Wildcard (24 page)

Then alien industrial sounds, like metal
sawing neutronium. Agonizingly loud, she heard laughter with
screams underneath and all of it for hours at a time. Combinations
of the above with antipodal rhythms came, then played backwards.
Then played forwards again at faster speed, backwards again at
faster speed. She lost count of the cycles as it sped up faster and
faster with each play. Eventually, the cycles reversed, and it
slowed back down, but still played backwards, then forwards. Then
it slowed down more than the original and repeated that process for
a blurred amount of time.

The body began to rot, and stink. After some
days, the smell gagged her almost constantly.

She received bags of liquid, a gelatinous
substance intended to keep her alive. Sometimes after she ate, she
would become intensely nauseated. Not from the food, she could
tell, but from some sonic device. She would vomit, more foulness to
endure.

She quit eating, passed out, woke up with an
intraveneous tube feeding her. She tried to take it out, but the
hole in the head lashed out, causing her screaming pain. She left
the tube in.

The lights flashed on, intensely bright, for
just a second. The body was looking at her, its face sagging from
the rot. She crawled to the far side of the room, the lights
flashed on again, and the body was looking at her again. No noise
of it moving. And again. Always watching her, this corpse. She
found her way to the body, closed the eyes.

The lights flashed on again. The eyes were
open, staring at her. She tried to destroy the body, smash the face
to pieces in the dark. She did it.

The lights came on. The face was there,
intact but for the rot, staring at her. The eyes did not rot. The
old woman’s voice came on, less machine like, more human. And worse
by that fact, more unnerving, more insane, creepier. It was more
removed from any reference point Martha knew.

“Martha. That is the last time you will hear
your name.”

Long gaps between sentences, or
mid-sentence. 20 minutes, an hour.

“You will be …”

Lights. Staring corpse. Dark. “…someone
else.”

“By killing me, you opened a psychic gate
between us. This always happens…”

Nothingness.

“…in the taking of a life. Some connection
is made. Or, between us two…”

Time in the dark…

“…deepened.” Lights, staring corpse.

“How to turn this into…

Deadened silence for how long.

“…advantage. How to use the thread. I will
be reborn…

the temperature dropped to 30 below zero

“…in you…

It gradually warmed to a survivable
level.

“…Let it happen. Let this horror cease.”

A long night passed, but did not end.

“We have always known, or at least
suspected. Indians took the spirit of the animals they killed to
strengthen themselves, or to free it. It is not evil, it simply
is.”

Often it would be hours between words.
Martha hungered for the words, any human contact at all, even this
hideous recorded voice.

“We have watched, experimented, and proven
that something…”

The voice seemed to need to convince her,
somehow, that it was actually possible.

“…can step through. From the dying to the
killer…

“Not enough, it seemed, but real, provable,
definite. Something can step through.” The top of her head, the
Mechanic’s thing, tingled, and it spread. It relaxed her.

“Wildcard taught that theory can be forced
into reality.”

The voice sounded more distant, like it was
fading.

“No, don’t leave me,” she begged. “Please
don’t leave me.”

“Do you believe this, Deeply Named?” The
voice disappeared at the end.

Nights of blackness passed in soundproofed
silence. The voice returned, talking abstractedly, like a lecture
to an empty hall.

“In other words, if you can dream it, you
can do it. Any theory can be made real, if you can sufficiently
assert its possibility. Juniper argues that Wildcard proved that to
:3:. All things are possible. ‘If you can make someone believe,’ a
poem read.”

“The theory of the psychic gate is validated
by great mind practitioners in a practice of reanimating an
animal’s corpse. The records have been verified and many
demonstrations have provided…proof. If such a thing as proof is
possible.”

The woman slipped into non-identity as
barrages of sensory horror swelled over her, then receded beyond
nothing, then repeated in a different way. She turned so alone,
nothing to ground in, no place to be, no one to tell her she was
still alive or dead or in between. She had been alone all her life,
except for the years with Karl, but it had not prepared her for
this. All of her training could not hold her together much
longer.

“The psychic gate is much stronger if
certain conditions are met. If, for example, a twin pulls the
trigger. Or, theoretically, a clone. The door could be held open
longer, wider, and offered to an invading expertly trained
consciousness with the assistance of technology, especially quantum
technology, or q-tek. A being named :3: has invented this
technology. A consciousness can be guided to a new home. If all the
above conditions are met, results are very likely.

“What happens to the previous occupant? They
must be…”

Glaring lights. Corpse. Pointing at her and
staring.

“…put away.” The lips moved.

Darkness, silence, heat.

She longed to let herself go insane. But the
idea that theory can be forced into reality kept her engaged. It
was her plaything, her mind game, her companion. The voice had
spoken of it at length. It seemed intentional, to give her this
thing, this hope and possibility, so that she would have an easily
broken lifeline to her sanity. They were keeping her on the edge of
madness, but not letting her step all the way across.

Lifetimes after, the voice came again.

“Why should the recipient of the
consciousness be told the meta-theory that any theory may be forced
into truth? Because they must accept, they must believe such a
thing to be possible. As it is possible. By hearing it repeatedly,
they will come to believe. This is crucial in an unwilling
recipient, as most would be.”

The voice had changed, slowly, without her
noticing. It was a man’s voice.

“No doubt the recipient will try to resist.
Leave them alone, in darkness and silence, subject them to torture
and stress, disorient them constantly, deprive them of any notion
that they are seen by anyone. Make them invisible and make them
suffer, and soon they will long for the relief of another in their
mind.

“Eventually, they go so mad with loneliness,
isolation, fear, insanity, and pain that they will become ravenous
with desire to simply speak to someone else. That someone else is
with them, already inside from the moment of death.”

Hours of thick silence followed while the
smell of rot faded. Sensations went away completely, a psychic
weapon.

“What are you doing to me?” she
screamed.

Immediately, “A very effective technique,
tested, but not fully, is to remove the ability of the recipient to
feel her nerves, to move her limbs, to see, hear, or taste. This
can be done by clipping the nerve endings.”

In the silence and dark, she could not move
her arms, could not feel anything. Her senses were gone. It lasted
hours or days.

“Clipping the nerve endings has some
deleterious effects, unfortunately. The vessel is no longer useful
for the incoming entity. An even better solution is quantum
isolation of the nervous system. This can be turned on and off at
will, and with sufficiently advanced technology, senses can be
isolated.”

Her skin came back, on fire. It was searing
against the floor, burning. She could also smell, but neither see
nor hear. She could not move, could not even scream.

It lasted for 6 hours. She knew because
something told her the time every 67 seconds.

More deadness, and she lost track of who she
was, who she had been, what she might become. She forgot her name,
and began speaking to herself by humming in a voice she could not
hear. All ideas of her self came apart, unraveling into threads,
drifting away like smoke.

“Eventually the recipient entity will
realize that it is in their interest to help, and will find a means
of disappearing.” The voice coughed, a wet, hacking noise. “Of
course, it will not be that easy.”

The voice, when it came again, was not
coming through ears, but from inside the head. It was the
synthesized voice of the old woman.

“Karl,” it said softly.

Shock. She tried to sit and couldn’t. Her
body wouldn’t respond.

“Karl.” The man laugh, then nothing.
Black-no-sound.

…

“Karl is in danger.”

…

“The Benefactor’s business partners have a
vested interest in the man Named …Karl.” A newscaster tone spoke in
the same voice.

The deadness fell like a thick blanket for
ages.

“Tell me,” she was unable to scream. “Who is
this Karl? Tell me about him. Tell me. Please, tell me, god. No,
anything, tell me, something. Karl. NO. Who the hell is Karl? Save
him. Save Karl.” Silent shouts in a mind that was no longer
hers.

Somewhere, somehow, she knew him. She needed
to help him. He was her last hold to reality. But who was he? What
was it, this Karl? The word ached to hear. It hurt like love being
torn away.

“The…business…partners…are…interested…in…Karl.” The sentence
dragged forever. It took longer the second time.

Longer still the third.

“A transfer between Mansworld and the human
world is definitely possible,” the Doctor said. “You may only remap
a human brain once, quantically. We are not even certain about
that. However, :3: has dissected over 8000 human brains to the
molecular level and thinks it has a 98% probability of success. In
your case.” He looked at Karl. “Your personality, your brain,
everything is geared for it, almost as if by design. A second
switch-over would create deep inconsistencies, probable induction
of paranoid schizophrenia or psychosis.”

Karl and Seeker had contacted him. He sent
Karl to a facility which allowed for visual cross-over simulation,
an attempt to feel like they were in the same room. They could see
each other in three dimensions. Seeker met the Doctor at the
facility. The Doctor appeared to be excited by the idea, though he
was difficult to read.

“It is challenging to make something appear
exactly on the other side as it is on the initiatory side.
Impossible, actually. But we can get quite close. The commentary by
Juniper on :3:’s explanation is, to quote,

“‘Distortions will appear in the transfer.
Each movement across will increase the distortion by an exponent.
An error of 2/10ths of a percent, perfectly workable, in the first
transfer, will increase by a magnitude of up to 5 times for the
second transfer. An error of 1% would induce at least one form of
madness, probably more. Loss of some fine motor skills and memory
are 78% probable. A third transfer would virtually ensure the death
of the transferee.’”

“Not a pleasant scenario,” said Karl. The
Doctor shrugged.

“Would a Mans suffer the same?” Seeker
asked.

“Good question. The third transfer, yes.
Death would be highly likely. The second transfer, no. A Mans might
develop an excessive analysis of his own behavior, already a common
tendency. Or become nihilistic at returning here where things could
be considered as not truly alive. Or be quite happy at returning.
Mansworld is a simpler place, in many ways, than the human
world.”

“How?”

“Mans are somewhat predictable compared to
humans, especially icons. :3: has mapped out, or solved, you might
say, many of the fractal bases of Mansworld. Dartagnan theorizes
that Karl’s entry here will alter everything, however.”

“In what way?” Karl asked.

“I agree with Dartagnan,” Seeker said. “We
will learn from Karl. Mansworld will learn from him. Perhaps even
icons will evolve. Everything will change.”

“The business partners are interested in
Karl.” The sentence repeated rapidly, in many different voices. It
happened too many times and lost all meaning. It was just noise in
the pitch black space of looming insanity.

“If the subject has substantial life
motivation, children, for example, their hold to identity will be
correspondingly strong. The following set of tools will allow one
to attack that motivation.

“First, sever the identity of the object of
love. The sensory isolation will go a long way in this process. It
has, however, been proven to be incomplete. Repetition of the name
of the object of affection many thousands of times has been proven
to dissociate the meaning from the symbol. Which is to say, the
name loses its connection to the other person. This is best done in
the context of extreme and volatile emotion regarding the object of
love.

“If this can be achieved, the affection will
have no concrete object. Does the person love the other person’s
face, or walk, or laugh? No. They love the person in total, but
without a name to attach it to, this love loses its hold. If this
can be achieved, the subject loses any connection to external
reality.

“A similar process can be utilized if the
recipient is primarily driven by hatred. It is a simple rule: sever
the subject’s strongest emotion from the object of the emotion, and
the subject will have no binding factor to tie their identity to.
They will forget who they are in the deepest way.

“Still, a drive exists, something wishes to
continue. We lack the means for dealing with this, for eradicating
it completely. However, it can simply be left in this state. It is
critical that the invading consciousness be extremely powerful and
capable of a steady vigilance because of this. The subject will try
to return.”