by Gary Braver
“Root beer?”
“Root beer?”
He slipped on his shoes, then stepped out from behind the screen. They were all staring at him. “You said root beer?” Sarah looked frozen in place.
“If you have any.”
“Any particular brand?” Dr. Luria asked.
Did they stock a whole variety in their fridge? “I don’t know … A and W.”
“Is A and W root beer something you usually drink?”
“No. Any brand’ll be fine. What’s the problem?”
Luria approached him. “Zack, please bear with me. When was the last time you drank an A and W root beer?”
Zack’s head still felt buzzed, as if insects festered in his skull. “Huh?”
“Please, just answer the question. When was the last time you had an A and W root beer?”
“I don’t know,” Zack began. “I can’t remember the last time. Maybe when I was a kid … fifteen years ago, if ever. Why? What’s this all about?”
“Do you live near any stores, billboards, fast-food places, with A and W signs visible?”
“No.”
“Can you recall anyone in the recent past mentioning A and W or ordering one anywhere?”
“No.”
Luria turned the laptop toward him. “Is the A and W logo an image that’s familiar to you?”
“I think so, but I can’t tell you what it looks like.”
“But you probably recognize it, right?”
“I suppose.”
“But it’s not fresh in your head.”
“No.” The dark expectancy in Luria’s eyes set off a small charge in him. “What’s this all about?”
Luria nodded to Sarah. But instead of leaving for the drink, she produced a stepladder and moved it to a tall cabinet against the wall. She climbed up and removed a laptop flattened open on the top. When she got down, she turned the screen toward him, and on it was a shot of a frothy mug of A&W root beer.
“I don’t get it,” he said.
They were still staring at him. Then Dr. Luria said, “I think, my friend, you had an out-of-the-body experience.”
36
“A what?”
“An out-of-the-body experience. Do you know what that is?”
“Like when people have accidents and watch paramedics give them CPR or whatever?”
“Precisely. Or in an operating room, patients will report floating over the scene.”
“What does that have to do with root beer?”
“We conducted a test while you were in suspension,” Luria said. “You couldn’t see it from where you were, nor could we. But on top of that cabinet we placed that laptop with its screen opened to the ceiling. On it was an image randomly selected from hundreds. We had no idea what it was until you awoke. Your first request was for root beer, preferably A and W—the very image the computer had selected, visible only from above.”
The cabinet was about seven feet tall with nothing visible on the top. The ceiling about three feet above that was made of nonreflective panels, so there was no way he could see even if he stuck his head out of the MRI tube. “Couldn’t it be just a coincidence?”
“Statistically very unlikely, since you said you can’t recall the last time you had that brand,” Luria said.
“What about those images from the other day? Maybe it was one of them and stuck in my mind. I woke up thirsty, and that was the first thing I connected with.”
“Except that in suspension, your brain cells were anesthetized from communicating with each other. Your memory bank was dormant.”
“You mean even if that logo was in my head, I wouldn’t have remembered it?”
“Precisely.”
The skin on his scalp tightened.
“Another thing,” said Luria. “The resolution power of this machine can record minuscule variations in cell-pattern activity from visual stimuli. Those brain scans we did the other day allowed us to identify discrete neuropatterns with specific images. You follow?”
“Kind of.”
“In other words, the machine correlated particular images—kittens, sunsets, exotic cars, root beer logos, family photos—with neuroelectrical activity at the cell level.”
“Think of it as a neurostatic fingerprinting,” said Sarah. “What we saw in your brain activity patterns specifically correlates with that pattern when the A and W logo was shown to you the other day.”
“So you can recognize particular emotional states of people?”
“Yes, modes of joy, anger, sadness—a full spectrum of emotional states.”
“But pictures of birds or sunsets don’t create emotional differences.”
“You wouldn’t think,” Stern said. “But actually they do, but on a micro level. The brain creates very subtle differences, ‘microemotional’ reactions to particular stimuli. With more personal images, like your pet, girlfriend, a family member, or favorite vacation spot, there are more pronounced neuroreactions. Eventually we can develop full neuroelectrical signatures of test subjects’ various states. And those help us interpret what goes on during NDEs.
“Also, some of these individual signature patterns coincide with those of other test patients. In fact, some of these patterns are standard and give us a boilerplate code.”
“But I thought you said the anesthetic stopped the electrical activity in my brain.”
“That’s right.”
“Then how did you detect electrical patterns in the scans?”
“That’s the key question,” Stern said. “There’s a biochemical explanation. Part of your brain didn’t respond to the anesthetic. Possibly there’s an undiscovered sodium channel that did not react to the tetrodotoxin but still kept you in a flatline state.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Well, that specific neuroelectrical pattern regarding the root beer logo could only have been there had you woken up and climbed out of the MRI and up a ladder to the cabinet.”
“But that didn’t happen,” Zack said.
“That’s right,” said Dr. Luria. “The other explanation is that in the state of suspension, your consciousness transcended your brain. If you will, your spirit left your body.”
Zack’s mind felt stunned. “But how…?”
Sarah came over to him with a bottle of water. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know. I’m having problems with what you’re telling me.”
“Of course. It’s a bit incredible to me also.”
“But how do you explain that?”
Dr. Luria’s face looked like a polished apple for the excitement she was trying to contain. “That’s also what we’re trying to determine and the reason why we’d like to run another test on you, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“You want to put me under again?”
“At another time. You need to rest up and let the sedative leave your system. We also need time to analyze all the data. But, if you’re willing to have another session, we’ll pay you another seven hundred and fifty dollars.”
The group looked at him with faces full of expectation. He felt his Armenian merchant gene kick in. “How about a bonus for good behavior?”
Luria smiled. “Would eight hundred make you feel better?”
“Not as much as a thousand.” He held his breath as Dr. Luria thought that over.
“You drive a hard bargain,” Luria said. “Okay, one thousand. And we’ll come up with a mutually convenient date.”
Yes!
Then Luria took Zack’s arm. “Zack, I want to remind you that nothing that occurred here tonight can be shared with anybody else. This is all still very confidential.”
“Of course,” Zack said, wondering how and when they’d reveal their findings. “How exactly are out-of-the-body experiences related to near-death experiences?”
“More than fifty percent of those having NDEs claim to have out-of-the-body experiences. They’re part of the same phenomenon.”
“What if it happens the next time?�
��
“Then it would all but eliminate coincidence,” she said, “and would confirm that you acquired information while in suspension—that your unconscious mind left your body.”
Zack made a move to follow Sarah to the exit. But Luria stopped him. “Zack, you may be interested in knowing that the heightened neuroactivity we recorded is located in the very sector associated with religious and spiritual experiences. It’s known as the ‘God lobe.’”
“The God lobe? But I’m not even religious.”
“And that’s what’s so interesting.”
Zack gathered his things. Then Sarah walked him to the door. “How are you doing?” Her eyes glowed warmly, and he liked the feel of her hand guiding him to the door. He was still a little shaky on his feet.
“A bit dazzled.”
“Of course. It is very exciting,” she said. “Oh,” she added, and handed him a check.
He slipped that into his pocket and followed Bruce to the car. The chauffeur got into the driver’s seat and closed the door. Before Zack got in, he turned to Sarah. “When you’re not looking for the afterlife, do you ever go out for beer and pizza?”
“Are you inviting me?”
“Yeah.”
“I’d be happy to.”
“How about Friday night?”
“Sounds fine.”
He got in the car. If this was his postcoma afterlife, he was beginning to enjoy it.
37
Roman entered La Dolce Vita restaurant feeling a little giddy. From what he surmised, Cola, Pomeroy, and company were conducting experiments that would have gotten them burned at the stake a few centuries back. Today, they hired Roman.
He ordered a seafood risotto and a glass of Chianti. His next assignment was a Roger Devereux, a research neuroscientist from Boston University School of Medicine. According to his scant information, the man was also a regular at this restaurant, coming in a couple of Monday evenings each month. He usually showed up for a seven o’clock reservation, window seat. It was six forty-five, and Roman had a table at the rear of the main room with a view of the empty reserved table by the window.
Through the windows, his eyes fell on a large Gothic church in red brick across the avenue. What a difference from the squat yellow brick structure of St. Luke’s on a side street off of Franklin Avenue in Hartford. He still remembered Father Infantino’s hellfire sermons about what would happen to sinners when they died—resurrected in body and mind and dumped into hell to suffer hideous punishment forever without the relief of death. The good father had claimed that there was a punishment tailor-made for every kind of sinner. Those who blasphemed God would be hanged by their tongues. Adulterers would have liquid iron poured on their genitals. Liars would be forced to chew their tongues while vultures pecked out their eyes. Women who had abortions would be made to wallow in excrement up to their chins. Murderers would be cast into pits of poisonous snakes. Those who turned their backs on God would be impaled on spits and roasted over blazing fires. And these torments would go on for eternity.
“And how long is eternity?” Father Infantino would howl. “Imagine a mountain thirty thousand feet high and that every ten thousand years a giant bird would fly to the top and rub its beak but once on the rocky peak. How long would it take before that wore the mountain to its base? Not a billionth of the time you’d burn in hell. And the awful magic of hell was that you wouldn’t die. You wouldn’t burn up—just suffer forever and ever, torment without end.”
Even as a boy, Roman didn’t understand how anyone could believe in a God who’d torture His disobedient children for all eternity. Wasn’t God supposed to be good and loving and all-forgiving? Or was He such a raging sadist? If so, it was hard not to question His moral integrity. Also, how did Father Infantino know that hell was like this? Was that stuff really in the Bible? And wasn’t the Bible written by a bunch of old guys thousands of years ago? Even if hell was really like that, why bother? Why not wipe out all of it? Blotto. Once you’re dead, you’re dead. No second chance, no hellfire. Hell was just not going to heaven where the good guys went.
Some years later, Roman would tell himself that Father Infantino’s rants were the product of a sexually frustrated middle-aged guy who couldn’t find a real job and who got off scaring the shit out of little kids. Probably diddled a few behind the altar.
But over the last few weeks, Roman began reexamining the possibilities beneath all the thunder. And what he had concluded was that there was a God after all. He wasn’t sure that heaven was a city of gold and precious stones, or if God sat in a throne of light, or that you got to hang out with your dead relatives, saints, and Jesus himself for eternity. But he had come to believe that life did go on. And for some reason, these doctors were in league with Satan. So what did he have to lose by knocking them off? Nothing. And maybe an eternity to gain.
A little before seven, in walked a guy who matched the cell phone photo of Roger Devereux. He looked less like a professor of neurology at BU and more like someone behind the counter at Ace Hardware. He was short, chubby, and bald and was stuffed into a too tight blue blazer and blue shirt. He entered alone and was led to a window table. After maybe ten minutes, a woman appeared in the entrance and joined him. Devereux’s wife, a former lab associate.
Roman had taken a table where he could not be seen by the Devereux, nor near the restrooms should either need one. He ate slowly and had a second cup of decaf while the couple finished their meal and left. Roman paid the check and followed the Devereux, who lived in a high-rise condo complex a few blocks from the restaurant. He kept his distance and waited for them to take the elevator to the fourteenth floor. Then fifteen minutes later, he rang the intercom for 1404. A male voice answered. “Dr. Devereux?”
“Yes.”
“My name is John Farley. I’m from the Boston office of the FBI, and I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“FBI? What’s this all about?”
“Well, I’d rather explain in person. If you’d like, we could talk down here or go someplace else, or I could come up.”
“I’ll be right down.”
“Fine.” The guy was smart. A minute later, he came down, still dressed in chinos and blue shirt. He opened the security door and stepped into the foyer. Roman smiled and flashed a phony photo badge fabricated a few years ago on another case. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but we’d like to talk to you about a former colleague of yours, LeAnn Cola.”
“LeAnn? What about her?”
Roman looked around the bleak entryway. “It’s a rather sensitive matter, and I’d rather not do it here. We could go find a coffee shop if you’d like.”
Devereux studied Roman’s sincere blue eyes. “No, come on up.”
“Really, there’s no need to disturb your family.”
“No, that’s fine.” And he unlocked the security door and led them to the elevator.
Hook, line, and sinker, thought Roman as they stepped into the elevator.
Nothing was said in the ride up, and at the floor Devereux unlocked his condo door. “Ruth, we have a guest,” he called out.
The wife appeared, and Devereux introduced Roman, who flashed his badge again and apologized for the intrusion. “Our office is investigating the death of Dr. LeAnn Cola,” Roman said, then expressed condolences for the death of their friend.
Mrs. Devereux asked if he’d like coffee or something else to drink, and Roman politely refused. Then she disappeared into the other rooms, leaving him and Devereux on facing armchairs. To Roman’s right was a wall of built-in dark-wood shelves with books and photographs, including a large one of a woman and two young children. Roman nodded at the photo. “Beautiful children.”
“Thanks. My daughter and her kids.”
“Again, I’m sorry about the death of your associate.” Devereux thanked him as Roman reached into his briefcase by his feet and extracted a clipboard pad. “Does the name Thomas Pomeroy mean anything to you?”
Devereux’s face clouded
over. “Yes, Tom was a friend and colleague.”
“You know that he died recently also.”
“Yes.”
“How did you know them?”
Devereux hesitated for a moment. “I worked with them.”
“Well, we have reason to believe that your colleagues didn’t die by accident or natural causes as reported but were murdered.”
“Murdered?”
“Yes. That their deaths were staged to appear like a heart attack and gas leak.”
“That’s awful. Who would do such a thing? And why?”
“That’s what we’re hoping to learn.” Then, with a woeful expression, Roman added, “We think the deaths are connected to some research they were doing. I’m sorry to say that we picked up intelligence of a contract on your own life.”
“What?”
“Yes, someone wants you dead, and I’m hoping you’ll give me information that could help us prevent that.”
Devereux’s mouth went slack. “What?”
“Our sources tell us that the contracts may have come from somewhere in the Catholic Church, believe it or not.”
“The Catholic Church?”
Hearing the squeal in Devereux’s voice, the wife came out of a back room in her bathrobe. “Is everything okay?”
“Tom Pomeroy and LeAnn Cola were murdered,” Devereux announced.
“What?”
“Mrs. Devereux, I’m afraid that’s true and that your husband’s life is in danger, maybe your own. And we think it has to do with the research you all worked on.” Before either of them could catch their breath, Roman turned to Devereux. “I’m wondering if you could tell me about that project, because I think it’ll help prevent more killings.” Then he turned to the wife. “And Mrs. Devereux, please join us, since I understand you assisted.”
In shock, the woman lowered herself onto the sofa. “We were doing research on sleep, what happens in the brain at various states,” Devereux said.
“Sleep?”
“The project was confidential by contract, but we worked on imaging software.”
“Can you tell me a little more, like why someone would want to stop you?”
