He wanted to give up then, but he didn’t do it. The lockbox had been easy for his dad, but some things weren’t. He had seen his father solve problems so many times he couldn’t count them, and even though Daddy often got angry, he never quit. He always solved the problem in the end, and when it was over he would stop swearing about it and go get a beer.
I can do this like Daddy would, trying and trying until the problem gives up. Jack slid the scissors back in the lock and worked on it solidly for the next hour without another break. He sometimes reflected on that moment later in life, though much of what had happened at the hospital was vague and hard to remember. The time he worked on the window lock, though — he would always remember that because it was the first time he proved to himself that he could solve any problem if he just concentrated and didn’t stop.
He jiggled the blade as he turned the lock and it popped open, just like the one on that old box of his father’s. He felt a surge of pride and pushed the window up all the way. Now the only thing that stood between him and freedom was a thin little screen, just like the ones on his windows at home.
He felt like a prisoner, but this place must not have been built for keeping prisoners. That lock was not so hard to beat, and there didn’t seem to be any other security at all. He could pop out the screen, wiggle out through the open window, and run for all he was worth. Once he made it off the grounds, he could hide in the city. There were abandoned buildings. He knew that because he had seen them before. He would find an empty building, sneak in when it was dark out so nobody saw, and then decide whether he wanted to go home to Mommy or just keep running.
Jack pushed out the screen, which fell down to the ground below. He slid through the window and let himself drop too, although the harsh glare of the sunlight made his eyes water and the impact as he hit the ground was a lot harder than he’d expected. He struggled back to his feet, saw a cluster of trees up ahead, and started to run.
Jack was faster than they’d expected, running as only a small child can run. The orderlies spilling out the door were way behind him, but then a guard with a gun came running out from the little hut up by the road, forcing Jack to veer to the left.
It cost him too much time, and he was forced to run in a zig-zag pattern because the guard was still in front of him and the orderlies were coming up from behind. He tried to make it to the cluster of trees, but the guard kept swerving and blocking the way. Nearly panicking now, Jack looked frantically for some other target, someplace he could reach so he could hide.
There was nothing at all, and the effort of looking cost him more time that he couldn’t afford to lose. Just as he gave up on finding a new goal and started his sprint for the trees, Jim slammed into him from behind and knocked him sprawling. The impact stunned him, and he lay there gasping for breath. Jim held him down, whispering, “You little asshole! You made me run!”
That was all Jim could do to him, because the guard and the other orderlies were there in seconds, hauling him roughly to his feet. Dr. Jeong came out, waving to get their attention. “Be gentle with the boy!”
Jim glared at him viciously, but the guard with the gun gave him a guilty look and one of the other orderlies frowned sympathetically. When Dr. Jeong got close, he was shaking his head as if disappointed. “Silent alarm, Jack. On the window screen. You should have known better. Now you leave me no choice.”
He turned to the guard. “Would you please escort Jack to Level Q?”
The guard seemed almost shocked by this. “Level Q? But that’s the mental…”
“Yes, exactly. Jack’s obviously having a much harder time than we expected maintaining his mental equilibrium, and at the moment he’s a danger to himself and others. For his own protection, the boy will have to be put in a straitjacket and kept in solitary confinement until the Procedure. It’s of the highest importance that he stay here where he’s safe. We’re on the verge of starting the most important part of the research… and the Referendum is only a few days away.”
The guard just stared at Dr. Jeong, not knowing what to make of this little speech or of the order he’d just been given. Then he sighed regretfully and took Jack by the wrist. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”
Was this what his parents were talking about when they always went on about the Federation? Big men with guns who made you do what you were told, no matter how horrible it was? Jack threw himself down on the ground with a piercing shriek, and the orderlies had to fight to pick him up. He yelled and kicked, swiping at anyone near enough to reach. He wanted to bite them, he wanted to scratch them. It was hard for them to do it, but they got control of him anyway and picked him up.
For all his determination, for all his resourcefulness, Jack Klingerman was completely powerless.
Chapter Thirteen
Dr. Jeong was both thrilled and nervous. The pinnacle of his career to date had finally arrived, and the Procedure was about to begin. This experiment was the real purpose of Project Charlie and had been since the beginning. Only the lack of a suitable subject had delayed it so long, until the fortunate discovery of Jack Klingerman.
If only the cost had not been so high. It was hard to admit it, but the Klingerman family had been destroyed by the Project. Paul Klingerman was as good as broken and would never be able to return home. After one final attempt to reclaim her son, Diane Klingerman had left her flight squad and become a test pilot, a job so dangerous and demanding that it would take up all her time and attention. And as for Jack…
It might not be a good idea to think too much about the boy. The Procedure was risky, and he might not survive it at all. The responsibility for all this suffering was a heavy burden. Still, the potential benefits outweighed the costs. This research could help so many people. Guilty feelings and sentimentality were inappropriate.
And more importantly, his battle for control of the Project was near total victory. Despite the objections of some of the board members, there would be no inconvenient investigations or external restrictions to worry about. One final hurdle — a pro forma review by some military security adviser — and he would be left to his own devices to make the breakthrough they had all been dreaming of.
An assistant approached his workstation. “Ready for Phase 1.”
He looked over at Jack, lying unconscious in the Delta brainwave state while attached to an Entrainment Device. The Device was used to induce various brainwave patterns through light and sound. All humans were capable of the Delta state, though most people experienced it only in sleep or meditation. The nature of the so-called Charlie Mutation allowed other states, brainwaves that were never experienced by ordinary humans.
“Begin Phase 1.”
The assistant nodded and walked back to Jack. In their preliminary tests, they had already established that Jack could enter the Epsilon State and the Lambda State. That alone was amazing, but the point of the Procedure was to bring Jack into Lambda while he was attached to a prototype quantum device. According to all their calculations, a human who entered Lambda outside the bounds of relativistic physics would experience a fundamental shift in mental capacity. It was time to find out.
The assistant connected the Entrainment Device to the quantum prototype sitting next to it, then checked his screen to confirm the condition of Jack’s brainwaves. “Subject has entered Epsilon State.”
Dr. Jeong could see the same information through his own holoscreen, but it was always best to follow procedure and let the person using the device confirm all developments.
“Subject has entered Lambda State.”
This was it. When he gave the command, the electrode attached to the quantum induction device would be charged with a surplus of power, giving it the ability to bend time and space. With relativistic physics temporarily suspended, everything in Jack’s perception should become non-local. Either that or his brainwaves would stop entirely and Jack would flatline.
“Proceed to Phase 2.”
The assistant flicked a series
of switches. “Phase 2 initiated. Doctor… this is extraordinary.”
Trembling in wonder, Jeong checked his holo screen. Epsilon and Lambda were new discoveries, the unexpected results of the Charlie Mutation. This was something new. The activity going on in Jack’s brain was completely unprecedented, something no other human being had ever experienced.
+++
Jack felt like he was in a dream, only much clearer and more lucid than any normal dream. He could see everything — literally everything, all at once. A woman halfway across the galaxy was holding her baby; a rose was opening its petals in a garden on T3; an old man was drinking something and crying on a space station near T5; a comet was streaking its way across an uninhabited system and then slamming catastrophically into a nameless world.
The information would have been meaningless and incoherent, a babble of chaos, if his mind had not quickly focused on the people he knew personally. Rather than trying to process the limitless vastness of knowledge flowing through and around him, his mind called up certain images, certain timelines for special notice.
It made him think of a comic book, the way he could see moments from the past, the present, and the future simultaneously. It was all very fast — or something that felt like speed, because time was not a useful concept — but it was hard to remember it or make full sense of it right away.
He saw a moment from several years ago, his mother and father on their first date. His mother was stiff and awkward, his father was mercurial, jumping from topic to topic with frantic brilliance. But she understood him, she could follow his train of thought and give him the kind of conversation he had always yearned for. In the next panel of the story, they were getting married, and the look of joy on his mother’s face was something he had never seen before.
Then his mother was pregnant, needing extra help in so many ways. His father was flailing, overwhelmed by the details, unable to focus no matter how hard he tried. Jack could suddenly see that his father loved him, had always loved both of them, and how much he had suffered. Something was wrong with him and he didn’t know what: a deep anger was taking hold of him. He lost his way, retreated from the marriage and the family, tried to live through his work. It was the same with his mother. As his father’s anger slowly ate up all their happiness, she also retreated inside herself. They had met each other as two lonely people, but marriage had only made them lonelier.
That wasn’t all. Jack saw so many things. The assistant and Dr. Jeong had timelines too. When he wasn’t at work, the assistant was caring for his elderly mother. She would die in a year, and he would come into a surprisingly large inheritance. Dr. Jeong had a large extended family, but they were all beginning to cut him out of their lives as they realized that he cared about his career much more than them. Jim the orderly had a private life as ugly as his personality, but it would all end soon. Jim would try to cheat a drug dealer and get shot in the face, and his body would be found in a dumpster.
Jack saw someone else, someone he hadn’t met yet. A man named Trent, his timeline deeply interwoven with Jack’s own. Both timelines spiraled into the future in close proximity, though he couldn’t see where the spiral ended. Perhaps not everything was set ahead of time? Peeking in on this timeline, he found Trent a confusing man. Intelligent and benevolent, manipulative and ruthless, Trent was a man who understood power and used it shamelessly, but also a man who wanted the best for humanity. He caught a few glimpses of other friends — a woman named Alice who became a robot and a man named Brad whose grin hid secrets.
He could see what would happen in his own life, and he could hardly believe it. He was really going to visit all those other planets. It was just like he’d dreamed! He saw glimpses of his future and was amazed and delighted: a dark purple mountain range, a city of pyramids, a desert of red sand, a shadowy gorge. He saw the stars, spread out before him like gleaming marbles in the viewscreen of his very own spaceship. He viewed himself as a grown-up, talking to important people while they listened closely to his every word. He’d been so sad at the hospital, but he would live a life of adventure and excitement. He would do big things.
It wasn’t all happy, though. He saw other things too.
A huge man with an evil face coming in at him with a bloody knife, next to a machine that could squish people up.
A big cage with metal bars, where they’d locked him in till they could decide what to do with him.
A spaceship burning, drifting slowly toward a doomed city while people screamed and ran in panic.
A bomb going off on a snow-covered mountain, and an avalanche roaring down at him while he ran for safety.
Tumbling over and over in the empty blackness of outer space, desperately trying to breathe…
Then his vision expanded, and Jack saw that he was right about the future. Chains of events branched off into possibilities, superimposed on each other as clouds of potential. Not everything was predetermined — humanity especially, which hovered uncertainly between possible destinies.
He observed the overall effect of humans on the galaxy, a mixture of hope and fear, of creation and destruction. There were real possibilities here for everyone to flourish, but there were potential dangers too, even absolute destruction. If humans could not transition to a peaceful way of interacting, developments in technology would eventually make it possible to destroy whole worlds, and the species would annihilate itself even as it spread across the galaxy.
The whole experience was fascinating, an awe-inspiring tableau he could easily have watched forever. He didn’t want it to end, he just wanted to see lives play out and learn, to understand and experience. But then the flow seemed to change. He started to lose the ability to focus on a single moment or a single timeline.
The effect was overwhelming, like trying to understand a sped-up film. He started seeing more and more, voices and visuals of things and places, people he’d never seen or heard of, pasts and futures all crowded on top of each other.
He began to panic, not knowing how to regain control. Though totally separated from and unaware of his body, he felt something similar to a wave of anxiety. There was a bright light in front of him, and it kept growing in intensity. He tried to close his eyes, but they were already closed. It didn’t help. Jack’s head began to hurt, and almost instantly the pain spiraled out of control.
Someone was calling his name. He didn’t know who, but the voice made him think of his Daddy at first. Am I late for school? Did I sleep in and miss my ride? Have I made Daddy late for work?
No, it wasn’t his Dad, but it was someone he knew, although he couldn’t say how or why. Whoever it was, they were saying his name over and over again. “Jack, I need you to get up. Jack, it’s crucial that you wake up now. Come on, son, we’re waiting.”
Jack opened his eyes and was shocked at first to find his body responding. Wherever he had just been, it was beyond the body. He had lost all awareness of his physical self and had almost lost the memory. Now here he was, and he seemed to have a body again. He needed to remind himself of how it worked, so he flexed his hands and pressed his thumbs and forefingers together just to feel the sensation.
Then Jack sat up. Standing there in front of him was the man who’d been speaking, along with several other people who stood behind him respectfully. They all wore Federation uniforms. Not like the ones used in the facility, but more like something soldiers would wear. They had guns at their hips, and some of them stood with their hands on their weapons.
The man smiled at him, but it wasn't friendly. Almost like he was making fun of something, maybe himself. “We’re taking you out of here, kid. The papers are all in order. Don’t worry, you’re my responsibility now.”
Dr. Jeong stood nearby, looking on in dismay and frustration. Jack knew something about Dr. Jeong, something the doctor would not have wanted him to know. He had seen Jeong’s timeline, and he knew the doctor had intentionally and recklessly risked his life. When they began the Procedure, the doctor didn’t kno
w if he’d go into an amazing new brainwave state or just die on the spot. And there were other possibilities: a permanent coma state, incurable madness. The doctor had acted with a total lack of ethics or empathy, and right now he was worried he might even go to jail because of it.
Jack knew he wouldn’t, and that he would face no consequences of any lasting nature. He would resume his research, always looking for another subject with Jack’s special characteristics. The Charlie Mutation wasn’t just one thing: every person with the gene for it developed and manifested in a different way. He wouldn’t stop hoping, though, and he wouldn’t stop searching. Bitter until the end of his life about losing control of Project Charlie to the military intelligence people, he would end up using private lab space and his personal funds. All alone by the end, having alienated everyone who had ever cared about him, Dr. Jeong would finally go too far.
Thirty-three years in the future, the doctor would finally find someone with a version of the Charlie Mutation not too different from Jack’s own. An adult man rather than a child, the new subject would have a history of anger and violence, the same characteristics that had prevented the doctor from using Jack’s father for the Procedure. By that point, though, he would no longer care. Desperate to finally complete his work, Dr. Jeong would attempt the Procedure on the new subject — and be brutally murdered. Jack had seen it all.
It made him think. Just like the man who would eventually kill Dr. Jeong, Jack knew he was here because his brain was unusual. No, not just unusual. Special. Extraordinary. Something passed down from his father like a gift. If his brain was extraordinary, then maybe he could do something extraordinary with his own life.
He wanted to believe it, but he was scared. The whole experience had been like a dream. The memory was already fading from his waking mind. Maybe it was a dream, and nothing more. That must be it, he realized. No one can see the future.
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