Black Jack

by Rani Manicka

  ‘Just a mind construct. Blue corridors are easy to erect and almost impossible to detect. Let’s walk down it.’

  They began to walk. Black turned to look at Green.

  ‘I know you want to go to the girl,’ said Green. ‘But I have to warn you that you won’t like what you see. De-programming is a euphemism for frying the human brain. She will not recognize you.’

  Black looked at him in horror. ‘How bad is she?’

  ‘Very bad, though she will recover somewhat in time.’

  Black felt as if his heart was breaking. ‘I want to see her, anyway. Will she be able to see me?’

  ‘Yes. As much as they would like to, they cannot separate her from her psychic powers - she is…special.’

  ‘Will you help me?’

  ‘Of course. I will guide you there.’

  ‘Can I go now?’

  Wordlessly, he held his hand out.

  Black did not take his hand. ‘I need to talk to you; will you come to see me again tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you. I owe you so much.’

  Green smiled sadly. ‘You have four minutes and twenty-three seconds.’

  ‘What happens after?’

  ‘Carter will wake you up with some “news”. Hurry. You now have four minutes and thirteen seconds.’

  Black took Green’s hand and for a moment the blue corridor swayed and twisted like a snake. Then he was standing in Dakota’s living quarters. She was sitting in front of the TV, but her body was leaning forward unnaturally. Without changing position she turned her neck slowly and looked at him, without curiosity, stupidly. The action reminded him of that of a small animal. Then for no reason her eyeballs rolled in their sockets, making her look weird and vacant. It was obvious that she was heavily drugged. Without any sign that she had registered his presence she turned away and stared at the TV screen. Despite Green’s warning, Black was crushed by her appearance. He went closer.

  ‘What are you watching?’ he asked. The Wizard of Oz was playing.

  Her eyelids drooped and her eyes shifted oddly. Then she hunched her shoulders and brought her neck in, almost as a turkey would, until her chin was sitting on her chest. She didn’t know what she was watching.

  She seemed so foreign and lost that Black felt a sick despair creep into his soul.

  Perhaps he should start with something easier. ‘What’s the time now?’

  Dakota did not respond.

  ‘Are there no clocks in this place?’

  She shook her head slowly. She was communicating with him.

  ‘If we find a news channel it will show the time.’

  ‘No news.’ The words were slow and thick, but he had her speaking.

  No news channels? ‘How many channels have you got?’

  She held both her hands up and carefully counted out four fingers and showed them to him.

  ‘I see.’ He looked around him and noticed her food tray. He touched the base of a dish. It was cold.

  ‘Hungry,’ she said.

  And Black felt fury, white hot, at her destruction, at the men who had done it. He had to turn his face away from her so she would not see it and misconstrue it as directed at her.

  ‘Dakota lonely,’ she muttered suddenly.

  He turned back, full of compassion. She was trying to stand up. Clumsily, unsteadily. There was something wrong with her feet. They would not obey her. He could not risk going closer. If her hand went through him she would be frightened. She gave up, fell back, and looked confused.

  He looked at his watch. His time was very nearly up. ‘I’ve got to go now, Dakota, but I will be back.’

  ‘Promise.’

  He smiled at her. ‘You will wait for me, won’t you?’

  She nodded.

  ‘You won’t tell anybody about me, will you?’

  She shook her head vigorously. A three-year-old child.

  Then he was back in his body. Carter was clicking his fingers smartly. ‘Well, well, look who’s made it simultaneously on CBS, ABC, and NBC?’

  Seek not the kingdom of shadows,

  For evil will surely appear.

  For only the master of brightness

  Shall conquer the shadow of fear.

  - The Emerald Tablets of Thoth

  ‘I want to help her.’

  ‘Not a good idea, Black.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The only way you can help her is if you went back in time. And that would be very unwise.’

  ‘Unwise?’

  ‘Remember when you watched Superman turn back time by turning planet Earth at dizzying speed in the opposite direction?’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  ‘Well, it won’t be as simple as that. Going back in time is fraught with great danger. There is a very high probability that you could get stuck in it.’

  ‘Stuck?’ Black felt fear slice through him - a premonition? He brushed it away before it could take root.

  ‘Any manipulation of time usually causes it to solidify. First, it will appear to be racing through you, while moving at normal speed for everything else around you. That will be your only warning and your last chance to get out. If you are unable to at that moment, then the very air around you will change. It will take on a soup-like thickness and turn greenish. The sensation will be similar to being in a storm shelter while a tornado is raging directly on top.

  ‘Movements will then be restricted only to those you can make in quicksand. For a few seconds the green will fade out and the objects around you will start to shimmer and lose their solidity. Physical objects will become clear liquid - not because they have lost their physicality, they are still there, but because solidity is a function of time. They will appear to you with waves running through them. Then the thickness will set around you like jelly around a fly, trapping you so thoroughly you cannot move a single muscle. But you will be able to feel everything, though.’

  Black gave a nervous laugh. ‘Not much difference to what I live through every day, then.’

  ‘No, it is indescribably worse. The realm between life and death is like being in a deep freeze, but most humans will experience that mixed state badly. It is an environment that is so incomprehensible and so frightening to humans that almost all who have ventured there have spontaneously combusted. And because their perception will be so distorted by their surroundings, it will become impossible for them to tell whether a minute or a century has passed. As such they will experience themselves burning for what appears to be years, even if only minutes have passed before they are pulled out. And the one or two who have escaped and come back have gone mad owing to their inability to comprehend what happened to them.’

  There was a short pause. Black thought about Dakota - poor, dribbling Dakota - speaking in the third person: ‘Dakota lonely.’

  ‘I will take the risk,’ he said.

  ‘You are very courageous.’

  ‘No, I’m not. I’m actually afraid, but I care about her. And I must do this.’

  ‘Love. What a beautiful thing it is when it touches the human heart.’

  ‘Show me what I should do.’

  ‘All right. The easiest way for you to get to her is to meet her in the past just before her de-programming and do something that will change the course of her actions. Choose your entry into the past carefully and plan your moves even more carefully. There is no going back. If you snag your clothes on a twig or a nail don’t look back. The artificial matrix is designed with tricks and traps to snare you. Never look back, no matter what happens. Do what you have to do and get out.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I see that you already have a plan.’

  ‘Is it a good plan?’

  ‘Yes, very imaginative, a trait much admired by my kind.’

  ‘Will it work?’

  ‘If we are in the timeline where it does.’

  ‘And if we aren’t?’

  ‘Then what can go wrong will go wrong.’

  ‘No matter w
hat happens, thank you for all your help.’

  ‘Be as quick as you can.’

  ‘I am ready whenever you are.’

  ‘Remember, any intervention at all from me will cause me to get stuck in this dimension, so expect no help. Good luck and do not tarry for a second longer than necessary and never repeat any action.’

  ‘Even if I get stuck, I will have changed the future for her, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m ready.’

  A blindingly bright light shone from Green’s forehead and something resembling a tunnel opened up. It was like a three-dimensional fractal, a dancing five-pointed star full of light. Black stepped into it and felt it pull at the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands. Locked into the tunnel he could not decide if he was spinning or if the world outside the tunnel was spinning.

  When the spinning stopped the tunnel opened out to a corridor. She was in front of him. She was pulling her hand out of a thick door, the door to the room where he was held. At that moment she turned to look back at the corridor. He had arrived seconds before the jump. Instead of seeing an empty corridor she saw him. She turned around to face him.

  ‘Don’t go in there,’ he warned. ‘It’s a trap. I’ve come from the future and I’ve seen what happens if you do. You will be sucked out like a rag to a place where you will become nothing, and Dakota will be de-programmed. Her brain will be so badly damaged that she will barely be able to function.’

  ‘But I am supposed to give her to you.’

  ‘You already have. Now go back and quickly. Pretend you have never been here. Do nothing to call attention to yourself. There are things afoot - big changes are about to happen.’

  ‘There is a video record of everything I have done, and this trip.’

  Black did not hesitate. ‘I think I can erase it for you. Quickly, we must hurry. Go the way you came and I will follow you.’

  She made her jump back into the session room and he followed. The tunnel stayed next to him. Teddy and the Biotech were waiting for her return, but they could not see him. Black immediately set about erasing the video records.

  When Shekina came out of the trip seat she said, ‘Don’t worry about their memory banks. I’ll take care of that. But there are also the images from the corridors and those from my room. They are held in the central unit.’

  ‘OK,’ he said, and did to the central computer digital image records what he had done to the computer records in his room. Seconds later the job was done and Black knew it was time to go. He turned toward the tunnel that was waiting beside him, but his eyes caught a flying cockroach. It landed on Teddy’s cheek. How strange that such an insect should live in such a clinical place. What did it eat to survive, he wondered, and automatically looked back at it. It was only for a split second, but that was all that was necessary. The artificial matrix had set him a trap and he had fallen into it.

  Almost immediately he felt that first and last warning to ‘get out’ that Green had told him about. Time rushing inside him while all around him everything was normal.

  Shekina, her face contorted, shouted out, ‘Run, Black, run.’

  But even then it was already too late. The air was turning green around him.

  Before he could react, jump into the tunnel, the green faded out and Teddy and the cockroach began to shimmer and undulate. The effect was similar to what heat waves do to things in the distance. Teddy became as liquid as a glass before it shatters under the influence of a soprano’s high note.

  Black turned and tried to make for the tunnel, but it was as if he was running in wet cement. Without warning it hardened and he was unable to move a single muscle. Not even his eyes. He started to become disorientated. A sickly yellowish light shrouded him. It smelled of rot and decay. And fear. Terrible fear. Suddenly, true to Green’s word, he began to burn from the inside out, the horror of which was beyond anything he had ever encountered or could ever have imagined.

  Eshu throws a stone today and it kills a bird yesterday.

  - Yoruba poem

  Miss Monroe walked into the girl’s quarters carrying her lunch. The girl was sitting in front of the TV, but it was turned off. At Miss Monroe’s appearance, she turned and smiled at her.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Miss Monroe, straightening up and looking her in the eyes.

  ‘Thinking,’ replied the girl, her eyes bright and full of life. ‘Did you bring me chocolate?’

  Miss Monroe put her hand into her pocket and brought out a bar.

  ‘Oh, good,’ she said and, as she took the bar, slid a piece of paper into Miss Monroe’s hand.

  ‘Well, I’ll be back later to pick up the tray.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Miss Monroe did not get a chance to look at the paper until she entered her own quarters and sat at her desk as normally as she could. The girl had neat small writing.

  I remote viewed your psychiatrist – he’s one of them. Do nothing out of the ordinary (not even chocolates for me). Stay down for now and don’t try to get any kind of help for me. Things are afoot. There is a way out for us.

  Miss Monroe felt strong gratitude fill her heart for the girl. She did not know that her real savior was a boy lying in a bed deep underground who had gone back into the past and changed the future. In this future she did not have to see a brain-damaged child and in a rush of emotion confront Dr. Klaus. In this future she did not have to die.

  Back in her quarters Shekina ignored the food on the table and returned to doing what Miss Monroe had interrupted. Helping Black. She vowed that she would not stop until she had won them all over. She began with Africa and stop just before she reached China.

  Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.

  - Leonardo da Vinci

  Schooner Klaus came awake gently in his darkened bedroom. For some delicious minutes he relished the luxurious softness of the goose down pillow under his head and neck, and the lovely warmth of his deep bed. He stretched slowly, enjoying the languorous movement inside his muscles. Quietly, avoiding the sight of the woman beside him and without waking her up, he slid out. He did not enjoy the sight of his wife’s overly bronzed, sagging arms, which were inevitably exposed at this time of the morning.

  Last night was fuzzy in his memory. He remembered going to a club, a special place where they played kings and queens in the back rooms. He didn’t know why he still felt the need to frequent such seedy places, but it was only there amongst the most degenerate of humans that he felt he could be himself. In places like that there was no need to pretend and hide. All was filth, and so was he.

  He walked silently into their bathroom. When they had been on their honeymoon his wife had seen this design in a ladies’ toilet in Richmond, England. And she had never forgotten it. Ten years ago when they had moved into this house she had recreated it. An English design. Blue patterns on white, like china. Pretty. He switched on the lights and stepped up to the mirror and blinked, his eyes still unused to the sudden brightness. Someone had written on his bathroom mirror with pink lipstick.

  His jaw dropped as he read the message that was scrawled across the mirror in bold handwriting. His first reaction was one of fear. That someone had entered his bedroom while he had slept and written on his mirror. Then the expression in his eyes changed to one of disbelief. Below the mirror, lying without its lid, was the lipstick used. He picked it up slowly and looked at the blunted edge. And tried to remember. How? When? He looked again at the words.

  FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE CATCH

  ME BEFORE I KILL

  AGAIN. I AM PURE

  EVIL

  No doubt about it. The handwriting was his. He sat on the broad, wooden toilet seat - an English antique specially flown in. He turned toward the mirror and looked at his own shocked face behind the writing. He had no memory of writing the words. He closed his eyes and thought hard about the night before. But it remained illusive. Shadows. And it occurred to him that this was not the first
time there were gaps in his memory.

  There was only one explanation and that one was totally unacceptable. Alters inside him! That he was not the puppet master he had thought, but a puppet with others higher up pulling at his strings was too horrible to contemplate. He refused to consider it. For now, damage control.

  He went to the door and looked in on his wife. Her sagging arms were lying above the bedclothes, and her breathing was even. She never awakened early - the pills always kept her dead to the world until her alarm went off in a couple of hours’ time. He went back into the bathroom and locked the door.

  Meticulously, using toilet paper, he cleaned the lipstick marks. They came off easily. He peed on top of the soiled toilet paper and flushed it. Then he brushed his teeth, shaved, and went into his dressing room. He opened his wardrobe door and looked at the row of faultlessly tailored identical uniforms. He selected one and carefully dressed in it. When he was ready he stood in front of the mirror. There had been no writing on the mirror. Of course not. He had been overly imaginative even as a boy. He was no puppet, he was the puppet master.

  I work all night, I work all day, to pay the bills I have to pay. Ain’t it sad?

  - ABBA, ‘Money, Money, Money’ (1976)

  It was a Saturday.

  Kim was sitting at her kitchen table in her pajamas and dressing gown having breakfast. She put her slice of toast down when she heard the post hit the floor. After donning a pair of white gloves she picked up the bundle and shifted through it quickly. One envelope caught her attention. Plain white and marked PRIVATE. It had no return address on the back. Discarding the rest on a side table in the hallway, she took it to the living room. It crackled enticingly. Carefully, she sliced open the top and looked in.

  Tinfoil.

  She pulled the tinfoil out by tugging it at one end with pincers, and unraveled it. Five twenties. One hundred dollars. She sat back and looked at it, then put the notes back into the tinfoil and the tinfoil back into the envelope. It would have to be sent off to the lab, but already she was sure they would not find a single fingerprint anywhere. She sat on the couch and Sheba jumped into her lap. She stroked her soft, white fur absently. So the money was real. Until she had seen it, she hadn’t been able to believe that there existed a group of people - and she was certain that it was a group - who would pay out for a game of this nature. It made no sense.