Chapter Nine

 

She was silent on the first train and the second.

I wasn't even certain she was breathing in the cab. She made no noise.

She was eerily quiet when we rolled into the small town a couple over from the one where my house was.

She didn't even ask a question when I got a second cab to take us to the next town over, or a third one to drop us two blocks from the house.

She didn't complain when we hiked the two blocks in the pouring rain or when I opened the old iron gates to the estate where we would be staying.

She walked up the driveway, eyes steady and face soft, without uttering a single word. I unlocked the gate and stepped up to the porch to open the front doors, swinging them wide. The house didn't gasp this time. It was ready for us.

The maids, who I’d hired, had cleaned it to the point that the filth was gone and the wood shined, but nothing would fix up the old look or feel. The furniture gleamed from the wood polish and vacuuming but the decor was still fifty or more years old.

The fridge was filled with food and drinks and the dishes were all washed and ready to use.

It would have to do for now.

Lana strolled about, analyzing or exploring, I wasn't sure which, while I called and booked a realtor and stager to take on my Manhattan apartment. I gave up my lease on the dentist office that was likely being raided at that very moment.

I wasn't going back, not for a while.

Then I turned off my phone and went to get the equipment.

In the dark room of the basement where it was, I crept through the shadows the dim lights cast. As I grabbed a box a noise startled me. I spun, jumping when I saw Lana staring at me with her dead-fish eyes and mussed hair.

“I thought I would see if you needed help.” She said it so flatly, I wasn't sure if she was being real or if she’d quickly come up with something while getting caught spying on me, plotting my death.

“Sure.” I pointed at a box. “Grab that one and I’ll grab this one. We don't need the other boxes right now.”

She moved with no emotion or purpose. Like a zombie.

We carried the boxes upstairs to the top floor, to the bedroom I had designated the one we’d use for the machines.

I plugged the equipment in and glanced back at her.

She was staring at the glass container of nanobots, marveling maybe at the bright blue light that shone from within them. It reminded me of a bright blue lava lamp, only the nanobots had capabilities beyond the average human’s comprehension. Apparently, also beyond my comprehension.

The glass container was pressurized and controlled by a compartment below, run on batteries that didn't require changing. The microscopic robots had been programmed to always keep their population at a set number, reproducing as they needed. Them and the container would outlast all of us. It was a genius invention, one I’d always admired.

I grabbed the second container, the sirens, and placed them on the dresser next to the others.

Once I had it all settled, as close to set up as I was going to get in the small room, I plugged in the lavender diffuser and closed the drapes. I lit a candle, creating dim lighting so I could watch her but not have it bright in the room.

“Thank you, Emma.” She shook slightly as she spoke, her voice cracking. Her eyes had come to life again.

“Don't thank me, Lana. I’m going to experiment on you. This is a business transaction, nothing more. I’m paying you in trips inside.”

“As long as I go inside, I don't care.” She lay back, offering her veins, like a heroin addict handing over her arm. “I just need to give birth to this baby.”

Seeing the mess she was didn't give me pause. It should have.

I hooked her up to an extra machine this time, using the old software I had from when I created Lucid Fantasies. It allowed me to track her, to explore with her. The nanobots would report back with visuals but also send signals from the different areas of the brain, showing the stimulation the experience was creating.

She took a deep breath, squeezing my hand like we were old friends, which in some ways we were, and then closed her eyes.

I sent her in, putting her to sleep, and watched the screen of the old laptop I hadn’t used in ages.

My belief in my product had been blinding.

Sitting back, watching her nanobots start their journey, I expected the initial reaction. They sped for her dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and hooked in but something gave me pause. I sat up, watching the code popping up, realizing a small part of the cluster had strayed from the herd. They headed into a different part of the brain as if they were commanded to. Each nanobot moved with speed and efficiency as though heralded to the cerebral cortex.

My stomach clenched as I watched her run her own show. Her dreams were her creations. Her mind had evolved, not the nanobots.

She wasn't a zombie, she was a puppet master.

She had experienced them so many times she had changed to suit the skill set they offered.

She had a need and unconsciously solved the problem.

“No,” I whispered, certain this was impossible. This level of long-term use wasn't something we’d tested against, but we hadn’t thought we needed to. Everyone dreamed. Every single day people dreamed. They daydreamed. They read books and watched movies and imagined things. It was never hazardous. However, a forced dream, inside a forced world, apparently could potentially create a problem, as shown here.

I watched, in half horror and half fascination, as she used the nanobots to her advantage, masterfully creating the world in which her heart lived.

At the six-hour mark I brought her out, desperate to ask questions. She woke much the same as the last time I had put her in. She was partially awake and still stunned. I ran the sirens call a second time, forcing the biosensors to commit suicide. I made a note to up the dosage and the length of time the siren’s call ran for Lana.

“Tell me how it works. I want the full explanation, from start to finish. How it feels going into the world and what experiences you have while there. I need to know what you recall from being there, what memories are formed, and how they exist in your mind. Be detailed.” I grabbed a pen and paper and turned my laptop camera on, recording the conversation.

The screen image was fuzzy from the dim candlelight, but she nodded as she sat up. “Okay.” She sounded different, still detached but less depressed.

The gloomy creepy-looking woman, who had hidden in my apartment for days on end, was gone. Old Lana was back.

“When I go in, it’s dark and peaceful. It’s quiet for a moment, like the world is building in front of me but I can’t see it yet.” She shuddered, wrapping herself in the blankets. I realized there was frost in the air when she spoke, and suddenly registered that I was frozen solid. I turned on the gas fireplace that likely used to be a wood-burning fireplace but was converted in the eighties.

She breathed softly, continuing the story, “Then it loads, all at once. I’m blinded and overwhelmed. I see everything, maybe too much for a second, and then it’s normal. Wherever the story was when I left, it takes off from there. So now, my baby is about to be born. I’m quite pregnant. Danny’s worried I won’t survive labor. He doesn't understand that this world isn’t real and that he’s dead.” She chuckled.

“Sorry, what?” I cock my head, certain I’ve misheard her.

“I’m pregnant—”

“No, I got that part. Did you say the story takes off where you left it, exactly? Like the book is loading where you left off, like reading? Or the story you’re creating is taking off?” The system was designed to allow a traveler to experience a book in chronological order, but this sounded like she was off story, big time.

“I haven’t been in the book for ages. We finished it off and then created our own.”

“So you aren’t Cousin Mel, having a baby?” I gulped.

“No. Mel died. I am me.”

“Margaret?” The character I created for Gone with the Wind, named after Margaret Mitchell.

“No. When we left the storyline, when I saw Danny and was able to connect with him fully, I stopped being Margaret.”

“You chose to stop being Margaret?” My insides felt like water. My mouth dried completely as I tried to understand this.

“Yeah.” She smiled, pleasant and calm. My insides threatened to burst all over the room and my brain was ready to explode, but she was calm.

“You weren’t distracted by the novel?”

“No.” She shrugged. “I mean, I was. It lasted like the first couple of weeks, I don't know. But then I thought of Danny and I stopped living in the dream. I found him and started playing a new storyline out.”

“And from there, every time you enter, you are taking off where you left off?” I felt numb.

“Yes.”

That was impossible.

“But you’re present, you know you’re in a story and it’s fake?” I couldn't get a handle on this.

“Of course. It’s just like living out a fantasy, one where I get to have everything I ever wanted.”

“Is the story still set during the Civil War?”

“No.” She wrinkled her nose. “Too violent. We changed it a while ago. Different setting. I decided on the sixties. He has a job as a salesman, and he goes to work in a blue suit and an old car. It’s new to us though.”

“We. Us. What the fuck?” I stood and paced the room. “Why do you even go into Gone with the Wind?”

“I assumed the control is part of that storyline,” she answered hesitantly.

“We need to see. Lie back.” I hurried to the machine, starting Shawshank Redemption. It was nowhere near Gone with the Wind, and I couldn’t imagine Stephen King would be as easy to stray from.

She went in once more, her brain repeating an identical response as some of the nanobots strayed from the herd and went directly to the cerebral cortex again.

I let her stay in for an hour before pulling her out. Again, she was a zombie before I sent the sirens call a second time.

“Well?” I asked impatiently.

“Story took off the same as last time.”

“Didn't the book load?”

“It did but I stopped it and made my world.”

“Impossible,” I muttered, stumped and yet fascinated.