by Nick Thacker
Surely we’re not going there?
A large hill rose up from behind the house, casting it in an even deeper shadow than the night was able to provide. Set a good distance away from the house, Julie could see a lone light, affixed to a tall pole, gently illuminating a tiny four-walled structure, in a pale yellow glow. This building, too small to be anything more than a simple storage shed, sat next to a long, covered area lined with picnic tables, plastic chairs, and chest-high wooden benches.
“The shooting range is to the left, and the survival course’s main camp is directly behind the house, going up and over the hill.” The man driving, the former Army sniper Paulinho had introduced as Reggie, motioned with his head as he described each station. “We use the range year-round, but I’m only running a winter course right now. Better weather for it, I guess, so people were only signing up then.” He chuckled, then grinned. “Kind of seems pointless to me, to only prepare for the worst during the best time of year.”
He pulled up to the shack, and Julie could see that it was completely dark inside. The only light in the entire area, actually, was the light pole near the shooting range. Reggie put the car in park, then turned to address the occupants inside with him. “Stay here a sec, while I disable the defense system. Shouldn’t be any trouble, but it’s outdated, and I can’t afford an upgrade right now.”
While he said it, he pulled out his phone and opened an app. “Also,” he added, flicking around on the screen of his phone with an outstretched index finger, “let there be light.”
With a dramatic flourish, he poked at the screen and the entire compound was brilliantly lit up in daylight-bright white light.
Julie involuntarily brought her arm up, shielding her eyes, while Amanda and Paulinho gasped audibly.
Reggie laughed again. “Impressive, no? One of the best home defenses you can invest in is great lighting. Anyone sneaking onto my property in the middle of the night will have to be invisible if they don’t want to be seen.”
He tilted his head to the side. “Actually, I take that back. They’d still be seen. They just wouldn’t know it until the other defenses kicked in.”
No one in the SUV asked what the ‘other defenses’ were, and Julie was partly glad they didn’t. She hadn’t been able to decide if she trusted Reggie or not, though he had been the one who’d saved them from the terrible onslaught at the hotel. Part of her wanted to trust the man, but another part of her seemed to sense the hesitation in Ben, and borrow it from him.
After a minute of playing with his phone, Reggie finally looked up and unlocked the car doors. “Great. I think that’s most of them. Home sweet home.” He pulled the handle and exited the vehicle. Paulinho did as well, followed by Amanda, then Ben and Julie. It felt good to stretch her legs, but she could also feel the fatigue of adrenaline and lack of sleep finally setting in. Whatever the plan was, she hoped it involved sleeping — safely — for a few hours at least.
“Let’s get you all inside, then figure out this ‘golden man’ stuff,” Reggie said. He led the way into the miniature home, the four others trailing behind, still skeptical. He paused at the front door, turning around. “What are you waiting for? Let’s go!” Reggie poked out a sequence of numbers on a tiny numerical lock control mounted above the door handle, and the door clicked and swung open.
Julie reached the door next, followed by Ben and the others, and she stopped at the threshold. Reggie had disappeared.
She stepped a foot into the building and then saw a staircase to her left, strategically hidden from view from outside the house. Reggie popped his head up the stairs. “Come on,” he said. “Ain’t got all night.” The man’s head disappeared again from view, and Julie followed.
The stairs turned once, then opened up a flight below the floor into a strikingly different setting. A basement room, easily three times the size of the main building above her, awaited. A couch, two armchairs, and a well-appointed bar faced her, spaced out nicely against the backdrop of a beautiful, early nineteenth-century English decor. Wallpaper, crisply glued and in perfect condition, covered the three walls she could see, and an arched entryway led further into the dwelling.
“My ex-wife put most of the furnishings in here. I’m a stickler for order and cleanliness, so I probably would have made it look like a hospital room if it were up to me.” Reggie was already behind the bar, pouring himself a glass of bourbon. He swished it around in the glass as the others joined Julie downstairs, and he held it up to them. “You’d actually be surprised at the quality in beverage choices here,” he said. “Good enough to make any American proud.”
He held up the glass, a signal of offering to the rest of the group, but only Ben obliged. He stepped up to the front of the bar, pulled out a gorgeous solid wood barstool and sat on it. Reggie seemed more than pleased to pour the man a drink, and Ben held it up, inspecting the color.
Julie thought the two of them might completely disregard the rest of the team, consumed by their love for fine spirits, so she cleared her throat.
Amanda walked closer to the bar. “Mr., uh — Reggie…” Reggie looked up but didn’t offer his last name to the woman. “Sorry… I mean, thanks. Thank you for what you did back there.”
He nodded, scrunching his face slightly to exaggerate the expression.
“But, we, uh…” her voice trailed off.
“I know,” he said, interrupting the awkward silence. “You need to find out who wants to kill you.”
Her eyes widened slightly, probably surprised at the man’s bluntness, but then she nodded.
“Yep, working on it.”
Julie watched the man pour himself another glass, then refill Ben’s. He carefully placed the bottle back on the rack it came from, the unlabeled decanter facing perfectly out toward the room. He turned back to Ben. “That’s a 1970, and it goes down about as well as anything twice the price. I know the guy who makes it — local, actually.”
Julie watched as Ben closed his eyes and took a long sip.
Unbelievable.
Ben was the type of man who could so focus on one thing she often thought there was something wrong with him. She often told him he’d die one day pushing himself too hard, unable to quit when he needed a break. The only two things she’d ever known to be able to break him from his focus was herself, offering something he couldn’t provide on his own, and a good glass of whiskey.
And this glass of whiskey must have been particularly good. He’d essentially blocked out everything else around him, taking in the aroma, then the taste, then the feel of the liquor.
He looked at her, and she raised her eyebrows. Done?
He snapped out of it. “Sorry, just… it’s good.”
She wanted to smack him. “I’ll get a bottle of it for you before we leave.”
“No, can’t do that,” Reggie said, unaware of the unspoken fight going on between Ben and Julie. “It’s local, but it’s not actually for sale. Sorry. I might be able to —“
“Listen, Reggie Whoever You Are. We’re really thankful that you’re here and all, and that you’ve taken us in to your underground safe house, but we really need to figure out who’s behind all of this. And I —“
Reggie held up his pointer finger, giving Julie the immediate urge to smack him as well. “We’re already working on it.”
This time, Paulinho, Amanda, and Ben seemed surprised.
15
“I FORWARDED THE FILE FROM Amanda’s phone to my own online storage system when you were sleeping.” He reached below the bar and pulled out a shiny silver remote control. Pressing buttons on it, Julie watched as a huge projector screen rolled down from the ceiling and onto the wall nearest Ben, opposite the couch. “Wasn’t any trouble, since it wasn’t encrypted anyway. Still wouldn’t have been, since I’ve got…”
Reggie realized the others were staring at him.
“Look, I’m not a hacker. It was easy enough. The point is that I wanted to have it ready to queue up here in the house, so we
wouldn’t have to wait around any longer. Grab a seat, let’s figure this out.”
He grabbed his glass and headed over to one of the armchairs. Ben and Julie followed, and soon they were all seated facing the giant screen. True to his word, Reggie had gotten the video and other files downloaded onto whatever computer he had hidden in the house, and the main video was loaded up and ready to go.
“We don’t need to see this again, correct?” he asked to no one in particular. When no one answered, he hit a button and went back to a directory listing of the other files. Clicking the first one, he sat back in the chair, relaxing into the comfortable plush of the upholstered furniture piece.
Julie watched the screen as a map appeared. It was a map of the Amazon Basin in the center, but zoomed out enough to show nearly the entire continent of South America. Rio de Janeiro was at the bottom-right of the map, labeled in handwritten text that had been painted on the digital image.
He pressed forward and watched as the screen changed. The same map was displayed onscreen, but another handwritten label appeared. ‘Cristo Redentor,’ #1, was written above a line that stretched from Rio to the edge of the top-left of the map, cutting through the Amazon basin.
“Christ the Redeemer,” Paulinho said, translating from Portuguese. Julie immediately recalled the image of the large statue of Christ in her mind, sitting with arms outstretched atop a Brazilian mountain.
They stared at the image a moment, then Reggie progressed to the next image. This image was the same map, but the line changed almost imperceptibly, and the label as well: ‘Cristo Redentor,’ #2.
A third image came up; still the same map, but another line, and another label: ‘Teatro Municipal.’
There were only three images in the folder, so Reggie scrolled through the directory and went to the second of the folders, one labeled ‘Florianopolis.’
The first image appeared, the map shifting slightly and yet another line appearing. The label read, ’Hercilio Luz.’
Paulinho explained. “Hercilio Luz is a well-known bridge in Florianoplis, Brazil.”
Reggie scrolled through five more images, each with a perfectly straight line drawn on it in a slightly different location, and each with a unique label. Julie was amazed at the clarity of the writing, and the lines, no doubt traced with a ruler by Dr. Ortega moments before his death.
They scrolled through a few more folders, mostly labeled after locations and in Brazil, but there were a few from around the world. One was as far away as Paris, France, and showed the location of the Eiffel Tower, the diagonal line superimposed on the map connecting the two locations.
“What do the locations have to do with your research, Dr. Meron?” Julie asked. Amanda hadn’t spoken since they’d arrived, and Julie wasn’t sure what the woman was thinking.
“I don’t know yet,” she said. “I’m not sure why Dr. Ortega went through all this trouble. It seems like he’s just drawing lines from the location of the subjects we studied to… something else.”
“Locations of what, though?” Paulinho asked. “Where the subjects were born? Or where they were last known to be living?”
“I don’t think so. The labels are of tourist attractions, and I remember some of these tests. The dreams we recorded sometimes had very recognizable scenery in them. The Christ the Redeemer statue was particularly striking in some of them, and I’m sure the Eiffel Tower would have been, as well.”
“So these people — subjects — visited these locations,” Ben said. “Then Ortega drew lines from the locations to… something else. So what?”
“Dr. Ortega wouldn’t have gone through the trouble if he didn’t —“ Amanda’s voice stopped mid-sentence.
“What is it?” Paulinho asked.
“Pega-veretas,” Amanda said. “What does it mean?”
“It’s a game, just like he said,” Paulinho answered. He paused a moment, trying to think of the best translation from Portuguese. “Rods, or sticks — ‘pick-up the sticks,’ I believe it’s called.”
16
BEN HAD SEEN THIS GAME before. Sticks, or rods, laying on each other on the floor, and two players attempted to pick them up one at a time without disturbing the other sticks. He’d never played it, but he’d seen it in toy stores as a kid. Amanda stood and walked to the map, pointing at the line. “He’s drawing the ‘sticks’ on the maps,” she said. She was getting excited, and Paulinho and Reggie stood to join her near the map. “Reggie, go back. What other folders are there?”
Reggie followed her instruction, showing them the list of folders within the directory. Amanda read the list, then pointed. “There! ‘Zoomed images.’ Pull that one up.”
Reggie did, and the first of the images appeared onscreen. The label was one they’d seen before: ‘Cristo Redentor, #2.’ The line also appeared, drawn to extend past the edge of the image toward the top-left of the screen. But the map itself was zoomed in much closer to the Christ the Redeemer statue. They could see the outline of the mountain’s topography, dotted nearby with the unmistakable shape of houses and buildings. What was most evident, however, was the word ‘subject,’ scrawled in Portuguese near the base of the mountain.
There was a tiny ‘x’ near the word, and the line began and extended from it.
The next image was similar, but with a different ‘x’ and a different line.
“All the lines are diagonal, from top-left to bottom-right,” Julie said. “Or vise-versa.”
The next image, however, changed that theory. It was another ‘x,’ another ‘subject,’ and yet another line, but this one was sharply descending from the top-right of the screen to the bottom-left. The title of the image was “Estátua da Liberdade.”
“The Statue of Liberty,” Paulinho immediately translated.
“It seems like the lines are all pointing at the same spot, right?” Julie asked.
As soon as she said it, Ben spoke up. “Is there a folder with all of the lines added to one map?” he asked.
Reggie flicked through the folders again and found one labeled ‘Convergence’ in Portuguese. He clicked on the first image, and everyone in the room gasped. Ben stood up and walked toward the screen.
“They’re all converging on the exact same point,” she whispered. “It’s… just like he said. ‘Pick-up sticks,’ but the sticks are these lines. They all cross each other, at some point in…” her voice trailed off.
Amanda picked up the rest of the sentence. “…In the Amazon rainforest. Reggie, can you print these?”
Reggie nodded. “Of course.” He navigated around the menu system on the computer.
Ben squinted at the top-left of the map, mostly centered on the upper half of the South American continent, and saw the words ‘Floresta Amazônica’ written in the same clear, delineated handwriting. There was a circle hastily drawn around the convergence point of the lines, and they all took a moment to examine the map.
“But where is he getting the directionality of the lines?” Reggie asked. He navigated back to the list of folders, searching for anything that might be helpful. Paulinho told him to stop at one of the last folders.
“Positioning Screenshots, or Placement Screenshots,” he said as Reggie entered the folder. Ben examined the first image. It was nothing more than a splash of color, shades of lighter and darker colors, all blended together, with a grid carefully drawn on top of the entire image. Lighter blues and yellows appeared near the top, and darker shades toward the bottom. On the bottom-right of the screen, against a background that was a similar golden shade, he saw a man staring straight at him. As Dr. Meron had explained, the man was perfectly in focus. It was too small an image to see the man’s facial features, but Ben could tell the man was standing in front of something large. He forced his eyes out of focus, and an image seemed to appear around the golden man.
“Christ the Redeemer,” Julie said aloud. He saw it too. A fuzzy triangle dominated the image, dead-center, with a much smaller triangle of a bluish tone sitting on top o
f it. There was sky around the “statue,” and Ben knew it was a view looking up at the statue, the mountain itself covering most of the picture. The golden man was placed in the image, standing still and, as always, looking straight at the subject.
“Well, if that ain’t the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Reggie said.
Ben had to agree. He’d never seen anything like it, and it wasn’t even a faked image. “You mean this is a screenshot of a recording of someone’s dream?” he asked.
Dr. Meron nodded. “We’re getting better every month at rendering the images. More and more sensors, designed to pick up the exact locations of neurons firing in the brain, allow the computers to project certain lights, colors, and pictures onto a screen. It’s just creating a visual representation of what’s happening electronically in the brain.”
“This is amazing,” Julie said. “How do you even do something like this?”
Amanda nodded again. “Thank you. It’s been a long process, but the basic technology and techniques have been in place for years. We started with an eight-by-eight grid of lights placed on a piece of board in front of our subjects, and when we’d light one of the lights, a certain area in the brain would light up as well. The same place would light up the same way every time, and by tracking that information thousands of times with hundreds of subjects, we were eventually able to create a ‘map’ of the brain. That map could then be used in reverse: we told the subjects to think of one of the lights lighting up. To actually picture it in their mind.
When they did, the same areas of the brain would light up the same way, as if they were physically seeing the lightbulb turn on and off. Eventually, that research allowed us to know what type of image, for the most part, their brain was conjuring up.”
Reggie smiled. “Fascinating. Then, naturally, you took it a step further, and started recording their dreams?”
“Dreaming and how dreams are produced is one of the most understudied fields in neuroscience, because it has been impossible to ‘see’ someone else’s dream. We’ve had to work from descriptions, and as you all know, remembering a dream that happened the night before can sometimes be a challenge.”
