“How do you know?” Luria asked.
“I don’t know how I know. Just a feeling.” Then Zack turned to Dr. Stern, who was at his computer terminal listening to him intently. “Was it a real NDE?”
“I don’t know for sure,” Stern said. “There was activity in the temporal and parietal lobes, suggesting stimulation from outside.”
“So it’s an NDE? Not a flash dream thing?”
“At this point, it looks as if you weren’t dreaming,” Dr. Luria said. “The dream centers of your brain were dormant, yet there were electrical stimuli that appear to have come from outside your brain.”
“I beg to differ,” said Dr. Stern. “But it could still be a flash dream just as you woke up. Most of the activity takes place at the very end of your suspension.”
Zack could see Luria bristle at Stern. “We’ll have to do another run.”
“Another suspension?” Zack asked.
“Yes. But some other time. It takes twenty-four hours for the sedative to work itself out of your system. Would you be willing in a couple of days?”
If there was anything to the narrative flow of these visions, they were getting darker. He could feel his hesitation, in spite of another $1,000. “I guess.”
“Good. Let us do the analysis, then we’ll call.”
After he got dressed, Sarah walked him to the limo out front. As they walked up the stairs, Zack stopped. “I was there, Sarah. That was no dream, flash or otherwise.”
“I’m sure it felt that way.”
“Except real dreams always have some margin of awareness. Not this. I could smell the pines, I could feel the sand on my feet. I’m still chilled from the cold air. It was a total sensory thing, not a dream.”
“The preliminary data do show a lot of sensory activity.”
“But?”
“But so did other suspensions that turned out to be flash dreams after we ran the math.”
“So when will you know?”
“In a day or so.”
Bruce was in the car and waiting for him in the parking lot alongside the building.
“She keeps asking me if I was alone in these dream visions or whatever they are. Is that something you can determine?”
“That’s what we’re hoping. Which means separating out the neuroelectrical signature of your own mind from other data we’ve picked up. If the other neurodata can be identified as an external sentience, it would be a major leap. Are you okay for another run?”
He really didn’t know. Standing in those woods and facing that mute hooded figure was not something he was yearning to return to. Yet he felt compelled by a bizarre sense that these suspensions had produced a queer narrative—but one that seemed to be growing darker, more secret.
“See you soon.” She gave him a hug, and he left with the driver.
44
Roman’s weapon of choice for assignments was the 9 mm Beretta 92FS Parabellum. Its name derived from the Latin,
What he liked about the Beretta was its accuracy at high distances. The manufacturer boasted a flat trajectory for a hundred meters, but Roman didn’t need that in his trade, since most kills were up close. And the 9 mm had lethal stopping power. Especially important was the long barrel, which added to the noise suppression provided by a silencer. Silencers didn’t really silence the way they did in the movies, they only reduced the gunshot to maybe a hundred decibels. Like car mufflers, they contained and dissipated the hot gases from the exploding propellants, suppressing a much louder escape blast. Thus, the longer the gun barrel, the better the suppression.
Every couple of weeks, Roman would bring his Beretta to the Pawtucket Rifle and Pistol Club to shoot off a box of rounds. He had done this for years, even after officially retiring. He’d love to fit the weapon with one of his suppressors, except that they were illegal for private ownership in Rhode Island or Massachusetts. Only the military or police could use them. So he wore his ear mufflers and fired full blast at various distances. He did, however, bring his own special-order paper targets, which came in a wide variety, from the dart target board to deer silhouettes to human silhouettes. Today he was shooting at a slightly demonic blackened skull with the bull’s-eye on the forehead. He liked that because it reminded him of the devil. No matter what the target, range shooting was great therapy— pure eye–hand coordination and a chance to clear his mind of the usual debris.
But his thoughts today kept coming back to that fucking Kashian kid.
What he knew confused him. Here’s this kid who quotes the Lord’s Prayer in the original while half-dead. A bunch of people flock to him for miracles, some feeling Jesus in the room, some smelling roses of the Virgin Mary. Yet Devereux claimed that they were testing him, hoping to confirm the spirit world was real—and maybe the reason Roman had been hired to pop the scientists. That made no sense.
He went online and looked up “near-death experience,” finding hundreds of reports. Most accounts were firsthand testimonials of people who nearly died in hospitals or in accidents, then went sailing down tunnels to a bright, happy paradise where they met with the spirits of dead loved ones and holy ghosts.
He also found Christian Web sites dealing with NDEs—Web sites that outright condemned attempts to contact dead relatives or saints, claiming that “great spiritual dangers” awaited those who made such attempts. Apparently those interactions weren’t with dead loved ones or Jesus, but with demons—or Satan himself, hoping to lead victims away from dependence on God. The worst offenders were NDE charlatans who exploited victims of grief. One blogger claimed that the death of a loved one should drive us into God’s loving arms, not New Age books full of lies and false hope.
The complete disparity in claims not only quickened Roman’s curiosity, but blurred his theological mission. He took aim at his target and put five holes in the skull’s forehead, thinking that he’d better check out this kid at close range.
45
“We have a little surprise for you,” said Dr. Luria on the phone the next Tuesday. “No suspensions tonight, and please come dressed up.”
That was all she told him, except to meet at the usual pickup spot near Symphony Hall.
Zack’s sole dress-up wardrobe consisted of a blue blazer, a pair of chinos, and a blue shirt. His one tie was balled up with a pair of dress socks. He ironed that, and at six sharp he was at the corner of Huntington and Massachusetts Avenues, picked up this time by a Lincoln Town Car, not Bruce in the SUV. And the driver came with a personality.
“Where we going?” Zack said, getting in.
“The Taj Boston.”
He had heard of it and knew it wasn’t exactly a grad student hangout. “Sounds good.”
“I take it you’re not from around here.”
He didn’t want to sound dumb, given that he was born and raised just ten miles out of town. “Nope, just arrived.”
“Where from?”
“Maine.” He had no idea why he said that.
A few minutes later, the driver pulled up to the corner of Arlington and Newbury at the doors of the most elegant hotel Zack had ever been to. When the driver let him out, Zack fumbled for money, but the man said that
