught, her mind seizing upon the idea.

  How could her memory have contradictions?

  It was possible for two people to remember an event differently depending upon many factors: their point of view to the event, their religious beliefs, their political perspectives. But could a single person create multiple versions of events? Could a single person create multiple timelines within his or her mind?r />
  What did that say about the person?

  Either an event occurred, or it didn’t. The presence of a contradiction like that would have to imply different personalities, wouldn’t it?

  Oh God, what if she was going crazy after all? What then? It would certainly be an easy explanation…

  No, best to put that aside for now as well.

  If it was happening, then she couldn’t fix it by thinking through it. She had to concentrate on what she could do something about.

  The bath water had lost much of its heat. Caught in her thoughts, Sherry forgot her concern about Stan walking in and proceeded to rinse off and towel dry at a normal pace.

  Grabbing a bathrobe from the linen closet, she wrapped herself in terrycloth pink and walked downstairs. The television was off. Stan hadn’t fallen asleep in the recliner, nor was he stretched out on the couch. The kitchen was as she had left it, dinner plates and cookware soaking in the sink, dishwasher full of clean dishes from yesterday, not yet put away. Wherever Stan had gone, he hadn’t left a note.

  Grabbing a Dunkin’ Donuts K-Cup from the box on top of the refrigerator and a clean Turvis Tumbler from the cabinet, Sherry made herself a fresh cup of coffee.

  Would someone with multiple personalities have access to the memories of both?

  Was it more plausible to consider the possibility that someone…somehow…had tampered with her memories?

  Would she even remember if that happened?

  Something inside of her believed her mother died just after she started Boot Camp. But there was no break in her Basic Training. She hadn’t taken Emergency Leave to fly home. She distinctly remembered her mother alive when she boarded the plane, and though there were memories of being in the Emergency Department when a young doctor came to tell her the bad news, they were fuzzy.

  The timing didn’t work either.

  Her mother was alive before she flew over seven hundred miles, but somehow, she was able to return to the Emergency Department in time to be there when she died. After a car accident. Her mother was still in the Emergency Department despite that it must have taken hours if not days to secure emergency leave and board a plane to come home.