“You also said that they didn’t feel like regular dreams.”
“Yeah, I still wouldn’t say they were supernatural. Just very realistic dreams.”
“Elizabeth thinks you experienced transcendence.”
“But everything I’ve read, including Gladstone’s book, talks about unconditional love and tranquillity. I didn’t get that. Plus I was younger and so was my father, and he wasn’t any being of light.”
“So what are you saying?”
“That maybe Dr. Stern’s right. Maybe it’s all from inside my own head, and nothing else.” His only explanation for the root beer logo thing was sheer coincidence—that the image had been buried in his brain, tweaked while in suspension, so that he came out thirsty and craving a frosty A&W. As for the nightmares of being buried in sand, he blamed that on the anesthetic—that and how his brain had suffered trauma from the bike accident, followed by weeks in a chemically induced coma.
“That’s entirely possible, which is why she wants more tests, if you’re still willing.”
“I’ve got bills up to here, so I’m willing.” But he still felt torn. Despite the wide-eyed speculations about the afterlife and cosmic sentience, he couldn’t help thinking that he was part of a very expensive exercise in pseudoscience. It reminded him of those Discovery Channel shows about alien visitations, with scientists holding forth with sweet-smelling endorsements. Of course, he didn’t say that. Nor did he mention how he’d like to get back to those woods and find out what his dream “father” wanted to tell him.
“Let’s see how you do on Thursday.”
After a second glass of wine, Sarah lowered her head onto his shoulder. In a few moments, they were kissing and fondling each other. After a spell, she began to unbutton his shirt and kiss his chest. “You know what?” he whispered.
“What?”
“I’m starting to believe in transcendence.”
48
At six P.M. on Thursday, Sarah pulled up in front of Zack’s apartment to drive him to the lab. “Bruce, you never looked better,” he said, getting in.
Sarah smiled. “He’s got the night off.”
She headed down Huntington toward the MassPike. But instead of the usual turn off Route 109, Sarah proceeded to the next right and then another, cutting behind the lab building where construction was being done. Because of the high evergreens, Zack had not noticed the large white church on the other side of the woods behind the lab. A sign in front read, “The GodLight Tabernacle.” As they passed the church, construction crews were finishing a security fence around the lab. “It’s on the same property as the church.”
“Yes. Gladstone owns all the acreage around here, including the lab.”
She continued past a low white parish house through more hemlocks to a new security gate at the entrance of the lab. Because of the trees, the fence was not visible from the church, and it was topped with razor wire. Also new was a guard shack with an armed uniformed man. Sarah showed her ID and guest pass for Zack. The guard looked at Zack and let them go through. “Is there something I should know?”
“Just that a lot of crazies don’t like what we’re doing.”
“Any actual threats?”
“Just some nasty communications,” she said. “As you can see, the guards are new.”
“Guards, plural?”
“There are others around the compound.”
They parked against the building, then moved through the front entrance, where a barricade had been erected and where a technician scanned them for metal and checked Zack’s backpack. All this in just a few days. “Just how serious are these communications?” he said as they walked down the hall to the lab office.
“It’s more precautionary than defensive.”
Dr. Luria was talking to Dr. Stern and a technician when they entered her office. They greeted Zack, then walked him down the hall to the MRI room, where he changed and got hooked up on the gurney.
Sarah patted his arm. “Ready?”
“If you don’t bring me back, the Discover people will be really upset.”
She smiled. “So will I.”
“Be still, my foolish heart.” He closed his eyes on her smile as she powered him into the MRI tube.
His last thought before Sarah depressed the plunger was,
* * *
Zack did not recognize the car. Or the street. Nothing about the locale meant anything to him. Nor did the fact he was driving somewhere in the country with very few houses and deep forests right up to the road. Nothing had any meaning except for the figure far down the road. A woman jogging in a pink outfit.
She wore headphones and was pumping hard along the same side of the road. Sunlight splashed through the canopy of leaves. He slowed to the speed of the jogger, who was too lost in her music and running to notice him pace her a hundred feet back.
Two cars came the other way and disappeared in his rearview mirror. Ahead, the road was a straight cut through the trees with no houses or cars approaching. He pulled alongside the woman. Without breaking her stride, she turned her face toward him. She wore sunglasses with large white frames. He lowered the passenger window as if to ask directions.
It took a few moments, but her face registered fear and she stopped in her tracks.
In a lightning move, he put the car in reverse and then jammed it into drive. Before she could move, he turned the wheel sharply and drove into her. She let out a cry as she tumbled onto the soft shoulder. When she saw him back up and then shift into drive, she let out a scream, cut off as he drove over her body and felt the heavy crunch of bones beneath the wheels.
He woke up to the sound of his own scream.
* * *
But nobody in the lab heard it.
Sometime later, he was in a chair in the lab office, drinking black coffee. Sarah, Luria, Stern, Cates, and a technician at the video camera listened to him.
“Did you know the woman?” Luria asked.
“I never saw her before.”
“Or where you were?”
“No.”
“Or why you hit her?”
“No. It didn’t even feel like me driving.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t explain. It just didn’t feel like my emotions.” Silence settled over the room like fog. “It was like someone else’s nightmare.”
On the computer monitors, colored splotches danced across the schematic of his brain. After a moment, Dr. Luria said, “Zack, you didn’t have a dream or nightmare. Your brain was incapable of dreaming on the anesthetic.”
He looked at her without response.
“Every indication points to a transcendence. The data’s still raw, but at the intercellular level the sensory centers of your brain experienced external stimuli—vision, hearing, touch, spatial maneuvering.”
“We still have hours of analysis ahead of us,” said Dr. Stern.
“But you think it was a transcendence?” Zack asked.
“I’m not ready to jump to conclusions yet.”
Sarah said nothing, but Zack suspected that she agreed with Stern. Luria made a dismissive gesture with her hand and moved to another monitor beside Byron Cates. “Your blood profile shows a dramatic spike in epinephrine, another name for adrenaline. And that means your brain experienced a fight-or-flight response signaling your heart to pump harder and your blood pressure to increase. Do you remember feeling any fear?”
