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"Okay, we're just about done here." Zaldania pulled on a strap. "Is that too tight?"
"You know, I really can't tell anymore."
She bent down to look at him. "How're you doing?"
"I feel like a sausage."
At Dr. Rider's behest, Isaac had stripped down to his underwear while two student assistants wheeled a platform over to the Creature. A bathing cap had been fitted over his hair, and the four of them- Isaac, Zaldania, and the two students- had climbed onto the platform. From there, they had manhandled Isaac into the suit, buckling him into the crisscrossing straps like a fly into a postmodern web. He could still move, scratch his nose or cross his legs, but everything had a springy, bungee-cord flexibility, so that when he relaxed his muscles, his limbs returned to their hanging configuration.
Zaldania swabbed his arm with something cold and wet. "Okay," she said. "I.V. going in now."
"Ow!"
"Hold still. Okay, got it." She straightened up. "You've got prominent veins."
"This is good, is it?"
"Oh yeah, definitely. I didn't have to poke around." She took a heavy, opaque set of goggles from one of her assistants. "Goggles," she said. "Then airmask, then we close up and fill up. You're not claustrophobic, are you?"
Isaac eyed the gear in Dr. Rider's hands. "Not until now."
"You'll be fine. I'll be with you over the comm the whole way. Ready?"
Isaac took a deep breath. "Go ahead."
She leaned down, stretching the elastic band over his head. Isaac could smell her beside him; latex from her gloves, soap, coffee, her unique human scent. The goggles covered his eyes. All was darkness.
"Mask next," Zaldania said. "Just breathe normally."
He felt it being fitted over his mouth and nose, smelled of plastic and antiseptic. There was a brief moment when it sealed to his face, and he felt he couldn't draw a breath. Then he breathed in cool air, and heard the whoosh of his own inhalation in his ears.
In the darkness behind his goggles, hypnogogic images winked in and out of existence.
"Um," he said. "Dr. Rider?"
"Right here."
"You haven't started the I.V. yet, right?" His voice sounded muffled and hollow through the mask. He could feel the needle in his arm, the compression of the band holding it in place.
"No, not yet. Don't worry, I'll tell you when."
He heard her move away, heard her footsteps descending the ladder.
"Isaac?" Her voice over his comm. "Can you hear me all right?"
"Yes."
"We're closing the sphere now. Once it seals over, the fluid will start filling in. It'll probably feel a little cold at first."
"Not very womb-like, then?"
She gave a short, nervous laugh. "Guess not. About the right consistency, though, really. Okay, closing now."
A hum. A whoosh and click as the sphere sealed. Then, from somewhere outside, the sound of liquid moving through pipes.
It touched his toes first, moving up his feet with maddening slowness. It was cold and viscous, more a jelly than a liquid. It pressed in on him, creeping up his legs.
This what Socrates felt after drinking hemlock, he thought, and then wished he hadn't thought it.
The fluid reached his neck. He felt an atavistic surge of fear as it rose over his face, age-old dread of drowning welling up from genetic memory, but the seal on his mask was good. The cold jelly rose over his head.
The liquid sounds stopped.
Zaldania's voice crackled in his ear. "Still doing good, Isaac?"
"Cold," he said.
"Sorry about that. Your body should adjust pretty quickly."
"Whoopee."
He thought he heard her snicker.
A long moment of silence. Then: "Okay," Zaldania said. "We're going to start the I.V. feed now. This may st art to fe el abi t w e i r d
...easterly six or seven...
The two men sat across from one another at the long table. Formal place-settings had been put down, along with flowers, fingerbowls, folded napkins, and the appropriate number of spoons. There was very little food. Only one of the two was eating, and only sparingly.
The Professor's plate was empty. His wine glass stood untouched. Though he appeared to sit upon the chair opposite Alexander, his bulk left no indentation in the chair. If he moved too quickly, his image jumped, the connection skipping frames as the rendering tried to keep up.
"Given the situation," Alexander said. "We can't be seen not to take appropriate steps. If the other branches of the Family got word about our failure to act, they could use it as a blunt instrument to club us out of power."
"I understand," the Professor said.
Is this a dream? Am I dreaming?
"I think the original three should fulfill honor," Alexander said. He sipped at his wine. "There's no reason to go any further. Of course, you'll be losing three of your own-"
The Professor waved this away. "Sacrifices to the cause. Our mutual goodwill will, I hope, remain intact?"
"Of course. Knightsbridge is...a bit remote, but the changing patterns seem to favor it as a jumping-off point for a number of different planes. Also, it would look good for the Stone line if we were seen to take over business there after completing requirements. It has the sort of fait accompli aura the Family seems to love."
"Will you..." The Professor looked at him from beneath heavy lids. "Still be needing an intermediary in your future dealings?"
Alexander smiled a thin smile. "Relax, Professor. I don't intend to muscle you out of your territory. You have a ground-level knowledge that we'll need to establish our connections. Knightsbridge will belong to us in deed, but all business will be routed through your offices. Would that meet with your approval?"
"It would."
Is this the past? The future?
"Excellent. I look forward to working with you."
The image of the Professor stood. "When shall I expect the, ah, conclusion of your requirements, if I might ask?"
"Within a week or two. I'll send people. Professionals."
"Very well, then. I w i l l
The scene faded.
He became aware of himself again.
Had he been gone an hour? A minute? Time was stretching out, bending, running fast and slow through the reels of his consciousness. His hands and feet tingled. The muscles of his thighs twitched uncontrollably. He felt cold.
The darkness before him began to take on texture. Geometric shapes, like hypnagogic images but more persistent, danced before his eyes. They wove in and out of one another, both there and not-there, like the static on and untuned television. At first, they looked like sets of teeth, jaws opening and closing in the darkness. Then he saw that they were not teeth but DNA helixes, the spirals resembling mouths.
Resembling mouths.
Remembering mouths
Remembering mouths
What had he been thinking just then?
Th o u g h t s b rea kin ga partflo winglike ta ffy.
...
He shook himself mentally. His head had begun to ache, the nootropics coming on like a freight train. He remembered, suddenly, the smell of dead popcorn and sour cola that wafted up from the room behind the concession stand of the theatre he had been to when he was younger. It was a decay smell, oddly fascinating. It spoke of years and performances that existed now only as memories in the minds of those who were left...and this. The ground-in smell of soda spilled on the floor years ago, one layer in a complex strata of sticky remnants. Olfactory archeology.
All the world's a stage...
"Dr. Rider?"
He thought he heard a voice in his ear, but he was having trouble making sense of the words.
Almighty hell, I'm far gone. Did I speak that? Did I think it? Did she answer me, or did I imagine it?
How long had he been here?
“Hello? Is anyone there? Doctor Rider? Is the experiment still going on? I’m feeling a little disoriented...”
When had he said that before?
Or was there a before?
Hadn't someone said something about it being always now?
Always now
All ways now
All ways, now
A voice, unbidden, in his mind's ear:
"Self-revelation, in the mystic sense, is usually defined by what's called a Threshold Experience, a point where the experiencer takes- or is forced to take- a step back from normal perspective, and note a midpoint between one 'self' and another." Professor Dorn brushed his hair out of his face and continued. "A better word here might be 'persona'. It's all big-'s' Self, after all, whatever you are at the moment. Either the crying baby, the child, the surly teenager, the person who thought that one stupid band was 'like, really cool' for about three weeks, and the person who knows better today are all different people- which is sort of true, but a dangerous perspective- or they're all you. They're all Self, and another example of the limitless nature of persona." He grinned. "Who needs reincarnation? Be someone else tomorrow!"
Isaac saw himself in the back row, taking in the lecture with wide eyes.
He thought: I look so much younger.
"Threshold Experiences," Dorn went on. "Are just like they sound. In-between places. Doorways between one room and another, one world and another. In traditional magic, these were the places where the strangeness happened. Doorways. Crossroads. Twilight. Mirrors- the ultimate in-between, a magic barrier no thicker than a breath. People have always known instinctually that this is where the magic happens, because this is where people and things get shaken up. This is where change happens. And magic is change."
A hand went up in the audience. Dorn waved it away.
"Hold on," he said. "Gimme a minute. This is the good part." He grinned again. "I knew a guy once who believed he could teleport anywhere he wanted to instantaneously. All he had to do was convince the Universe that he was in that place, instead of wherever he was, and poof. Cheapest teleportation device ever. He told me he'd set aside an hour a day to devote to figuring this talent out. A whole hour, every day. I told him it'd never work. Anyone want to guess why?"
No hands went up.
"Not enough time," Dorn said. "Or, more accurately, not enough concentration. If he'd told me he'd set aside eight, ten, twelve hours every day to work on it, and he really meant it, I bet he'd be zooming around the cosmos right now!" He waved his hands at the assembled students. "You want to learn to fly? Want to walk on water, move objects with your mind, walk through walls? No problem. Just spend four hours every day concentrating on that, and nothing else. That's it, just four hours, and I bet you'll have it down in five or ten years. But you won't do it, and neither will I, and you know why?" Dorn leaned forward, his grin sneaking back. "You ever tried concentrating on one thought for a long time? Just one thought, nothing else. Not what you're going to do for dinner. Not that pretty student you'd like to make bonkies with, nothing. Just one thought. Go home and try it tonight. Time yourself, if you can. Start the watch when you begin, and stop it every time some other thought intrudes on the one you meant to think. I'll be staggered if anyone makes ten minutes. Now imagine concentrating on one thought for four hours. Not just one time, but every day. No matter what. No breaks for beers with your friends, or sex, or just because you don't really feel like it that day.
"We could live forever, or read each others' minds, or summon gods, but we won't. Because we're all too easily distracted. I mean, come on! Who's got time to evolve when there might be something good on television?"
------
"Quit this world, quit the next world, quit quitting!" -Sufi proverb.
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Take Me Back to the Garden of Love - 14
