“Why are we here?” he asked. “Are we going to play a therapeutic game of ping-pong?”
“I wanted you to meet some of our other patients,” said Dr. Holst.
“Subjects, you mean,” said Benjamin.
“I’d ask you to avoid that word in here,” said Dr. Holst. “As far as those three children are concerned, they are patients.”
“Because you don’t want to upset them with the truth?”
“Upsetting them is the least of my worries. Come, let me introduce you.”
Dr. Holst led Benjamin to the group. The three stopped talking and looked up as he approached.
“Benjamin, I’d like you to meet Miguel, Thomas and Marina. Children, this is Benjamin. He’s a new patient here.”
“Hello,” said Benjamin.
The three exchanged confused glances, and one of the boys murmured something to the others that Benjamin didn’t catch.
“Children, don’t be rude,” said Dr. Holst. “Say hello to Benjamin.”
“Hello,” the children said.
“Much better,” said Dr. Holst, with a smile. “We’ll leave you alone now. I was just showing Benjamin around.” He took Benjamin’s arm and escorted him away from the group.
“Do they know me?” Benjamin asked, as they made their way to the door.
“Why do you ask?” said Dr. Holst.
“I just… got the impression they recognized me.”
Dr. Holst opened the door and they began walking back toward his office. “They’ve met you before,” he said, “but you wouldn’t remember them, of course.”
“Is that all of them? All of your subjects?”
“Besides you, you mean?”
“Well, yes.”
“Yes. Estefan, Miguel, Thomas, Marina and you. Why, did you expect more?”
Benjamin shrugged. They had reached Dr. Holst’s office, and he followed Holst inside and they sat down.
“Why did you take me to meet those kids?” Benjamin asked.
“Why do you think?” asked Dr. Holst.
“I don’t know!” cried Benjamin. “Just tell me what the fuck is going on!”
“Quantos años tienes?” asked Dr. Holst.
“I don’t speak Spanish,” Benjamin grumbled.
“Neither does Estefan,” said Dr. Holst. “I’m lucky you speak English.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“The mind has amazing coping mechanisms,” Dr. Holst mused. “People can convince themselves of just about anything. How old are you, Benjamin?”
“I told you. I’m fifty-eight.”
“You were born in 1942. It’s currently 1950. How old are you? Quantos años tienes?”
“I’m done with this,” said Benjamin, getting out of his chair. “I’m going back to my room.”
Dr. Holst unbuttoned his right sleeve, rolled it up, and planted his elbow on the desk. “Arm-wrestle me,” he said.
“You’ve lost your fucking mind.”
“Arm-wrestle me,” said Dr. Holst again. “Beat me and I’ll let you go back to your room. Hell, I’ll discharge you. You can be a free man, if you think you can handle it.”
“I’m leaving,” said Benjamin, walking to the door.
“The hell you are,” said Dr. Holst. “You walk out that door and it’ll take me thirty seconds to have security subdue you and drag you right back in here. Beat me at arm-wrestling, and I’ll call off the dogs.”
Benjamin exhaled angrily. He’d had enough of Dr. Holst’s mind games. All he wanted to do is go home. But where was home? If it was really 1950, then the place he thought of as home wouldn’t exist yet. He wondered what would happen if he showed up on his parents’ doorstep. Would they be relieved to see him? Would he meet another of himself? There were no answers. Nothing made sense. He needed psychiatric help, but he couldn’t trust Dr. Holst to help him.
Benjamin sat down, rolled up his sleeve, and leaned over the table. Even at fifty-eight, he was stronger than most men. Dr. Holst was a slightly built man in a sedentary occupation. Benjamin didn’t think he’d have much trouble beating him. The question was whether Holst would live up to his promise when he did.
Dr. Holst smiled and clasped Benjamin’s hand in his. Benjamin’s hand practically disappeared in Holst’s grip; Benjamin hadn’t noticed before how massive the man’s hands were. Holst began to exert pressure, and Benjamin leaned into it. A heartbeat later, Holst slammed the back of Benjamin’s hand against his desk. Benjamin was still trying to figure out how this was possible when Holst encircled Benjamin’s wrist with his thumb and forefinger and pulled Benjamin’s hand over the desk toward him, palm up.
“You see this?” he said, squeezing Benjamin’s hand like a vise. “This is your hand.” He held out his own left hand. “Compare it to mine.”
“Let go,” growled Benjamin, struggling against Holst’s impossibly strong grip.
“Look at my hand,” Holst said. Benjamin looked away. “Look at it!” Holst cried.
“Let go of my arm!” screamed Benjamin. “Let it go!”
His voice sounded strange. Small and high-pitched. He heard the echo of Jessica’s voice: Let it go, Dad.
Holst released him, and Benjamin fell back into his chair. He stared at the red mark on his wrist where Holst had held him, turning his hand over slowly as if seeing it for the first time. A small, nearly hairless hand, unscarred and unwrinkled.
He heard a child’s laughter, and realized it was his own. The laughter turned to sobs. He blinked away the tears, wiping his face with his sleeve.
“No,” he murmured, staring at his hands. “This isn’t possible.” He was struck again by the strangeness of his own voice. “My name is Benjamin Stone. I’m fifty-eight years old.” But as he said it, his own voice mocked him.
“I’m afraid you aren’t,” said Holst. “I understand this is quite a shock.”
Benjamin laughed again at the understated absurdity of Holst’s comment, and again his voice betrayed him. The laughter turned to screams. At some point, he became aware that he was lying on carpet, with many hands clutching at him. A bee stung his arm, and everything went black.
Chapter Twenty-six
Benjamin awoke in the same bed, with gray light still filtering through the window. Had he slept the night? He had no way of knowing how much time had passed. If he had dreamed, he wasn’t aware of it. He felt groggy from the sedative.
He found himself staring again at his hands. They stubbornly remained small, soft, unscarred, and virtually hairless. That part hadn’t been a dream. Either that, or he was still dreaming now; it was becoming almost impossible to tell. His life had become an endless series of disconnected delusions, some of which seemed to be anchored to an underlying reality. He found himself laughing, and was again arrested by the strangeness of the sound.
Had it always sounded like that? Had he always been in this strange body? No. It was impossible. He had fifty-eight years of memories as Benjamin Stone. He had lived through the Beatles, the Moon Landing, the Vietnam War, Reaganomics, the Persian Gulf War. He had worked for thirty years as a cop in Portland, investigated hundreds of crimes. He had gotten married, had a daughter, watched his wife succumb to cancer. All of that was real. It had to be.
And yet, here he was, in this body, fifty years in the past. His mind had tried to deny it, like the woman who didn’t recognize her own left arm, but something Holst said had forced him to see the truth. No, it wasn’t what Holst had said. It was Jessica telling him to let it go. He realized now that was when the walls he’d assembled around his psyche had begun to crumble. His own subconscious had been trying to tell him the truth, through his visions.
The only possible answer stared him in the face: he wasn’t a “special case,” as Dr. Holst had claimed. He was just another subject. A child who had developed the ability to see the future, and had been brought to this hospital to serve the interests of GLARE. That’s what Holst had been trying to show him by taking him to meet the o
ther subjects. They were all children. And not only that, but one was missing: Felipe. “Because I’m Felipe,” he said aloud. The high pitch of his voice jarred him again, but the words themselves carried no meaning. He had no memory of being Felipe. He occupied Felipe’s body, but he remained Benjamin Stone. He had distinct memories of his childhood—living in the old farm house in the middle of his father’s apricot orchard, just outside of Sunnyview. Despite the incontrovertible physical evidence, he couldn’t make himself believe that he was Felipe Sanz.
No, he was to Felipe Sanz what that poor German woman was to Estefan: a host for the subject’s consciousness. Somehow, like that woman, he had been pulled back through time into the subject’s body. And if Estefan was any indication, he’d spend the rest of his life this way. Would it drive him insane, as it had that woman? Had it already? Was there any hope for him to live anything like a normal life? Even if he were ever released from this institution, he was physically and legally an eight-year-old child. He’d be sent to live with Felipe’s family, to grow up all over again, with a family that in all likelihood barely spoke English. Jesus Christ, he’d have to go through puberty again. The whole thing was absurd. And he hadn’t even begun to consider what had happened to Felipe. Had Felipe awoken one morning to find himself in the body of 58-year-old Benjamin Stone? Was he even now wandering around modern Sunnyview, even more baffled and terrified than Benjamin was? It was like a time-traveling version of that silly movie where the mother and daughter changed places: too ridiculous for him to take seriously. No, he couldn’t worry about what had happened to Felipe. He had to concentrate on the here and now. How long had he been in this hospital? The whole time he had thought he was in Sunnyview in the year 2000, had he really been here?
But that was the wrong way to think about it. He hadn’t been in the year 2000 and the year 1950 simultaneously. He had lived in the year 2000, and then his consciousness had been dragged back to the past. The process hadn’t been instantaneous; he’d gradually become more and more aware of the past intruding on the future. And in 1950, Felipe had gradually lost more and more of his identity to Benjamin. And now the transition was apparently complete. He, Benjamin Stone, was fully inhabiting Felipe Sanz’s body. He was struck anew by the absurdity of Felipe awakening in the body of a 58-year-old man in the year 2000. No, it was too bizarre to contemplate. He had enough weirdness to deal with in 1950.
He got out of bed and made his way to the bathroom to urinate. He did his best to mentally prepare himself for this activity, but there was really no way to prepare oneself for suddenly waking up with prepubescent genitalia. At least, he found himself thinking, Felipe hadn’t been in the throes of puberty at the time Benjamin took over his body. The hormonal surges on top of everything else would surely have driven Benjamin mad.
After finishing this business, he splashed some water on his face, trying to clear the fuzzy residue of the sedative from his mind. He dried his face and took several long, deep breaths. When he felt reasonably steady, he returned to his room and tried the door to the hall. It was locked from the outside. He considered banging on it, but wasn’t sure there was any point. In an institution like this, the staff would be inured to the sound of maniacs pounding on doors, screaming to be let out.
He went to the window and spent some time trying to discern objects through the frosted glass, but it was hopeless. Somewhere beyond what he experienced was a real world populated by real people going about their daily lives, but Benjamin could only imagine that world, based on the hazy shapes that reached his eyes. Trapped in this room, there was no way to know what was real.
After some time, the nurse came to check on him. “Benjamin?” she said, much the same way she had the last time. He realized now that she hadn’t simply been checking whether he was awake; she was checking what name he would respond to. He apparently responded appropriately, because she made a note on her clipboard and asked him to follow her down the hall. This time, she took him to an observation room where she took his blood pressure, checked his irises, and performed a number of other mundane tests that presumably were designed either to determine whether the sedative had left his system or whether he could respond to simple commands without collapsing in a hysterical episode. Evidently he checked out okay, because after making a few more notes, she led him back down the hall to Holst’s office.
“Benjamin,” said Holst, as Benjamin took a seat across from him once again. “How are you feeling?”
Benjamin wanted to laugh, but bit his lip. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep laughter from morphing into hysterical sobs. He took a deep breath. “I’m fine,” he said. “Considering.” Considering that I’m a grown man who has been sucked fifty years back through time into the body of an eight-year-old.
“Any dreams last night?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” said Benjamin. He wondered if he would ever dream again. What would he see if he did? Who would he be in the dreams?
“Do you recall our conversation yesterday?”
“Yes,”
“Good,” said Holst. “That’s progress.”
“Is it,” said Benjamin flatly. “You consider it progress that I’m stuck here permanently. “In Felipe’s body. I am stuck here, right?”
Holst hesitated a moment, but evidently decided that the direct approach was warranted. “Yes. We’re not certain yet if the phenomenon is permanent. A reconciliation between the two personalities may be possible.” But Benjamin thought of Estefan Lopez, who was still not himself, fifty years later.
“What do you mean, a reconciliation?”
“You have to find a way to reconcile the Benjamin Stone personality with the Felipe Sanz personality. It isn’t going to be easy, but I can help you, if you let me.”
“I don’t understand,” said Benjamin. “I’m Benjamin Stone. Felipe’s personality is gone. There’s no ‘reconciliation’ going on. It’s just me stuck in this strange body.”
“I need you to understand something,” said Holst. “You’ve made a breakthrough. You’ve seen through one delusion. But it’s important that you not fall victim to another.”
Benjamin stared at his hands, Holst’s words barely penetrating. “What are you talking about?” he asked after a moment. “I finally understand what is happening to me. I’ve been pulled back through time. Just like Estefan. The person Estefan has become, I mean.”
“No,” said Holst.
“Don’t try to bullshit me, Holst,” asked Benjamin. “What is happening to me is exactly what happened to Estefan.”
“You’ve seen someone whose mind has been taken over by an alternate personality,” said Holst. “But you’re misinterpreting the nature of the phenomenon. Those personalities… they’re not people who exist outside of the respective subjects. They’re constructs. Figments of the subjects’ imagination.”
Benjamin laughed. “Estefan is imagining that he’s an elderly woman who can only speak German? That’s quite an imagination.”
“Yes,” Holst said. “It is. An imagination orders of magnitudes more powerful than normal. It takes a very special sort of brain to imagine on such a scale. A child’s brain that has been altered to have certain natural conceptual barriers removed.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that Benjamin Stone is not a distinct person, separate from Felipe Sanz. He is a creation of Felipe’s unconscious mind.”
Benjamin could hardly believe what he was hearing. “So I’m not really Benjamin Stone?” he said incredulously. “I’m a figment of Felipe’s imagination?”
“Benjamin Stone is a construct,” said Holst, softly but firmly. “A device Felipe created to allow his brain to make sense of his perceptions. Understand that I’m not saying that Benjamin Stone isn’t real. In a sense, he’s as real as I am. And you may very well continue to think of yourself as Benjamin Stone for some time. Felipe’s original personality will probably never fully return. But we are all ultimately the product of our memori
es, and many of your memories are false. The product of Felipe’s imagination.”
“My memories are real,” Benjamin insisted. “I’ve been pulled back here, into this body, just like Estefan. Estefan projected his mind into the future, into someone else’s body,” said Benjamin. “That person somehow came back instead of him. The same thing happened to Felipe. To me.” As he said it aloud, he realized how insane it sounded. Either he was making a huge leap toward sanity, or he was on the verge of losing himself completely.
“That isn’t what happened,” said Dr. Holst. “Felipe didn’t project himself forward into Benjamin Stone’s body. Felipe constructed a fictional reality and placed himself into it, in the form of Benjamin Stone.”
“So after all this, you’re denying what GLARE is doing? You’re still going to insist there’s no secret precognition program?”
“No,” said Holst. “I’d have preferred to allow you some level of delusion, as it’s more conducive to gathering information, and frankly I don’t think the human brain is designed to handle the level of cognitive shock you’re experiencing. But I’m out of time, and you insisted on the truth, so I’m giving it to you. GLARE exists, although it isn’t known by that name. Just as William Glazier exists, more or less, in the form of David Stockton. The major outlines of your memories are accurate. We created a group of subjects with what you might call precognitive abilities, for intelligence purposes. But the details of your memories are fiction.”
“Details like who I am?” cried Benjamin, his voice cracking.
Holst sighed. “The alternative is that you’re a grown man who got time-warped back into the body of a child in 1950. You must hear how ridiculous that sounds.”
“You work for a secret program that causes mutations in the brains of children to predict the future, and you’re going to accuse me of being ridiculous?”
“This program is unorthodox, to be sure,” said Dr. Holst. “It was the result of a fortuitous accident, and our methods lie on the fringes of modern science. We’ve learned that the human brain is capable of things we never imagined possible. But there are some hard limits to what can be done. Limits imposed by the laws of physics and brain chemistry. Two things that we know to be impossible are time travel and the transfer of consciousness from one person’s body to another.”
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