10
(1 votes)
| Rating | Rated by |  | | 10 | TheRealKarmaTse.. | |
You must login to vote
|
|
|
The Jittlov Institute was a low, rambling building in the style of a Victorian mansion, complete with mullioned windows and outthrust gables. A small green courtyard led up to the front steps, behind which stood a stout wooden door.
Isaac lifted his hand to knock, then lowered it. The door was already cracked open. Isaac pushed at it, and the door swung in on silent casters.
The lobby beyond was floored in faded red and black tiles, with walls painted in the same paradoxically soothing red. Slanted walls led off to hallways on two sides, the walls meeting at a nexus point on the opposite end of the room. A complex multi-terminal workstation, like the control center of some space-age battleship, was packed into this corner, spreading out around it to form a complete circle. At the center of this shrine to the gods of Information sat the receptionist, who was reading a messageboard. As Isaac approached, he closed it down and swiveled around to face him.
"Isaac Angelus, right?" the man said.
"Er. Yes. I was just wondering if I could see Dr. Rider, if she's free at all today."
"Not a problem. She's just down there-" The receptionist pointed to the righthand door. "Turn left at the library, then near the end of the hall. She should be expecting you."
Isaac blinked. "She should?"
"Sure."
"But...I didn't tell anyone I was visiting today."
The man shrugged. "I don't know. It's kind of out of my depth. Just assume things work differently in this place, and you'll sleep better at night. I've been a student here for..." He paused. "...a while. I feel like I'm getting used to all of it."
"I know what you mean," Isaac said. "It's all coming back. Thanks for the directions."
"Not a problem." The man swung back around to face one of his terminal screens. "Good luck."
Isaac headed down the righthand corridor, his footsteps echoing after him.
"Good luck?"
The Institute was a mix of high technology and classic architecture, the more outlandish machines and set-ups overlaid atop a rambling, low-ceilinged country estate. There was even a suit of armor, standing to one side of the library entrance. Isaac turned left, followed a narrower hall toward a door labeled: PRIVATE, and stopped in his tracks when a voice came out of an open side door.
It said: "In here, please."
Which would have been more unsettling, had the voice not sounded so completely distracted. Isaac stepped through the side door and found the owner of the voice, who was indeed quite distracted.
Two human bodies, naked save for underwear, lay side-by-side on two low camp beds. Each wore a complex coronet of electrodes, skin monitors, and neural feedback pads, along with a pair of opaque goggles, and a set of headphones. A tangle of wires snaked back and forth from their headpieces, connecting them to each other so that the bodies- one male, one female- were joined head-to-head. The familiar blip of a heart monitor sounded at intervals from a nearby machine.
Hunched over the two prone bodies, arms resting on her knees, was a short, compact woman in a white lab coat. She straightened, knees popping, and turned to face Isaac. She wore sneakers, jeans, and a faded sweater beneath her coat, which reached almost to her feet.
She smiled at him. "Isaac, hi. I'm just finishing something up here."
He held out a hand. "Doctor Rider."
"Zaldania." She shook it. "Just give me a second to check the stats on these two, and we'll go somewhere where we can talk."
Isaac nodded at the two figures. "They'll be all right on their own?"
"Oh, sure. We're just running a REM transference study."
"I see."
She knelt down beside the machinery again. "It's a specific kind of sleep study. These two, Gordon and Victoria, they've been sleeping together- I mean, they've been falling asleep together- for six weeks, and their REM cycles have synchronized."
"I didn't know that could happen," Isaac said.
"It usually doesn't. But these two are both latent Psi talents, both have the same kind of memory-structure and descriptive-structure setup, and a whole host of other things, half of which we probably don't know yet. Out of a study of 36 couples, only these two displayed the kind of synchronization we were looking for."
"Neat."
"Neat, but not enough for a study." Zaldania seemed most at ease when in lecture mode. "What got them down here in their undies for us was recurring incidents of crosstalk between their REM episodes."
"I'm not sure I follow you."
"Incidents, objects, and themes from Victoria's dreams would appear in Gordon's dreams, and vice versa. Victoria might have a dream about being in a classroom, studying for a test, and Gordon would have a dream- we later were able to pinpoint that these were happening at the same time- where a professor and a blackboard appeared for no apparent reason. Or Gordon might dream about tornadoes, and the people in Victoria's dream would keep making reference to stormy weather and tornadoes. Really fascinating stuff. Or else the world's best two-person mentalist trick."
"You can't tell if they're faking or not?"
"Most of what we get is still their own reports and dream journals. For all the gear we've got here, we still can't actually look in on people's dreams. It doesn't work that way." She stood up again, and turned to face him. "Don't misunderstand me, please, Isaac. For every dream that's obviously some kind of construction or mishmash of themes, we suspect there are many more that are, in some way, related to a larger and more nonlinear picture of consciousness. We're not really sure what that means, to be honest. But that's part of what the Jittlov Institute is here for." She looked down at the sleepers again. "These two will keep for a while. Let's go for a walk."
Isaac followed her out of the room, back down the hall, and out into a little garden decorated with spherical bronze sculptures.
"I really am glad you took us up on the offer," Zaldania said. "We always leap at a chance to work with a graduate from the College, and apart from your remarkable morphogenic field, you tested very high for latent Psi."
"Which means what, exactly?"
"Psi is a catch-all term we use for a- getting larger all the time- large body of phenomena and abilities that appear to utilize senses and talents not covered by the classical five- six if you count balance, or seven if you count proprioception- senses. By latent, we mean that you've never displayed obvious use of this inherent psi-ness, morphogenic field nonwithstanding, and you've made no conscious effort to develop or cultivate that aspect of yourself. It's the difference between a muggy summer day and a thunderstorm. The conditions are right, but A doesn't denote B, or we'd never have a muggy summer day without a thunderstorm. Make sense?"
"I think so. And you can test for this?"
"Eventually, yes. It takes a lot of general testing. It's like the old blind men with the elephant, only multiplied tenfold. All the input on its own doesn't suggest anything specific, but put them all together in the right way, and you can 'see' the elephant. You, Isaac, have got an elephant in your head." She paused. "So to speak."
"That doesn't sound very comforting..."
"Sorry."
"It's all right." Isaac scratched at the back of his neck. "I don't mean to sound rude, but all this is starting to sound a little...mad sciencey."
Zaldania grinned. "I remember saying the same thing to my mentor a long time ago, when I first got started in this field. Do you know what he said?"
"What?"
"'All science is mad science.'" She grinned. "And it's true. Some disciplines just hide it better than others. And now that I've really unsettled you..." Her grin grew bigger. "Want to come see the machine we want to put you in?"
"With a lead-in like that, how can I say no?"
Zaldania patted him on the shoulder. "Spoken like a true psychonaut. All right, follow me, and I'll take you to meet The Creature."
------
"Quit this world, quit the next world, quit quitting!" -Sufi proverb.
|
Take Me Back to the Garden of Love - 14
