Chapter 20 #2
I dragged my eyes open to find Lyle sitting up. The blanket was still wrapped around his legs, but he looked stronger. The color was back in his cheeks. He smiled as I struggled upright in the chair.
“Sorry, bud. How long was I asleep?”
“Five or six hours. You needed it.”
“So did you, I think.” I stood and stretched.
He saw the edge of the skinsuit under my shirt. “How do you like Iron Maiden?”
“Huh?”
“The P-D-S-A-S. The suit.”
“Oh, yeah. Iron Maiden, that’s clever.”
“No spikes in this one, though.”
“Not so far anyway. No, it’s—it’s great. Thanks.”
“It’s a stuck-up pain in the ass. It’s based on a CMC standard personal armor template, and they loved putting every rule in the military handbook into the computer control system when they built those things. But it’ll protect you.” Lyle’s smile faded a little. “If we can’t stop it.”
I peered at him. This ancient version of my son. “How are we going to stop it?”
“The Second Device.”
“And that is…?”
“I’ll show you.”
His wheelchair was powered. He led me through the main door, where the wheelchair used rotating, gear-like mechanisms to walk him up the stairs, keeping him level and comfortable the entire time.
All I had to do was walk next to him. From there we returned to the elevator.
We descended several floors, and Lyle rebuffed my questions with a wave of his hand. “Just wait.”
When the elevator stopped, I followed Lyle down a wide, featureless gray corridor, his chair whirring.
The corridor could have been in the interior of any building, but it felt deep underground.
I knew we were just that—deeply underground—but something added to the feeling, some weight in the artificial tinge of recirculated, air-conditioned air. The way sound felt dampened.
At the far end of the corridor was another bank-vault-style door.
It opened with a hiss as Lyle’s chair approached.
Lyle rolled through the doorway without pausing, and I followed, taking in the next room.
It was spacious, with high, arcing ceilings.
Lights overhead flickered on as we entered, big flat panels that curved with the ceiling and evenly lit the space below.
In that space, resting on brushed-metal flooring, was Lyle’s Second Device.
The Second Device stood eight or nine feet tall.
It was, like the first Device, built like a cage.
But this one was much more complex than the one Lyle had constructed out of spare parts in Amy’s basement in Portland.
The metal of the cage was a deep, shiny black.
Bars arched upward and were riddled with protrusions that had their own protrusions in turn.
It was almost organic. A metallic tree that had grown around a vaguely human-shaped interior object.
“I called it Yggdrasil for a while,” Lyle said. “But that seemed too dark. So, Second Device it is.”
“It’s incredible. How does it work? Or should I even ask?”
“It’s the headaches that tipped me off. It’s probably not worth going into the technical details. But it has to do with the quantum waveform unique to your mental bio-substrate.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “That sounds a little like what Maggie said. She dismissed it.” Her words, spoken only ten days ago for me, were clear in my head.
“She was missing information. All this was the product of decades of research. A breakthrough. I had to ask myself, what was this unknown force latching on to you so accurately? Not why, not even how, but what. There had to be something, some connection. I had posited this as early as my graduate school days. I couldn’t nail it down.
I gave up so many times. Set up different mechanisms to protect you.
The Word. Co-opting my part of the CMC. But I kept returning to the core problem.
And I found it. That connection to the quantum field, the unique waveform making you, you.
Your consciousness. All sentient creatures have one.
It defines consciousness. It’s that thing which makes us. ‘I think, therefore I am.’”
“And?”
“And,” Lyle said, his voice quiet, “this will disrupt that waveform.”
“Disrupt?”
“Temporarily. During the transit period.”
“I, uh … I don’t get this, Lyle, obviously. It’s way over my head. But disrupt? Disrupt the thing that makes me, me?”
“I know it sounds dangerous. And it probably is, in a way. But I’ve tested it.
On myself, on others. Volunteers, like Jennifer, the soldier who brought you to me.
There are no ill effects we can discern.
You’ll feel nauseous and—and ‘weird’ is the only way to describe it.
But, if my theory holds true, the temporary disruption will prevent this thing from latching on to you. You won’t jump forward.”
“Will I have to go in it every morning for the rest of my life?”
When I looked up, Lyle had a surprised look on his face, like I’d asked something he thought beyond me.
“Well, yes. Possibly. If it works, we’ll take measurements and do analysis.
There’s a chance that after it’s disrupted once, this thing, the energy source latching itself on to you, will pass.
It will have become dislodged in space-time from your quantum waveform.
Permanently. And, if not, then, yes. You’ll have to stand in this thing every day.
” He gave me a rueful smile and spread his thin, liver-spotted hands.
“In which case, maybe ‘Yggdrasil’ was a better name, after all. But, come. Now that you’ve seen it, I want to spend the rest of the day with you.
Just in case it doesn’t work. I want to spend it with my old man. ”
I forced myself to smile and allowed Lyle to lead the way back to his room in the upper levels of the bunker.