Reviver: A Novel

by Seth Patrick

  After three hours, hunger took him into the kitchen. He microwaved a chicken curry, grabbed a can of Coke and sat in front of his PC, browsing the latest news. He sat up when he saw the police had gone public at last with Daniel Harker’s death, although they still hadn’t revealed the link with the raid on the house.

  He found the most recent report.

  It opened with shots of the FRS building, the road to Harker’s home, and the house he’d been found in, while the voice-over summarized the little information that had been made public: ‘Daniel Harker’s body was found in the cellar of a rented house. Despite the condition of the body, a revival was attempted two days ago here at the Forensic Revival Service. Police announced that the revival was successful but gave no other details. Another police statement is due tomorrow.

  ‘Mr Harker’s daughter, who had flown from her home in England following her father’s disappearance, is believed to have been present at the revival but was not prepared to comment.’

  The picture cut to a shot of Harker’s daughter driving up the lane to the Harker home, reporters barking questions at her. The camera closed on her grim face as she drove by.

  The report continued: ‘The revival is a tragic and ironic end to the life of Daniel Harker, the man who made his career by breaking the story of Eleanor Preston, the first known reviver, twelve years ago.’

  The report cut to archive material, an overview of Daniel’s life. Jonah was familiar enough with the details, but he watched all the same. Little things annoyed him, liberties taken for the sake of easy journalism. But the thing that grated most was the way they presented Harker as an opportunist and his career as a fluke: he happened to be in the right place and milked it for what he could. They gave him no credit for how he paved the way for revival to become accepted.

  His novels didn’t even rate a mention. Jonah knew the first three had been modest successes, but Harker’s fourth had taken flight onto bestseller lists around the world. His alias had been an open secret. Not even to get a mention was disappointing …

  He thought of the next book he’d been planning, existing only in handwritten notes in his home, ideas that were just beginning to come together into …

  Jonah swore, knocking over his Coke.

  Just as with Nikki Wood, his thoughts had not been his own.

  He understood the figure in the darkness. He knew who had been lurking there, following him since the burnt-out house.

  It was Daniel Harker.

  19

  The next morning Jonah called Stephanie Graves. By noon, he was back under the scanner, Graves waving away his protestations about how awkward a situation he was putting her in.

  She took him to her office afterwards. ‘There is evidence of remnants,’ she said. ‘Strong evidence. You should have been fine with the revival, even though it was such a difficult one. I don’t understand why the BPV increase didn’t take care of it.’

  Jonah felt his cheeks burn. ‘Sorry. I just grabbed my old medication and took an extra half pill.’

  Graves frowned. She opened her mouth to speak, then paused and shook her head. ‘Not the smartest thing to do, Jonah. But it was the right dose. It should’ve been fine. Maybe I should have insisted on a longer break, or only let you take on easier cases. Whatever the reason, right now rest is what you need, more than anything. The remnant effect you experienced with the girl was short-lived. Hopefully the same will be true for Daniel Harker. I’ll give you a three-day course of a cocktail that will clear this. It’ll leave you feeling odd, so be careful. It’s a powerful memory disruptive and it may make you extremely drowsy. Take it each night before you go to bed. You’ll experience some disorientation and further drowsiness in the mornings, but that’s normal. It’ll soon wear off. Your symptoms should stop. Let me know at once if they don’t. I’ll brief your office counsellor. You need weekly assessments, then come back for another scan in a month. I want to be sure this time. Once you’re clear, simple revivals only until we see how you’re getting on.’

  ‘You said the remnant was strong. How strong?’ Graves squirmed a little. There was hesitance there, reluctance. ‘Please?’

  ‘It was particularly strong, Jonah. I’ve seen stronger, but not often.’

  ‘How bad can this get? It scared me. The feeling of being watched. Seeing something follow me…’

  ‘Your mind’s way of interpreting these stray thoughts. Unsettling, but it’ll pass.’

  ‘And then when Harker’s thoughts began … I felt like I was watching someone else think. Like I wasn’t in charge. Like I was a spectator. How can that happen?’

  ‘Jonah, most researchers in the field dismiss remnants as unwanted memories, like post-traumatic flashback. You and I know they’re more than that. There’s a theory that the normal way we understand other people is by actually carrying a model of them within us, like a simplified simulation. The brain’s ability to do that is what drove the explosion in the complexity of human social interaction. The better we know someone, the more detailed the simulation of them becomes. We’re starting to be able to view the workings of the brain with a resolution fine enough that we might expect to see these simulations, but so far there is nothing to distinguish them from our own thoughts. It makes sense that the brain simply creates them using the mechanisms that drive our own consciousness. Jonah, I think that in the most extreme form of remnants, the mind deals with the unusual waves of activity, and the corresponding triggering of unfamiliar memories, by separating that activity, quarantining it, so that it acts as a fast track to forming one of these internal representations. If you have ever imagined how another person would feel in any given situation, or what they would say, then what you’ve been experiencing is just a more extreme version of that. The delusional feeling that your thoughts are not your own happens because you have a well-established internal model for someone who is essentially a stranger. At heart, though, it’s based on a perfectly ordinary mental process. It’s not something you need to be afraid of. The medication I’ve given you will fragment those memories enough to let them dissipate naturally.’

  ‘But how bad can it get, Dr Graves?’

  She sighed. ‘Do as I’ve said: get plenty of rest, and you’ll be fine. We’ve caught it before it went too far.’

  Too far, Jonah thought, wondering what exactly that meant. ‘Have you ever had a case where it did?’

  Graves paused, looking past Jonah for a moment. Then she nodded. ‘Once, six or seven years ago. A high-rated private reviver. He did a stint as a forensic reviver in Toronto, but he had problems and returned to private work south of the border. The private revival firm he worked for referred him to me after he’d been following the wife of one of his subjects. She’d reported it, and he’d been arrested, drunk. He insisted he was her husband. The tests showed he had four clear remnants at that point, all strong. And one strong enough to leave him so confused that he believed he was somebody else, for a time. That’s the worst I’ve ever seen. The delusion was compelling. Recovery took months.’

  Jonah nodded. He couldn’t help pressing for something more. ‘What happened to him? Did he ever work as a reviver again?’

  ‘I advised him not to.’ Graves went to a cupboard and returned. She handed him a small clear pill bottle. Inside were three yellow tablets that looked like they’d take some swallowing. ‘Here. They work like a charm. The second-worst case I ever saw was a forensic reviver. With these pills and one month of rest that person had a complete recovery and went back to work, with no further episodes. You’ll be fine. Remember, take one just before you sleep. When you’ve finished the course, Daniel Harker won’t trouble you again.’

  * * *

  Back in his flat, Jonah started writing an email to Hugo Adler to let him know what had happened. As he wrote it, he wondered if he should tell Never the details. He decided it would be better to leave him out of it and save him the worry.

  He thought about Stephanie Graves, and how keen she had been to sp
end that expensive scanner time on him – and then promise more later. Perhaps she had seen an opportunity for a case study, like the other case, six years before.

  Then it occurred to him: six years ago, Graves had still been part of Baseline, and the case had pertained to forensic revival. The close ties between the FRS and Baseline meant there was a good chance that the prior case she had mentioned would be somewhere in the FRS archive. Whether Jonah would have clearance to view such documents was another question, especially with remote access, but he thought it was worth a try.

  With the email to his boss unfinished, he logged onto the FRS system, brought up the archive and tried searching for relevant terms. In the list of hits he saw a document by Stephanie Graves entitled ‘A summary of factors affecting BPV remnant suppression’. There was an additional reference number beside it. He clicked on it.

  A window popped up, warning him that the content was sensitive and contained personal medical information. ‘Please ensure you view this document in a private environment,’ the window advised. Jonah glanced behind him. Marmite was settling down on the couch for a nap.

  ‘I hope you can keep a secret,’ Jonah said to the cat. Then he clicked ‘OK’.

  An error message appeared. ‘You do not have permission to view this material.’

  Jonah swore under his breath, and then jumped as his phone handset rang loud and close.

  It was Never. ‘Hey, Jonah! Saw you’d logged in, thought I’d see how you were.’

  Jonah kept his voice low, a harsh whisper. ‘You were keeping tabs on me?’ He realized how angry he sounded, an overreaction to being caught.

  There was a pause before Never replied. ‘Uh … OK. I’ll leave you in peace. Just thought I’d say I’d cleared it with Hugo for you to be off until this time next week, and you should actually take the break. Working from home doesn’t count.’

  Jonah bowed his head. ‘Shit, man. Look, I’m sorry. I’m tired. How’s your day been?’

  ‘I’ll let you off, mate. This morning was a juicy one. Young newly separated wife, strangled. Boyfriend in the next room, beaten to death with what may have been a crowbar.’

  ‘Nasty.’

  ‘And messy. Double onsite, we had Stacy and Terry reviving, with me and J. J.’

  ‘Was it the ex-husband?’

  ‘That was the theory, and he had gone AWOL. Turned out to be more complicated. The boyfriend had started on her, she’d managed to phone her ex for help. He got there to find her dead, so he killed the boyfriend. Then vanished. He sounds as big a nightmare as the boyfriend, though. That girl could pick ’em. Anyway, how are you? Better after yesterday? Still, uh, seeing things?’

  ‘I just need to rest, Never.’

  ‘You’d tell me if there was something up, right?’

  Jonah knew exactly where this concern was coming from, and he knew Never could read him; it wasn’t fair to his friend just to play dumb.

  ‘There’s something I’m looking into. It’s probably nothing, and I promise I’ll tell you soon, but I need you to do me a favour and let me deal with it.’

  ‘OK,’ Never said, sounding wary. ‘But I’m holding you to that, and I’ll be checking up on you. If there’s anything I can do to help…’

  A thought occurred to Jonah. ‘Well … There’s a case I want to look at. It’s in the FRS system, but I don’t have permission to view it. You’re an admin, right? Is there any way…’

  ‘You sly dog. Make yourself a coffee. By the time you’re done, you’ll have access. Just don’t tell anyone, OK?’

  * * *

  Jonah did exactly as instructed. Coffee in hand, he sat back down and searched for the same key words as before, then clicked on the link.

  This time, the case report appeared on screen.

  The reviver’s name was Victor Eldridge. As Graves had said, the reviver had been brought in after approaching the wife of a subject he had revived a week before. The wife had not felt directly threatened, and had not pressed charges against him, but the company he’d been working for had contacted Graves. Eldridge had been one of their best revivers. They wanted him looked after.

  ‘At this time,’ the report read, ‘the remnant effect is assumed to be a mild presentation of memory and emotion originating from the surge phase of a revival. Yet this patient had periods of lucid interaction during which he seemed to think he actually was the subject. Under interview, these periods were observed five times, the longest episode lasting twenty-seven minutes. The patient’s responses were consistent and detailed, and information specific to the revival subject seemed accurate. After each episode, the patient was asked how aware he had been, and confirmed that he had been conscious at the time yet somehow observing these thoughts arise without direct control. This suggests that if sufficiently extreme, the remnant effect could amount to a kind of parasitic intelligence, with the survival of patterns of thought and behaviour from the revived subject dominating the mind of the host. How long-lived these effects might be if untreated is currently unknown. In this case an extended course of high-dose novadafinil and propanolol was effective.’

  Jonah took a deep breath. It was just as he’d experienced it. Yet the words Dr Graves had used in this report were very different from how she had presented it to him, as an ordinary mental process being misinterpreted by a mind under stress.

  She had been trying to put his mind at ease. Delusion. Nothing to be afraid of.

  In practice it was much more. Graves had called it ‘parasitic intelligence’.

  It was a form of possession.

  He noticed a reference beside the paragraph he had read, and when he followed it he came to a list of dated files, each titled ‘Interview excerpt’ with a reference number. Wondering how many laws he was breaking, he opened the first.

  A single camera, pointing at a man he presumed was Eldridge: wide-eyed and nervous.

  ‘Were you aware you’d been talking?’ asked a voice – muffled; it sounded like Graves.

  ‘Yes,’ said Eldridge. He had an earnestness, an openness, a smile that suggested damage. He seemed horribly fragile. ‘I could hear every word. I could hear the thoughts that led to the words. And none of them were mine. That’s the way it always is. I can’t influence them. I’m trapped in my own head and all I can do is watch.’ The broken smile remained as he spoke, but his voice was despairing. The clip stopped. Jonah went back to the report. There didn’t seem to be much else, beyond what Graves had already told him. Eldridge was a mess, and although there was only one remnant strong enough to intrude into his waking actions, testing had revealed evidence of others.

  Jonah thought of the term Graves had used: ‘ghost traces’. It seemed horribly appropriate now.

  He switched between report and interview footage for half an hour, getting increasingly agitated by both the content and his guilt at the illicit access. Yet it was Eldridge’s expression that had the greatest impact. The man seemed to have given up hope.

  He read the section on the drug treatments being used.

  ‘The patient has been experiencing episodes of profound paranoia,’ it read, ‘making references to an external force he believes to be following him.’ Jonah thought at once of Harker’s lurking presence. There was a reference again, which he followed.

  Eldridge’s weary face appeared once more. It looked like the same interview location.

  The voice off screen: ‘What are you afraid of, Victor?’

  ‘There’s something watching me. Something with me.’

  ‘You feel it now?’

  ‘Yes. Scratching at the back of my mind. I heard it whisper once. Sometimes I think I still hear it.’

  ‘When did this begin?’

  ‘Ever since the Ruby Fleming case. Something else was there.’ Eldridge said it in an urgent whisper, glancing around as if he may be overheard.

  Jonah felt very cold. It wasn’t Harker’s remnant presence he was reminded of, not now.

  It was Alice Decker.

&nb
sp; He went back to the report text: ‘Prior case was during patient’s employment with Toronto Forensic Revival Department. Case was considered by Eldridge’s superiors to have been a result of his own state of mind affecting that of the subject, leading to subject’s panic and contact loss.’

  There was another link, which he presumed would be to the review of this prior case. Instead, there was footage from the revival itself.

  Canadian procedures closely followed those the FRS used. The footage had three separate image feeds, the long shot giving context to the other two.

  A narrow street, an alleyway with an open door leading into a lit corridor, black bags of garbage mounted high by the wall. At the extremes of the image, Jonah noted tape sealing off the scene. On the ground by the door, a woman lay, her dead eyes open. There was no obvious sign of trauma.

  Eldridge ducked under the tape and entered the picture. Jonah was startled by how healthy the man looked, his frame full to the point of being overweight. A confident man, unrecognizable given the shell he was to become.

  Eldridge stated his name and the case details as he took the corpse’s hand.

  Not aware he was doing it, Jonah’s left hand gripped the desk, needing to hold on to something firm. He wanted to stop watching, but he couldn’t. There was silence for several minutes as Eldridge began the process. Jonah sped up the footage, until he saw the corpse shift. He wound back slightly and played it through.

  The woman’s chest was rising and falling in the slow, exaggerated movements the dead had when breathing.

  ‘Ruby,’ said Eldridge. ‘Can you hear me? My name is Victor.’