The Traveler's Companion

by Chater, Christopher John

  “No idea. But he’s got the entire top floor of the hotel. I can’t seem to get up there. He’s blocked me out somehow.”

  “Blocked you? It’s possible to create a barrier?” Iverson asked.

  “Anything’s possible here, for fuck’s sake,” Gibbons said. “I’ve been watching who’s been going in and out of the hotel and I believe Go has brought his scientists here to study your city. They’ve been going on field trips. Some go to colleges and museums; others go to churches, temples, and synagogues. I followed a group earlier that went to Golden Gate Park. While non-corporeal, I was able to monitor their conversation. They were discussing theories on how you’re able to get things to last so long. They think it’s something in the molecular structure of the objects. Because you’re a scientist, they think you have special knowledge concerning the nature of reality that allows you to create things that last longer here,” Gibbons said.

  “They must be going in and out from somewhere inside the hotel,” Iverson said.

  “Is it true?” Gibbons asked.

  “Is what true?” Iverson asked.

  “Do you have special scientific knowledge that allows you to create longer lasting manifestations?” Gibbons asked.

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Iverson lied. He was glad he and Beth hadn’t discussed it earlier, at least not in detail. From now on, he would have to censor their conversations. Who knew when Gibbons was watching them? It dawned on him that he was now treating his boss as an adversary. What other option was there? Gibbons couldn’t be trusted with this power, no one could be. Abuses were already taking place. Go was right, it would corrupt anyone who got a hold of it. But while Go hoped to disperse the power evenly, Iverson knew keeping it from everyone was the only way to protect reality. If Gibbons found out he was concealing information, he would be returned to reality and tried for treason.

  “DIS needs any and all information about longer lasting manifestations,” Gibbons said.

  “I’d be happy to manifest whatever you like, but it won’t be any better than anyone else’s manifestations. I spent yesterday cleaning up my city because a lot of it had dissolved.”

  Gibbons chuckled. “What happened to your people?”

  “Many of them perished.”

  Gibbons laughed.

  Iverson wanted to kill him.

  “That’s a shame,” Gibbons said.

  “So, as you can see, I’m no better than anyone else here,” Iverson said.

  “What about Beth? She’s lasted for several days now,” Gibbons said.

  “A fluke,” Iverson said.

  “We should run a few tests on her to find out,” Gibbons said. “Get a team in here.”

  “Later,” Iverson said. “Time is running out. We need to find out where that lab is.”

  “Sounds good, but how are we going to get past that barrier?” Gibbons asked.

  “We need GPS trackers from reality,” Iverson said.

  * * * * *

  In this case, a GPS tracker only needed to be a cell phone, which Iverson managed to get from the DS&T laboratories without much hassle. Cell phones were everywhere and no one would think twice about finding one on him. It would also be easy to plant one in a room. Once the rift was located, the phone could be tossed into reality and the signal would be picked up in seconds by the CIA satellites. They would know exactly where the lab was, and could send a team there in a matter of hours. Time was of the essence.

  Iverson then had to make a moral decision. He had to decide whether or not he should ask Beth to submit to Go’s medical tests. It was the only way into the hotel. Beth was now the key to C.C. Go’s world.

  There were many potential holes in this plan that he was perfectly aware of. For starters, what if Go decided to close the rift while she was there? Or what if his laboratory was underground? GPS would be useless if the lab was in a missile silo in the former Soviet Union. Even with all the technology available to the CIA, the old-fashioned way of following someone was still the best way to know where they were.

  “Will it be painful?” Beth asked.

  “In reality it would be, but I think Go can do something for you in the Zone.”

  “If you want me to, I’ll do it,” Beth said. She put her arms around him, stealing affection from him.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be there with you,” Iverson said.

  * * * * *

  He took Beth to the Four Seasons Hotel lobby. He had the bartender bring her a drink to calm her nerves and then went to a front desk agent and had him ring Mr. Go’s room.

  Moments later Go materialized in the lobby. He sat at their cocktail table, a cup of hot green tea appearing before him.

  “Thank you for coming, Beth. But may I ask why you’ve had the change of heart?” Go asked, and then took a sip of tea.

  “Ryan talked me into it,” she said.

  “Is that a fact?” Go asked.

  “I want to know what she’s made of as much as you do,” Iverson said. “And I want her to last. If reality is doomed, then I’m going to need a stable home environment. I’ve seen what happens when things dissolve. It’s very distressing to say the least.”

  “I have to say, Doctor, I’ve found the accommodations here in your San Francisco quite nice. My team hasn’t had to re-manifest anything since we’ve been here. It’s quite extraordinary.”

  “It’s not that extraordinary. I’ve been doing maintenance on the hour,” Iverson said.

  “I see. So it’s just Beth that lasts?” Go said.

  This was what Iverson had feared. Soon enough he’d make the connection. Beth was made to last because he cared for her.

  “And my ring.” Iverson said, showing him his finger with the ring on it.

  “Yes, of course. The ring.”

  “The stipulation I have about these tests is that we find a way to keep her from any pain, and that I’m with her the entire time,” Iverson said.

  Go took several seconds to think this over, hiding behind a drink of tea. Iverson took his hesitance as a good sign. If he didn’t want him upstairs, then there was something up there to hide. Iverson hoped they wouldn’t close their rift into reality before he got there.

  “One second,” Go said.

  Mr. Go vanished, leaving behind a totally unnecessary nimbus of light. He was showing off again. Go returned after a few minutes, put a hand on Iverson’s shoulder and a hand on Beth’s shoulder and teleported them to a sitting room on the top floor of the hotel.

  This room had been manifested to look like the waiting room of a doctor’s office. There were magazines on a coffee table along with pamphlets on bone marrow biopsies. All of this was for their benefit.

  A door opened and Go came through dressed in green scrubs. Looking at a clipboard, he said into the room, “Iverson. The doctor will see you now.”

  “This is all very cute, Mister Go,” Iverson said.

  “Thought you’d like it.”

  “Actually, I hate doctor’s offices,” Iverson said.

  “This will only take a minute,” Go said. He escorted them down a hall and directed them into a small examination room.

  Go manifested a gown and handed it to Beth. “Would you mind changing into this? The doctor will be right in.”

  “Don’t keep us waiting,” Iverson said, just as Go was exiting. “Bastard.”

  “You said this wouldn’t hurt, right?” Beth said, undressing.

  “I’ll do whatever I can,” Iverson said, turning away to give her privacy.

  Moments later Dr. Riley entered the room. He was wearing a white doctor’s coat.

  “Doctor Iverson. Beth. Nice to see you again,” Dr. Riley said.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Iverson said.

  “Fair enough,” Riley said. He unrolled a cloth case, exposing the instruments inside. There was a trephine needle and an aspiration needle, which to Beth looked like medieval torture devices.

  “You like your needles, don’t you?” Beth said.
<
br />   “Beth, could you lay on your stomach please?” He took out the aspiration needle, the first of two needles used in the procedure. “The biopsy will give us cell and stroma constitution, which can tell us how ephemera stem cells operate,” Riley said. “Thank you for doing this.”

  “Wait. Let me anesthetize her,” Iverson said.

  “No need. Already did it,” Riley said, inserting the needle into her lower back just above her left buttock.

  “Any pain, Beth?” Iverson asked.

  “Don’t feel a thing,” she said.

  Iverson sighed. This was a good time for him to have a look around.

  “I think you got it under control. Is there a place to have a smoke around here?” Iverson asked.

  “Just go out into the hall. I’m sure you’ll find a place,” Riley said.

  Iverson went into the hall, but instead of going back toward the lobby, he went in the opposite direction. Once around the corner, the hall only went a few meters, ending with a white wall. The floor tiles, however, ended at a strange point, appearing to extend beyond the wall. He created a peep hole and peered through. The room beyond contained half a dozen scientists in white lab coats, working at different stations. Was this Go’s lab? The only way to know was to try and teleport into it. If he couldn’t teleport there, then he knew it was reality. First, he altered his appearance and became Dr. Riley.

  When he materialized in the room, he knew he was still in the Zone. Go’s team must have manifested this lab, from the look of things, to conduct some odd tests, tests impossible in reality.

  Appearing as Dr. Riley, the other scientists regarded Iverson with minimal interest, so he began to look around. A scientist wearing protective eyewear and holding a clipboard was observing an enclosure. It had a metal door with a view port. Vents above the door were allowing exhaust to escape from inside the room. Iverson went to stand next to the scientist. A man was inside the room, bathed in murky yellow light. He was a white male, stripped nude, no older than forty, and now laying on the floor in a fetal position. He was either dead or unconscious because he wasn’t moving even though his skin was bubbling with blisters. Then his body began to expand, swelling into one giant blister until finally exploding, spraying bloody chucks of body mass against the walls and window.

  Iverson, shocked and disgusted, took a step back, feeling woozy and faint. Had they put that man in a human-sized microwave?

  The scientist turned to him and said, “It’s just ephemera.”

  Iverson took a step away from the scientist, trying to hide his disgusted and horrified expression. Once behind him and out of sight, he took a moment to get his bearings. He forced what he had just seen out of his mind.

  He then peered over the scientist’s shoulder and tried to figure out what the scientist was writing on the clipboard. There were three different columns with the headings Temperature, Duration, and Splatter.

  Were they measuring the splatter spray produced by exploding ephemera? What type of science is this? He railed in thought.

  The scientist turned to catch Iverson peering over his shoulder and asked, “Everything alright, Doctor Riley?”

  “Fine. Carry on.”

  An alarm went off in the scientist’s pocket. He took out a cell phone, looked at the LCD screen, and said, “It’s my time.”

  Iverson nodded, but had no idea what he meant.

  The scientist walked away and went straight for a wall at the end of the room. When he got to it, instead of stopping, he walked right through it. Iverson suspected the room beyond was in reality. He hoped it was Mr. Go’s secret laboratory. He needed a better look.

  He slowly made his way across the lab, looking in the various holding cells on the way. Ephemera were locked up like test monkeys inside rooms not much larger than walk-in closets. One of them was the homeless man he had cured.

  Iverson went up to the glass, peering through. The man stood up from the floor and walked toward him, barely conscious. His movements were slow, his feet were dragging, and he had a blank expression. As they stood only inches apart, Iverson saw madness in his eyes. It wasn’t the same mental illness he had seen in him before he had cured him. This man had once been a raging drunk, but now he was the complete opposite. They had made him a zombie, his mind lost in some type of drug-induced psychosis.

  Iverson took a chart off a hook beside the door. It read:

  “Subject was homeless ephemera, but was rescued by creator and cured of mental disorders. After seven doses of LSD, ephemera has not reverted to former mental state. Brain reacted same as human brain after drug use, showing the cured brain’s resilience. Dosages will continue to be administered every hour.”

  Out of nowhere, the man began screaming. It was a primal cry, a high pitched screech, and it was attracting attention. Iverson fumbled to put the chart back on the hook and when he finally had it secured, he quickly moved away.

  A scientist and a young girl were inside the next cell. The little girl was no more than five years old, and she was wearing a red and white checkered dress and shiny black shoes. She had brown hair pulled into a ponytail. She and the scientist were sitting on the floor facing each other. The far wall was inhabited by a rift into reality, an ionized hole that led to a child’s playground.

  While holding the clipboard, the scientist said to the little girl, “Would you like to go to the playground?”

  The little girl nodded.

  “It’s okay. You can go. Go to the playground.”

  The little girl stood up and walked towards the rift. When she got to it, she looked back to make sure it was okay.

  “It’s okay. Go play,” the scientist told her.

  When she stepped into the rift, she exploded. There was a flash of white static and yellow sparks and then nothing was left of her but a plume of smoke wafting in the room. The little girl was gone.

  The scientist noted it on the clipboard, and then manifested another girl who looked exactly like her, preparing to start the experiment all over again.

  Iverson moved onto the next holding cell, boiling with anger. There was a dog inside this one. It was lying on his side, panting nervously. A timer was on the wall, counting down. Iverson took the chart off the wall.

  “Ephemera canine cells analyzed. Countdown indicates total cell degradation event.”

  Iverson put the chart back on the hook. The only redeeming quality of this experiment was that that the dog had no idea that the timer indicated when it was going to expire. There were many other cells with ephemera waiting to be experimented on. He counted as many as twenty, and he guessed that Go’s scientists had devious plans for all of them. These were Iverson’s people, and he vowed to come back and free them after planting the cell phone.

  A man in a white lab coat approached him.

  “Doctor Riley. Do you have the sample?”

  He assumed he meant Beth’s bone marrow sample. “Not yet,” Iverson said.

  “Then why are you here?”

  Iverson took out the cell phone and said to him, “It’s my time.”

  “Yes, of course. Is she still in the examination room?”

  “She is.”

  “Would you like me to take over the procedure?”

  “No. I’ll just be a minute.”

  “They recommend an hour, sir.”

  “An hour? Yes, well, it can’t be an hour today.”

  “They’ll be upset with you.”

  Iverson couldn’t walk through that rift without Dr. Riley’s appearance exploding off him. But he had to get that phone on the other side.

  “I guess my call home will have to wait. They’ve been working us like slaves around here. I can’t even take a quick break, for Christ’s sake!” In a pretend tantrum, Iverson angrily threw the phone through the rift and into reality. He then teleported back to the examination room.

  Beth was getting dressed.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Iverson said.

  “Do I look thinner? He took two
millimeters of bone marrow.”

  “Come on.”

  * * * * *

  Iverson was helping Beth down the hall toward the master bedroom, but as he went past the guest bedroom, he saw that the door was ajar.

  “Who opened that door?” Iverson asked.

  Beth didn’t reply.

  Iverson pushed the door open and quickly looked inside the room. The other Beth was gone.

  “What happened to her! Where is she?” Iverson asked.

  “I did it for us,” Beth said.

  “Where is she?” Iverson demanded.

  She wouldn’t say.

  Iverson thought of his sick wife and materialized at the bottom of Hyde Street. He looked around. The hospital bed was on its side in the middle of the street. Beth was laying in the gutter. She had been sent racing down the hill on the hospital bed and had crashed against the curb.

  He ran over to the bed, flipped it onto its wheels, and then lifted her up from the gutter to put her on the bed. He manifested perfect health for her with the exception of the coma. This wasn’t the time to cure her of that. He checked her pulse and listened to her heart. She was still alive.

  He teleported them back to the guest bedroom.

  As he stood next to her, holding her hand, Angela entered the room.

  “I heard you fighting with Beth,” Angela said. “Is everything alright?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Doctor. I believe you’ve been compromised. You’re unable to handle the emotional volatility of this scenario. Your brain scans—”

  “I told you not talk to me about brain scans here! We don’t know who’s monitoring us!”

  “You were unencumbered by relationships before this and now you’ve been forced to act as caretaker for beings that are unstable. You’ve taken on too much responsibility. I think some time outside the Zone would be a good idea.”

  “I can’t leave her. Not yet.”

  “We’ve failed to achieve our primary objectives.”

  “We have to stop Go,” Iverson said, tightening his hold on his wife’s hand.

  “I don’t think that’s possible, Doctor.”

  “Anything’s possible in the Zone.”