Scott wondered if this was a dream, like earlier in the day. Now the strange apparition of the man was here, just as he said he would be. His appearance in the bedroom seemed intrusive, encroaching into the place where Deanna lay beside him, but she remained oblivious. The man did not speak, perhaps not wanting to disturb her – as she would certainly have been if she could share in this madness.
‘I told you I would arrive at four am,’ the man whispered. ‘I’d hoped you’d be prepared.’
‘Well, sorry to disappoint you. I only got to sleep not much more than an hour ago.’
The man nodded, knowingly. ‘I understand this is not conducive to your domestic situation, but there is the small matter of saving humankind.’
‘If you’d put it like that I’m sure I’d have gotten no sleep at all.’
‘I can assure you there will be plenty of time to sleep. She need never know you have gone. Now please, if you can be ready---’
‘Give me five minutes.’
He put on the clothes he’d left by the bed the night before while Torbin said he would wait outside. Scott still expected to suddenly wake from a dream that had somehow been carried through from whatever it was earlier in the day – a psychotic narrative, he guessed Dr Fortenski would say.
Scott nevertheless exited the cabin to see Torbin in the ground’s gentle illumination which reacted to his presence, waiting and looking about him as if worried at someone’s approach. The man had a small silver-grey device, extruding what was obviously a wrist-band.
‘We must go very soon.’ Torbin said nervously, and handed it to Scott.
Immediately when Scott grabbed the equally-ethereal device he felt a strange shiver throughout, like a sudden Arctic cold had penetrated his light jacket and jeans.
But the sensation eased, and he noticed how the surrounding foliage shifted from green to a violet colour under the bioluminescence.
‘Put it on your arm, it will keep you in this quantum state. I will use the temporal modulator. Be prepared for a feeling of disorientation.’
‘Why were you there?’ Scott asked him. ‘On that planet. You jumped off that mountain, then you were at our base camp – and you ransacked it.’
He visibly recoiled. ‘The technology you left there – it was a beacon for the Elusivers. A nano replicator; that says: “We’re advanced enough to build anything from atoms, and we’re spreading our technology to far off worlds. That’s really advertising! And you surely got their attention. And why I jumped. To scare you off, before the Elusivers applied a more drastic solution.’
‘The Elusivers? Who are they?’
‘Never mind. You wouldn’t understand at this point. There’s no time to waste talking.’
‘I need to know what, who, I’m up against.’ Perhaps this man was simply insane, wanting someone to play along with his mad delusion.
‘Please. I will explain later. It should all become clear in due time.’
Torbin produced a slim silver-grey rectangular box, similar to a med-scanner, pressed something on its side. The world became an amorphous yellow-white. Scott felt nausea rising as the surroundings formed into swirling shapes. Then figures of orange like the archetypal demons with scouring pointed faces, looming over with pantomime menace. ‘Leeeave,’ one said as it thrust itself towards him. This was the madness he had now descended into. Your sick mind, Scott. You’ve finally lost it. Even Dr Fortenski would deem him beyond help.
But there was another voice. It was Torbin. ‘Ignore them, they cannot harm you. This is not a physical realm.’
Scott remained silent, and tried to ignore these creatures. The swirling shapes finally resolved into what he recognised as the US mission base. He was inside the docking building, directly connecting the shuttle that would take them to the orbiting craft.
There were no people there except for Torbin who was still next to him. He said, ‘The you of three months ago is in his sleeping quarters. You must speak to him, he will only listen to you.’
Before Scott could think of a good way to express his incredulity a figure in a white suit popped into existence. His arms folded, with a look of weary disapproval. ‘You know this isn’t right,’ he said, looking at Torbin. ‘Surely I don’t need to quote you the Temporal Directive.’
Torbin exhaled in a way to signify disgust. ‘But given that I am not one of you, it has no bearing on my actions.’
‘You don’t understand our technology, Torbin. Your plan is flawed,’ the man said simply.
‘Then what is your plan for a safe future?’
‘It starts from the present, rather than trying to alter the past.’
‘The present, what’s that any more?’ Torbin sneered. ‘Anyway, there’s not time to discuss your temporal ethics. The only solution is to create a new time that they haven’t determined.’
Scott now knew what he had to do. He ran towards his own sleeping quarters. He found he could slip through the door as if it were merely a projection. But just as he got to his room where his former self slept obliviously, something pushed him back. It was an all-over force, not quite solid but like a wall of water. He felt he couldn’t breathe, that the water was rushing against him as he lay outside the quarters.
After what seemed like a minute the pressure subsided and he regained his breath. Torbin helped him to his feet. The man in the white suit observed from a metre away. Scott looked towards him. ‘How did you...?’
‘I did nothing. There are others who will preserve the integrity of the continuum … but perhaps in not such a measured way.’
Torbin glared at the man. ‘It’s them! We wasted time, and gave them the edge on us.’
‘If you mean the Elusivers. Quite possibly. I suspect they followed you.’
‘So there’s nothing we can do. Just give up, lose our lives and our history?’ Torbin slumped to the floor, his face weary. Except there was something of the faux dramatic, as if done for Scott’s benefit.
‘It doesn’t need to be your burden. Allow it to be ours.’
‘You mean “don’t make things worse than you already have.”’ He sounded as if he was about to cry.
‘We have to return now.’ The white-suited man pressed something beneath his cuff.
Scott was back in his bed, Deanna beside him still asleep. Hardly any time had elapsed. It was as if he had never left. The logical part of his mind told him that indeed he hadn’t.
He felt an overwhelming need to sleep.
*
Raiya didn’t need an appointment to see her former tutor Professor Eidenberg. At the Toronto neurological sciences institute she was welcomed as a friend. Of course anyone in such professional circles had no need to book their time weeks or months in advance, but this was the same day of her calling to request the meet.
His consulting room could not have been less like the clinical environ of a surgery, with its large leather effect high backed chairs and accompanying fake fire. In the chair, Morton Eidenberg sat wearing a fawn tweed suit jacket, the requisite patches on the elbows: the Oxford don look he’d cultivated from those years teaching idealistic students such as herself.
‘Raiya, my girl. How good to see you after all these years.’ Only he could say that in the way that didn’t imply anything beyond a polite cordiality.
‘And you, Professor---’
‘It’s Morton now, OK. Please take a seat.’ He gestured to the high back chair opposite. ‘Would you like a drink?’
‘Okay, Morton. Water would be fine.’ It still felt curiously wrong calling him by his first name, as if breaching some sacrosanct social barrier.
‘So I take it this is not a social visit – something about a troublesome case?’
‘Well, as you know, I can’t really discuss the specifics.’
‘Doctor-patient confidentiality – you don’t have to tell me.’
‘Actually, this is more about me. I think I have some memory loss.’
‘Yeah, I get that these days. But you’re still a young woman.’
‘If only it were merely the usual forgetfulness. No, this is far more serious. It’s as if---’ She found her throat had dried. She took a sip from her glass. ‘As if certain parts of my past have been removed.’
‘Memories can be extracted, but even with today’s technology there can be nasty side effects – mostly psychological. After all, it’s not a natural process. But you surely know all this, so you at least want evidence that you’ve undergone it.’
‘You can scan for signs, I know. But I wonder if they at least in part can be recovered.’
‘Had you considered that you may have had these memories removed of your own volition?’
‘I don’t see why I would.’
‘You don’t remember why. But what about those memories we find intrusive, those that can interfere with our work? I’ve treated patients who’ve simply wanted to forget a bad relationship, and then wondered why people talked to them about someone they thought they had never met.’
‘I still remember my bad relationships, and I would say they are useful memories – salutary lessons. This is something far more serious, profes---Morton.’
‘Raiya, you must understand, memory revival can pose as much risk to your mental well-being as its removal. And you understand what may be recovered is simply how you interpreted an event at the time, however accurate they may seem.’
‘Of course, I’m not hoping to actually relive every event. I also understand that you’re the best in the field. And that there are security implications to consider.’
‘You had a referral for the architects, I’m told.’
‘But I don’t even know it’s anything to do with them; there is someone else. I just need to find out.’
Prof Eidenberg nodded in acknowledgement. ‘So you’d like me to begin the process immediately?’
‘Please.’
‘You’ll have to sign a disclaimer.’
‘I understand.’
She trusted him such that she didn’t read the small print, no doubt concerning the reason this procedure was still not cleared by the medical council, and thus any deleterious effects would not incur professional liability on behalf of the administrator.
Eidenberg produced a grey plastic headcap. ‘I guess I hardly need to warn you this will not at all be pleasant.’
She nodded. ‘I’m ready.’
The headcap was a thin plastic web that, when placed over her head, contracted to a snug fit.
What she experienced could not be described as pain in the physical sense. It was a sharp blast of awareness: a thousand thoughts in an instant; the totality of her self brought to bare for the most objective analysis. Taking her back to a powerful experience: a drug she once took as a student on a gap year expedition through the Amazon rainforest. The entire Brazilian section had been decreed national park status, and restored to much as how it had been a thousand years ago. The ancient tribes still remained as they had been for millennia, now seemingly as tourist attractions. The taking of their herbal drug, Iowaska, had become a right of passage for most psychology students, its effect was renowned, legendary. It induced a state of shocking retrieval of her past – memories she’d wished she had buried for good: those selfish, inconsiderate acts. She remembered as a seventeen year old the boy she had cruelly rejected merely in a text message, and told her clique of friends why he was no good for her, and his ‘pathetic’ attempts to win her affection. Had they blabbed to him? By his hurt expression as he turned to avoid her, it seemed so. But it was too late, she had thought. Now she wondered if she could have put it right, assuaged her guilt. Yet, there were the good times: her husband when he was there, when she had been everything to him, before he had sampled the delights of a younger woman.
Her life, the whole past, writ large in lurid colours; the voices of everyone intimate or even pressing when she brought them to mind. The man she now confided in, Leonard Heigener, was speaking to her. But even in her imagination he appeared only as a holographic projection. He was talking about an unusual case-study, someone that she apparently knew about. It was him: the man who had contacted her. But now her colleague’s image was shifting about in a distorted way as if from some kind of interference, and his voice similarly until she could no longer understand a word. And then his image disappeared to be replaced by a tall thin man in a black suit and fedora hat. He was no holo-projection. He advanced towards her as she stumbled out of her office chair.
‘Doctor Fortenski,’ he said, almost spitting out the ‘Doctor’ part. ‘You have been digging around into matters that do not concern you. Now please desist. You do not understand what you are dealing with.’ He got so close to her now she could hear his angry breath. He produced a small silver-grey cylindrical device with a flared out end she knew to be a hypospray. She tried to push him away but he was too strong. Then her world went dark.
‘Raiya,’ came a faint voice bringing the world back. ‘Raiya!’ It was Prof Eidenberg, and she was in his consulting-room. He removed the headcap. ‘Can you understand what I am saying?’
‘Yes.’ she managed, though the intense pain in her head made just saying that word such an effort.
‘You began to go into neural shock. I am sorry if I left you in there too long.’
‘No need to apologise, it brought back some useful memories.’