Chapter Eight
THE FEDS HAD put Evelyn up in a swanky Magnificent Mile hotel with floor-to-ceiling windows and a stunning view of the surrounding skyscrapers. Lights winked on as the sun lowered, and my own ghostly reflection in the glass overlaid the scene.
As for any other transparent occupants…there were none.
When I turned back to the room, Evelyn gave me a shy smile.
The downtown wind had knocked her hair clip askew and a few white locks poked out at odd angles.
Hardly threatening…aside from the plain black case in her hands.
“Full disclosure—this is the first time I’ve shown the tech to anyone outside R&D.
I didn’t think you would give me a chance. ”
“Why not?” I wondered.
She laughed uneasily. “Bethany said you’d rather be set on fire than participate in another lab study.”
Jacob cut in before I could answer. “He’s got good reason to be touchy about lab work. He’s been through things most psych departments wouldn’t believe. Let’s not be so fast to sign him up.”
Evelyn held up her hands. “Of course. I wouldn’t dream of running anything without consent.” She turned to me with a softer tone. “I was thinking more…you might find them interesting. That’s all.”
Evelyn popped the case, and inside was a pair of glasses. Plain, black-framed glasses. Maybe the arms were a bit thicker than usual. But if I hadn’t known they came out of a top-secret FPMP lab, I would’ve just figured their design for a fashion statement.
Jacob frowned in thought.
“They look harmless enough.” I gestured toward the case. “May I?”
Evelyn held it out.
I picked up the glasses. They felt heavy. Then again, compared to the cheap dollar store pairs I usually wore, that was no big surprise.
“They’re called SPECs,” Evelyn said. “Signal Processing and Extrasensory Calibration.” I raised an eyebrow, and she shrugged. “I may be guilty of overthinking the acronym. But it’s got a good ring to it.”
“How do they work?”
“The binaural pulses are carried through the temples, where they can vibrate the cochlea without involving the eardrum.”
“So I could get the same effect as Mood Blaster without—”
“Without blocking your hearing, exactly!”
Immediately, I saw the advantage. I didn’t always have the luxury of abandoning all my physical senses to tune in on a ghost. And if it was possible to have my binaural beats without the distracting whub-whub-whub, I could still track what was going on around me—from simple conversations to a potential assailant.
“Can I try them on?” I asked.
Jacob said, “Shouldn’t we have someone from the lab walk you through safety protocols first?”
“There really are none,” Evelyn said. “You just…put them on. As for safety, it’s the same principal as Mood Blaster. If anything, the mechanism is gentler, since it uses bone conduction at the temples instead of piping sound through the ear canal.”
“Safer than earbuds,” I told Jacob as I slipped them on. Don’t get me wrong, I was glad he was looking out for me. But I’m perfectly capable of standing up for myself.
I slid them on.
They felt like…glasses.
“Once we’re in production,” Evelyn said, “we can fit them with tinted lenses, or prescription, or even smart glass that would allow things like navigation or translation. At this stage, all the tech is limited to the arms of the prototype. Eventually, the user will be able to control this via Bluetooth on their phone, but for now you just tap it on. The button is a pre-programmed ramp from beta to low alpha.”
The details of Mood Blaster, pre-update, were frankly a bit hazy…but this “ramp” of hers sounded familiar. “You mean…the big red asteroid?”
Evelyn nodded. “The big red asteroid.”
I was already tapping the button when Jacob said, “But how can you tell if it’s working?”
“It’s just a dry run,” I told him. “Like shooting paper targets at the firing range.”
“Maybe,” Evelyn said, “maybe not. Just last month, someone in this room suffered a fatal heart attack.” She didn’t need to be empathic to note the look on my face. Flustered, she said, “Sorry—I guess I should’ve led with that. But I didn’t want you to have any preconceptions.”
White light was already pouring on down. Heart attack victims tend to be more sad than scary, and most of them don’t stick around. But the ones that linger are the ones who didn’t see it coming, and they’ve got a bunch of unfinished business holding them back.
If there was a ghost in the room, they’d be haunting me by now. Given that I wasn’t currently getting an earful, I ruled that out. But I hadn’t been looking for repeaters.
“I’ve got to admit,” Jacob said, “for something that’s still in testing, this is remarkably seamless. You’d almost forget it was experimental.”
I was glad he was onboard. Jacob didn’t hand out praise lightly.
Evelyn gave a quick, almost startled smile. “Thanks—I, um—well, that’s really good to hear.”
I scanned the floor first. Nothing. Then again, our prior resident probably had a few minutes to come to terms with the notion that their indigestion was something a lot more serious. Tragic. But not sudden enough to leave a repeater behind.
I didn’t ask where the death had occurred. I let my training take over and I walked the grid.
More nothing.
“It’s not often that I say this,” I told Evelyn, “but I’m sorry to break it to you, your room’s not haunted.”
“That’s beside the point, Agent. How do you feel?”
Still digesting about thirty pounds of mozzarella. But aside from that? “Fine.” And then I glanced up and caught a glimpse of my reflection in the dresser mirror and nearly did a double-take, because I’d been so focused on checking for a ghost, I’d completely forgotten about the glasses.
And they didn’t look too bad on me, either.
* * *
We did a few more tests, comparing and contrasting the high-tech SPECs with Mood Blaster.
Evelyn even showed me how to beat level 18 by strategically holding my breath at a certain point.
It wouldn’t help me modulate my brainwaves, she said, but it was enough to fool the crude sensor in my smart watch by manipulating my pulse.
The SPECs were so unobtrusive, I hardly knew they were there. But Evelyn assured me that if I were hooked up to a scan, my brain would be putting off the smooth, flowing peaks that accompanied heightened ESP.
I wasn’t so sure about that. Not with the third piece of deep-dish I’d attempted now setting fire to my esophagus.
“There’s a 24-hour convenience store in the lobby,” Evelyn said. “I’ll bet they have some antacids—and I’ll bet they’ll be exorbitantly marked up. I’ll walk you there and put it on my expense account.”
She tucked away the SPECs and we headed toward the elevators.
On the way down, she told me about the success they’d had so far with astral projection with a medium recruited from PsyTrain.
I’d never met the guy, and the level of augmentation they’d achieved with him seemed negligible to me.
But apparently it was “statistically significant.” And that meant something was working.
“I was thrilled when Bethany agreed to a clinical trial,” Evelyn said, then proceeded to rattle off a bunch of numbers and percentages about Bethany’s ability to trip the light fantastic—which had always seemed pretty limited to me.
That was probably for the best. The only clear application for astral projection is espionage, which would be a sure way to get yourself picked off by the opposing team.
“Bethany’s data will really help with the fine-tuning.
Which also gave me an excuse to revisit my old Mood Blaster and see what’s become of it.
Er…don’t include that on any of your reports.
My bosses wouldn’t take kindly to me showing interest in an intellectual property I sold off years ago. ”
“My lips are sealed,” I assured her, swallowing down an oregano-tinged burp.
The tiny convenience store did indeed have some antacids—and I could’ve bought a year’s supply for what they charged for a single roll.
But since Big Brother was footing the bill, I grabbed two.
I was considering adding a bag of chips, just on principle, when movement caught my eye—at the counter level.
I don’t care how swanky a hotel might be. Chicago is Chicago. And that means rats. Except when I did a double-take, I saw it wasn’t a rat at all shambling along the counter, but a creepy, cylindrical, semi-transparent mass that looked like a gigantic ghostly bacteria.
My heartbeat stuttered—I’d been holding my breath just like I had on level 18—and the massive germ thinned until its outline could be mistaken for a trick of the overhead lights bouncing off the chrome trim on the Lotto machine.
That’s where it roosted, I realized. Lying in wait for the next hopeful sucker to waste two hard-earned bucks so it could hop on and feed.
A habit demon.
I’ve seen habit demons crawl, slither and float, and they’re just as different from one to the other as a cornucopia of rotting fruit.
But the way they feed off the dopamine squirt of a human’s addictions makes them easy to classify by their behavior.
I’ve never seen a random non-physical cootie just hanging out and enjoying the ambiance. This thing was lying in wait.
Evelyn glanced over sharply, scanned the counter, then returned her gaze to me. She’d felt me feeling whatever it was I felt—and we all knew it.
I nodded toward the stack of Tribunes beside the machine. “Four bucks for a daily paper—since when? That’s highway robbery.”
No one in their right mind would buy that excuse for my adrenaline spike, but she didn’t press. Either she didn’t know me well enough to spot the fib, or she was incredibly tactful.
I wasn’t sure if I’d minimized my talent out of strategy or habit. But now it would be too obvious if I asked how long till the binaural SPECs enhancement wore off, so I just chafed the back of my neck and hoped the bacteria brick didn’t decide to feed on my big, fat lie.
We bid Evelyn goodnight, and on the way down to the underground parking ramp, I told Jacob in low tones about the habit demon as I crunched down half a roll of antacids.
“By the time I even realized what I was looking at, I couldn’t see it anymore.
Plus, well…I guess it startled me. And that was enough to hijack my alpha waves. ”
I watched Jacob’s jaw work as he chewed through the information like a handful of chalky pills.
I figured he was mapping out a plan of attack to get his hands on the demon and tear it in half—they’re apparently even more satisfying to pop than bubble wrap.
But instead he said, “And you didn’t mention it to Evelyn because… ?”
I wasn’t entirely sure. “Because she’s from National, I guess.”
Our conversation ebbed as we strolled past the FPMP-issued Lexus and looped down the next aisle. “A lot of people work for National,” Jacob said. Meaning, the FPMP signed our paychecks, too. And it’s always good to find an ally wherever you can.
“It’s obvious you think she’s pretty great.” The two of them had clicked immediately. He’d let her talk me into field testing the SPECs without putting up much of a fight, and green-lit the pizza I was currently regretting. “But what can I say? I’m accustomed to keeping myself to myself.”
And while I couldn’t speak for the demons, in my experience, old habits die hard.