Continuance (6 page)

Mandy has
freckles. Mandy’s getting married.
The thought of her daughter both calmed
and distressed her. Distantly, she was aware of other people scurrying about,
talking in urgent voices. She heard the approaching sound of sirens.

“We have a female – early forties
– injured but conscious.” The officer spoke into the air, talking with dispatch
or headquarters. “We’re going to need extraction equipment and medevac.”

That feeling of brokenness was
there again, and she knew her life hung by a thread. Strange that of all the
things she could have dreamt about in this moment, it would have been that
time, so long ago.
After all, we’ve got time.
Later that night, Patrick
had come to The Collegiate with her. That had been the beginning.

“Just hold on,” the officer said,
speaking to her again. “We’ll get you out.”

As the sirens crescendoed, her
vision faded, and she slipped into unconsciousness again.

2089

“Sedation complete. Subject
vitals are normal.”

To Jason’s ears, Chaela
Laurensen’s updates sounded equal parts statement and question, as if she were
waiting for acknowledgement after each. He watched her fidget with the collar
of her white lab coat as she ran through her assigned checklist, hunched over
the hovering readouts on her workstation’s photoscreen. Every few seconds, her hand
wandered up to tuck auburn hair behind an ear, keeping it clear of the slim
headset she wore.

The intern slots for
the Chariot lab were reserved for exceptional students – those with high marks
in neurobiology and bioinformatics.
That made Chaela a puzzle. He’d worked
with her on the scanning protocol since their first day in the lab – more than
a week now – but she was still uncomfortable with the steps. Why, he couldn’t
put his finger on. She was smart, learning the rote parts of the process faster
than he had – a fact that surprised him. But when it came to applying
fundamental neurological concepts, it was almost as if she’d never learned the
stuff, or been absent in class that day.

She’d caught on quickly, though.
As he watched her, concentration shone in her eyes and her jaw tightened. Trying
to be inconspicuous, Jason tapped a finger against his temple, hoping she’d
understand his improvised sign language.

“Neural patterns…neural patterns
are within array tolerances,” she said. Behind them, Dr. Fairchild paused her
pacing long enough to give an approving nod.

To his surprise, Chaela gave him
a grateful look. In the time they’d worked together, she’d proven to be as
prickly as she was stubborn, especially with her fellow interns. Then again, he
and Stuart hadn’t exactly gotten off to the best start with her that first day
of class. This glimmer of warmth was a welcome change.

“Okay,” the professor said, “It looks
like we’re ready to begin.” She wasn’t a tall woman, but Jason felt like she
towered over him as he sat at his workstation. The way she observed and
directed every aspect of their progress reminded him of a football coach on the
sidelines during the playoffs. When she wasn’t standing behind him or Chaela, her
gaze always returned to the transparent inner wall of the control room,
checking the subject strapped on the table at the center of the circular chamber
beyond. “Jason, let’s bring the array online.”

Jason spoke into his headset. “Stand
by.” He was already comfortable with his part of the procedure. If he felt any
anxiety, it was for how the results might turn out.
There’s nothing I can do
about it now.

He touched several controls, watching
as his photoscreen confirmed the initialization sequence for the array. Packed
in a circle around the imaging chamber’s ceiling, each of the few dozen cold-field
emitters resembled a double-barreled ray gun trained on the subject on the
table. As each came online, the empty space between the barrels illuminated,
shimmering with a dim, violet glow. He couldn’t decide if the Chariot array
looked more like a battery of weapons from a space ship in some science fiction
movie, or a high tech execution chamber. After a few seconds, the last node
initialized. “Array is online. Looks like the imaging field is synced up and
stable.”

“Good. I’m initiating the data
feed,” Dr. Fairchild said. “Looks like Chariot is talking to us. Green lights
on all array nodes. AI module is active.” She paused a moment, checking the
readouts on each photoscreen to her satisfaction. “I think we’re ready for data
capture. Okay, Jason. Initiate the scan, please.”

“Initiating.” Jason sensed the
professor and Chaela watching as he touched the control to activate the mapping
sequence.

The three of them watched as the
table at the center of the imaging chamber pivoted upward. It locked in place
at vertical, presenting a perfect view of the subject. Stuart wore a black,
form-fitting suit that covered his body from toes to chin. A pair of metal
restraints around his torso and hips kept him in a standing position against
the table, and the stiff material of the suit underneath his chin held his head
up despite the fact he was sedated.

Without being prompted, Chaela
touched a control at her station. “Support field is active.”

From that point, the automated
portion of the sequence kicked in. Stuart’s restraints unlocked and parted in
the middle, receding into the table as it descended back toward the floor.
Stuart remained where he was, unconscious in a free-standing position on the
imaging platform. Besides being designed to limit interference during the
mapping process, the black retroweave material of the suit also reacted to the
force of the chamber’s support field, keeping Stuart upright. As the table came
to rest, a small disk-shaped section of the platform floor began to rotate,
turning him in a slow, continuous circle.

The control room started to pulse
with a low hum Jason felt in his chest. The spectacle unfolding in front of
them was mesmerizing, but he managed to return his attention to his station in
time to report, “Scan commencing in three….two….one….”

Chariot switched to full power,
filling the control room with a sound that was at once menacing and thrilling –
a deafening, eerie bass drone laced with the sizzle of pure energy. The dull
violet glow from each of the emitter nodes swelled to become blinding balls of plasma,
bathing everything in reddish-blue. A pulsing disk of violet light materialized
above Stuart’s head as he rotated, and the platform rose in a gradual, almost imperceptible
ascent. After a moment, the top of his head met the hovering disk, painting a
circle on his scalp that enlarged as he rose, drifting down the slope of his
head, encircling it.

“We’re receiving neural
positioning data, now. Everything looks good.” Dr. Fairchild’s voice was steady
and calm. Even though she stood only a few feet away, without his headset, Jason
wouldn’t have been able to hear her. The whine of the machinery drowned out everything
else.

Stuart’s platform continued its rotating
ascent, and the band of light encircling him crept downward, first over his
forehead, then his eyes, his mouth. Seconds, perhaps minutes, dragged by.

A flashing light pulled Jason’s
attention back to his photoscreen, a pure, familiar red standing out against
the more alien violet. “Something’s causing dissonance in the beam amplifiers.”
Dr. Fairchild was beside him in an instant. “And the interference is
increasing,” he said. “Our imaging field’s going to lose coherence.”

The professor ran a finger along
the numbers on his screen. “See if you can adjust the frequency to compensate.”

Looking at his display, Jason sat
perfectly still. But he also
moved
, reaching inward to a place somewhere
inside himself.
Without really knowing what he did, he…
flexed
something. The numbers on his display came alive to his eyes – dozens of
parameters and readouts shifting and changing every second. He was aware of
them all, felt them as if they were an extension of himself.

With increasing speed, the
array’s beam coherence dropped toward minimum. Modulating the frequency would
work, but the interference would destabilize the field before he could finish the
adjustments. Noting the time remaining in the scan, he searched for another
solution. Numbers and equations ran through his mind, and like the pieces of a
puzzle, they coalesced, showing him how they might fit together in the way he
needed.

“I’m increasing power to the beam
modulators,” he said. “It’ll only slow the effect of the interference, but we
only have thirty seconds to go.” Right away, the adjustment did have a positive
impact, slowing the effect of the dissonance, strengthening the amplifiers.
Concentrating on the readouts labeled “Beam Coherence” and “Time Remaining,” he
watched the two numbers as they ticked downward. Unless the time reached zero
before the coherence readout dropped too far, the scan would fail.

Dr. Fairchild stood over his
shoulder. “It looks like that corrected it.” But the words barely left her lips
before the beam coherence plummeted again, this time at an alarming rate. For a
moment, Jason thought the scan would be lost, and he heard Chaela curse under
her breath through his headset. As it fell within a few points of critical,
though, the coherence leveled off, and the last few seconds of the scan ticked
by with levels hovering just above minimum.

The machinery started to power
down, and the violet disk of light from the imaging field dissipated. The
surroundings in the control room faded back to their natural colors, while the
pulsing, electric hum died to stillness. For a moment, no one spoke. Jason
glanced at the other two, seeing excitement on Chaela’s face, and something
else from Dr. Fairchild – surprise?

Idiot!
Why didn’t I
just let it fail?
Would anyone think what he had done was unusual? Aloud,
he heard himself mutter, “Mapping sequence complete,” breaking the silence.

Chaela looked at Dr. Fairchild,
waiting for her reaction.

Looking at each of them in turn,
the professor gave them a reassuring smile. “Well, that turned out to be a
little more exciting than expected, but all things considered, I think it went
rather well. Terrific job, Jason. Terrific job,
both
of you
.
”

Chaela beamed, eyes sparkling
with excitement. “Amazing!” she breathed, pivoting her chair toward Jason and
the professor. “How soon can we see the results?”

Jason relaxed.
They’re just
happy it worked.
With any luck, no one would attribute his part in the
ordeal to anything more than good luck.

“It should just be a few minutes,”
Dr. Fairchild said. “I’ll head over and start the render in the A/V room.”

Chaela rose. “I’ll help.”

Dr. Fairchild held up a hand, not
unkindly. “I can get things started, Chaela, but you could give your partner a
hand helping Stuart out of the imaging chamber. It will take several minutes
for the render to complete anyway, so you won’t miss much.”

As Dr. Fairchild left the control
room, Chaela deflated a little. “That’s a given,” she muttered at the floor. “This
is
Stuart’s brain we’re talking about after all.”

She and Stuart hadn’t gotten
along in the week since class had started. It hadn’t taken Jason long to notice
that every time Stuart made a joke about the lab or Dr. Fairchild – which was
often – Chaela got irritated. Jason assumed she simply took her studies and the
internship seriously. Right then, she seemed more disappointed at having been
excluded from assisting the professor than angry at anything in particular.

Remembering Jason, she added,
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I can act like an old bag too, sometimes.”
She gestured with an upturned palm at Stuart’s unconscious form. “Shall we?”

Jason touched the control to open
the door to the imaging chamber. “Don’t sweat it,” he said. The SLIDe mounted above
the entrance verified his bioprint, and the transparent double doors slid aside
with a slow
ssshhhh.
He and Chaela made their way along a grated metal
walkway leading to the imaging platform in the center. Underneath the grating, a
utility sub-room sat below the chamber, crammed with machinery and coolant
tanks.

“I should be the one apologizing
to you, anyway,” Jason said as they reached the central platform. The system
had returned Stuart to a horizontal position, and Jason released the restraints
to retract into the table. “I mean, I think we probably got off on the wrong
foot last week when class started. I know Stuart and I can be a little
obnoxious when we’re together.” Thinking back on their meeting during that
first day of class, Jason couldn’t really blame Chaela for holding a low
opinion of Stuart. Or him.

“As opposed to a lot when you’re
not?” She glanced up at him, the frost he remembered from her eyes that first
day of class replaced by a mischievous spark. Then she went back to work,
removing the stiff chin support from the collar on Stuart’s suit.

If she was making jokes now, at
least it was progress. With the physical restraints undone, Jason tapped a few
options on the control surface to modify the sedation field. “Tell you what.
I’ll make you a deal. I’ll work on toning down the obnoxious, and in return,
you agree not to consider me guilty by association.”