by Jeremy Bates
“Come on, professor,” she said playfully. “I mean, I’m not drunk tonight. I’ll behave.”
“This is not a good time, Penny,” he repeated meaningfully.
Comprehension flickered in her eyes, and she peered into the apartment, drawing a connection between the bottle of wine on the kitchen island, the mood lighting, and the background music.
Her face darkened.
“Go home,” he added gently. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
For a terrible moment Wallis thought Penny might burst into tears, or worse, throw some sort of scorned lover’s temper-tantrum. Thankfully, she merely hurried down the stairs.
Badly shaken, he returned to the deck. Brook had not touched any more of her food and was standing by the railing that bordered the deck, gazing out at the night.
“It was my assistant from school,” he explained. “She wanted to update me on the experiment.”
Brook turned. “At close to midnight?”
Wallis scratched his head. “Look, it’s bizarre. I don’t really know what to make of it.”
“She knows where you live?”
“I’m baffled, Brook. I swear, she’s never been by before, and there’s nothing going on between us.” He couldn’t believe he was speaking these words, feeding Brook such a clichéd defense, but he nevertheless added: “She’s my assistant, for Christ’s sake! She’s twenty-one.”
“I think I should go,” Brook said tightly.
“Brook, no—hold on! Look, she has a crush on me, okay? That I know. She’s made it pretty clear. But there’s nothing between us! I swear to you, nothing!”
Brook studied him for a long moment, then, in a disconcertingly blasé tone, she said, “Okay, Roy. I believe you. I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t think you’re telling me everything, but I believe you’re not romantically involved with this assistant of yours. Still, I can’t stay tonight. I’m sorry.”
She marched past him and went inside. Wallis followed, at a loss for what to say or do to right the situation.
“Brook…” he said lamely when she opened the front door to leave.
She didn’t reply. The door swung shut behind her.
After a long moment of thoughtful silence, Wallis returned to the deck to finish his dinner—and smashed his pasta-laden dish on the slate tiles, followed shortly by his Dark ‘n’ Stormy.
Day 11
Thursday, June 7, 2018
Dr. Roy Wallis did not bring Penny Park a green tea the following morning. He set his vanilla latte on the desk and got straight to business. “How were they?” he asked, looking through the viewing window. Chad sat on the workout bench, slumped forward, his head held in his hands. Sharon was nowhere to be seen.
“Is Sharon in the bathroom?” he inquired.
“Yup,” Penny said, not looking at him. She was wearing a denim jacket over some sort of multi-colored court jester’s shirt. Jovial, however, she was not. More like royally pissed.
Dr. Wallis didn’t appreciate the attitude. He’d done nothing wrong the night before. She was the one who’d tracked down where he lived and busted up his date.
“How long has she been in there?” he asked.
“A couple hours.”
“A couple hours?”
“They’re bad,” Penny said. “Like, really bad. Way worse than yesterday.” She finally glanced up at him, but instead of the anger he’d expected to find in her eyes, there was only concern. “We made them sick, professor,” she continued. “And I think we need to end the experiment.”
Dr. Wallis straightened in shock. “End it? Penny, we can’t end—”
She cut him off. “These last few days, I haven’t been comfortable with the experiment. I’ve been worried about Chad and Shaz. Now I’m really worried about them. What we’re doing, stealing their sleep, it isn’t right. You said this yourself—”
“The experiment was approved by the university’s Institutional Review Board. Chad and Sharon both provided written informed consent. Most importantly, they’ve displayed no willingness to end—”
“Stop it!” Penny cried. “Stop talking and listen to me, okay? Chad and Shaz are not well. Look at them! Watch them! See for yourself.”
◆◆◆
Dr. Wallis and Penny Park observed the two Australians for the next twenty minutes. Chad remained on the weight bench holding his head in his hands. When Wallis coaxed him into conversation, his replies were curt and slurred, and he complained of dizziness, nausea, and the “fucker of all fucking headaches.” When Sharon returned from the bathroom, she appeared gaunt, clammy, and unsteady on her feet. She curled into a ball on her bed and wrapped her arms around her knees in an effort to stop her body from trembling. She refused to speak at all.
Dr. Wallis tried once more. “Sharon?” he said. “I would like to perform another EEG. Would that be acceptable?”
When she didn’t reply, he got up and rolled the metal cart with the EEG equipment into the sleep laboratory.
Neither Australian paid him any attention.
He stopped next to Sharon’s bed.
“Sharon?” he said in a clinical voice. “Open your eyes please.”
She cracked them open. They were red and watery. “What?”
“Remember this machine?”
She looked at the EEG equipment. “No.”
“We used it a few days ago.”
“What does it do?”
“It will help me find out what’s bothering you. Sit up please.”
She didn’t respond for a long moment. Then slowly, like an old woman suffering osteoarthritis, she sat up, shoulders rolled forward.
“I’m going to place this on your head now,” he said, picking up the electrode headband. After smearing some gel on her forehead, he slid the headband in place so the smooth side of the metal discs were in contact with her scalp, and the adhesive ground patch was behind her ear. “We’re all set. You can lean back against the bed’s headboard, if you’d like?”
She only closed her eyes.
Dr. Wallis adjusted the photic stimulator so the lamp was directed at Sharon’s face, flicked on the amplifier, and began recording her brainwaves.
◆◆◆
While Penny Park watched Dr. Wallis perform the EEG on Sharon, the questions that had consumed her thoughts all morning returned:
Who was that woman he’d been with last night? Is she prettier than me? Is she some big-shot professor too? Are they dating? Can I compete?
Penny totally regretted going to the professor’s house last night. She’d made such a fool of herself. She cringed each time she recalled the disapproving look in his eyes when he found her on his doorstep, and how he’d sent her home like she was nothing but a silly little schoolgirl.
She was furious with him for making her feel as lousy and worthless as she did. She wanted to hurt him the way he’d hurt her, which was why she’d taken so much satisfaction in telling him the Sleep Experiment had to end. The dismay on his face had been priceless! But she was not motivated to end the experiment by her embarrassment and jealousy alone.
Sharon and Chad really were sick, and they really did need medical attention.
When Penny had taken over for Guru at six a.m., the Australians were their normal sedentary selves. By midmorning, however, Sharon began sweating and shivering, while Chad swatted at invisible objects and mumbling gibberish. By noon Sharon had curled into a fetal position on her bed where she rocked and moaned and sobbed, and Chad could hardly stand for a few minutes without losing his balance and falling over, looking for all the world like a drunk after an all-night binge.
Penny had nearly called Dr. Wallis then, to tell him about the Australians’ rapid decline in health, but her pride did not allow this. She didn’t want to show weakness. She didn’t want him to view her once again as a silly little schoolgirl, for despite her anger with him, she still craved his respect.
So she stuck out the last two hours on her own, checking her wristwatch ev
ery ten minutes, silently urging the hands to move faster.
Dr. Wallis, Penny noticed now, was removing the electrodes from Sharon’s head.
The EEG test was done.
Penny knew the professor was going to try to spin his findings in the best possible light and insist everything was okey-dokey. She would like to believe this, because deep down she really didn’t want the Sleep Experiment to end, as that would mean her relationship with Dr. Wallis, however rocky, would end also.
But what she wanted didn’t matter anymore.
It’s not about me, she told herself, realizing how selfishly she’d been behaving lately. It’s about Chad and Shaz. It’s about doing what’s right for them.
◆◆◆
“The electrical activity in Sharon’s brain is exceedingly abnormal,” Dr. Wallis admitted to Penny when he returned to the observation room. “It’s similar to what you might expect to observe in someone with epilepsy, and very severe epilepsy at that, multiple seizures a day.”
“See!” Penny said, appearing vindicated. “She’s sick! Something’s not right in her brain. She needs to see a doctor…a medical doctor.”
“Bah!” Wallis said, brushing these concerns aside with a wave. “You’re overreacting.”
Penny seemed taken aback. “You’re not going to do anything to help them?”
“What can we do right now, Penny?”
“For starters, professor, we shut off the gas and take them to the hospital.”
Wallis blinked in surprise. “You were serious about wanting to end the experiment?” He shook his head vigorously. “Where is the scientist in you, Penny? We do not shy away from the unknown; we embrace it.”
“Not at the expense of two people’s health, professor.”
“Penny, Penny, Penny,” he said, alarmed at her flip of allegiance to him. “Does this newfound moral compass of yours…have something to do with last night?”
“No! God! They’re sick in there!”
“They may be, but simply letting Chad and Sharon out of the sleep laboratory is no magic solution, I’m afraid. They won’t instantly and miraculously recover. In fact, their symptoms may worsen.”
Penny frowned. “What do you mean? You don’t know for certain? The stimulant gas, professor…you’ve tested it before, right?”
“Of course I have, Penny. Extensively. On mice.”
“On mice? Only mice? And what happened to the mice?”
“They didn’t sleep, naturally,” he told her. “And then, unfortunately, they died.”
“Died!” she cried, shooting to her feet.
“Penny, calm down.”
“But what if Chad and Shaz die?”
“Humans aren’t mice, Penny! They’ll be fine. I’ll reduce the amount of gas being vented into the room each day,” he lied, giving her a chance to come back to his team. “We’ll wean them off it during the last week of the experiment.”
“No! No way, professor! This has to end.” She took her phone from her pocket.
“Who are you calling?” he demanded.
“Guru.”
“Guru? Why?”
“So he can talk some sense into you—”
Dr. Wallis grabbed her phone and stuck it in his blazer pocket, steeling his nerves for what he now was convinced had to be done. Penny had left him little choice. Her mind was set in opposition to him. She could no longer be trusted to do his bidding and keep her mouth shut. She had become an existential threat to the experiment. “You’re not calling Guru, Penny,” he said, “so stop being such a melodramatic twat.”
Penny stiffened as if he’d slapped her. The cloudy confusion and hurt in her eyes quickly focused into sharp fear as she read his intention on his face.
“Professor…?” she said, back-stepping toward the door.
“Why couldn’t you have been a good girl, Penny? Why couldn’t you have simply nodded your head and gone along with me, Penny? I don’t want to do this. I really don’t.”
“Professor…?” Her back bumped into the door. She turned—fast. Got the door open, but that was all before Wallis grabbed her from behind and swung her about. She cried out in alarm. He shoved her to the floor and fell on top of her.
She screamed.
Dr. Wallis covered her mouth with one hand. The scream became a strangled muffle. She writhed back and forth beneath him and swatted his sides with her hands. He worked his weight forward until his knees pinned her biceps to the floor. Tears smarted her eyes and her body shuddered as she sobbed into his palm. With his free hand, he pinched her nostrils closed.
Her eyes bulged. She went wild, bucking her hips and thrashing her head from side to side and biting his skin.
Wallis didn’t watch her die. He wasn’t a sick man. He was an ambitious man, and he couldn’t allow anybody to sabotage his life’s work.
Not when I’m so close to uncovering the truth behind the human condition.
So he lowered his lips to her ear and told her in a soothing tone that her suffering would soon be over, that she would no longer feel any pain, that she would be at peace.
Wallis continued telling Penny Park this for a good minute after she had stopped moving.
◆◆◆
At nine thirty p.m. Dr. Roy Wallis left the observation room and waited out front Tolman Hall for Guru to arrive for his ten o’clock shift. Swollen storm clouds robbed the night sky of the moon and stars. Rain fell in a steady drizzle, and a nippy wind rustled the wet leaves of the nearby trees. Dr. Wallis chained smoked and tried not to think too much about Penny, or the work ahead of him to dispose of her body. When he spotted Guru approaching through the dark, he crushed out the smoke beneath his heel and met the Indian in the middle of the breezeway.
“Professor?” Guru said, surprised to see him outside. “What are you doing out here?”
“Nice night, isn’t it?” Wallis said. “I like it when it rains. Everything is clean and fresh.”
“I like rain too, but not so much when I have to walk through it.”
“At least you don’t have to worry about it messing with your do anymore.”
“That is true, professor. I continue to reap the rewards of my transformation.”
“You don’t have a car?”
“I do not even have a driver’s license. Should we go inside? It is rather chilly.”
“Here’s the thing,” Wallis said, stroking his beard. “I’m not sure the best way to break this to you, buddy, so I’ll just spit it out. The Sleep Experiment is over.”
Guru’s eyebrows arched. “Over? Did something happen to—”
“The Australians are fine. But since your last shift their conditions deteriorated demonstrably, and I decided, in the interest of their health, to take them off the gas.”
Guru’s shoulders slumped as he digested this information. He looked like a lost puppy dog that had been kicked in the side. “I should have expected this. Their health had been declining for days. Have they begun to reacclimatize?”
“They’re still in the basement. Once I turned off the gas, and the air in the sleep laboratory approximated the ambient air in the building, they quickly fell asleep in their beds. I suspect when they wake sometime tomorrow their symptoms will have decreased significantly, if not have resolved all together.”
Guru sighed. “Well, this is unfortunate. I was enjoying assisting with the experiment very much. I am sad it has come to a premature end.”
“Look on the bright side, my man. The experiment lasted eleven days. We tied the Guinness Record. That should be something to celebrate.” Dr. Wallis clapped him on the shoulder. “Your contribution has been greatly appreciated. Go enjoy the rest of your summer. Of course, you’ll be compensated for the full twenty-one days, so don’t worry about that. Just email me your bank details, and I’ll wire the money tomorrow.”
“You are too generous, professor.” Guru stuck out his hand awkwardly. “I must thank you for this experience. I will not forget it.”
Dr. Wall
is shook. “I hope to see you in a few of my classes next semester.”
Guru frowned when he noticed the compression bandage wrapped around Wallis’ right hand, which hid the teeth marks on his palm.
“Spilled some hot coffee on it,” Wallis said by way of explanation. “Nothing to worry about. You take care now.”
Day 12
Friday, June 8
Dr. Roy Wallis spent the next several hours observing the Australians and recording notes as usual. Cloistering himself in the small observation room 24/7 for the foreseeable future was not going to be ideal, but he would put up with the discomfort in the name of his research. He would purchase an inflatable mattress to sleep on, and he would eat most of his meals at the nearby cafés and restaurants in downtown Berkeley. He would have to return home to shower and shave, but that shouldn’t cause any problems. The Australians had displayed no desire to leave the sleep laboratory. All would be fine.
At two o’clock in the morning, Wallis walked through the wet night to his car and parked it out front Tolman Hall. He returned to the empty basement room where he had stored Penny’s body and carried it under the cover of darkness to his car, where he laid it across the tiny backseat.
Slipping behind the wheel, he pressed the ignition button and spent some time plugging his destination into the GPS system. A minute later he was about to put the transmission in gear when a knock on his window made him jump. He peered out to see the round face of campus police officer Roger Henn. He was smiling beneath his waxed Monopoly Man mustache, so Dr. Wallis didn’t think he’d seen Penny’s body. Moreover, the Audi TT was a two-door coupe, and the backside windows were little more than tiny triangles, which made it very difficult to see into the backseat. Still, Wallis played it safe and got out of the car.
“Rodge, my man,” he said, digging his cigarettes from his pocket and leading the bigger man away from the car.
“How ya doing, doc?” Roger Henn said. His ball cap—stamped with POLICE: University of California—was pulled low over his forehead, the bill keeping his bright blue eyes in shadows. He had the ruddy cheeks and nose of a seasoned drinker, and he smelled strongly of spearmint gum.
