Flashback

long, wide underground room. But Nick had already caught a glimpse of what was inside.

The three ninjas stayed in the airlock as Sato escorted Nick into the space. Two medicos or technicians, both wearing full surgical robes and masks as well as the caps and booties, hurried up to say something, but Sato waved a single finger that silenced them. One of them bowed low to Sato.

They walked past tall tanks of Plexiglas or some stronger, clear plastic-glass material. Each tank was filled with a greenish liquid. A score of pipes and tubes snaked into each tank, and half of the tubes connected to the human beings—mostly men, but a few women—who floated in each vat. They were naked except for a sort of diaper from which more tubes came and went. Tubes ran into the men’s and women’s nostrils, and broader tubes were forced down their throats. Other IV drips connected to wrists and arms. Sensors on the figures’ chests and bellies and shaven heads fed data to control boards on the exteriors of the tanks.

“The tubes are for nutrients and other functions, Bottom-san,” Sato said softly, almost whispering, as if they were in a church or shrine. “They receive no oxygen in gaseous form. You see, their lungs are actually filled with the liquid. The fluid is a highly oxygenated mixture. The initial immersion is difficult for the subject, if conscious, but the human body—once the lungs are completely filled—soon learns to use the oxygen in the fluid as easily as if he or she were breathing air.”

They moved from tank to tank, walking in single file between the tall containers. Each of the hundreds of tanks was illuminated from the inside and the overall effect in this subterranean chamber was that hushed, almost solemn sense of being in some fantastic aquarium. The only sound came from the quiet machines or the occasional rustle of soft-soled slippers on the tile floor. The laboratory space did have a churchlike hush and reverential feel to it.

“Except for a few cases, in which the subject is being punished,” whispered Sato, “we remove the eardrums, eyeballs, and optic nerves. There is no need for them, you see. They could only be a distraction.”

Nick thought, They’re being punished by not having their eardrums, eyeballs, and optic nerves removed? He feared that this would make sense in a moment.

“What is this?” demanded Nick. “Some sort of sci-fi experiment for long-distance space travel? Are these clones or something? Adapting the human body to live under the oceans? What the fuck is this nightmare?”

They stopped by a tank where a man who looked to be in his early sixties floated amid his Medusa-hair tangle of tubes and microtubes. His eyelids were sutured shut and sunken. He had no external ears and the ear openings had been covered over by grafts of flesh and skin.

“These are the first test subjects,” said Sato. “A few hundred here at NCAR from thousands finishing their testing nationwide. These are the final quality-control check before Flashback-two is distributed in America and elsewhere.”

“F-two?” Nick repeated stupidly.

“Precisely,” said Sato. He set his strong hand on the glass inches from the floating man’s face. Nick noticed that this man’s skin—the skin covering the faces and scalps and bodies of all the figures in all the tanks—was fishbelly-white and as wrinkled as an albino prune.

“They will spend the rest of their lives in flashback happiness,” continued Sato. “Less than two miles from here, people are spending millions of dollars to relive their entire lives under supervised flashback medication at the Naropa Institute. But regular flashback demands that the subject be awakened for several hours out of each twenty-four—to exercise, to eat, to avoid bedsores and other ailments of the permanently immobilized. Their relived lives are constantly being interrupted, the flashback illusion interrupted and violated. But here…”

Sato gestured around.

“Here Mr. Nakamura’s science department has provided full lifetimes’ worth of only the happiest moments, not merely relived as with flashback, but restructured as one’s imagination and fantasies would have them. People here are spending happy futures with loved ones they’ve lost to death. Cripples in real life walk and run here and will for the rest of their F-two lives. Failures in life find success in these tanks, with this drug, and no one is harmed. There is no failure or loss under this kind of flash, Bottom-san. There is no pain under Flashback-two. None at all.”

“It’s real,” mumbled Nick. He meant the drug. After all these years of rumor and myth about F-2, it was here. And real.

“Oh, yes. To these men and women, everything they are dreaming is totally real,” said Sato, misunderstanding Nick’s comment. “The only difference separating life under Flashback-two and what we call ‘real life’ is the wonderful absence of physical pain and painful experiences or memories or emotions for this privileged group.”

“How long do they… live?” asked Nick. His clothes still carried the stink of Denver Municipal Landfill Number Nine. He wished he were back there.

“Our best projections, based on a decade of research, suggest a normal span of seventy or eighty years,” said Sato. “Sometimes longer. A full, rich, happy life.”

Nick covered his mouth with his hand. After a moment he removed it and grated, “The penalty in Japan or anywhere else for Nipponese nationals using flashback is death.”

“As it shall remain, Bottom-san,” said Sato. “And that law will continue to be strictly enforced, just as it is in the Global Caliphate.”

Nick shook his head. “You’ll sell this stuff, this F-two…” He broke off when he realized he didn’t know how to end that sentence.

“At a lower price than the original flashback,” Sato said proudly. “F-two will be street priced at a new dollar for forty or fifty hours. Even the homeless will be able to afford it.”

“You can’t give three hundred and forty–some million people each a fish tank to float in,” snarled Nick. “And who’s going to feed the flashing millions? It’s hard enough to do that now.”

“Of course there will be no tanks, Bottom-san. The customer will have to find his or her own flashcave or comfortable, private place in which to go under Flash-two. The tank really is the best option. We imagine that providing such places—perhaps some not so different than NCAR—will be a growth industry in the next few years. We imagine that other nations, ones that do not allow either form of flashback within their own borders, might be helpful in manufacturing such total-immersion tanks for Americans.”

Nick counted cartridges. He had fifteen rounds in the magazine already in the Glock and one more magazine in his jacket pocket. Thirty rounds total. It might take several 9mm rounds to crack one of these tanks, if they were breakable by small-arms fire. The .32 didn’t count since it almost certainly couldn’t smash this type of super-Plexiglas. It might be transparent Kevlar-3, in which case even the Glock would be useless here. He later realized that this probability was the only thing that stopped him.

The two men stood in green-shadowed silence for a long moment: Hideki Sato contemplative, Nick Bottom seething in murderous frustration.

“Why are you showing me this?” asked Nick, staring Sato in the face.

The big security chief smiled slightly. “We have to leave now, Bottom-san, if I am to return you to your vehicle before the hour is up as I promised. Later today, when you speak to Mr. Nakamura, do not forget the possibility of NCAR.”

“I’ll never forget NCAR,” said Nick.

1.17 Denver—Saturday, Sept. 25

“Where are they?”

Nick was in the weapons-check airlock and Gunny G. was the only one behind the counter.

“Your son’s gone, Mr. B. And your father-in-law has had some sort of stroke or heart attack,” said the ex- Marine.

“Gone?” shouted Nick. “What do you mean Val’s gone? Where to?”

“We don’t know, Mr. B. He went up and out the skylight and down a rope. I’ll show you.”

“Is Leonard—my father-in-law—alive?”