Afterimage

by Roderick Geiger

  Earlier, when Evans had delivered Box 3 of 3, the team had reviewed the contents, singling out areas that needed clarification. The work had been divided into thirds among them, and was parsimoniously accomplished. Deverson, during the last three months prior to his disappearance, had been much distracted by illness. The work he had done focused on mixing species for his tests. These had turned out badly, causing extensive damage to his equipment, so he’d returned to INFX 204, pairs of rats. Using a computer brain alignment program he’d written, he achieved three near-perfect, near-damage-free INFX procedures with his rats. The account of the last of these, until now, was Deverson’s last formal entry. This new box, consisting mainly of experimental design and observation forms, had been the basis for all of the Membrana Ruptura Society’s ‘Intercessions,’ as Evans and his staff called them. There had never been any design forms or observation forms for using a human, nor had there been any mention of any human-subject experiments.

  No one on the team had had the time to read the hand-written commentaries scrawled on the backs and in the margins of these lab forms. Gill felt it was necessary to do so before the next experiment. This - and also to get some fresh air - were the reasons Gill had come out into the courtyard this afternoon.

  Until this morning he hadn’t even known the courtyard existed. It was an enclosed triangular patio between two buildings protected by a ten-foot, poured-in-place concrete wall hidden behind a row of blue spruce trees. Private, with a clear view to the sky. On the other side of the wall was a sidewalk, and for a moment Gill imagined a corps of reporters and camera crews readying siege ladders for an all-out assault on the fortress. He laughed at the notion.

  He returned to the hand-scribbled notes, snippets of Deverson’s thoughts, doubts, reservations. They were his outlet, a chance for his orderly and disciplined mind to come off the leash, to wonder and wander, to freely express. He didn’t make them on any regular schedule. Most weren’t even dated. Gill supposed he wrote them as time and mood permitted, probably following long days in the lab.

  Right up to the end Deverson had continued to call his project INFX, repudiating the fact that most - students, faculty, the media, even the groups who protested his work - referred to it simply as the Instant of Death.

  Evans had known about the notes. It was Evans who told Gill to read them all. The one he’d just read he believed to be the earliest. Now he pulled his chair up under the wide brim of the umbrella and read on:

  “I have made it my singular goal to unlock the secrets of the non-explosive INFX. The issue is much more than simply reducing damage to expensive equipment…it is the only clue I have to unlocking the mystery of what it is I’ve stumbled upon, for I am certain now that these infernal explosions are indications of my clumsiness, my ignorance, perhaps my arrogance as well. I am like a rogue elephant blindly crashing through the forest, destroying everything in my path. I must find a way to slip in quietly, damaging nothing, upsetting nothing, displacing not even a twig or leaf, before I will see where I am and know the way ahead.

  “I wonder if, four billion years ago, some powerful accident might have been visited upon the primordial earth, some cataclysm of radiation perhaps erupting from deep within the planet, perhaps blasting down from the violent skies, perhaps originating from deep in space, a natural event or sequence of events which tapped the same energy that INFX taps. Could it have been the spark that caused that first RNA molecule to form…to replicate itself?”

  This was familiar Deverson, reminiscent of a Deverson lecture given for freshman biochemistry classes. It was a lecture Gill, as TA, had heard dozens of times…

  The portly professor removed a tarp from a 3-gallon glass vessel filled with brownish green ooze: “For the sake of argument let’s assume that between three and four billion years ago, the young earth really was rich with pools of this muck, as many scientists believe,” he began. “This is primordial soup, a mixture of naturally occurring elements acted upon by numerous natural forces: solar radiation, geothermal events, lightening. Over time it can form into amino acids, fatty acids and hydrocarbons …this is the stuff, so goes the theory, from whence life began.”

  He stared down into the bowl a moment, shaking his head. “Thousands of scientists have been playing with this muck, with countless variations of it, bombarding it with every known form of radiation. They’ve shocked it, squeezed it, boiled it, froze it, sung to it, pan-fried it, slapped it, sliced it and diced it.”

  He suddenly removed the lid and thrust his arm into the liquid. A powerful stench, a cross between sulfur, skunk urine and fertilizer, lashed out upon the unsuspecting class all at once, and up from three-dozen voices came the piteous moaning of their putrescent disapproval. Deverson grinned, his arm dripping with the ooze. “ The theory goes that this is us - primordial us - 3.5 billion years ago. Bear with me here.

  “We all know that the rules of natural selection are not exclusive to living things. Inanimate objects can evolve too. Just as the most successful predator dominates his environment, so also does the chemical compound which forms the most readily or lasts the longest; it too eventually becomes predominant in it’s environment.”

  Deverson towel-dried his arm. “It’s theorized that before life on earth began, short chains of amino acids formed into microscopic bubbles, called microspheres. They formed readily and lasted a long time and eventually became quite common. Inside the permeable membranes of these tiny, water-borne bubbles, chemical reactions were taking place. Acted upon by ultraviolet radiation, focused by the curvature of the microsphere’s semi-transparent membrane, new, complex molecules were forming. Some of these new molecules were bonding with the bubble membranes, making them tougher, longer lasting, and eventually, about 3.5 billion years ago, pools of these things were everywhere, these tough-membraned, highly evolved, long-lasting inanimate bubbles filled with complex macromolecules of proteins and hydrocarbons and fatty acids. Mix in a molecule or two of ribonucleic acid, blast it with a couple million volts of lightening and there you have it! Voila! Life! Right?

  The class remained silent. “Wrong. No matter how we set up the experiment, the little bubbles don’t become little living cells. They don’t go swimming merrily off to begin the painfully long, slow climb up the ladder of evolution. Something is missing.

  “Some say the hand of god is what’s missing and as such it is unknowable. Others say it’s just a missing particle, an antiproton, a gluon, and we’ll find it, sooner or later.

  “Only one thing’s for certain: it’s our destiny to keep on looking…”

  Gill shook his head free of the memory and continued scanning for the hand-written notes. There were none for many pages; then this:

  “I am finding it harder and harder to concentrate, to understand what people are saying to me. I am losing my temper more and more often. I’m sure my problem has to do with the dreams, either the ridiculous dreams themselves or the fact that I’m no longer dreaming like a human, therefore I am being deprived of whatever psychological purpose dreams serve. It is probably both.

  “Every night I dream of being an animal, of being in the company of other animals of the same species, living like the animal, quickly forgetting that I’m human, freed from my humanity, devolving to the instinctive, lower-brain level of the animal. The other night I was a rat caught by a bobcat and I spent most of the night feeling what it’s like to be eaten alive. Earlier in the week I was a dog nosing through a garbage dump all night, fighting with other dogs over scraps of stale, rotten things.

  “But there have been some truly remarkable aspects to these dreams. As the rat, punctured and hanging in the cat’s mouth, I experienced an amazing resignation to my fate. I felt myself merge into the whole chain of life, and, I dare say…if it’s possible for a rat to feel joy, then that is what I felt.

  “And as a dog, I learned what it is like to have so keen a sense of smell that I could actually ‘see’ an olfactory landscape. I could smell the shape of object
s, their positions left and right, near and far, high and low, even down below the ground, behind and around solid objects. And when I awoke, I found myself lamenting my atrophied - nay worthless - human nose.

  “Notably, I’ve never dreamed of being an animal species which I haven’t at some earlier time put in my machine. It would seem irrefutable that I am dreaming the lives – the dreams - of my victims. But why? Is it possible that just being near the machine can cause these subconscious effects? If so it will be interesting to see what kind of dreams I have after the dolphin experiment.”

  Gill found this brief note tucked in a margin:

  “It occurred to me that I had, without asking permission of the billions of people who stood to be directly affected by INFX, gone ahead and let it out of the bottle anyway, that if it didn’t end here, right now, with some terrible and final explosion, then it would be forever impossible to put it back, to go back to the time when men made up stories to explain the wonderful mysteries of life and death and creation, inventing gods and demons that other men believed, actually believed in, like little children. Have I forced the world to grow up too soon? What happens when innocence is no more?”

  The next note said:

  “It struck me last night, I must check my notes! Why didn’t I see it earlier? Male and female. The passenger and driver need to be opposite sexes! Yes, I’m sure of it!!! Whenever I’ve used same-sex subjects the ‘Muffler Effect’ is null. How wonderfully simple. Ying and Yang. The duality of sexes is a fundamental essence of life. Of course. How it builds and expands and builds. Wonderful!”

  This note was labeled simply ‘Christmas 2 am’:

  “I find myself compelled on this, the Western world’s most holy day, to ponder the theoretical big picture as it applies to my work. What is the physics of this thing I have discovered? What are the mechanics, the natural laws, the observable facts?

  “It appears that at the death or birth of an organism, a burst of life-energy must pass through a sub-atomic rupture in the membrane separating our universe from the next. This next universe must be parallel with our own, existing everywhere, all around us. No one has ever traveled there and returned, so the composition and appearance of this dimension is subject to considerable speculation. I have observed that if even a few particles of matter interrupting the life-energy escape from the rupture, there comes a powerful energy surge, usually in the form of an explosion or blast of heat energy.

  “I believe what I have really discovered is the elusive fifth force. It is life-energy, the dominant force in our universe even though it is held at bay by a dimensional membrane, an energy field of unknown composition. I believe a theory, which adequately describes the physics of the fifth force, will explain discrepancies in the rectifying of general relativity theory and quantum mechanics. Electromagnetic, weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force and gravity are all subservient to life-energy, which I believe existed here before the Big Bang, and will continue to exist here long after our universe has contracted into infinite nothingness.

  “In the mean time, as we venture out into the stars, we will find that life is not some fluke accident limited to narrow temperature bands or freak chemical reactions. Rather, we will find that life passes through the membrane anywhere and everywhere it possibly can, forcing itself upon, and inhabiting even the most unlikely collections of matter.

  “I believe…”

  That was all. The next note was undated, hand-written in the comments section of a lab notes form stained with what appeared to be blood:

  “Had a remarkable dream. Am writing it now while it is still fresh in my mind. I was a chimpanzee, strapped on the carriage of my own machine, looking up at a man, who was myself, injecting the lethal dose into me. But I did not know it was a lethal dose, nor that I was about to go into the machine. I recognized myself as a zoo chimp might recognize his human jailkeeper, nothing more. And I was frightened…no, terrified, unable to move on that cold plastic table. I felt betrayed by that human…that human who was me!

  “The pounding coils grew louder as I rolled in, squirming and afraid. Then the cocktail began to work, I growing sleepy and calm. My senses dulling and shutting down.

  “I knew I was dying! I could feel my lungs stop, my heart stop, my brain race to shut down body functions in order to preserve my consciousness for as long as possible. It seemed so futile. Shut down the liver and save the consciousness for a few extra seconds? Why? Why?

  “With all my senses gone, with no sensory input of any kind, I found myself floating in a silent blackness. Then there was a light and I sensed myself moving toward it and it grew brighter until it was everywhere and I moved into it and out the other side into a magnificent grove of giant trees, twisted, intertwined branches climbing into the clouds. And there were other chimps there, chimps I recognized, relatives, clan members, and they greeted me in a most joyous reunion, more sublime than anything I have ever felt as a human, and somehow I knew the place was infinite in time and space, that I was home, and free forever.”

  And two pages later:

  “We’ve shunned the family this Christmas, something we’ve never done before, but I wanted it that way. I didn’t want them to see me like this, even the children, whom I love, fear and – most of all - distrust. This is too much for Adel. She is trying so hard to be strong. So loyal, so brave. Soon I will have to keep a nurse around the clock.

  The next note was scribbled, nearly indecipherable:

  “So be it! It is untested but I believe it will work. Of course it will be difficult to find a human volunteer, but I think not impossible. I have attended support groups at a terminal care hospice and have met people like myself. I am feeling them out, looking for someone innately courageous.

  “Also I think I’ve found one of the newer open MRI rigs, something with a short bore and enough table capacity to handle two humans squeezed together, side-by-side. It will probably be necessary to amputate the arm and shoulder of the driver in order to fit both in. Perhaps the passenger’s too. A major complication.

  “Am still hopeful about the dolphin test. Pretty sure I’ll have a subject soon. The dolphin’s similar brain mass and configuration may make it acceptable to replace the human driver. I am hoping to do that test right after the New Year.

  “Not sleeping much now, so the animal dreams are less, but am getting grouchier, more irritable. Hard to keep lab assistants. They think I’m insane. I think so too.

  “The sun is setting on what will surely be our last New Years’ together, Adel and I. At least in this world. This is a time of year people reflect on their lives and religions and on what they really believe, or what they really don’t believe. I have always been a scientist, but I do not know what to believe anymore. Perhaps I really am knocking on heaven’s door, as Adel says. If this is so I wonder what He thinks of me. Am I His champion, using my God-given talents to do His bidding? Or am I a villain, a murderer of His creations on some vain quest in the name of ego and glory?

  “I have been thinking often of the chimp. It is the first and only time I dreamed as a chimp, and the only time I had dreamed so vividly about going into the machine. I have a sense that I had become Dorothy, the elderly female I used as a driver last August.

  “It has occurred to me that the chimp heaven I saw through her eyes was Dorothy’s dream, her idea of eternal paradise, and it was that dream which her brain tried to preserve as it raced to shut down her body, her senses, her cerebellum, and finally itself. Here is where I believe general relativity theory and INFX theory are reconciled. I believe that during the one-billionth of a microsecond when Dorothy’s life force passed through an opening in the dimensional membrane, time slowed to a stop…just long enough for Dorothy’s consciousness to be deposited in the past. For her, time would seem to continue on normally. For the rest of us time really does move on normally. Here, Dorothy is dead, past her core failure, beyond revival. But to her…she is still there, in that mystical forest with her family, clim
bing or lazing in the sun or swinging through the branches, totally unaware that she is suspended in a sliver of time.

  “At least I hope it is so.”

  Gill read the last paragraph twice. This was how Deverson’s Expiration Protocol theory had evolved over the last 20 years to incorporate a purpose of dreams component. Deverson believed dreaming was the process of creating and editing a kind of virtual reality movie to be played at the moment of death, that this movie was stored in the brain’s core and would start playing after all five senses had shut down. Cut off entirely from the outside world, the individual would have no sensory reference to the passing of time, and thus, Deverson theorized, a few seconds might seem like an eternity.

  Gill pondered for a moment what might be in his movie, and his two little girls playing in the woods immediately came to mind. Not a bad way to spend eternity.

  He returned to his scanning of the pages and found this short, undated note squeezed sideways in a margin:

  “The agency that provides home-care nurses is having trouble filling my needs. Can’t sleep. Can’t remember simple things. I need the drugs but they make me feel stupid. I am so angry. I need to get back to my lab. They say nurses will be available after the holidays.”

  And on the next page:

  “Jan 31 – The tuna boat owner in Richmond delivered a dead dolphin today. The idiot! He claims he didn’t know I needed a live one! I have been promised another, a live one this time, but the man already has my money and I fear the worst.