Vessel, Book I: The Advent

by Tominda Adkins

  * * * * *

  When Ghi came to his senses again, he was not alone. Several of the specialists from the convention were herding around his hospital room, looking through his MRI and CAT scans, babbling in various languages and fascinated tones.

  They were looking inside his head.

  An awful chemical taste lingered in his mouth. Something was wrong with his sight. Light from every available source held his attention captive, splintering around the room in billions of individual trajectories. This reminded Ghi about where he and his mind had just been, and his heart spasmed violently.

  He searched the room's faces, but Dr. Avery's wasn’t among them. The other doctors noticed his waking state at once and stage-rushed the bedside, wasting no time with the questions. Panicking, Ghi pretended to be too confused to answer any of them―which wasn’t far from the truth―and bought himself a few minutes of not having to say a word.

  When Dr. Avery appeared and politely ushered the medical mob out of the room, Ghi wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or terrified. The doctor's familiar face looked suspicious and grave as he rolled a chair to the bedside, holding the most recent cranial scans. Ghi held his breath and waited, careful not to be the first to speak. He could not dismiss the ridiculous notion that, simply by examining the translucent images of his brain, Dr. Avery would be able to see what he'd dreamed.

  Or been told. Or whatever. It hadn’t been like a dream at all.

  "How do you feel, Ghiyath?" Dr. Avery asked. He sounded tired.

  Ghi really hadn’t had time to assess that for himself. "I feel okay," he said, without conviction. "What happened?"

  "Well now, that’s what we’re trying to figure out." Dr. Avery adjusted his glasses and further studied the scans. "You resisted consciousness for nearly eighteen hours, and we couldn’t determine why." The doctor shook his head, rambling his review. "All your vitals were fine, blood tests came out normal, and you have no history of this as far as we can tell. And here’s the really interesting part."

  He held a scan up. Ghi winced at the lights reflecting off its flimsy surface. Through their distracting, luminous tangle, he saw what he’d seen countless times before: a cross section of his own brain. He was pretty sick of seeing his brain. He was pretty sick of everyone else wanting to see it, too.

  He couldn’t help but notice, however, that his brain looked much more interesting in this scan than it ever had before.

  "I’ve never seen anything like this," Dr. Avery said. "No one has ever seen anything like this."

  A numb chill ran down Ghi's neck. He wanted to close his eyes. The light, it was too much.

  "Don't be alarmed, Ghiyath, but while you were unconscious, your brain activity was ... abnormal, to say the least." Dr. Avery smiled incredulously. "It was through the roof. What really interests me, though, is that most of the activity was occurring in areas that people―well, most organisms, as far as I'm aware―never use. Areas that we can't use."

  Ghi listened with an increasingly sick feeling in his stomach. He looked at the scans, trying to make a connection, but the new patterns meant nothing to him.

  "Do you remember anything? Any strange dreams or sensations?"

  Ghi stayed very still before choosing his words.

  "No. Nothing."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes. Nothing at all."

  Dr. Avery sighed and stood up. "Alright, I’m going to go arrange another CAT scan immediately. See what’s happening up there now," he said, gesturing at Ghi’s disaster of black curls. "If you’re in the clear, we’ll get back up Boston and start some more testing. Sound good?"

  Ghi had no honest opinion. He had other things on his evidently freakish mind. "Yeah, good."

  "Okay then, you just take it easy for now. You know the drill. Call a nurse if you need anything."

  "Okay."

  The doctor looked at him once more, in a piercing, uneasy way, and then left the room.

  Ghi waited only a few seconds before scrambling out of bed. He put his bare feet to linoleum and staggered into the suite's small bathroom, locking the door behind him.

  Inside, there was just enough room to lay flat on his back, to feel the cold of the sterile floor and the goodness of being alone. When the fluorescent lights above interrupted this feeling, he shuddered and averted his eyes as if reacting to unwanted flirtations. Something like a groan was rising up inside his throat, but he didn’t make a sound. He thought he'd had problems before.

  This was bad.

  This was so bad.

  He decided to let himself think about it, which was about as scary as deciding to open a terrarium full of jumping spiders. Ghi clenched his eyes shut and covered them with his hands. The lights' whispers filled his head.

  Ghi had lied to Dr. Avery for the first time. He’d had a dream, alright. He’d had a full-color Discovery Channel documentary fire off in his head.

  I know exactly how it went. Jesse Cannon told me all about it.