Tempus Genesis

by Michael McCourt

  When the storm came it was indeed a tropical spectacular. It had begun with little warning just after they had finished dinner on the lawn. They had enjoyed several dishes of rice, noodle, fish and pork. Jenny had enjoyed exquisite paper thin omelets filled with tiny button mushrooms cooked in chilli pepper and soy sauce. They had sipped on green tea and drunk beer throughout. Oliver, Jamie and Jenny had eaten with Jimmy’s family, his daughter, son-in-law and two grand children. Once the snake whiskey came out Oliver had retired to bed. He had got soaked through to the skin just making the short journey across the lawn to his cabin. Oliver had insisted Jenny stayed up to drink with Jimmy and Jamie, he could see she was enjoying herself. Jamie was surprisingly upbeat about Oliver’s prospects with Dyer. Probably snake whiskey induced optimism Oliver thought.

  Oliver had slept deeply even as the storm continued to rage. In the dead of night it became more ferocious and lightning flashed across the sky with bursts of thunder quickly following each strike.

  Oliver sensed he was not alone. He tried to rouse himself to focus on what he thought was a person stood in the corner of the room. Each flash of lightening briefly revealing the shadowy figure. Too much beer and two diazepam (meant for a fear of flying only) had made Oliver groggy and disorientated.

  “Oliver,” came a whisper.

  “What?” Oliver propped himself up on an elbow, “Jamie?”

  An electric torch was switched on and Jamie stood in the corner of the room. Rainwater dripped from his face, nose and hair.

  “Oliver, I’m sorry, something terrible has happened,” Jamie said his face ashen.

  “What is it?” Oliver swung his legs out of bed, “Shit, you haven’t had sex with Jenny have you?”

  Jamie stepped forward, “No, of course not, she’s sick, I’m sorry I think it’s my fault.”

  “What happened?” Oliver pulled back his mosquito net and stood up. He reached for some shorts and pulled them on.

  “We’d been talking about the regression thing she does, I was teasing I guess and she did this demo, which was mind boggling,” Jamie rubbed his chin anxiously, “she hasn’t come back.”

  “Okay,” Oliver grabbed a sleeve of diazepam from the table, slipped on his shoes and a t-shirt and they both rushed from the cabin out into the storm.

  Oliver spoke loudly over the noise of the rain as they rushed across the garden, “We had agreed she wouldn’t try it out here, just in case, the healthcare is just hopeless in Vietnam.”

  “I’m really sorry,” Jamie shouted back. The rain was relentless in its force.

  Upon entering Jamie’s cabin Oliver was greeted with a similar sight to the one he encountered a few weeks ago. Jenny was arched back on one of the beds her body gripped in stasis, eyes fixed open, white over. Her skin trembled and it was paler than ever before. Blue hues traced along veins beneath her skin. She looked many times worse than the two previous incidents Oliver had witnessed.

  “Sit her up,” Oliver instructed Jamie, they both helped lift Jenny into a grotesque seating position, “Get some water.”

  Oliver popped three diazepam from the foil sleeve. He placed them on a small table by the bed, keeping one arm around Jenny and tried to crush the tablets. Jamie returned with the water.

  “I don’t think they will go down mate,” Jamie said handing the water to Oliver.

  “Jenny, you need to try to take these,” Oliver said, ignoring Jamie.

  Jamie held Jenny and Oliver tried to feed some crumbs of tablets into her mouth, followed by water, in a futile attempt to get her to try to swallow. The broken tablets and water just poured in and straight back out of Jenny’s unresponsive mouth. Her breathing was shallow and laboured. Oliver took her pulse from her wrist and frowned at the feathery weak rhythm.

  “Fuck it,” Oliver stood and picked Jenny up and cradled her in his arms. She hung from him lifeless.

  “What are you doing Oliver?” Jamie asked.

  “I’m going to take Jimmy’s boat and go to Dyers,” Oliver looked around the room, “where is your rain mac?”

  Jamie went to his rucksack and pulled out his Rain Mac.

  “Drape it over Jenny the best you can,” Oliver said and Jamie spread the waterproof across Jenny as she lay suspended in Oliver’s arms.

  “I’m really sorry mate,” Jamie’s said as he tucked the mac in around Jenny.

  “It’s not your fault Jamie,” Oliver turned and walked to the door. Jamie didn’t even think to question Oliver’s judgment in seeking out Dyer in the dead of night and in the middle of a tropical storm.

  Neither Jimmy nor his family heard the rasping sound of the outboard motor on his small canoe. The rain was so fierce it drowned out the sound of Oliver starting the engine and steering the canoe away from the house jetty and into the canal waterway. Jenny laid on the small narrow deck of the canoe in a pool of rainwater that had formed in the bottom of the boat. In a powered boat the French house would only be ten minutes away. Oliver quietly navigated the canoe down the canal, anxiously checking Jenny every few seconds.

  Oliver turned off the engine a few metres before arriving at the steps that led from the canal up to Dyers house. He moored the boat and gently retrieved Jenny from the deck. Shifting his balance he cradled her high in his arms, he stepped gingerly out of the boat as it rocked from side to side. Before he ascended the steps to the lawn he placed his ear against her mouth, he could hear slow shallow breathing.

  Oliver slowly crossed the garden in front of the large house. Jenny was not heavy but the veracity of the rain made progress difficult.

  Oliver arrived at the door of Dyers residence. He leaned awkwardly to the door and with all his strength gave the iron knocker two hard raps against the door.

  Oliver placed his mouth close to the glass, “Professor Dyer,” he shouted. He waited a moment, no response. Oliver knocked again.

  “Please professor, it’s my friend, Jenny, she is sick, I know you conducted research on this, possibly with people like her. Robert Dyer, you must be able to hear me, I’m sorry for waking you but I think she might be gravely ill, she is in some kind of regressive state,” Oliver’s nose and chin dripped water in the rain.

  “Jenny can regress Professor, physically access past lives,” Oliver called as he knocked on the door. He stood back. This whole trip had been a foolish reckless pointless gamble he thought, as each second passed with no response.

  A light came on in the hall and Oliver saw the shadow of a man pass through and the sound of soft footsteps as the figure disappeared. Then silence but for the falling rain.

  Oliver held Jenny tightly in his arms, he whispered to her, “Come back Jenny, please,” he kissed her lightly on her cheek.

  A wooden shutter to Oliver’s right creaked open a few inches. Oliver moved around positioning Jenny so her face could be seen from within the house.

  Oliver spoke to the dark space behind the gap in the shutter, “Look Professor, she is frozen in some kind of regressive seizure, her skin is taught and pale, eyes fixed back, occasional flickers of static, you must recognise this type of condition.”

  As Oliver lifted Jenny out to display her, inside Dyer stood motionless looking out at the unwanted visitors. His resolve to resist this intrusion started to unravel as he studied the young sick woman.

  “It can’t be,” Dyer whispered to himself as he looked at the pathetic sight of Jenny held in Oliver’s arms.

  The shutter closed but Oliver could see more lights come on behind the wooden slats in the window. Then in the hall a light came on. Oliver turned and watched the shadow of Dyer as he approached the door. The man who Oliver had so desperately sought unlocked the door and opened it a few inches. Oliver prepared to greet the mysterious professor.

  Dyer looked out bathed in shadows from the light of the hall. Oliver spoke more quietly, “Thank you, thank you Professor.”

  A crisp smart English accented Dyer spoke, “What have you given her?”

  “Nothing, I tried diazepam
oral but she couldn’t swallow, last time this happened she had twenty milligrams of diazepam IV.”

  “That would be the correct thing to have done, you had better bring her in,” Dyer retreated from the opening in the door and pulled the large door open wide. He gestured for Oliver to enter, which Oliver did. As Dyer closed the door on them he peered into the rain and dark that covered his garden, then he also went inside closing the door and locking it shut.

  Dyer guided Oliver into an opulent lounge and beckoned for him to lay Jenny down on a large soft plump couch. Dyer was aged and kindly looking, tanned and distinguished. His smile was warm and genuine but he looked tired with an air of sadness about him.

  “So this is why you traveled nearly six thousand miles, are you interested in regression?” Dyer paused having no name for this young man.

  “Oliver, Doctor Oliver Harris. Yes I am, I have tried to study it at UCL but it was frowned upon.”

  “It would be, it would be,” Dyer smiled reflectively, “Do you trust me to treat her Oliver?”

  “Yes of course Professor, can I help?” Oliver asked.

  Dyer walked to leave the room, “In the drawer of that dresser you will find packs of sterile cannula, unpack one. I have medicines and an infusion drip in my study.”

  Dyer left the room and Oliver went to the drawer. He took a pack, cleaned his hands with alcohol gel that was by the pack and unpacked the kit. He took the IV line and cannula-over-needle device and laid them out on a sterile sheet contained in the pack. He took Jenny’s arm and held it as straight as he could. There would be no problem finding a vein, the problem was keeping the veins in her skin Oliver thought.

  Dyer returned with a saline drip on a short stand and a phial containing diazepam. Together with Oliver they worked quickly to establish an intravenous line in Jenny’s left arm. Dyer drew up the diazepam from the phial and administered a large dose. He then established the saline drip in the same site and regulated its flow. He balanced the stand on a small coffee table.

  “It is surprising the size of dose that can be tolerated, indeed is required to reverse the stasis,” Dyer said as he gauged Jenny’s pulse with his finger tips.

  “So you are familiar with the condition?” Oliver asked.

  “Very much so,” Dyer replied without taking his eyes from Jenny.

  Jenny suddenly exhaled loudly, “Harrumph,” Oliver was startled by the sound and watched as Jenny’s body relaxed and regained its flesh tones. She appeared to be sleeping softly.

  “There,” Dyer said, “she is back with us, safe and sound. I’m not certain that it’s the diazepam that brings one back, I don’t know what does exactly, but it relaxes the body enough to prevent bones from breaking. As happened to me once.”

  Dyer held up his forearm which was twisted from a badly set fracture. Dyer smiled at his deformity as he presented it to Oliver.

  “I am also a fellow sufferer,” Dyer declared, “Would you like a cup of tea Oliver?”

  “No thank you.”

  “Do you mind if I do?”

  “Of course not.”

  Dyer left to make tea. He returned shortly with tea and a glass of juice.

  “Here, sip on this,” Dyer handed the juice to Oliver.

  “Thank you,” Oliver drank it all, “Thirstier than I realised.”

  “So you are a doctor like my good self?”

  “You’re housekeeper told you about me?”

  Dyer smiled, “She liked you, said I should meet you, she suspected you had a genuine reason to see me. Unlike the various journalists who have tried to get to me over the years.”

  “She liked me? Didn’t seem that way. Why would journalists follow you out here professor?”

  “Please call me Robert. You don’t know about my departure from England?”

  “No, I know you left about twenty years ago, I found two brief papers by you in the archives at Oxford, a suggestion of a book or manuscript on your regression experiments. There was enough in your papers for me to try to replicate your hypothesis, I hoped to establish experiments but they were discredited. That’s it, no one will discuss your work with me. It is a taboo subject.”

  “I am surprised anyone remembers me now, even the journalists stopped coming several years ago.”

  Dyer sat down on a chair next to the sofa where Jenny laid. He gestured for Oliver to sit, “Have a seat, Jenny will sleep for several hours now.”

  Dyer stroked her hair and checked the drip.

  “Professor Blooms remembers you, but becomes apoplectic at the mere mention of your name.” Oliver said.

  Dyer chuckled, “Blooms that crusty bastard, he must be over seventy, he’s still lecturing then?”

  “Yes.”

  Dyer took a sip of tea, “There was a manuscript, well still is,” Dyer looked upwards at the ceiling, “in my study, ‘The Tempus Genesis Experiments’, it would have been published. God knows where we would be now. Look Oliver I’ll share with you my story, but as a warning, you must not persist with any further study on this subject.”

  Dyer was more somber, he smacked his lips as he gathered his thoughts.

  “I don’t understand,” Oliver broke the silence in the room.

  When Dyer spoke his recollection was delivered crisply in an almost sing song manner, Oliver was captivated by his story, “I’m hoping you will. When I was a young man, not unlike yourself, I was captivated by a notion, put to me by an American pathologist. This, proposition, once I understood it, became a bit of an obsession. I was in California as a medical student, having bagged a bursary for an oversees jaunt, when I met this fabulous chap, Harold Manrinney. Quite a famous pathologist of his day. Now, Dr Manrinney and I hit it off. He was a pathologist who often chopped up the poor souls who popped off in the ER. I often followed the corpses, to Harold, and watched with fascination this giant of a man unravelling the truth behind their demise. We went to a party, it was a seventies thing, and I sat with him, in a corner, smoked too much cannabis and popped a little acid, and enjoyed a long conversation.”

  Dyer drunk more tea and then leaned forward to gently stroked Jenny’s shoulder, he took her pulse once again, “How did you meet, Jenny, you said her name was Jenny?”

  “Yes. She has a shop in Brighton I was passing, we connected through a shared interest in regression, she is into all kinds of paranormal interests.”

  Dyer smiled, “Really, how long have you been together?”

  “It’s only been weeks, we came here to try to find you because of this condition, to seek your help.”

  Dyer looked reflective, “Isn’t it funny how life has a way of catching you up. Now where was I? As the sun came up Manrinney recounted the most curious tale. He told me about a leader of a cult in Tennessee, in the nineteen fifties, who fathered five children, to five different mothers, as you do in any cult worth its salt. This cult leader was renowned for his powers of regression. When these children became adults, they too claimed an ability to recount past lives, at will. None of these five, had children. They committed suicide, together, one night in nineteen fifty eight. They left a note, saying only ‘to protect the future’. How strange I thought. When I returned to the United Kingdom, with me I had Dr Manrinney’s pathology notes on the five who took their lives. Dr Manrinney in his report observed they all shared enlarged cells and tissue in the temporal lobes associated with memory. Harold had offered to me this hypothesis, what if they shared a physiological link that dictated their ability to regress? What if the ability to recall past lives, was chemically, genetically, organically, driven? Imagine that. In the early eighties I found four individuals, who claimed to be psychic regressors. I wrote a book, The Tempus Genesis Experiments. The reaction to the manuscript by the college was that I had a twinge of eccentricity verging on a touch of madness, which left me relieved I never included Manrinney’s pathology notes. At least I never damaged his good name. The book never got published, probably a good thing on reflection.”

  Oliver’s
mind was whirring, he had so many questions but dared not ask. He remained mindful that Dyer was sharing this only to serve Oliver a warning. Oliver’s quite brilliant mind could not help but take each element of information he was hearing and brick by brick add it to his own hypothesis.

  “It all went terribly wrong once I transferred the experiments to me, to see if the effect could be induced in someone without any predisposing indicators.”

  “And it worked? That’s incredible,” Oliver remarked.

  “Listen,” Dyer said suddenly.

  “I can’t hear anything.”

  “Precisely, the rain has stopped. Come outside with me, the sun will be coming up. I don’t want to wake Jenny.”

  Dyer stood and with Oliver they walked together through the hall, he unlocked the door and they stepped into the garden. The night sky had faded to a light blue as it welcomed daybreak. The horizon above the forest of the delta was singed with an orange stripe where the sun was beginning to rise.

  “Who told you I was here?” Dyer asked as they strolled across the lawn, hues of steam swirled around their feet as the warming of the ground evaporated the storm water that had fallen.

  “David Brown. He lives in Kennington.”

  “I thought it would be David. He definitely had the ability to regress but he was so mentally unstable I couldn’t work with him. There is only him left, I advised him it is safer to guard this knowledge as a precious secret. The Tempus Genesis effect is a dark power I fear Oliver. He will have mentioned my wife too then?”

  Oliver swallowed, “he seemed to suggest she died.”

  “Ha. David will have told you the rumour was I killed her,” Dyer put his head down, “which in one way is true.”

  Dyer walked ahead to the end of the garden, where a Buddhist pagoda had been erected.

  “These days I find great serenity in the teachings of Buddha,” Dyer said, “many journalists have tried to contact me, probe me about my experiments. Ultimately they are trying to print the story that is their version of the truth of my wife’s death. I resist because there is no sordid murder to be exposed. And the truth is too close to Tempus Genesis, which is one Pandora’s Box I intend to keep firmly shut.”

  “What happened Robert?” Oliver asked.

  Dyer and Oliver stood together bathed in half shadow, half rising sunlight.

  “Promise me this Oliver, after today you will create no further chapters in this area and only use any knowledge to care for Jenny.”

  “I can promise that, I only want to do what’s right by her.”

  “Good. I commenced some experiments with my four chaps who claimed to be able to regress. My four men, I noticed, had increased levels of the mix of enzymes that Manrinney found in the dead cult members, Thiamine was present in increased, inexplicable amounts. This concentration seemed higher during those times they were recounting past lives. I also observed, when scanning the brains of these four, as did Manrinney in his post mortem notes on the cult, enlarged cells in the hippocampo-mammillary circuit and in the thalamus.”

  Oliver studied this point, “They had enhanced cerebral physiology linked to memory?”

  “Good man. Exactly. It was fascinating, I knew there could be something groundbreaking in this, mind blowing even. I managed to recreate the traces of enzymes Manrinney and in turn I had found associated with regression. I synthetically reproduced the enzymes in my lab and Oliver this was the discovery of the millennium. The subjects were the genuine article, but could not turn it on at will. Certain elements had to be in place, relaxed environment, ambient room temperature, dimmed lighting. Conditions that I believe allowed the brain to secrete the right recipe of enzymes to trigger them accessing the past. When I introduced the synthetic thiamine based agent, intravenously, it switched them on, like that.”

  Dyer clicked his fingers to emphasise the point.

  “But Jenny seems to regress at will, switch it on and off, though she’s now struggling with the off button. She takes no substance to help her,” Oliver mused.

  “She is unique I suspect. My fatal mistake was to extend the experiment. I could not make full sense of their abilities as the subjects had preconditions. So I used myself as a control. I commenced regular injections of the agent, over several months with no effect. But then suddenly, wham it kicked in and I begun being able to regress. You would not believe the many wondrous things I have seen, experienced, ancient civilisations, moments in history, Tudor Britain, Victorian times. It was the greatest discovery man has never known Oliver. This wild roller coaster, popping in and out of different peoples past lives. Looking out from behind their eyes. The substance was, or should have been essentially harmless. I hypothesised that this capability to travel through time and witness history was genetically driven, imprinted in all of us, just waiting, to be unlocked. I never had a decent analogy for this, but with computers, well, you will understand this. Imagine memories are passed on from generation to generation, as genetic information. That your fathers’ fathers’ memories were encrypted in your DNA, just like Bytes of information on the Hard Disk of a computer. Just waiting for the right pathway to be introduced to unlock them.”

  Oliver was taken aback by this reveal, he thought it through, much he had anticipated. However he still had a question, “But memory is unique, it dies with individuals. Genes can’t collect or retain thoughts, experiences?”

  “Can’t they? Why not? Think of epigenetic expression, why can’t it extend to memory? Of course it does, the Cherokee Indians knew more about this than scientists Oliver. Think of the work by Lamarck, and Timbergen on Gull chicks. I had a look at the DNA of my four, I believe I found the strand of chromosome associated with regression, it had a chink in it. Now I am convinced that memory is passed on. Details encoded and downloaded onto genes,” Dyer started to walk around the garden.

  Dyer continued as Oliver moved to walk with him, “There is a valid school of thought that accepts personality traits are passed on genetically, anger arousal, pre-disposition to violence. Why not memory? A powerful strand of DNA material, that can be unlocked and travelled down, in three dimensions and in touch with all the senses. Paranormal, yet scientific. And at first I thought an element of control, choice even, over the power was possible. However, through a combination of events, my own DNA changed. Science is like this isn’t it, you discover so much, but know so little. The agent was creating growth in my brain, within the temporal lobes, the thalamus, the hippocampus-mammillary circuit was increasing in mass. I was having weekly CT scans, they showed the changes, but I also think the X-rays and the thiamine agent combined to well, my own DNA chinked. Irreversibly.”

  Dyer stopped at the top of the steps that led down to the canal where Jimmy’s boat remained tethered. He placed one hand on a stone pillar that marked the entrance to his property, as if to steady himself. A single tear rolled down his saddened face.

  “Robert?” Oliver asked placing a hand on his shoulder.

  “And I passed that faulty gene on to my daughter. It would seem she has suffered a lifetime because of it,” Dyer looked back towards the house.

  “Jenny?” Oliver was staggered at this revelation.

  “Yes, I received photographs of her up until her eighteenth birthday. From the adoption agency. I thought she may choose to look for me one day. She is more beautiful up close than any photograph.”

  “You’re wife Robert, how did she?”

  “During an experiment, it went horribly wrong and I lost her. Jenny lost both her mother and her father that day,” Dyer bowed his head and restrained himself from shedding tears.

  “I had stopped the experiments before Jenny was born, things were not going well. But from a very early age Jenny would go into a regressive state, I named it regression narcolepsy, at times for many hours. The hospitals diagnosed her with epilepsy. I knew different, she was unstable from infancy. So I started to experiment once more. I had lost the four men from the programme, I tried to find others, like Da
vid Brown but I couldn’t make satisfactory progress. I needed answers, a cure. Jenny’s mum became increasingly desperate, as did I. Then I made a fatal error of judgement when I recommenced the Tempus Genesis programme. Foolishly I agreed to Jenny’s mother participating, Julianne and I as the research subjects. She died one short week later.”

  Dyer stretched to his full height and breathed in. He set off walking stiffly towards the house. Oliver followed.

  “Take Jenny back to your homestay and get her comfortable, she will sleep for most of the day, when she wakes feed her well, she will have a great appetite.”

  Oliver walked quickly to keep up with Dyer’s determined pace.

  “But what shall I tell her about our conversation, about you?” Oliver asked.

  Dyer stopped and spoke instructively to Oliver, “You must tell her nothing, she came to Vietnam to find Professor Dyer the scientist and doctor, Jenny didn’t come looking for her father. Come back tonight, alone. We can talk more then. I need the day to think.”

  Oliver and the Professor walked back to the French House, with its ornate carved images glowing beautifully in the dawn light of the morning sun.