Afterimage

by Roderick Geiger

  “Then let’s do this,” Chalmais said, and all at once they were up, moving, talking, full of purpose.

  Sunday

  Gyttings-Lindstrom Research Unit,

  Eugene, Oregon

  Gill rushed onto the darkened bridge, faintly illuminated by dozens of green, red and orange power-indicator lights. As he threw banks of switches, dials lit up, rows of lights came on, motors whirred, walls of monitor screens crackled to life.

  Gill flopped into the captain’s chair and switched on his personal log recorder. “Only have a moment. So many variables. No time for procedures, checklists, much left to chance.” Then he added sarcastically: “Deverson, if you’re out there, this would be the time to wish us luck.”

  “Six minutes, everyone,” he said into the PA microphone. Visible in the lab window, Galtrup looked up from the laser interferometer he had assembled at the patient end of the Twin Tunnel. It still needed a delicate alignment calibration. Two gurneys arrived, each surrounded by swarming orderlies and nurses. “Forget that thing Will and get the subjects hooked up,” Gill barked into the mic.

  Two technicians raced onto the Bridge spooling cable from the rooftop satellite dish, hooking it to an unused LCD monitor. When the image came up on the screen, it displayed a forward shot from Argyle’s bridge, large rain droplets freckling the window in front of the camera. Argyle was headed straight into 2-meter swells, noticeably rising and falling, a fan of bow spray leaping high with each plunge.

  “Is the link still working in the conference room?” Gill asked. He knew the close proximity of the 2-Tesla magnet next door would soon disrupt video and audio, and in a few minutes the conference room on the far side of the building would be their only link to Argyle.

  The technician gave a single, exaggerated nod.

  “This better work.” Gill said as he switched it on.

  “Are you receiving us?” Devon’s voice said. “Can you hear me?”

  The technician handed Gill a headset. “Yes!” he exclaimed, adjusting the tiny mic boom. “I see and hear you. Can you be ready in five minutes? Your weather looks pretty bad.”

  “Bout as good as it gets out here! No worries. We’ll be ready.”

  Gill manned the imaging console and booted the alignment program while he talked into his log. Several computer monitors switched on above the console displaying computer graphic representations of the two tunnels, curved and straight reference lines superimposed across the screens, multi-colored readouts in degrees and millimeters, magnetic field gradients. Colorful direction-of-field arrows moved across and around the tunnels, some circulating the two tunnels in a figure-eight pattern, others moving in oval patterns around both tunnels. The lower, center monitors glowed multi-hued; globular images that rotated and panned in and out and rocked from side to side; the outermost monitors displayed rotating lists of map defects and extrapolation coordinates. Galtrup came on the Bridge and took over at Imaging.

  Watching as the countdown chronometer passed 3:50, Gill wondered: “Can we get them aligned this fast?”

  “We’ll soon know.” Galtrup said without looking up from his fingers as they clattered deftly across three keyboards.

  “I can see your control room now,” Devon fairly shouted from the Argyle bridge. Even with all the ports battened-down, the whipping of wind and sea outside created substantial background noise. Whitecaps on two meter swells, one-kilometer visibility fading into froth and rain blowing in arcs off the wavecrests. Devon braced his feet against the ship’s roll, watching both the feed from Eugene and the lifeless, colorless sea in forty shades of gray. Another monitor showed enhanced satellite weather images, a front coming in from the south off Antarctica, coming up at them broadside.

  “We should turn into the wind,” Captain Rachete almost yelled, a finger in one ear.

  They’d buoyed a deep sea anchor at the calculated REME center, it’s flashing tower light still visible astern. Devon pointed and said: “No! Trust me. Keep the buoy directly behind us.”

  Devon returned his attention to the monitors arrayed across the starboard side of the bridge. “I’ve got a good image of your screens, doctor,” Devon announced as he watched the Core Failure monitor dropping rapidly: 24%, 21%, 18%, then leveling at 14%. “We’re steaming away from the REME center now…a little extra safety margin. We’ll need a minute or two to get our stabilizers down.”

  “I’ll give you enough warning,” Gill said. Then, with a hand over the microphone, added: “I hope.”

  Blackburn appeared at the door with Ishue. He gestured for her to take a seat in the gallery, then remained standing, arms folded. Lomax came on the Bridge and took up his Lifesigns station.

  By the time everyone got settled the CF monitor was darting back and forth between 2% and 4%. “Roll them in, Dr. Lomax,” Gill commanded, trying to mask the urgency in his voice. “Everybody. We’re passing two minutes.” The noise from the lab was growing louder, a brusque combination of pounding and mechanical whining.

  The CF was holding steady at 1%.

  Gill squeezed the transmit button and said: “Devon, 60 seconds!”

  “Roger that,” crackled the reply, and within ten seconds the image on the Argyle monitor stabilized a bit, a view across a mile of whitecaps, the distant red light still visible, bobbing and flashing against an iron-gray sky.

  The alignment computer displayed graphs and lists of numbers as it sought to superimpose hundreds of three-dimensional axis points, moving the Adel image and the Wayne image in tiny jerking motions. On the imaging monitors the two, razor-thin slices continued to change incrementally, in form and shape growing ever more similar.

  As the alignment program processed data, a tiny, light-colored blob appeared on Adel’s monitor, swelling asymmetrically until it reached about the size of a dime. Lomax let out a sigh of relief.

  “Is that it? Is that what you guys call the core?” Ishue asked, moving as close as possible before Blackburn blocked her progress with a stern arm gesture.

  They watched the two flickering images for several seconds…then Galtrup answered:

  “So goes the theory. We’re in alignment.” Galtrup stabbed one of the monitor screens with his index finger, a pointing gesture. “There, that…that’s Adel’s lower anterior temporal lobe. Her core. When it changes color, becomes dark like the rest of her brain…well, that’s failure, the neurons stop talking to one another. The scan has to be passing right through that; and through the equivalent in Wayne’s brain at the exact same moment, together, at the instant hers fails. This is the part we haven’t figured out how to automate.

  “All righty then,” Gill said, quickly scanning the room. He threw the blast-door switch activating the steel and Kevlar plates to converge across the copper-tinted Plexiglas window.

  They waited. The seconds ticked by, each seemingly drawn out a little longer than the last. The only sounds - the incessant pounding, whirring, droning of the machine just beyond the wall mixed with static-riddled audio from Argyle.

  Outside in the cool night it was raining now, clouds of raindrops gathering around the streetlights, drops patting noiselessly on the roof above. Quiet except for a tractor-trailer truck chugging out Gyttings-Lindstrom’s back gate.

  Ten seconds passed. Then twenty. Suddenly Gill flinched, stabbed at the key. “Too soon,” he yelped, reflexively withdrawing his finger. Everyone in the room drew a deep breath and held it.

  “Ready now,” he said to both bridges. This was the hard part, the subjective part. No stress here. He sat back, trying to relax, closed his eyes. Focus on nothingness, Zen, absorb all the data at once, visualize what It’s like inside Adel’s failing core, that last gang of neurons about to fire their final synapse…almost dead, not quite…”Now!” he blurted, punching the ‘enter’ key.

  The machine’s pitch suddenly rose to a whine, melded with a syncopated rumbling like the sound of a distant cattle stampede, the walls shaking slightly, equipment racks squeaking. A coffee cup crashed to
the floor. The wheeze of rushing air, itself rising in pitch. Then it stopped. Abruptly. Everyone remained frozen, waiting for something else to happen. Nothing happened.

  Every monitor, every screen failed at once, flashed to static, an annoying spectrum of white noises playing bad harmonies.

  “We’ve lost you,” Devon shouted. “Can you hear me?”

  “I hear you,” Gill’s voice crackled. “…We lost your video…”

  The whitecaps had all been bowing due north, away from the approaching storm front, but now they’d shifted toward the REME center where the buoy light had been.

  “GPS telemetry says the buoy’s still there,” Schiffer shouted, watching through 70X binoculars. She hooked her arm around a bulkhead support to stabilize the big glasses. “I don’t see it.”

  “It’s been sucked under,” Devon bellowed. He looked at Rachete excitedly. “Keep us moving away. Full power.”

  “We’re losing speed,” Rachete shouted.

  “Say again, Argyle!” Gill called into his mic. But the signal was gone. He scanned the walls of dead monitors. “Doesn’t anything work in here?”

  “Some of the lab sensors,” Galtrup said excitedly: Radiation is normal, EMR within limits, but the temperature’s dropping fast in there. “Forty-one degrees on the floor…39 degrees, 38…

  “I’ve got no life signs from either tunnel” Lomax barked “No readings. All zeros. Could be they’re empty. Could be sensor malfunctions. Or maybe both tunnels are empty!”

  “Twenty-nine degrees,” Galtrup said. “The furnace is on, isn’t it? Twenty seven, 26…”

  The Argyle audio coughed again: “Can you (garbled) full ahead…I hope you’re…”

  “Argyle? Do you hear us?” Gill repeated it. Nothing. Turning to the others, he said, “Is there anyone in the conference room?”

  Blackburn tried the intercom, then tried the security office. “Static,” he growled, shaking his handheld transceiver.

  Chalmais leaped to his feet. “Turn everything off,” he ordered.

  “It is off,” Gill said. Then into the microphone: “Mr. Robbins? Dr. Schiffer? What’s going on down there?”

  They heard no direct answer, just scratchy shouting in the background, first a man’s voice: “Hard a-port!” Then a woman’s: “Oh my god! Can we ride that?” Then static. Gill tried several more times to raise the ship. Only static.

  The blast door motors had failed. It would now be necessary to open the doors manually. Gill struggled with the right door crank but couldn’t budge it. Galtrup, and then Blackburn lent hands, but still it would not turn.

  Thus unguarded, Ishue moved to the wall and tried the left-side crank, got the door open a crack. Galtrup helped, and slowly the left door slid sideways.

  Condensation on the copper-tinted window restricted their view inside Lab Three. Like looking into an aquarium. All ceiling lights were out - the lab illuminated solely by a sharp, bluish-white light from within the tunnels, pulsing irregularly. Whitish gas billowed along the lab floor like fog.

  “Is that steam?” Ishue asked, “I thought it was freezing in there.”

  “Leaking coolant,” Gill reasoned aloud.

  “I think they’re empty!” Chalmais shouted, leaping to his feet. “I think they’re empty, people! I think we did it!”

  “That light’s coming from inside the tunnels,” Gill said. “I thought we killed all the power.”

  Galtrup threw up his hands, “I did. It’s off!” He checked his board again. “Everything’s off!”

  “I’m goin’ down there,” Blackburn said, hurrying out.

  They stared silently, watching the eerie, randomly throbbing light, as if someone inside the tunnels, just out of sight, was operating an arc welder of tremendous power, sparks of white-hot metal cascading unevenly out the mouth of the machine, falling to the floor.

  “That isn’t possible,” Lomax said and asked at the same time.

  A wave of sound passed quickly across the room, shrill, uneven, almost human.

  “What was that?” Ishue croaked.

  “God,” Galtrup mumbled, “sounds like voices…”

  “That’s a short,” Gill announced, pointing into the lab. “Power’s still getting to the chassis somehow.”

  Galtrup tried to wipe the window clear, but the condensation was on the lab side and the wiper motor wouldn’t run. He trained his laser pointer at the near side of the Twin Tunnel frame, the magnesium alloy giving off a crystalline glow. “Is that…is that…ice?”

  “Could be,” Gill said.

  “Always with the cold, like in ghost movies…” Ishue observed. “I always thought that was so corny.”

  “I’m getting no readings at all now,” Galtrup, said, pounding his console in frustration. He extracted a portable Geiger counter and switched it on, the needle jumping wildly. A pop emitted from the speaker, a puff of smoke jumped from the vents. Galtrup kicked the machine under the console, shaking his head.

  “It’s getting cold in here too,” Ishue shivered. The ribbon tied to the furnace register fluttered ineffectively, the machine pumping warm air but not keeping up.

  “This isn’t supposed to happen, is it?” Chalmais asked rhetorically. He was on his feet, checking the landline phone system, punching line buttons, clicking disconnect buttons.

  Gill couldn’t take his eyes off the hypnotic image in the window. “Someone should go down to the conference room and check on Argyle,” he said dreamily. The conference room was at the far side of the complex, 300 yards away.

  “I’ll go,” Ishue blurted. Perfect! Swing by Lab 3, shoot some art, get some quotes from Devon. With any luck she would be back at the Holiday Inn within the hour, writing her piece for tomorrow’s papers. I hope my camera still works.

  Chalmais couldn’t allow the reporter running free in the facility. “You stay, I go.”

  “Can you get word back to us?” Gill said without turning. “I have to know if the REME’s ended.”

  “Lines are all dead,” Chalmais said, punching buttons on the phone one last time.

  “If I go with you,” Ishue suggested, “I can run back here and give them the heads-up.”

  Chalmais nodded. “You stay close.” He had already decided to hog-tie Miss Ishue to the first security guard he found.

  “Send us some warm jackets,” Lomax added.

  Only four guards worked weekend graveyard, one posted in the office on camera surveillance. Blackburn found this guard staring at 36 blank monitors. He chewed the guard out for lack of initiative, then sent him to find the other guards. “Have everyone meet me at Lab 3 in five minutes…” He checked his watch, tapped on it, listened to it. Like everything else, dead. Likewise the guard was alternately shaking his wrist and pushing his watch against his ear. “Shit, just go,” Blackburn bellowed, shoving the man out.

  The security chief doubled back to the research wing through deserted hallways, some florescent lights on, some with only emergency lights on, others completely dark. He found Thomas at the double-door entrance to Lab 3, slumped in a chair. Asleep? It was dark here, and noticeably colder than the front wings of the building. He shook the young man.

  “Wha…oh, hey, where’d he go?”

  “Who go?”

  “Wayne. He was standin’ right there. I swear to god. What’d ya do with him?”

  “You were asleep, son. Dreaming.”

  “Bullshit. I know dreaming from not dreaming. Where’s Wayne?” He tried to stand up, but the large man was too close, interfering with his balance.”

  “Calm down,” Blackburn said, feeling for his handcuffs in case it came to that. Has everyone gone crazy around here? “I’m sure he’s still in the MRI.”

  Thomas impulsively grabbed at the door handle, then recoiled with a screech. Freezer-burn!

  “It’s locked,” Blackburn scoffed, holding his master key with his jacket sleeve for insulation. He tried turning the key for as long as he could stand the cold, then stepped back, key still in
the lock. “I’ve got some tools in my office.” He turned.

  Thomas inspected the heavy doors; ice crystals forming on the steel skin, then stepped back and swung his chair into the gap between them. With a dull clank the latch sheared on the right-side door and it swung slowly inward, creaking loudly on brittle hinges.

  Ishue would have gotten lost in the labyrinthine building without Chalmais, especially in the darkened hallways. This is creepy, she thought, feeling her way along, trying to match step with the surprisingly nimble vice president. More than once he stopped, tapping his toe impatiently. They met no one on the route until the atrium where a graveyard nurse was having a smoke. “I had to take a break,” she apologized. “Everyone on the ward is crazy. All the patients are awake. I’ve had four people tell me they’ve seen things that aren’t…”

  Chalmais interrupted: “If the situation is unstable, don’t you think you should be down there helping out?”

  “Aren’t what?” Ishue asked.

  “Yes sir,” she said nervously, eyes darting between her boss and the reporter. Then she scurried off.

  Thomas forged ahead, took two long strides into Lab 3 before recoiling in panic. Every inch of exposed skin burned from the cold. He stumbled backwards, blinded by the involuntary reaction of his eyelids squeezing shut to protect the fragile corneas. He bounced against the doorjamb and would have fallen deeper into the lab if Blackburn’s arm hadn’t shot in and yanked him back. The security chief parked the dazed young man against the hallway wall and examined his facial blisters. “You’re going to need some medical attention.” He zipped his jacket, then blew into cupped hands. “We gotta get out of this hallway.”

  Fifty feet across Lab 3, the Bridge crew had observed Thomas and Blackburn through the window.