Her pupils dilate rapidly, a sign of a hijack letting go. Whoever was in her has fled. She’s confused, frozen. Suggestible. Here’s my last chance.
I activate my maser and write deep into her mind. I’ve only got seconds before death. On the way home, shaken and sickened by what she’s seen, she’ll hum “My Disposition” without realizing it. The words will be stuck in her head for months. She’ll never be able to think of the song the same way again.
For Arthur C.
About the Author
Matthew Kressel’s work has appeared in Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, io9.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Interzone, Electric Velocipede, Apex Magazine, and the anthologies Naked City, After, The People of the Book, and other markets. His story “The Sounds of Old Earth” was recently nominated for a Nebula Award. He has been nominated for a World Fantasy Award for his work editing Sybil’s Garage, a speculative fiction ‘zine he published from 2003-2010. Currently he co-hosts the Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series in Manhattan with Ellen Datlow. He is a member of the Altered Fluid writers group, and in his spare time he studies the Yiddish language.
Pernicious Romance
Robert Reed
There are no suspects.
We know the vehicle was serviced by the school motor pool, but there were numerous locations and intervals where clever hands could have added a malicious device. Subsequent investigations have exonerated university employees as well as the student programmer responsible for the custom software piloting the giant football helmet. Investigations continue, but authorities no longer issue reports, claiming undiminished interest even as the work thins to fewer agencies and skeletal crews.
Even in retrospect, nothing about the football game appears out of the ordinary. Fiercely contested and low scoring, the battle matched every expectation up until halftime. Then the marching band played three numbers—a solid performance, perhaps even inspired. Once the band relinquished the field, the stadium lights were set low, and that was when the giant football helmet, lit up with the school colors, sprinted across the darkened turf, deploying an LED hose in its wake. The tradition was three years old. The competitive game and mild October weather insured that the stands were nearly full. With a flowing, artistic script, the home team’s name was being written with the hose. Onlookers assumed a simple malfunction when the helmet stopped on the fifty-yard line. Perhaps seven seconds passed. Unfortunately there is no video recording of the event. A significant EMP event came with the attack, destroying the data from security cameras as well as amateur videos. The entire campus and half of the city were plunged into a prolonged blackout. But using the scorched rubber turf as a marker, it appears that the device, whatever its nature, was set near the back of the helmet, and its detonation consumed both the helmet and golf cart, leaving behind dust but almost no shrapnel.
As a rule, the first victims to “recover” were located in the most distant portions of the stadium. People high above the south end zone were two hundred and twenty yards from the device, give or take. Most would have been watching the darkened field and the progress of their school’s helmet. Many would have been yelling out letters. Witnesses willing to discuss the event claim one of two scenarios: A bolt of light fell from the cloudless, moonless sky. “Lightning” is the most common word. “A laser beam” is also popular. But there are other accounts, equally certain, describing a flame or beam leaping up from the ground, presumably when the cart and helmet were vaporized.
Regardless of perpetrators, the attack was immediately blamed on terrorists.
That opinion hardened too quickly and too deeply, we believe.
These were enormous energies on display. There is no question about that. Which leaves us to wonder how any terrorist group could have mastered what appears to be a new technology—a set of tools that nobody else understands.
Cold as it sounds, we should feel thankful. In the end, only fifty-eight people were killed directly by the blast, while another thirty-nine succumbed to falls and head wounds. If casualties were the goal, these high-tech murderers could have ignited their weapon late in the first half, while the helmet was parked on the crowded sidelines. Unless of course the device was a demonstration event or a spectacular dud. Numerous public voices have made those bold claims, ignoring the absence of evidence. What is known is that nearly seventy thousand people were inside the stadium. Every survivor lost consciousness, some remaining that way until this day. And as a direct result, our country hasn’t seen a major sporting event for sixteen months, and it is the same across most of the world. Nobody wants to risk a repeat of that terrible Saturday night.
Except for a large portion of the victims, that is.
Case Study:
Today MK is a thirty-one-year-old woman, single and employed. As an undergraduate, she played in the school band, and that’s why the halftime show was her primary focus. But her little brother waited too long to purchase tickets, and that’s why they had the worst possible seats, and that’s why they were standing high up in the southern end of stadium, two hundred and twenty-three yards from the blast site.
MK remembers the band’s three songs and then the helmet writing PANTHERS across the unlit field. The vehicle stopped while it was crossing the T, which wasn’t right, and she immediately turned to her brother. She recalls laughing, telling him that this sort of shit wouldn’t have happened when Dr. Kalin was in charge of the band.
MK had played the snare drums, as did her brother after her.
Her brother turned toward her, presumably to respond.
Both saw a brilliant flash of golden light.
Yes, she was sure. The light was definitely gold.
Panther Stadium is a bowl of concrete and steel with oak boards for seats and numerous steel railings. The stadium is quite steep near the top. Several people close to MK fractured their skulls when they collapsed. But in general, surprisingly few of the victims were injured. Evidence shows that the lowest rows felt the effects first, and like a wave dispersing across water, the people above collapsed in a very orderly fashion, falling on the bodies before them.
Intentional or not, that was another factor in the paucity of deaths.
People outside the stadium, including a small portion of the campus police and ambulance attendants, suffered moments of vertigo but never lost consciousness. After perhaps thirty seconds of confusion, those few hundred people entered to discover thousands of motionless, apparently helpless bodies. Yet these victims weren’t unconscious, not in any normal sense. Every living person was breathing quickly and deeply, as if doing considerable labor. Some of those early responders reported a smell like perfume. But not everyone. The scope of the disaster and the total blackout led to panic, even among those with emergency training. But one campus police officer, armed with a working flashlight, climbed to the top row of the southern end of the stadium, and that’s why she was first to come across a victim who was regaining consciousness.
MK has that distinction.
The officer kneeled over the young woman. MK remembers her rescuer. In fact, she has talked at length about the pain and terror in that stranger’s face.
“Are you okay?” the officer asked.
“Yeah,” MK said.
In fact, she felt perfectly fine.
The officer held up a hand.
“Three fingers,” MK answered, before the question was asked.
Then she sat up on her own power, lightheaded but not disabled. There were thousands of bodies below, not one of them moving. Yet she heard a peculiar sound, diffuse and gray and not quiet, and after a moment she realized how hard everybody was breathing.
“Something’s happened,” she said calmly.
“A bomb went off,” the officer said. “You were knocked unconscious.”
“No,” MK said.
“Yes,” the officer told her. She was still holding up the three fingers, and the hand was trembling. “Every last one you . . . knocked out.”
MK said, “N
o.”
“You were,” the officer insisted.
“For how long?” MK asked.
The officer tried to make that calculation. But her cellphone was dead, and fear had distorted her sense of time.
“It’s been a week,” MK guessed.
“A week? Since you fell over?”
“Yes.”
“No. It’s been fifteen minutes, tops.”
MK’s brother, BK, was unconscious like the others, and then his breathing slowed. With a sigh, he opened his eyes. His forehead was scraped, but otherwise, he was unharmed and remarkably alert, sitting up beside his sister.
MK touched his wound.
“I didn’t see you,” she said.
BK agreed. “I didn’t see you either.”
The officer watched the conversation.
“This cop says fifteen minutes passed.”
“That can’t be,” he began.
“It’s been seven days. Almost to the minute, right?”
“No,” said BK. Then he closed his eyes, presumably making his own count.
“What happened to the two of you?” the officer asked.
Neither answered.
The officer started to repeat her question.
“Nine days,” BK interrupted. “That’s how long it was for me.”
“Are you certain?” asked the officer.
“Positive,” BK said.
Then MK said, “Huh. I wonder why the difference.”
But the problem had an easy enough answer. “I was down longer than you,” her brother pointed out.
In frustration, the officer snarled, “But what in hell happened to you?”
The siblings glanced at one another.
Then they looked up, and they spoke the same words.
“Love happened,” they said.
Elaborate graphs have been produced. Recorded testimonials and secondhand numbers have been plotted against axes that might be useful. Seventy thousand points in space and time will create pictures. For instance, there is a strong inverse correlation between the distance from the bomb and the duration spent being helpless. Spectators in the high seats generally woke that evening, while those closer to the field remained unconscious for days and often far longer. Being inside a restroom or otherwise shielded by concrete reduced the effects, but not as much as we might have guessed. Victims in the lowest seats, particularly those at the fifty-yard line, were slowest to wake. Yet their experiences pale next to the poor souls standing on the field itself—the band members and grounds crew, two teams and coaching staffs. Plus alumni and benefactors who had been given space on the sidelines. Those victims received the full onslaught of a very peculiar weapon, and several dozen died from brain hemorrhages, while others survived but have yet to open their eyes.
On the matter of correlations: There is a weaker but persistent positive correlation between how long someone was senseless and their perception of time.
Five days is the minimum “imaginary” time, while the record holder to date, if believed, is fifty-eight years.
Liquor consumption has no proven role in duration of helplessness or the depth of the experience. And despite rumors, cannabis had at most a minimal negative influence.
But judging by family reactions, genetic components can matter.
At this point, it bears stating that every number is just a number. Mathematical figures seem precise and cleanly rendered, yet in its nature, each number wants to mislead. Tidy graphs belay the scarcity of real data. Seventy thousand subjects were thrown into the same ad hoc experiment. No operative plans were made beforehand. No logistics were set in place. A college city with two major hospitals and minimal equipment for deep-brain analysis was trapped in the most unlikely scenario. Add to that the confounding facts of a wide-scale power outage and the substantial numbers of medical people—first responders and local physicians—trapped with the other victims inside the stadium. Also many key government people were struck down. The state’s second-term governor was enjoying one of the luxury booths, which gave him valuable distance. But he was standing over the fourty-five-yard line and as a result was left unconscious for many days.
A genuine bomb would have left corpses and living people who knew what to do with corpses.
Broken bones and burns respond predictably to medical tools.
But what can be done with tens of thousands who are incapable of reacting to light or pain, or human voices, or any other reasonable treatment?
What city in this world could handle the crush of so many patients, each wrapped in a condition that doesn’t resemble known comas or dream states?
The tragedy is still emerging.
What amazes us, writing from the midst of history, is the heroism of ordinary citizens facing an unexpected foe.
Case study:
SZ is a youthful fifty, a man who enjoyed prestige and responsibility in his lifelong profession. At the time of the attack, he was positioned high above the north fourty-five-yard line, apparently standing at the back of a luxury box. State troopers found him within the first hour, and because of his job and important friends, SZ was carried past other victims and placed inside a helicopter that whisked him to the state’s premier neurological-care facility.
SZ was the first patient to receive full batteries of tests, including blood work and EEGs and several thorough PET scans.
As such, he enjoys a singular value among his peers.
SZ wasn’t comatose or asleep, but characteristics of both states were observed. His body was limp, immune to mild pain and tickles. Loud sounds didn’t rouse him. The voices of his wife and children had no visible effect. There was a persistent erection, but it wasn’t associated with any normal REM sleep. If not for his arousal and rapid breathing, the man might have appeared dead, but the reality is that he was very far from death.
It bears repeating: Every victim’s brain was at work. Trained athletes and world-class dancers make huge metabolic demands on their minds, but SZ’s brain consumed more sugar and more oxygen than any brain studied before. No portion of his neurological system was at rest. Each breath supplied just enough air to maintain that fantastic storm of electricity, and because of fears that this middle-aged man would be overtaxed, SZ’s breathing was augmented with an oxygen mask.
The treatment may or may not have had a role in his experience.
Frankly, nobody knows what his experience was.
For three weeks, the patient’s condition held steady—no improvements or variations in his status. He was made comfortable, his body was hydrated, and once it was shown to be essential, he was fed sugar and proteins. (Starvation was and is an ongoing concern with every victim.) There was no reason to expect SZ to awaken, even after others from the same luxury box had opened their eyes. Three weeks had taught the doctors that they knew very little. After three weeks, even the most rational voice was speculating that a person didn’t wake until he was ready.
Twenty-four days after the football game, SZ was ready.
Unless of course he just simply woke up.
His wife was in the room, and by chance, his oldest child. Like every other patient, SZ was lost to the world, attached machines measuring the quick vitals, and then he was back again. This was not the same as waking from deep sleep. His mind was alert, and then he and his body were alert in a different fashion. The only major physical problem were his atrophied muscles. According to a nurse present, SZ tried to sit up but couldn’t. Then he spoke to his wife by name, and he smiled at the teenage daughter, and the girl responded by blurting out, “So who did you sleep with?”
By then, the world had learned what happened inside those raging minds—if not in detail, at least as a general rule.
Patients were meeting imaginary lovers and undergoing intense, soul-shaking affairs.
According the nurse, the girl’s combative attitude startled SZ’s wife.
“Honey,” she said.
“I know you were cheating on Mom,” the girl said.
SZ tried again to sit up.
The nurse attempted to help him.
“Get your hands off my father,” the girl shouted.
“Leave us, please,” the wife begged.
Standing in the hallway, the nurse overheard portions of a very difficult conversation. Her sense was that the girl was only voicing her mother’s deepest concerns. For years, there had been stories of infidelity involving this very important man. But rumors didn’t matter as much as the certainty that his mind—struck helpless by a terrorist attack—was happily engaged in a relationship that had no connection to real people and genuine events.
Beds were still at a premium at that stage in the crisis.
SZ was discharged as quickly as possible, and after several days of rest, appeared in public. His family stood beside him when he thanked the state troopers and hospital and the many subordinates who did his job in very trying times. Every observer was struck by the man’s graciousness and his smile. There are people with famous smiles, and SZ’s was one of those. But the expression was different than before. The audience saw a transformative joy, not only in how he grinned but how that joy seemed to make him lighter and younger than any man in his fifties should be.
The rumors had already begun by then. Which makes it doubly disappointing that we don’t have SZ’s account about his time as an invalid. Yet the patients are rarely willing to speak about these personal experiences, and our subject was even more circumspect than the norm.
Whispers claimed that he lived twenty years in as many days.
That would put him at the high end of the charts.
Voices that might know the story claim that SZ enjoyed a torrid affair with a living actress—that is, an imaginary version of an Academy Award winner. But that is the kind of rumor that spreads. Because it is compelling and obvious, and a portion of those who are doing the telling wish they could have dreamed about sleeping with a woman like that.
Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 98 Page 3
