by Susan Adrian
Are you working for or have you worked for any agencies of foreign governments? No.
Even telling the truth, I feel jumpy hooked up to the thing. It’s a lot worse when Dr. Milkovich gets up to bring the objects, and I know I’m going to lie. She brings in a metal box, thin and long like a safe-deposit box, and sets it on the table so it opens away from me. She takes out something in a sealed plastic bag, face dead serious, and slides the bag down.
It’s a ring. Plain, gold, scuffed. A man’s ring.
Here we go, problem solved. I can’t do it through plastic, but they don’t know that. I’ll try, fail. Done. I relax.
She nods at me. “Open it. We want you to hold it in your hand.”
Crap. I look at the camera—unblinking red eye—and open the bag, let the ring fall into my hand.
I close my eyes, but I don’t try to tunnel. I frown, grunt. Open my eyes.
“I told you. I can’t do anything. I don’t even know what you want me to do.”
Dr. Milkovich just looks at me.
“It was just a party trick, okay?” My voice sounds high in my ears. “A fake, to impress a girl. My friends fed me the information beforehand.”
She looks at Dr. Lennon.
“He’s lying,” he says, matter-of-fact. “It’s all over the place.”
“Try again, Mr. Lukin,” she says.
I grit my teeth. I pretend again, don’t do anything. I look up, shrug. If I don’t say anything, they can’t tell I’m lying, right?
“Lying,” he says.
“Jacob.” Liesel’s voice blasts from a speaker somewhere on the ceiling. “Do I need to come speak with you? We have an agreement.”
I stare at the camera. I can’t do it. Not here. If I do it here, on record, they’ll have evidence. Proof. I can’t. It’s too dangerous. It goes against everything Dad ever said.
“Doctors, you may leave for a moment. I need to speak with Jacob alone.”
The red light goes off and they leave, not looking at me. I’m still strapped to the chair, stuck. A couple minutes later Liesel comes in, holding a tablet computer. She walks calmly around the table, pulls a chair close to me, and sits. Sets down the tablet, folds her hands on the table, and looks at me. She doesn’t seem surprised, or even pissed. Like she expected this.
That’s not good.
“This is sooner than I wanted to have this conversation, Jacob. By not cooperating you’ve forced my hand, before we’ve even started.” She tilts her head, studies me. “What do you think we’re doing here, exactly?”
I don’t answer.
She turns my chair, fast, so I’m facing her, knee to knee. She leans in. I try to shrink away, but there’s nowhere to go.
“We’re doing tests,” she says, still calm. “Simply tests. But we are using a lot of government resources, on a Saturday, to accomplish these tests. And the tests must be accomplished, must be successful, before you can go home.” She pauses, studies me. “You do want to go home again, don’t you, Jacob?”
My breath hitches. “Yes.”
Her soulless eyes, shark eyes, are close to mine. “Because it’s possible—very possible, right now—that you stay here. That you never see your mother or your sister again.” She sits back in her own chair. “Let me show you something.”
She props the tablet in front of me, turns it on, and presses the play button.
It’s a video—grainy, but recognizable—of me at the party. Waiting for Caitlyn to come back with the object.
I look awful. Wasted, slurring, hair falling into my face.
But then Caitlyn comes back, and I tunnel to her sister.
It’s surreal. My face goes blank and smooth. My voice is deeper, distant, as I recite the details. Even though I know what’s happening, it’s freakishly impressive. She lets the video go through the tunnel to Rachel’s dad. When I open my eyes on the screen, Liesel hits stop.
“So if it’s proof you’re worried about,” she says, “I have proof. It’s too late for that.”
I swallow. Too late echoes in my head. “But it was a fake—”
“No. It wasn’t. The people upstairs have seen this already. It’s why you’re here, why I have any funding for this project, these tests. There has already been discussion of whether it is a national security risk to let you return home, with adversaries interested in you. That it could in fact be extraordinarily valuable to the national security of this country to keep you right here—or more likely, in a secure location.” She leans forward again. “I have spent considerable effort trying to convince them otherwise.”
Mom. Myka. Home.
“No.” I choke it out.
She pats my leg. “I understand, Jacob. I don’t want that for you either. I believe, personally, that you would be far more useful to us if you are happy, if you are out in the world living your life, protected. If you help willingly, now, we’ll be able to do that. To keep you all safe.”
I go very still. It sounds like she’s offering me a deal.
She studies me again. “I want this project to succeed. I want your skills to be an asset to this country. But I need your full cooperation—and I mean full, here and in what we will ask of you in the future. If you grant us your full, willing cooperation, with all that we ask, you can return to your life at the end of the day.” She smiles, white teeth through red lips. “There is more, of course. Further details, but we’ll discuss those after the tests. The … successful tests. Do you understand?”
It’s a hell of a deal: you’re here and we’ll lock you up forever right now—and no one will have any idea what happened to you—or do well on our tests and maybe we’ll let you out. What can I do? I can’t choose Door #1, the instant padded cell.
“Yes.”
“Yes, you’ll cooperate?”
I nod, silent. I don’t want to say it again.
“Excellent. I’ll go back to the observation room, and we’ll try this again.” She pats my arm this time. “I’m certain we will have better results.”
The doctors come back and get all set up in their positions without a single comment. I still have the ring clutched in my hand. When Dr. Milkovich gives me the signal, I hunch over it. Close my eyes and let it come, the glow, the buzzing. I speak what I see.
A man, middle aged. Medium height, beer belly, black-rimmed glasses. Dark, wispy hair, combed flat. Tan slacks and a doctor’s coat. Location: Arlington, Virginia. 3701 North Fairfax Drive, twelfth floor, lab 1235. He sees a bunch of squiggly pink things, outlined in a circle of light. A microscope. Without looking up, he says, “The SD CC 1b is definitely showing signs of preferential hydrolosis…”
I set the ring on the bag. “This guy’s two floors down.”
“It’s a test.” Dr. Milkovich says, even. But she has the look Mrs. Timmerman had at the party, times ten—like her fantasies have come true. Dr. Lennon peers at his screen like it has the mysteries of the universe on it.
Wonderful.
I bag up the ring and pass it back to her, and answer some questions for the Machine. She slides me another bag. This one has a small slip of paper folded in quarters, so worn it’s yellow and falling apart at the creases. I pluck it out carefully, with two fingers, and hold it in my hands.
Another man. He’s old, tufts of gray hair like steam escaping from his ears. A gray, grizzled beard. Location: Toulouse, France. Place de Capitole. A small café on the edge of the plaza. He has a false leg—I can feel the joint aching, at the knee. He rubs it absentmindedly. He sits in the sun at a table with a bright red umbrella, a cup of coffee in front of him: white china in a plain white saucer. He lifts his chin to survey the plaza, the noise of the crowd floating past. He raises the coffee, sips. He feels calm, content.
I let the paper fall, open my eyes. Odd to do two in a row like that. The only other time I’d done that was at the party. I feel a little disoriented, jerked from one reality to another.
Dr. Milkovich scribbles like crazy.
“Was that real time
? You were seeing what he is seeing right now, in France?” Dr. Lennon asks, his voice tinged with awe. Yes.
“Did you really feel what he was feeling? Physically and emotionally?” Yes.
More questions on how it felt, what I did, how I did it. The questions take longer than the tunnel. I wish there was a way to stop this.
Dr. Milkovich jumps up. “Excuse me for a minute.” She thrusts her card in the door and runs out.
“She moves like a squirrel,” I say.
Dr. Lennon chuckles—it’s true—but doesn’t respond. He’s busy typing. Dr. Milkovich is probably talking to Liesel and who knows who else. Discussing me. How they’re going to use me.
I wonder if I could kill a man just by telling the wrong person—by telling them—where he is.
The answer’s obvious. Yes.
6
“Pain” by Alice Cooper
Nothing changes when Dr. Milkovich gets back. She hands me another bag—a brown comb—and I see a woman in California mowing her lawn. A gold pen shows me a man in Khartoum, Africa, sleeping. When somebody’s sleeping that’s all I can say: where they are, what they look like, and that they’re asleep. I guess that’s still useful for lots of things I don’t want to think about.
Dr. Milkovich looks at her watch, which they didn’t take away from her. “We’ll do one more and then break for lunch.”
That’s good. I’m feeling kind of dizzy, with a smear of a headache at the edges. I need food. Caffeine. A piss.
She hands me a bag with a small, polished stone. It’s a tigereye, striped in bright orange and gold. It’s cool to the touch, slick. I rub it between my fingers—it feels good—and close my eyes.
Darkness. Cold. Nothingness.
I drop the stone. It clatters on the table.
My hands start trembling. I want to shove them in my lap, out of sight, but I can’t. They’re strapped down. “This person’s dead.” I swallow hard, so I won’t get sick. “Don’t ever give me things from dead people.”
Dr. Milkovich’s pen hovers over the paper. She doesn’t look up. “You can tell whether a subject is dead or alive?” she asks carefully. “With certainty?”
Crap. They didn’t know that. I bet that’s pretty useful information in espionage and warcraft, huh? Dr. Lennon’s watching me, waiting to see if his screen will light up.
I can try. “No.”
He looks at his screen, shakes his head. “Again. Can you tell whether a subject is dead, with certainty, from their object?”
I sigh. “Yes.”
Dr. Milkovich jumps up again and speeds out of the room without a word.
I lean my head back in the chair. I’d had, still hiding in the back of my mind, some hope that I could wriggle away from this future that’s unfolding in front of me at the speed of their imaginations. Yeah, maybe it was foolish. But it was there.
It isn’t there anymore.
* * *
After lunch we abandon the polygraph, thank God. Maybe now they know I’m telling “what I believe to be the truth.” I already showed them enough tricks to get their panties wet.
Liesel leads Dr. Milkovich and me to another room, this one like a huge doctor’s office. It has a few chairs, a hospital bed, my old friend the video camera, and a new doctor adjusting a different, bigger machine with sprouts of wires and a digital monitor. I recognize it: an EEG. To record my brain waves.
I stop, take a step back. “No.”
“Jacob,” Liesel says, her voice soothing. Meant to be soothing; really, kind of grating. “You agreed to do tests. This is part of the deal.”
The memory is vivid, bright. I was fifteen, and Mom and Dad and I were sitting on the sofa watching ER reruns. It wasn’t long before he died. The patient on TV had epilepsy, and they were hooking him up to an EEG. Suddenly Dad leaned over to me. Don’t ever do that, Jake, he whispered in my ear. Who knows what it would show. I nodded once. We never talked about it again.
I take another step back, almost to the door. “You didn’t say anything about that. You’re not messing with my brain.”
“This doesn’t do anything to your brain,” New Doctor says, smooth. “It’s not capable of it. All it does is record what’s going on. Like a blood pressure cuff, but for brain waves.”
This guy doesn’t look much older than I am. In fact, he reminds me of Chris, big and stocky, but with red hair. He looks like he belongs on a farm, or in Oklahoma. Or maybe the Waltons. Except he has a doctor’s coat and a DARPA badge.
“I know what it does,” I snap. “I won’t do it.”
The doctors look at Liesel, who sighs. “Full, willing cooperation,” she says.
Damn.
The EEG setup isn’t as bad as I thought, about the same time frame and discomfort as the polygraph. While New Doctor—his badge says Eric Proctor—sticks suction cups all over my head, I wonder what else they have planned for me, what I’ve agreed to. I wonder what it will show.
For now, I’m going home in a few hours—she promised—and that’s going to have to get me through.
“So you’re Jake, right?” New Doctor says. “With all the fuss we didn’t get introduced. You can call me Eric.” He sticks another suction cup in gel and plops it on my forehead.
“What, not Dr. Proctor?” I ask. I can practically see up his nose from this angle. “But it’s so fun to say.”
He laughs. “That’s a good one. But I’m not a doctor. She is.” He points at Dr. Milkovich, writing notes as usual in a corner. “But you can just call her Bunny. Everyone else does.”
She gasps, and color actually comes into her cheeks. Her round blue eyes glare at him. “Eric. He is a subject.”
He shrugs. “Doesn’t mean he’s not a person. We should treat him like one.”
I actually feel a little better, for the first time since yesterday. “I like Bunny. It suits you.”
She wrinkles her nose and starts writing again.
“That’s it for the torture devices,” Eric says, and turns a few knobs on the EEG. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
I see a bunch of lines appear, tracking across the screen, before he turns the monitor away.
“Sorry, mate. Don’t want to distract you.” He nods to Bunny. “Ready.”
She brings out the box, the red light on the camera goes on. Here we go.
* * *
I don’t realize there’s a problem until I’ve done three more objects, and my temples start to pulse. I don’t say anything. It’s a headache. I figure it’s normal to get a headache after this much tunneling. It’s a lot of mental effort, right? Like studying for a test, multiplied by a zillion.
I don’t realize it’s a serious problem until I do two more, and my head explodes with pain. At that point I don’t have to tell anybody. My screaming probably alerts them just fine.
I’m going to die. Pain burrows into my head, then swells to take over every inch. It hammers from the inside of my skull, trying to break free. Throbbing, sizzling pain. I can’t think, can’t move. Nothing in the world but pain, and my screams, over and over.
Make it stop. Please. Make it stop.
Liesel is there, and Dr. Milkovich and Eric and some other people. I can hear them, shouting orders, running. I can’t see them, because I can’t open my eyes. There is only pain.
I want to die. It would make it stop, and that would be better.
Someone pries my mouth open, thrusts something—things—under my tongue. They taste like Froot Loops.
Within a minute or two the headache is completely gone. A sense of peace, calm, seeps into me.
I open my eyes. There are six or seven people staring at me. I breathe, slowly, staring back.
“Are you all right?” Liesel leans over the bed, her badge tapping against my arm. Tap. Tap. In rhythm. A good rhythm. I tap my fingers to it. Tap. Tap.
I smile at all of them. “Hello.”
“The medicine will give him intense calm and a feeling of well-being, like incredible pot,” a man
in a doctor’s coat says blandly. “He’ll be like that for a couple hours; he will likely sleep. The pain should be gone by the time it fades.”
“Hi,” I say. “You have nice teeth,” I say to Liesel. “White.”
She sighs. “Okay, everybody but my team can go. Thank you for responding so quickly.”
There is bustling, but I don’t mind. It sounds good, friendly. It makes me happy. I’m floating, I think. Floating away somewhere nice. Like marshmallows.
“Oh, and Dr. Johnson?” Liesel says. “I’ll need a good supply of that drug. Thanks.”
Yes. A good supply of that drug. Excellent.
I smile at everybody. Then I fall asleep.
* * *
When I wake up Liesel’s the only one there, sitting in a chair by the bed. “Hello,” she says, fake bright. “It looks like you’ve had enough for the day.”
I sit up, rubbing at my head. I’ve been de-suction-cupped, and the camera is off. “What happened?”
“Your brain did some interesting gymnastics. It’s a good thing we had you on the EEG, or we would’ve had no idea what was going on. Are you okay now?”
I shrug. There’s no pain, no calm. Normal. “My head isn’t going to fall off. That was quite a high, though. What the hell did you give me?”
She smiles, proud. “It’s a new experimental drug for soldiers, called T-680. It induces theta level activity, to increase calm in battle. We gave you a rather large dose, hence the significant mood-altering. Aren’t you glad you’re working with DARPA?”
If I weren’t working with DARPA I wouldn’t have had the blinding headache in the first place. So, I have mixed feelings. “That’s not enough for me,” I say. “Thetas, gymnastics? What did the EEG tell you?”
I see her consider whether she should tell me. She nods. “Okay, let me try. It reported abnormal readings of delta waves during the … activity. Delta waves at any level are usually present only in deep sleep, but we’ve never seen delta waves quite like this.”
Dad was right. Again.
