Afterimage

by Roderick Geiger

  “No!” But it was already too late. He could feel the Valium working into his brain.

  Galtrup squeezed his old friend’s arm, trying to remain lucid. “How’d we get out of there? What happened to the reporter?”

  “Someone threw the switches, and sure enough the Twin Tunnel collapsed into a pile of junk. Wasn’t you, was it?”

  “No.” His grip slackened and he felt himself falling backwards into the pillow, through the pillow, down through the mattress. “I tried but I couldn’t move.”

  “Yeah. Must have been Ishue. She got out before the raid.”

  “Raid?” Galtrup’s eyes were glassed over now. He grinned foolishly. “Yeah, raid.”

  “Rest easy, Will. It’s over now. We’ll have plenty of time to talk later.”

  Thursday

  Hubert H. Humphrey Building,

  Washington D.C.

  The press hall was filled to capacity, mostly familiar faces, senior correspondents for the major networks, faces Ishue had seen on TV hundreds of times as a news consumer. Now she was here as a full-fledged member of the corps, one of just a hundred reporters and cameramen allowed into what would be the only government press conference on the subject of INFX. As she made her way past the line of TV cameras lining the back wall, people turned, gave her nods as if they knew her. Is that really Doug Arnold extending his hand? There was a business card in it.

  “It is quite a pleasure to meet you, Ilene. If you would, my network’s director would like to talk to you…”

  Ishue took his hand and smiled. Wow! I’m a goddamned celebrity here! Yesterday she’d been in New York, taping a prominent talk show and meeting with her newly-hired personal manager at the city’s largest literary agency. And later today she’d be on a flight to San Francisco where she’d write and file the press conference story from the first-class cabin. Tomorrow 50 million Americans would read it over breakfast. Her expense account was going through the roof, and Ed couldn’t break the habit of complaining about it. But she was making the Manzanita Enterprise a fortune in newswire fees. Are they really still paying me 550 a week? “Thank you, Doug; I’ll be glad to talk with him.”

  A woman had slid up behind the podium. “Please take your seats. We’re ready to begin.” She waited for compliance, then announced: “The honorable Dr. Floyd Loomis, Surgeon General of the United States.”

  He came out and leaned on the podium while the woman retreated back behind the curtain. Late sixties, very fit, full head of hair wearing a pastel green shirt and tie, no coat. He scanned the audience, nodding and smiling at the familiar reporters, this small, select crowd. When his gaze crossed Ishue’s, he gave her a nod of recognition too. My god, would the president recognize me walking down the street?

  “I’m holding Dr. Vrynos’ final report on the Manzanita accident, copies of which are in your press packets…and we’re passing those out now. For the sake of national security, your copies are edited.” Groans from the audience. “Please. You all knew – or should have known - that would be the case.”

  He sighed loudly, then continued. ”Let me begin by saying: it is imperative that no more of these INFX experiments be conducted, anywhere, by anyone. The State Department has been in discussions with our principle allies and we are in unanimous agreement on this. Because of their magnetic signature, these tests are highly detectable, and any such testing will be dealt with swiftly and decisively. That’s all I want to say about that.

  “Moving on to the issue of whether or not MRI is safe…this report identifies the cause of the Manzanita accident and provides remediation in the form of free software for the control computers of every MRI in use around the globe. Once downloaded, my office will issue a certification for that MRI to recommence operation. MRIs that fail to follow this recertification will be dismantled. Once complete, I’m confident this procedure will eliminate any chance of a recurrence of the Manzanita tragedy. Questions?”

  A hand shot up and Loomis pointed.

  “How confident, Floyd?”

  “I’m completely confident in these findings, Jack. So how about 100%?”

  Another hand, a reporter leafing through his packet. “Dr. Loomis, I’m…I’m not finding any details about what the software does.”

  “It prevents the accident,” Loomis smirked.

  “But we’ve all learned recently that the explosion only happens if the patient dies…”

  “It’s more complex than that. I’m afraid I can’t tell you any more.”

  “Dr. Loomis, where are we with understanding this action/reaction thing on the other side of the earth?”

  “I can’t comment on that.”

  Ishue raised her hand nervously. “Dr. Loomis, Ilene Ishue.” He nodded. “Will Gyttings-Lindstrom machines be getting this software first? And if so, does that represent an unfair business advantage?”

  He smiled. “Yes. It’s designed for their machines. Other manufacturers will get G-L software and then have to adapt it for their own machines. As far as the unfair thing…G-L has suffered the most here…and they paid for the fix, so no, I don’t see it as particularly unfair.”

  Another reporter: “Will the DOD be weaponizing this technology?”

  Loomis scowled: “I can’t comment on that.”

  Another reporter: “Isn’t this software designed to identify terrorists who attempt to launch suicide missions from the far side of earth?”

  Loomis shook his head disgustedly, then answered as if to a child: “It’s to make MRI safe. I cannot comment on classified aspects.” Staring straight at the same reporter, Loomis said: “Can we kill the cameras for a moment please? I need to go off record. Please? Thank you.” He sighed again. “Let’s cut the crap. I think you all can see the terror weapon potential here. So let’s not give the bad guys any ideas. We need time to absorb this science, to catch up with what our scientists have dished out, and I need you guys to give us that time. I need for you to be responsible here, for each of you to think it might just be your kids who get hit in the first wave.” He paused. “So let’s cut the speculation and the sensationalism. Let’s tell people it’s safe to go in their MRIs again and leave it at that. Okay? Thank you.”

  Thursday

  San Francisco, California

  Warren could not stop pining over Ilene Ishue. Every day since Monday, when he’d first heard the news about the raid on Gyttings-Lindstrom, he’d called her cellphone, each time leaving a message. How, he wondered constantly, had he let the best thing that ever happened to him slip through his fingers? Ishue must be thoroughly disgusted with him, he reasoned. She had not returned his calls. The more he thought about it, the more he beat himself up over it. He’d been a callous pig. He had only himself to blame.

  Al Hamilton hadn’t mentioned anything about a raid. Warren might have sniffed it out if he’d been at work - there were plenty of big mouths around the office. But he’d been out on leave to take care of Tyler. And while on leave, Al had assigned him the task of writing a report on his INFX investigation, a comprehensive report that would soon come under intense scrutiny, both public and intradepartmental. “You’ll need to be sure there’s nothing in there that violates agency code, state or federal law, or in any way makes the EPA, by action or omission, appear culpable for what these maniacs are doing up there with these machines,” Al had instructed in his usual, calmly understated demeanor. “And under no circumstances are you to communicate with anyone from the media, not by word, gesture, e-mail, sign language, Morse Code or any other way, especially with a certain female newspaper reporter who, with your unauthorized help, has had the Department spinning itself stupid for the better part of two weeks.”

  To make Warren’s lamentations even worse, he’d actually seen Ishue – on television on the Harvey Kambridge Report. He’d located the half-hour talk show on the Allnews Network web page, one of many sites he routinely searched for information about INFX. Ishue had topped the guest list.

  The show came on at 2 A.M. PST,
Friday, Kambridge, in his slender, upper-crust British accent, announcing: “Tonight we’ll be talking about the latest twist – and friends, it is a most bizarre twist in an already unbelievable story. Something amazing is happening in Eugene, Oregon. People there are saying the dead are rising from the grave, and we have with us in-studio an esteemed journalist who says the last MRI experiment at Gyttings-Lindstrom is the reason. We’ll also be talking with Tim O’Brien, Eugene’s Chief of Police, who has some very different ideas about these resurrection claims.”

  And suddenly there she was! Sitting comfortably on the studio sofa, well-dressed, powerful and confident. She looked great. Better, in fact, then he remembered…Ishue’s hair restyled into a face-flattering bob, legs - a little thinner, a little longer - peeking out from her well-tailored skirt. Was it the camera? Or was he seeing her differently now, a forgiving eye correcting her faults, accentuating her strengths?

  Kambridge introduced her as “journalist Ilene Ishue, who, from its very beginnings in a small-town MRI clinic three weeks ago, has remained on top of this roller-coaster of a story…” The camera cut to her face, backlit with an angelic glow. She smiled and nodded. Wait a second! She was wearing makeup! Her almond eyes, slender lips subtly accented. But Ilene never wore makeup! Someone in the studio must have convinced her to do it.

  “Ilene Ishue. How are you?”

  “Good, thanks Harvey.”

  “And thank you for being on the show. I understand you’re writing a book about INFX. I like to get the book plugs out of the way at the top of the show.”

  She laughed politely. “Yes, The Instant of Death Experiments. On the shelves by summer.”

  “I’m sure that will be a best-seller.” He paused. “You’re aware, Ilene, a Gyttings-Lindstrom press release Wednesday states they have no reason to believe you were ever in the control room during that final experiment.”

  “I saw the release,” she said matter-of-factly. “It’s simple misdirection, Harvey. The company is trying to refocus attention away from the legal problem they’ve created…legal and ethical.”

  “Of terminating these terminal patients?”

  “Yes.” She smiled broadly. “I can’t imagine Gyttings-Lindstrom wiggling out of a federal grand jury investigation, but who knows? And as for me being there during the INFX, virtually all the company’s employees, including a senior vice-president and the attending physician, tucked tail and ran when the situation started to unravel. So how can they claim to know who was there…or who wasn’t? We’ll have to wait to hear from the principal scientists, Doctors Vrynos and Galtrup. They’ll both confirm I was there, right up to the end.”

  “Anything new on them?”

  “Well, we’ve all seen the clip of them waving from their wheelchairs, so they obviously both survived, but at this point it’s not even clear which federal agency has them.”

  “Were they arrested do you think?”

  “I think ‘detained for debriefing’ might be a better way of spinning it. These two guys are the INFX experts, the only experts. If anyone knows how this new technology might be valuable…or dangerous, it’s them. It certainly wouldn’t surprise me if they were deep in the bowels of the Pentagon somewhere right this minute.”

  “Interesting. After this commercial break we’ll explore these reports of ghosts in Eugene, Oregon.”

  Warren got an idea. He fired off an e-mail to Ishue: “I have important new info you’ll need for your book. Contact me immediately. Warren.” He hit send, smiling at the insidious bluff. Oh well, all’s fair…

  When he returned his attention to the TV, Ishue was saying: “…and they’re all quite similar, almost stereotypical ghost sightings; translucent, wispy images, distant voices, musty smells, localized intense cold. Altogether, 14 sightings! In hospitals, convalescent homes, at traffic accident sites, the homes of loved ones.”

  “Thank you, Ilene. I think now would be the perfect time to talk with Chief O’Brien, from the studios of our affiliate WPRX channel 10 in Eugene.”

  The show’s Technical Director cued a split screen, with Kambridge on the left, an iron-jawed, gray-templed man on the right. “Chief O’Brien,” Kambridge said, “thank you for being with us tonight. Chief, you’ve seen the numbers…14 paranormal sightings in one hour…what’s your take on this?”

  “Well, first off Harvey,” O’Brien began with a patronizing smile, “Eugene is not your typical American city. We’re famous for our somewhat eclectic population, which is - let’s face it - more prone to…mystical, spiritual phenomena.” He sat upright, the smile gone. “And there weren’t 14 X-files…” he paused here, making a sheepish grin. “X-files is what law enforcement agencies call them. And there weren’t 14 in a half-hour, as miss Ishue claims. Not by a long shot. In fact, we received only three reports between Sunday midnight and Monday noon! Over half of those 14 reports came in after Miss Ishue’s first article on Tuesday; many of them solicited by Ms. Ishue.”

  “Solicited?” Kambridge looked surprised.

  “I’m sorry for the misunderstanding,” Ishue broke in, “but I never claimed the sightings were all reported in 23 minutes, only that they all referred back to deaths which occurred within that 23 minutes…while the INFX was in progress.”

  “Well, Harvey, unintentionally of course,” O’Brien said, ignoring Ishue. “Yes, solicited. Her phone calls to the families, her articles…caused a bandwagon effect. Suddenly everybody wants to be on the six o’clock news.”

  “You’re saying these people are lying…to get on TV?” Ishue said incredulously.

  “Not lying,” O’Brien said quickly. “More like exaggerating…wishful thinking.”

  “I appreciate your skepticism,” Ishue said as the TD cut to her, replacing Kambridge in the split screen. “We are talking about ghost sightings here. We should be skeptical, and I am. And I do understand how disruptive this all must be for your community.”

  Her courtesy caught him off guard. “Yes, well, there were five other deaths within the 30-mile radius during that 23 minute period, and those family and friends report nothing out of the ordinary. How do you explain that?”

  She had the answer, but she’d been hoping it wouldn’t come up. It was thunder she’d wanted to save for the book. “Glad you asked, Chief. I’m going to run a series of maps on the screen, 23, in fact, one for every minute of the INFX. The red dots represent deaths with reported ghost sightings, the blue dots, without.” She signaled the TD with a nod.

  Ishue narrated as the images progressed through the 23 minutes: “You can see, as we move forward in time, that the blue dots occur farther and farther away from ground-zero, and that the red dots appear to chase them outward. Let’s run that again, a little quicker. There, do you see it?”

  Kambridge’s voice: “Yes. It’s growing… expanding… Chief? Do you see that?” The TD added Kambridge into the split screen. O’Brien did not respond.

  “What about all the previous experiments,” O’Brien stated tersely, not as a question. “No X-files during the previous experiments.”

  Ishue responded quickly. “Sunday night’s INFX was very different from the previous experiments. Those INFXs lasted only a fraction of a second. The odds of someone else - within 20 miles or so - dying in that time frame? Very small.”

  Kambridge asked: “Well, that begs the question, Ilene: what was different on Sunday night that made the INFX last so much longer?”

  She might have answered it with the two words she’d heard from Gill: Chain reaction. The aperture was held open by those 14 other souls, one after another, for 23 minutes, and might still be open had she not shut it down when she did. Indeed, it might have grown, consumed the entire planet by now if she had not shut it down when she did. But this was the information she was determined to save for her book. The revelation; the payoff. She was confident the secret was safe. Only Vrynos and Galtrup had any chance of figuring it out before her book release. And neither would likely go public.

  “Il
ene? Do you know why?”

  Kambridge’s words startled her back into the present. “Uh, well, the INFX on Sunday was the result of fine tuning the procedure. Basically, it was the first truly successful INFX.”

  “Hmmm. Okay. So I have to ask…if these folks really did see afterimages of their kin, what’s going on here? I mean, what magic is afoot? How can this be happening?”

  “I can’t answer that, Harvey. Like you, I’m a reporter. I deal in facts. I make a conscious effort to avoid speculation.”

  “But here’s a case where the facts just don’t cut it.” At this point the TD dropped O’Brien and returned to the full-screen studio shot of Kambridge and Ishue. “You can’t leave us hanging like this, Ilene. You must have a theory. We need a theory.”

  She took a deep, long breath and said thoughtfully: “Well, this is what I’ve managed to cobble together so far.” Swiveling her chair slowly into the camera for effect, she continued: “Each…each of us is endowed with a miraculous gift, a packet of energy…which, at the moment of physical death, must leave us. It is THIS energy, leaving the corporeal body, that gets disrupted by the INFX, and THAT disruption is what causes the explosions, the afterimages and the maelstroms on the other side of our world.”

  The cameraman panned in on Kambridge, who smiled pensively. “Well, I for one consider that quite an uplifting thought, Ilene. Thank you for that.” The TD switched to a full screen of Kambridge, head on. “Something to ponder until next time, when we take an in-depth look at the week’s hottest stories. Thank you for being with us this evening, Ilene Ishue…we’ll be looking forward to seeing your book this summer, The Instant of Death Experiments. See you all next week.”

  Next morning, the city was shrouded in fog as Warren walked his son to school. The boy seemed distant, upset, so Warren asked him about it as they waited for the first bell.

  “I don’ know, dad. I been feeling kinda weird.”