by Pat Forde
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In Spirit
by Pat Forde
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Science Fiction
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Fictionwise, Inc.
www.Fictionwise.com
Copyright ©2002 by Pat Forde
First published in Analog, September 2002
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The story I want to tell you now is the oldest story in the book. It's the defining story of humanity, and it goes like this: A new tool comes along. Men see it in the world or in their minds. They strive to reach it, attain it, hold it aloft for a moment's wonder. Then they wield it wisely or wantonly, and in so doing they transform a society—a tribe, village, city, corporation, nation-state, or global institution, spreading the effects on up the evolutionary ladder of civilization.
It's a familiar story, yes. But to date, no tool has transformed human society as drastically as deep-projection technology. Not the first spark flinted for a fire, not the first ink put to page, not the first night lit by electricity, not the first atom split inside a bomb. None of those shocks were as transformative as Transdimensional Extended Projection technology, a.k.a. deep-projection.
How can I be sure of this?
I'm sure because deep-projection allows the impacts of those famous shocks of the past to be directly re-experienced—by allowing the past to be directly revisited from the present by qualified volunteers, a group that included myself from the very start. Yes, I was there, at the Institute for Advanced Study in New Jersey back in 2030, when the pilot test was performed. I was there, and I witnessed an opening being made for the very first time into unseen dimensions that stitch together the universal fabric of reality. I watched the very first volunteer, a dear friend of mine, project across the unseen frames of reference that surround and suffuse our reality; with my own eyes I saw her enter a dimensional plane that shared its reality with a precisely targeted moment in the past. You may or may not know that she was killed the following year, in riots at the Institute.
Whatever you may think of her, and whatever you may have heard of our early efforts, do not be misinformed about our technology. Deep-projection was not “time travel” as anyone had foreseen it. It was more like stepping into a virtual-reality display of the past, a past that we cannot affect in any way.... At least, we believed that at the start. And for the most part it's perfectly true: we cannot affect the past in any way that can change what's already happened.
It's also perfectly true that some of my fellow volunteers made the mistake of targeting moments in history that proved explosive to cultures founded upon those misunderstood moments. Still more explosive were news stories about the projection volunteers who returned from the past suffering strange side effects, consumed by poisonous thoughts and emotions long put to rest, feelings they rereleased into our present-day world.
Those news stories were true too, though I myself never experienced anything so negative during projection. In fact, my own experience was so much the opposite I felt compelled to join what's being called New Spiritualism, a movement among deep-projection users that focuses on “weak interactions” with the past. Before long, I was an outspoken leader of this movement.
And that is why I was called on to testify at international hearings on the global crisis that deep-projection technology had triggered, hearings convened at the Hague in the fall of 2033. By that time, a worldwide ban on the use of the technology had been decreed, and most deep-projection centers were already shut down. Many had been ransacked by mobs, and in some countries, projection facilities had been burned to the ground, the staff and volunteers that made it out of the fires alive arrested or worse.... I was one of the lucky ones. Lucky enough to avoid being lynched, and lucky enough to be asked to present the first case-study on our technology at the international hearings.
Even the World Court was curious to hear about my one-of-a-kind case study—rumors had been circulating for months about an unusual group of Americans who'd approached me, seeking assistance for the innovative application of deep-projection they'd come up with. The court saw my story as a potential antidote to all the media horror stories concerning what scientists had seen or experienced in the remote past.
When I walked to the podium in that great court, I began by stating emphatically that deep-projection was not a dangerous technology in and of itself. It was not, after all, a weapon. It was merely a kind of transportation device. So whether it was used for good or for ill depended on us.
Then I shared with the members of the World Court what I'm about to share with you: the case of a voluntary projection made by an inmate of Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania.
What follows is adapted from the inmate's deposition....
Raed was in his thirtieth year of incarceration at Lewisburg when they made him the offer to participate.
It happened on the day of his annual psych review, and the instant he entered the review room Raed knew something big was up. The faces on the penitentiary's psych panel changed slowly over the decades. A few more wrinkles, an occasional fresh new face to replace a retiree; but few new emotions. Yet three new faces were visible on the panel. And Lew's balding senior psychologist looked guarded, even confused.
Plus there were a couple of lawyers present in the room, which was very odd indeed. Raed hadn't even seen a lawyer since 2014....
“Please sit down."
A guard ushered Raed to the lone chair facing the table of psychologists. He lowered himself onto the chair, feeling small, even though he was taller than anyone on the five-man panel; he could see right over their heads to the mirrored observation-pane in the wall behind them. Raed was careful not to look directly into the mirrored pane, not because he was afraid of being watched—after thirty years at Lew, he'd feel out of sorts if he wasn't watched—but because he didn't want to see how much he'd aged in Lew. There were no mirrors back in his cell, of course.
“Something different on the agenda today, Raed,” Lew's senior psychologist said, managing to sound both weary and impatient. “I'd like to start by informing you of an assessment made by our medical staff.” The old man held up a slate plugged into the table, read from it: “Raed, you were twenty-four years old when given over to the supervision of this penitentiary. With the supplements we feed you and with the fitness routine you've elected to maintain, the prognosis is you'll have another fifty years with us here at Lew."
That simple assessment slammed into Raed. He blinked at the senior psychologist, feeling disoriented, drawn out of the “safe-houses” the man claimed Raed had in his head. Fifty more years!
He hardly heard what the two sharply dressed lawyers were trying to tell him.
“...which is why we're your court-appointed representation. We're here to tell you about a petition made by a group of interested citizens."
What were these men going on about?
“Concerning an experimental rehab program,” one of them continued, “that might be looked upon favorably by the Federal Board later, if you agree to undergo it."
Raed suddenly laughed, something he did so rarely it hurt his throat a little. “To what end?” he asked them. “Reducing one of my life-sentences?"
Raed was serving two thousand back-to-back life-terms. Convicted of being an accomplice to “one of the most heinous crimes in recorded history,” he'd received the longest prison s
entence ever handed out by a United States court—partially because he'd been a naturalized American citizen, but mostly because he'd been fully aware of the outcome of the crime. So Raed was never going to be released, reintroduced to society.
Extending him an offer of rehab was a ridiculous gesture.
“See this program through, and who can say what's possible?” The lawyer shrugged. “For now, two things are directly on the table. One: an opportunity to see your daughter."
Again Raed blinked at them, feeling his face reddening, stunned into apoplectic silence. When he'd entered Lew, he'd left a wife and a three-year-old daughter behind. And the last time lawyers had come to see him was back in Raed's thirteenth year here, when he'd been served divorce papers from Haifa and papers disowning him as a parent from Basma, his daughter. Basma would have just been old enough to sign those papers, that year. Had she changed her mind, now that she was in her thirties?
“Also,” the lawyer went on, “an opportunity to enter the world beyond your prison, in a limited and—well, unusual way.” The lawyer said this as though he didn't quite believe it.
Certainly Raed couldn't quite believe it. He hadn't seen the outside since his trial ended. The thought unnerved him, for he had no idea what the world was like anymore. “Who made the offer?” Raed managed to ask.
Now the second lawyer spoke up. “A group of citizens who have a certain relationship with you, but do not wish to be identified."
“Ah.” Raed knew just what group the lawyer was referring to. He sighed, “I need to think about it."
After the review was over and the guards took him back to his home in Lew Cell #1, Raed found he couldn't stop thinking about the astonishing offer made to him. Raed knew the group that had petitioned for the offer pretty well: an Arab-American Rights group that checked in on him over the years, to ensure he wasn't abused in the penitentiary simply because of the notoriety of his conviction. In the occasional letter he'd received from the group every couple of years, they emphasized Raed must not advertise their low-level connection with him. They threatened to stop making inquiries on his behalf to the Lew administration if he failed to maintain their privacy.
Raed understood the group wasn't actually “making inquiries on his behalf” because they were concerned about him, per se. Their concern—especially during the early years—was that Raed might take his own life in prison and become a martyr to his old cause.
Raed had no pent-up desire to become a martyr, and he was not considered a serious candidate for suicide—although, due to his uniquely lengthy sentence, he was permanently assigned to the suicide-watch list at Lew. If ever there was a prisoner who had nothing to looking forward to, it was surely Raed.
But now he could be a research volunteer for a new one-of-a-kind rehab program.
He would get to see his daughter, they'd told him.
He would get to walk the outside world for short stretches.
And for long stretches he would get to leave Cell #1, the largest and most expensive cell in the penitentiary, where Raed resided alone under constant guard and camera surveillance.
After thirty years, the cell was a home to him. Raed had taped up a picture of soaring desert dunes on one wall, a vista of the Moon over the ocean on another. He'd nursed a dozen plants up round the tiny window overlooking the courtyard that Raed could see out of, but no one could see in through. He'd even built up a modest bookshelf, though none of the books dated from this century. And there were no newspapers allowed in here, there was no television. Raed's media exposure was censored from the start of his incarceration “in order to prevent continued political inflammation of the prisoner."
Nevertheless, in the early years Raed protested this political censorship of news by cutting himself off from all news, all knowledge of outside events. He'd withdrawn from modern civilization completely the day he set foot in Cell #1. And why not? Raed had lost everything. So he restricted himself to reading older texts, like the Alif Layla Wa Layla, the Thousand and One Nights. Shaherazade, it turned out, provided a soothing escape for a man sentenced to spend ten thousand and one nights in a single room. At his own insistence, none of the books on Raed's shelf were published after the day of infamy he'd been convicted of participating in: the day the Lew staff still referred to as “9/11."
In the early years, Raed's psychologists hadn't been bothered by his self-censorship. But after the first decade, they changed their minds, complaining that he was retreating too far from reality. That's when the psychologists began to talk about “safe-rooms” in his mind, about a “labyrinth of rooms” he was building to escape not just from imprisonment but from himself. Raed snorted when he first heard this metaphor—but even then he'd suspected the description was all too apt.
An internal labyrinth. A long chain of rooms within rooms to hide in at the back of his mind.
For years he'd been building them, extending himself into new selves, splinter-selves that left his memories of life on the outside stored in some distant mental “room.” In the decades since Raed arrived at Lew, the administration had constructed four new versions of Cell #1 just for him, each room a little more livable, more “humane” than the last. Over the same period, Raed probably constructed forty new rooms inside his head, just to block away the portions of his mind he didn't need anymore. The first to go was his entire twenty-four-year-old “outside-self,” long lost now, dropped down some dusty crevice of the labyrinth Raed built to divide and conquer himself. During the ensuing years he'd wound his way deeper into the labyrinth, until he'd found a room strong enough to withstand eternal confinement and isolation.
After three very long and sleepless nights spent reflecting on his position—something Raed hardly ever did—he broke down and asked what was involved in the experimental program. He was told it involved a new technology, but much of the program itself would be left up to him.
A month later, Raed was taken out of Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary for the first time since he'd been brought into it. He was taken out just after dusk in an armored van without windows, and driven through the mountains toward a destination unknown.
By the sound of it, the armored van had a police escort, and the escort led the way for about an hour, about as far as Reading, Pennsylvania might be, Raed guessed. Then the van stopped, and he heard the driver talking with security guards. Raed heard something else too, a muffled sound familiar from his trial: the sound of protestors shouting at the van. He was astonished to think the public had found out he was being brought here, had gotten up in the middle of the night to come here themselves—but Raed wasn't surprised that people still harbored so much hate for him. On the rare occasions he gave interviews, Raed saw the wariness in the journalists’ eyes, caught them looking at him like a kind of living ghoul out of the pages of history.
The van parked in a loading dock. Raed was unloaded under guard, then brought to an empty conference room, wearing a monitoring restraint-collar that would sedate him instantly if he tried anything. Moments later, the same trio of young psychologists who'd sat through his review in Lewisburg entered the room, followed by a pair of middle-aged men introduced to him as “senior researchers.” The two researchers began outlining their experimental program, describing the new technology Raed would be required to use....
Raed listened to them, briefly astounded, then disappointed. “Projection” through a “dimensional fold” to a “targeted moment in the past"? Raed's mind began doing backflips trying to guess what was really going on here. Had the legal climate in the United States changed? Had new forces declared Raed should be put through some punishment alternative to confinement?
He told the researchers flat out he did not believe them. Traveling to the past was impossible, he didn't care how many decades had gone by since he'd been in the outside world.
So they took him down to the main “projection” floor, brought him into a room dominated by a big spherical cagework. There had to be a hundred different bars to the
cage, not all of them completely encircling it. And hanging in the cage's center was a body harness. Raed examined it suspiciously, wondering what exactly these men were trying to trick him into.... All the cage's arcing yellow bars were studded with cones that pointed inward, toward the harness suspended by a dozen blue coil-cables.
“Questions, Raed?” one of the psychologists asked him.
“What are the curtains for?"
The long back wall of the “projection” room was concealed—to hide a viewing gallery?
But then one of the guards who'd accompanied Raed from Lew drew back the curtains, revealing a long pane of Plexiglas that separated the room with the cage from—
A much larger room with a hundred identical cages that were occupied by suspended people.
At least, the suspended occupants appeared to be people. Raed stepped up to the Plexiglas pane, pressed his face against it, uncertain whether he was seeing an image televised across the pane or a real room on the other side of the pane.
The arena-sized room was real.
The hundred-odd yellow cages seemed real.
But all the suspended people looked blurry, far-off, fake, like projected images. Most of the image-people were moving, some running in their cages, a few leaping and rolling in midair.
“Those people aren't real,” Raed said over his shoulder, unable to turn from the pane. He was mesmerized.... Abruptly, one of the closer cages flashed with light, and the false floating image-person inside was instantly transformed into a clear-as-can-be jumpsuit-wearing woman, a real-as-can-be woman who stepped out of the yellow cage, a little shaky on her feet, but otherwise not visibly worse for the experience. She began conferring with a three-man team clustered round display-desks adjacent to her big yellow cage.
“You're telling me that woman was deep-projecting into the past?” Raed asked, noticing now there was a separate team for each harnessed and hanging “time traveler.” If this was all a hoax, it was an elaborate one.
