The Intruder (7 page)

"I don't usually eat breakfast," she said. "I just study, or sleep."

Jeremy noticed a book in her coat pocket, and suddenly realized he hadn't seen one since he'd come to Society. "You're a student?" he asked between bites. "Where do you go to school?"

"Right here at the
Capitol
University
," she said, pointing vaguely to her left. "I'm studying anthropology." After a pause she added, "Pretty useless thing to study, huh?"

"I wouldn't know," Jeremy said quickly, but he didn't want to get into that, so he continued. "You wouldn't happen to have a
10:00
lab in sociology in the
Powell
Building
, would you?"

Hanna's eyes lit up with surprise. "As a matter of fact, I don't. But I have a friend in that class. Are you a guest lecturer or something?"

Jeremy laughed. "Nothing so grand. But I'm supposed to be there today." He looked up and studied Hanna's eyes for a moment. He noticed that she was looking straight at him with both eyes. Neither of them wandered. Perhaps her implant wasn't on, he thought, or perhaps she just had good control of her eye muscles.

His gaze was suddenly distracted by something moving along the sidewalk outside the restaurant. He glanced away from Hanna in time to see a man's form glide past the main plate-glass window. Something about the figure troubled him, and he wanted a second look. It was as if he couldn't focus on the man, or as if he was walking in a mist in the otherwise bright and sunny weather.

A mirror on the left wall of the restaurant reflected a view of the sidewalk where the man should appear, if he continued in the same direction along the sidewalk, but he wasn't there. Jeremy continued to look for some time.

"Is something the matter?" Hanna asked.

"I just saw someone float by, outside. It was really weird."

Hanna smiled. "It's probably one of those hover-board things. They're all the rave at the university. You get yourself going and you just float along, about a foot off the ground."

"Maybe," Jeremy said aloud, but he continued to watch the sidewalk. Why did the man look so funny, and why didn't he see him in the mirror?

"So, uh," Hanna said, struggling not to giggle with embarrassment, "why did you use cash to buy your breakfast? Are you from
Australia
?"

Jeremy looked up.
Australia
? What does that have to do with it?

"No, I just had these coins and I wanted to get rid of them," he said.

She shook her head disapprovingly. "You could have traded them in with a collector for four times their face value. They're hard to get these days."

"I didn't know that," Jeremy said, feeling stupid.

"What time is your first class?" he asked to divert conversation.

"Nine. And if that means you want me to go, that's okay."

"No, no, I didn't mean that. Please stay," he said earnestly. "I just ..."

"You just wanted to change the subject," she finished his thought. "That's okay. But whether you meant it or not, you're right. I need to get going to class." Jeremy watched as she showed the first visible sign of checking her implant. Both her eyes moved up and to the left -- the default position for the clock.

"I'm sorry," Jeremy said. "I didn't mean to be rude."

Hanna smiled warmly at him. "You seem like a nice guy, Jeremy. I come here every morning at about eight. Maybe I'll see you sometime." She picked up her coffee cup and left.

Jeremy sat for a minute, staring into space. He might have gone on like that for some time, but his implant called him back to life.

From Doctor
Berry
. Reminder.
Ten o'clock
,
Powell
Building
, Room Twenty-three A. There's a map in the university page.

Jeremy activated his clock. He still had about an hour before he'd have to leave. Not another walk! 

To Doctor
Berry
. Acknowledged.

He accessed the university page on the hole and located the
Powell
Building
. There was a large park about a quarter of a mile from the building. He packed up the remains of his breakfast and headed outside to take a leisurely walk in the general direction of the park. Perhaps he could study for a while. He still had a few more lessons to do, and he wanted to read as much as he could about the implant and hole communications.

Back on the sidewalk, Jeremy turned from
North Capital Street
onto
H Street
, generally watching the pavement immediately in front of him as he continued to work on walking and working his implant. As he turned the corner Jeremy froze in mid-stride to avoid a collision. He'd almost walked right into someone's back. He was about to excuse himself when a sudden, irrational fear gripped him. It was that same pale, floating creature he had seen through the restaurant window. It wasn't a foot in front of him, facing away, drifting down the sidewalk.

There was no hover board or anything else to explain its odd, mid-air movement. Its feet moved slightly, but it wasn't walking -- the legs just stretched from time to time. The head moved about, left to right, up, down, taking in the surroundings, apparently unconcerned about where it was going.

But it wasn't just the unearthly movement that was so shocking. The body itself looked like a shade, or a mirage of a person. Jeremy could make out the form distinctly, but he could also see through it, which is why he nearly called out when the form looked as if it was going to collide with a man walking the other direction, towards Jeremy.

He could see the man through the body of the phantasm, and then there was the awful moment when they touched, then occupied the same space, then separated, both seemingly oblivious to the union they had for no more than a second. Somehow it seemed disgusting. Jeremy had one last thing he had to do before it got away. He closed his left eye.

The image vanished. There was nothing on the walk but normal pedestrian traffic. He tried alternating eyes, and there was no question about it; he could only see it through the eye that the implant was connected to. But why didn't anyone else see it? Or did they?

He had to know.

"Pardon me," he said to the man who had just shared space with a ghost, "did you see that?"

"Did I see what?" the man asked, clearly not pleased about being disturbed and eager to be on his way.

"I'm sorry, but did you see the form of a man floating along down the sidewalk?" He felt foolish asking the question, but he felt he had to be direct.

The man scowled at him. "Is this some sort of joke?" 

"No, but I'm sorry to have troubled you," Jeremy said and immediately turned away, walking slowly down the sidewalk. The creature was nowhere to be seen, but Jeremy continued to scan the street, hoping for another look.

What could that have been?
he thought. He checked to make sure he didn't have any odd programs running on his implant. He had been playing a spy game the night before, and it was possible there was some odd visual effect from that. But his implant was on standby: only the clock was running, and of course the mail system was on.

Could that be it? Can you send a ghost image by mail?

Jeremy ran a series of searches in the help sections of the mail database as he continued to walk toward the university. Tracing down his hypothesis had a calming effect. The adrenaline was wearing off, and he began to breathe more regularly. Seeing that thing had been a jolting experience, but he wasn't sure understand exactly why. It had frightened him at an almost animal level.

From what he could tell in the help database, it wasn't possible to send visual images by mail. You could send a message with a tag to a visual image stored on the hole, but the recipient would have to activate the tag before the image would appear. He had just received a message from Dr.
Berry
, but there had been no tag.

He arrived at the park and paused from his frantic thoughts to take in the beautiful lawn and stately oak trees, of all different varieties. In the center of the park was a reflecting pool, complete with a dozen or more ducks and geese. Jeremy sat on one of the wooden benches next to the pool and tried to calm himself and gather his thoughts.

First things first. I don't want to be late.

He sent himself a delayed message to remind him to leave for the
Powell
Building
on time. With that out of the way, he began to concentrate on figuring out what in the world he had just seen, and why.

He first suspected, and hoped, that seeing strange images was another common problem for newbies, like the floaters he had seen before. But Dr.
Berry
's warnings about implant psychosis were still ringing in his ears: one of the symptoms was seeing strange images. Jeremy refused to believe there was anything wrong with him, so he had to try to figure it out for himself first. If he couldn't solve it on his own, maybe he'd talk to Dr.
Berry
, but the risk was that she'd say he was sick and start "treatment."

After a few minutes searching the hole, he found a database of research articles on the experiences of newbies with the implants. He scanned the headers and noticed that one name occurred again and again in the studies: Dr. Anne Berry. She was clearly the expert in this field, just as the Advocate had said. She also had Jeremy under supervision.

A disquieting thought occurred to him. What privileges did "diagnostic mode" give Dr.
Berry
? Could she know that he had seen those images? Would she know that he was looking into implant psychosis? Would that make her suspicious of him?

Jeremy disliked going to doctors in the first instance, and he really didn't want her to put him through all kinds of fool tests. He decided to keep things to himself until he was fairly certain that he really had a problem, so he ratcheted up the security on his link to Dr.
Berry
, cutting her off from everything except mail and chat. The trouble was that if she tried to access his account while the security was up, she might wonder what he was up to.

Let her wonder, it's my business,
he decided after changing the link status. She couldn't get any information on his account without his approval.

He tried to calm down, but he couldn't shake a sense of urgency. He couldn't risk locking her out for too long, but he had to make some progress. As he struggled to find the right information on the hole, he noticed that his hands were shaking.

After a half-hour's reading, aided by sophisticated search engines, Jeremy found that several other young newbies had reported "seeing things," and had been subsequently diagnosed as suffering from implant psychosis: each time by the same physician, Dr. Anne Berry. The reports never recorded what they had seen, only that they became obsessed with certain illusions, presumably generated by neurological rejection of the implant.

They also became paranoid, unable to trust anyone, especially their doctor. Dr.
Berry
's thesis that such paranoia was the major indicator of the advent of implant psychosis had been universally accepted in the scientific community: mistrust of the supervising physician was the first sign of trouble and called for more careful supervision and testing.

For the second time that morning Jeremy felt his adrenaline rush. This woman had too much control over his life. The supervisory link with Dr.
Berry
was still secured, but now he had to decide which course had the most risk. What would make her more likely to suspect that he was becoming psychotic, that he was reviewing the literature on imaginary images, or that he had shut down his link to her? His mind raced for a solution, and then his pre-programmed message came.

It's time to go.

He quickly shut down his search and accessed the university's map site, then he re-established his link with Dr.
Berry
. 

He gazed across the pond and watched the ducks for a minute, breathing deeply. As he felt the jitters fade, he got up and followed the map to the Powell building. He walked through the campus, his mind engaged in that non-verbal thought that sometimes seems like no thought at all. 

*
             
*
             
*

Anticipation formed a knot in his stomach as he walked down the final corridor of the
Powell
Building
to Room 23A. He paused briefly at the door, forced a casual smile, and walked in.

He expected to see scores of college students staring at him, watching his every move, wondering how they grew 'em in the Community. Instead, seven students sat, engaged in light conversation, in a rough semi-circle of chairs that Jeremy would have expected to find in a living room. Refreshments filled a small table against the wall to his left. He rechecked the room number against Dr.
Berry
's message.

A moment later Dr.
Berry
herself emerged from a back office with another woman, who, after seeing Jeremy in the door, immediately rushed to greet him.