“Is there any way to prevent that?” I asked.
Putnam looked at me, hearing the intensity in my voice.
“Prevent deterioration?” he asked.
“Well, shrinkage specifically,” I said.
“A lot of studies have shown that estrogen helps prevent deterioration of the hippocampus,” he said, “though, too much estrogen can bring on epileptic seizures. Simply put, if the synaptic firing in the hippocampus is too great, it can cause the body to have seizures, and if it’s not firing enough you tend to experience depression. You want a healthy balance.”
“What will I experience?”
“It’s a perfectly harmless procedure,” Putnam said.
Sara said, “I don’t like all this talk about schizophrenia and depression. Do we have any guarantee that nothing like that will happen to Karl?”
“You have my word,” G.J. Putnam said. “Memory Retrieval is a perfectly harmless procedure. It’ll be over in about an hour, and you’ll both be rich beyond your wildest dreams.”
“What exactly are you going to do with his memory?” Sara said.
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” Putnam said.
“And all I have to do is sit in that chair?” I asked.
“We’ll place a ring around your head,” he said, “similar to the one you saw earlier. All you’ll be required to do is to sit in the chair and try to stay relaxed and calm.”
I looked at Sara with worry and concern. She too looked worried, but she masked it well and managed to smile.
“Fifty-eight million dollars,” I said.
“Karl, I’d love you if you only made fifty-eight dollars,” she said, “the rest of your life. It’s never been about the money.”
“But I want to do it,” I said. “I want to have the freedom to start a family with you. I want to grow old with you, Sara. I want to have children and grandchildren.”
She looked into my eyes, and we hugged one another.
She said, “I love you, baby. I’m going to stand right here and watch this whole thing.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Putnam said. “You can wait right outside, but you will not be able to stay here in this room.”
“Why not?” Sara said. “We were able to stand here when you did it.”
“It’s a different procedure,” Putnam said. “We have certain protocol to follow”--he looked at me and smiled--“now, if you’re ready, Karl, just have a seat up here in our chair.”
“I love you, Sara,” I said, and I hugged her one more time.
“I’ll be right outside,” she said. “I love you, too.”
Sara left the room, and Putnam helped me up into the chair.
“What are those for?” I said.
“Wrist restraints,” Putnam said, “to help prevent slippage during the procedure.”
“Slippage?” I said.
“We don’t want you moving around when we’re sending a couple thousands volts of electricity through your brain, now do we?”
“I guess not,” I said.
The technicians strapped my arms to the chair. One technician knelt down and strapped my ankles into the legs of the chair.
“You didn’t need to do all this when you did it,” I said.
“Just relax yourself, Karl,” Putnam said.
He held a piece of rubber in front of my mouth.
“Open up,” he said. “This restrainer will keep you from damaging your tongue.”
“Damaging my tongue?” I said. And he stuffed the thing into my mouth.
Now, I couldn’t talk without it sounding terribly muffled. One of the lab techs lightly pressed my head backward in the chair, and he fitted the ring down around my head.
I tried to ask what that was for, but it sounded like my mouth was stuffed with a sock. Suddenly, there was a sharp pain near my right and left temples, and I screamed out. Then, the pain stopped.
I could see Putnam out of the corners of my eyes. He was over at the computer console. He was speaking in a soft whisper to the technicians, and I heard the whirring of machines firing up all around me. I tried to move my hands and legs, but I was strapped into the chair. I tried to say something, but my mouth was stuffed with the rubber thing. I started to panic.
Putnam saw something on one of the video monitors that made him say, “Just try and take a few deep breaths, Karl. Try and relax, now.”
He walked over to me, and I looked at him with my eyes. My head and neck were stationary, and I couldn’t move around at all. There was another sharp pain, this one at the base of my skull, and I roared out in pain.
“Just try and take it easy, Karl,” he said. “Once the Dimetathine reaches your temporal lobe, you may experience some slight hallucinations”--he looked at me--“are you with me, Karl?”
Across the room, I saw a man walk through the wall. He wore a toga like the ancient Greeks, and he seemed very gentle and kind. He held two stone tablets, one in either arm.
“Hello, Karl,” he said.
I said something to G.J. Putnam, but Putnam didn’t understand me, and apparently he didn’t see the man in the white robes.
“We’ve been watching you a long time, Karl Connors,” the man said.
“Who are you?” I said, but the sound was completely muffled.
“I’m a spirit,” he said, “an angel here. You don’t have to speak out loud to me. I know your thoughts. Everything is going to be fine, Karl. You have many friends here.”
And suddenly, a half dozen more people stepped through the wall. There were three women and three men, and they all wore togas. They all seemed very warm and friendly.
“Hi, Karl,” one said.
“Hey, buddy,” another said with a smile.
“We’re your friends,” one of the women said.
“Now, hold on,” the first man said. “You’re going to be stepping outside of yourself for a moment.”
I felt a tension that started from just below my sternum. I felt nervous and panicky, and suddenly, I just stood up from the chair.
“See,” the first man said.
I turned and looked at the chair. My physical body was still sitting there strapped to the chair.
And yet I was standing up, too, in the middle of the room, six feet from myself in the chair. I reached up and took the thing out of my mouth.
“What’s happening to me?” I said.
“Your corporeal body is still strapped into that chair.”
“Putnam!” I shouted, but Putnam was over at the computer console, and he didn’t hear me. I shouted again even louder, but Putnam could not hear me at all.
I looked at myself in the chair. The me that was in the chair didn’t see that I was now standing in the middle of the room.
“Is this my spirit or something?” I said.
“Come,” the lead man said. “We want to show you something.”
I looked at each of the seven, and then I glanced back around the room at Putnam and the lab technicians. I looked at myself again, still strapped into the chair. Putnam walked over and said something to me in the chair, and I said something back to him.
But standing there in the middle of the room, I couldn’t understand what I was saying to Putnam. I turned and looked at the seven people in togas, and they led me into the wall.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
When I hit the wall, there was a white flash of light, and I found myself suddenly inside a tunnel. I could see a bright light at the end of the tunnel that looked like it was up on some kind of a table. I walked farther up the hallway, and I realized there was a wooden box sitting atop the table. And I realized that the seven toga-clad people were gone.
The table and everything in the room glowed white, except the little wooden box atop the table. The box was about the size of a 40-gallon cooler, but it was made with dark oak wood, and it had brass hinges and clasps on it. There was a padlock on the front, and a powerfully bright light poured out of the keyhole on the
padlock.
I bent down and looked at the keyhole. I put my finger up to the light pouring out of the hole, and the light spilled all around my finger. It was warm, and it bubbled around my skin where my finger touched the light.
“That is your soul,” a voice said.
I looked up from the box, and I saw the seven toga people standing in the room with me.
“What is that on those stone tablets?” I said.
“These,” the man said, “are the seven answers to the universe.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He read from the stone tablet in his right arm. “Number one: ‘Why are you here?’ Number two: ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’”--he looked up at me, smiled, and waved me over closer to him--“You see, Karl, the writing changes.”
And indeed, I saw that though the words were written into stone, the stone seemed amorphous, and the letters hovered in what looked like clear water that could be shaped and changed.
“Different people have different questions,” he said. “Most people’s questions regard their family’s happiness and health, the afterlife, money, these kinds of things.”
I looked and saw that each of the questions was followed by an answer.
“What is that one?” I asked, “Number six?”
“‘How long will I live?’” he read aloud.
“You know this?” I asked. “You know the answer to that?”
“Yes,” he said. “We have the seven answers to the universe.”
“Can I see them?” I asked.
He said, “You can only see one.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because that is the way that it is,” he said.
“What are the other questions?”
“Number four: ‘Is there life after death?’” he said. “Number five: ‘How do we achieve peace on Earth?’ Number six, you just read. And number seven: ‘If heaven exists, how do I get there?’”
“That’s the one I want to know,” I said. “I want to know the answer to that.”
The man with the stone tablets looked compassionately into my eyes and smiled warmly. He looked at his friends.
“Very well, then,” he said.
He crossed over to the table with the wooden box. He stood the tablet with the questions up on top of the box, and I saw the words pour down the tablet like running water. It was absorbed by the wood, and there was a powerful burst of light from the keyhole.
“The answer,” he said, “lies within.”
“It’s inside the box?”
“Quickly, now, Karl,” he said. “You don’t have much time here.”
“But I need a key.”
“You do not need what you already have,” he said.
And I felt something in the palm of my right hand. I looked down and opened my fist, and there was a single skeleton key. I held the key up and looked at it.
“Hurry, now,” he said again. “There is not much time.”
“If heaven exists,” I said aloud, “how do I get there?”
Everyone nodded sagely, and I reached the key forward toward the keyhole. It fit perfectly inside the lock, and I turned it over clockwise. The lock clicked and fell open, and I reached forward to open the box.
Slowly, I lifted the lid. Hugely powerful light poured out from inside the box, and I saw the answer. It floated there inside the light, which now poured around me, filling the whole room. I saw the answer.
“He’s coming to,” Putnam said.
“Brace for recursive shock,” one of the technicians said.
I felt all the muscles in my back, shoulders, and neck seize up. I roared out in pain and fright, and I opened my eyes and looked around the room.
Everything returned to normal. I was strapped into the chair. I had the rubber piece in my mouth, and I realized I was biting down into it with all the strength in my jaws.
“Karl,” Putnam said. “There you are. How do you feel?”
I looked at him, and he smiled.
“We’ve got it,” he said. “We’ve got the coded sequence from your memory!”
“Get this damn thing out of my mouth,” I said, but it sounded muffled.
“Let me take your restrainer out,” he said.
I tried to nod my head, but my neck was locked into the chair with the ring around my head. Putnam reached forward and removed the rubber piece from my mouth.
“Did you guys see them?” I said, my mouth clear.
Putnam looked from me to his technicians. “See who?” he said.
“Those angels,” I said. “Or whatever the hell they were. The one with the two stone tablets?”
“Just relax, Karl,” Putnam said. “We’ll get you out of this chair, and you and Sara can be on your way within the hour. You’re a rich man, now, Karl Connors.”
X
The limousine dropped us off at our Phoenix apartment just after midnight, and Sara and I walked tiredly up into the building with our little care package from Nano Tech. Inside the package, there was a single bank account number on a computer printout slip with all of the information Sara and I needed to access the account.
“How are you feeling?” Sara asked.
“I’m tired,” I said.
Sara opened the door, and we started to step into the apartment. The lights came on inside the apartment, and I saw four plain-clothed police officers in our living room.
“Getting in kind’a late,” Officer Staringer said.
It was the four officers I’d seen that morning at the station. Staringer was in my recliner with his hands calmly in his lap.
“Yeah,” Lenny said. “Getting in kind’a late aren’t you, Karl?”
“What are you doing in our apartment?” Sara said.
“It seems Karl here wasn’t exactly forthcoming with the facts about last night’s murder.”
“Murder?” I said. “I thought you said Earl’s death was ruled a suicide.”
Sara said again, “What are you doing in our apartment?”
“Karl, we checked with Global-Com,” Staringer said. “You’re the only Sterling Steamer employee that has a set of keys to the roof. We checked with your boss at Sterling Steamer, and he corroborated this fact. We checked Earl Redgraves’s person again, and we found no set of keys.”
“I don’t give a damn what you found,” Sara said. “Unless you have a warrant for our arrest, you have no right to be sitting in our apartment.”
Staringer sat in the recliner. Lenny stood over by the kitchen. The other two officers stood directly behind Staringer, and one of them produced a sheet of paper, which looked like a warrant.
“Global-Com gave us videotapes that showed you and Earl sneaking around on the sixty-seventh floor of the building, Karl. You told me you didn’t even see Earl Redgraves last night. You want to tell me why you lied?”
“Yeah, Karl,” Lenny said. “You want to tell him why you lied?”
“Shut up, Lenny,” Staringer said. “Karl, I was willing to play ball with you, but you lied. You lied to me, Karl.”
I saw the guns on the two officers’ hips. Staringer sat in my recliner just as calm as could be. He looked like he wanted an explanation.
I said, “There were three girls.”
“Three girls?” Staringer said.
“There was a CEO running around last night on the sixty-seventh floor with three naked girls.”
One of the officers standing behind Staringer said, “Bullshit.”
“It’s the truth.”
Staringer looked like he maybe believed me. “Who was this CEO?” he said.
“I can’t say,” I said.
“Well, you’re gonna have to say,” he said. “We got a warrant here for your arrest, Karl, for the murder of Earl Redgraves.”
“Yeah, Karl,” Lenny said. “We got a warrant for your arrest.”
I looked at Sara with humiliation and dread in my eyes. Sara was angry.
“You can’t do this,” she said to them.
“I’m afraid we can, ma’am,” Staringer said, rising from my recliner. “We’ve got the paperwork to do it. Frank, Stu, would you cuff this boy and read him his rights.”
“Yeah,” Lenny said. “Read him his rights.”
The two officers placed my hands behind my back. One started reading me my rights. Sara started crying.
“We can get an attorney,” I said to her. “This is crazy. I didn’t kill Earl Redgraves. I swear I didn’t. It was a CEO. It was the governor’s brother.”
“You have the right to remain silent,” Frank said. “Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law.”
“It wasn’t me, I tell you. It was a CEO. Check the tapes. Global-Com has its own security tapes. You’ll find the three naked ladies, the CEO.”
The officers led me out into the hallway. Sara was panicked and in tears, and all of a sudden, gunshots rang out from down the hallway!
One whizzed by my head and hit Frank. I looked up and saw six men coming up the hallway with guns. Frank fell to the ground, and everyone shouted and screamed. I hit the floor back inside the apartment, but Frank’s body blocked the door from closing all the way.
Sara screamed at the officers. Staringer tried to drag the body back into the apartment. Stu was on one knee in the hallway, firing his service revolver. Lenny helped Staringer pull Frank’s body into the apartment.
A barrage of gunshots crackled up the hallway. I saw Stu hit in his right shoulder, and he flew backwards and lay flat on the hallway floor.
The gunmen up the hallway roared at us. Staringer ducked around the corner of the apartment door and fired three quick shots with his handgun. Lenny shouted at him, “Stu is down! Stu is down!”
I got to my feet, my hands still handcuffed behind me. Frank was bleeding all over the foyer floor, and I saw that he was dying. He tried to gasp something, but blood gurgled up from his throat, and he started choking. Lenny yelled and dove out into the hallway and started firing.
“You idiot!” Staringer yelled at him.
I shouted at Sara, “Get the handcuff keys.”
Sara knelt down and removed the keys from Frank’s belt, but Staringer swung at her, and the keys went flying across the apartment. Sara said “oof!” and hit the ground hard.
The Kiribati Test Page 4
