Stasis (Part 2): Iterate

by E. W. Osborne

  “Vaguely. I remember you complaining about it a lot,” she said, still focused on the wall.

  “The therapist suggested I get the implant done to help with my confidence or some bullshit. They programmed these special Dreamscapes where I’d come out on top no matter what. Like, I’d be at the bank and people would come in to rob it and I’d be the one to save the day.”

  Maggie pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. She met his eye, almost asking permission to rip him to shreds. He finally laughed and gestured for her to continue. “I mean, it clearly worked. You’re the very image of masculine confidence,” she snorted.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he replied with a roll of his eyes. In a weird way, it was better for her to be horrible to him. Nothing felt more bizarre than Maggie acting sweet. “Just imagine if I hadn’t stopped all those bank robberies.”

  “Right? You’d probably be some skinny, pale nerd who did nothing but stare at his tablet and play with his…”

  “Okay,” he sighed. “So how is it actually removed?” he asked, hoping to get the conversation back on track.

  “I don’t actually know. There are stories all over of people who have gone to the doctor to get it done, but no details about what the process actually is. That’s weird, right? It’s not just me?”

  Neil had to agree. “Maybe they have to sign something before it’s done, promise not to reveal anything. I’m sure the process is proprietary.”

  Maggie squinted, not even entertaining the idea. “But then why are they open about the technology? If they’re so worried about people stealing their ideas, why is it all out there for anyone to see?”

  They stared at the smart wall for a few moments of tense silence. Neil tried to urge his brain into functioning, but it simply lacked the energy. He let out a long exhale as if he’d been holding his breath.

  “I have no idea, honestly,” he replied, ready to give up wondering. But Maggie was on the trail.

  “It’s one of two things. Either they don’t actually care or the information we all have isn’t the whole story.”

  Neil mulled this over, a distant memory tickling the back of his mind. “Didn’t they have to reveal all sorts of things when it first came out? I remember my dad telling me how safe it was, that it was the most tested invention in the history of man.”

  “Yeah…” Maggie chewed on the inside of her cheek as her mind clicked along at lightning speed. Neil yawned and eyed his bed, wondering if he could curl up for a nap. His eyelids were growing heavy. It’d been a long couple days and…

  “So!” Maggie clapped her hands, jolting him awake. “Let’s go get what we need.”

  “I’m not doing it.” She opened her mouth to argue and he silenced her with a finger. “I’m not letting some hacker wannabe fuck around with my brain. I’ll take my chances. Besides, they told me as long as I didn’t mess around with that…” He stuttered. His tongue suddenly felt like it’d tripled in size as he tried to spit out the name of the website. He tried again before shaking it off, attributing the odd episode to his exhaustion. “That site, then I’ll be fine.”

  “Hypnos has nothing to gain from messing with you. I called in a big favor just getting him to talk to us, let alone help.”

  “And while I appreciate that, I simply can’t trust it. I’m sorry, Mags, but it’s too much for me right now. I need to sleep. I need to study.”

  Her nostrils flared slightly. He could tell she was about to launch into a big tirade about trust and technology and how stupid he was for not doing this, but she thought better of it.

  “I’ll tell Wills. He’s just as stubborn as you, but he at least listens to sense.”

  Neil shifted to the bed as she got up to leave. His bones felt wearily heavy. “I listen to sense, but when it comes to strange people messing around with the way my brain works, I at least need a first name. That makes sense, right?” Without bothering to take off his dirty clothes or even climb under the blanket, he stretched out. “Besides, if they’d thought what we’d found was actually dangerous, I don’t think they would’ve let me out.”

  “Hmmm,” she replied dubiously. Without another word, she shut the door and left Neil to his sleep.

  He briefly considered queuing up a nice relaxing beach vacation Dreamscape, mostly a force of habit. But a split second later he realized they could be watching. It kind of killed the fantasy of watching bikini-clad women play beach volleyball.

  Neil rolled over and stared at the ceiling, awash with shame. For the first time he allowed himself to feel the true extent of this violation. All the Dreamscapes he’d played out over the years, some so private even he was embarrassed to think about them. His heart thumped as color flooded his cheeks.

  They could’ve seen everything.

  It wasn’t like he had anything seriously bad in his logs, but that didn’t mean he was comfortable with complete strangers picking through it with a comb. The impotent rage was a bizarre feeling. It was as if he couldn’t even trust his own brain to not betray him.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  South Lake Tahoe, CA

  June 7th

  AS THEY CRESTED over the high mountain pass, the deep blue lake finally coming into view, the grip of panic loosened its hold on Penelope’s chest. Lake Tahoe was exactly as they’d left it. Given her life in the last month, that was a great comfort and reminder. No matter what happened in her life or the next, that lake will stand for eons as it always has.

  She ignored Joey’s eyes on her but couldn’t ignore his words. When the car rolled up to their modest log cabin, the words he’d been chewing on for hours finally fell out.

  “Explain to me again why we aren’t at the beach right now?”

  Penelope tried to make it sound spontaneous. “I don’t know! We got through that traffic and I just thought, we haven’t seen the lake in a while. Why not go there instead?”

  She dove into the trunk of the car to pull out their bags and hide her slipping expression.

  “Okay, but that also means I packed a week’s worth of clothes for warm weather. There’s still snow on the mountains here.”

  Penelope cleared her throat, flipping her hair over her shoulder as she bounced back. “No there’s not. Besides, we have plenty of warm clothes inside.”

  Joey wiggled Anna in his arms, a silent reminder that the last time they’d been to the cabin, Penelope wasn’t even showing yet.

  “Okay, point taken. But all that is is a good excuse for a shopping trip,” she smiled. Turning on what little charms she had left over her confused husband, Penelope slinked toward him. “I know this is all sudden, but it’s nice, right? Lots of time for us to reconnect, relax. I know I haven’t been exactly present…”

  Joey exhaled sharply from his nose. “Uh huh.”

  She swallowed a bubble of irritation in hopes of keeping the peace. “So, here I am. Here we are,” she whispered, slipping her warm hand under the hem of his shirt to touch his stomach.

  Joey got the hint. “I can get Anna settled in for a nap if you bring the bags inside.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Penelope replied.

  As he disappeared inside the cabin, she closed her eyes and breathed deeply. A heavy pine scent hung in the damp air. The tall trees left her feeling insignificant and hidden, but she knew that wasn’t entirely true.

  If I was being followed, changing course once wouldn’t exactly throw them off, she thought. And if I tell Joey the real reason I’m up here, he’ll probably start following me too.

  June 8th

  She relaxed for one day, just long enough for Joey to stop watching her like she needed a mental health check. It took a couple romps in bed and a long, lazy morning in their pajamas to convince him she was serious about enjoying the break. For Penelope, she needed the time and distance to think over the past month. What looked like lounging in a bathrobe to Joey was actually intense, internal scrutiny.

  Penelope curled up on the over-stuffed, musty sofa with a cup of coffee and st
ared out the vast wall of windows. With as much detachment as she could muster, she ran through every case, every event from the moment she’d been paged to the emergency room.

  Was it an accident Cameron was there? Was he the one responsible for calling me down? I never asked him that…

  She ran through each moment with a careful eye for bias or blindness. However scary and surreal it’d been, she felt she’d conducted herself professionally. No decision had been made without a solid medical reason, even isolating that last patient from the others to conduct the scan. The way they’d gone about doing it was a bit suspect, but so was the involvement from upper management when the first one disappeared.

  But at a distance, she began to appreciate how bizarre the situation had been from the very start. She couldn’t remember a time when Dr. Hung, or any department head, had called a meeting of that magnitude over only a handful of cases. Had he called the CDC or had they called him? It was as if they’d wanted to shut it down from the start, cripple the rumor mill before it had a chance to ramp up.

  Maybe Cameron hadn’t been leading her down a path. He was allowed to have his own opinion about the cause, but she couldn’t think of an instance when he forced her down a line of reasoning. They were both excited and terrified equally. And then his bouts of paranoia…

  But after seeing strange unmarked vans leaving with all their patients, Penelope couldn’t deny he might’ve had every right to be paranoid. As a psychologist, the word carried a heavy weight of mental illness. Paranoia equaled delusions in her world, but… what is the word for a paranoia that is founded in truth?

  “Fear,” she whispered. Penelope groaned out of frustration. It was like trying to untangle a hopeless knot, put together a puzzle with missing and broken pieces.

  As hard as she tried to remove the history from the current events, she couldn’t ignore the fact Cameron had a hold over her. After nearly losing everything, she’d gained enough distance to realize something about herself. She didn’t believe in the concept of a soul mate, but she did believe in magnetism. There are some people who draw you in, pull at your inner being. Some for better, mostly for worse, these connections are as strong as Earth magnets and nearly impossible to resist.

  Could Cameron have been drawing her down this path without her even realizing?

  For a couple hours, she refilled her cup and waited for Joey to give her the right opportunity. It finally came just after lunch.

  “Anna and I were thinking of going into town for some lunch,” he said as he leaned over the back of the sofa.

  Penelope stretched and yawned, feeling as though she’d been roused awake. “That sounds nice.”

  He cocked his head, eyes grazing across her bare thigh. “You’re more than welcome to join us.”

  “I think I might take a rain check on that one, but please thank her for the invite.”

  His brow crinkled a touch. “We can stay here instead. I thought it’d be nice if we—”

  “No, no. It’s fine,” she reassured him. “I was thinking about having a nap, anyway.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely,” she nodded, praying he’d take the bait. She could tell he genuinely wanted to go out, but was held back by a sense of obligation to her. “I’m exhausted, really.”

  “I guess you wouldn’t mind if I took the car then?” he asked, kissing the crown of her head.

  I was hoping you’d say that. “Knock yourself out.”

  “If you change your mind, just give me a call and I’ll send it back up for you.”

  A half hour later, Penelope was pretending to snooze on the sofa as Joey left with the baby. She waited for the whir of the car to fade into the distance before jumping into action.

  She exchanged her slippers for hiking boots, coffee for a canteen of water. She had a couple miles ahead of her and not a second to spare. Almost out the front door, she stopped and jogged back in, placing her cuff and any other electronic devices she had on her folded clothes.

  Good thing I remembered.

  The Tahoe cabin had been in her family for generations, but none of the other Steele family members cared to use it anymore. Wealth had tainted their palettes and the wood paneling no longer appealed. But it wasn’t the scenery or seclusion that had popped into her mind as she was fleeing the hospital. It was another cabin, deep in the woods, that had originally changed their trip from the beach to the mountains.

  It felt good to stretch her legs. She’d spent the majority of the last month cooped up inside, working long hours, missing sunrises and sunsets. With a pack on her back, sweat on her skin, Penelope felt she was moving forward with purpose. The answers she was seeking might be only a few miles and a few hours away.

  The path she needed to take was remote but well worn. The first few branches were probably frequently used by hikers in the area. After the third turn, it began to feel overgrown and disused. Boot prints disappeared and thoughts of bears or mountain lions haunted every odd sound. After an hours’ hike, she crested a ridge she had last seen with her teenage eyes.

  Panting, she rested her hands on her hips and let the light breeze dry the sweat on her skin. The cabin was exactly as she remembered, only worn by a few decades. Nestled against the side of a mountain in a small valley, it looked more like a hunting lodge than a place where anyone would permanently live. A part of her had expected to come out this far and find it falling apart, roof caved in, and no sign of life. Instead, the soft inviting curl of smoke coming from the chimney told her someone was home.

  Nerves bubbled in her stomach as she started her descent toward the cabin. She’d put so much thought into how she would explain it all, she hadn’t spent any time thinking about if she should.

  There’s a reason he lives out here on his own, she thought, for the first time wondering if he might come at her with a gun.

  Penelope’s caution increased with every step. The thick scent of woodsmoke grew stronger as she got close. She kept a careful lookout for trip wires or other traps. Even turrets wouldn’t be out of the question, but she acknowledged her imagination might be getting away from her. What she found most surprising was that she was allowed to walk straight up to the front door without so much as a voice over a loud speaker demanding that she stop.

  With her knuckles poised above the door, she hesitated. Before she had a moment to reconsider, the door flew open.

  “Little Penny Steele,” the old man declared with little affection. Her name, as it was, came out more as an accusation than greeting.

  The gruff greeting knocked her back a step. She recognized the sharp eyes, but the mask they lay buried in looked completely different from her last memory. Wrinkles, worry, a beard years in the making… he looked nothing like her memory. Without a doubt, it was him.

  “Mr. Reich,” she replied, her voice breaking at the end. “How did you…”

  “Cameras. You look like your mother. What do you want?”

  “I—”

  “Were you followed?” he demanded, stepping forward to look into the blue sky.

  He smelled so bad, Penelope had to hold her breath between responses. “No. I didn’t wear my cuff or—”

  “They don’t need cuffs with their eyes in the sky,” he spat, scanning the small gap between the trees with a critical gaze.

  “I don’t think I—”

  “What the hell do you want, anyway?” he sneered.

  She tried to keep her patience, remembering he’d never been the most tactful of people even before becoming a recluse. “Mr. Reich, I know you value your privacy, so—”

  “So you thought you’d traipse your little ass up to my front door? I don’t suppose you’re selling Girl Scout cookies.”

  She ran her tongue along the rough part of her molars, trying not to snap. “I understand, but—”

  “You look like your mother.”

  Penelope smiled thinly. “So you said. Sir, if I could—”

  “They can follow you for miles.
The cloudy days are the worst. Can’t see ‘em at all.” He squinted up again, as if his milky eyes could see anything beyond the branches anyway.

  Her nostrils flared as she finally lost her grip. “Jesus Christ,” she muttered before continuing loudly. “Wesley, I need to talk to you. I think someone is manipulating the Seeds and you’re the only person who can help.”

  He tilted his head, the gesture animal-like, as if he were a dog hearing an odd sound for the first time. He considered her for a moment before stepping deeper into the house. “Come on in.”

  Twenty minutes later, she was perched on a rough wooden bench clutching a metal camping cup of water. It only took a few minutes into her explanation before Wesley cracked open a bottle of whiskey and poured himself a generous glass. Without comment, interruption, or question, he allowed her to go through the events of the last month. If she hadn’t seen it all first hand, much of it would’ve seemed too far-fetched. After she brought him up to speed, she even had a brief wave of concern. What if he thinks I’m crazy?

  “You’re a doctor now,” he said.

  “Yes, and I’d be happy to discuss the specifics with you if you’d like me…”

  He held up a hand to stop her. A thrumming silence filled the void between them. He swirled the whiskey around in the tumbler, his eyes unfocused and far away.

  Penelope’s brain jumped to another terrifying thought. I’ve assumed his mental abilities have remained all this time. What if, after all these years, he’s developed dementia? She’d tried to pay attention to his reactions as she spoke, but he’d been as still as a statue. Besides, she’d lost herself in the moment, reveling in the fact she could talk freely to a person other than Cameron.

  She studied him as he thought, wondering if she might’ve placed her hopes on the wrong person. It made her itch, like there was a countdown somewhere ticking away, counting to the final moments until there’d be no time left for talking.