Chapter

10

Wyatt stood up and quickly quad split the screens of Richard and Gloria’s apartment, showing their POV’s and the general surveillance camera’s POV.  “Holy, shit!”

Ramon and Krauslin were transfixed on the dream monitor, its split screen showing Richard’s dream on the left, Gloria’s on the right.  Both showed a POV of a person lying on their back, legs spread, and a Mid Eastern midwife administering.  The red and orange glow of fire accompanied by the sounds of a raging inferno, prompted the Arabic mid wife to yell, “الدفع,  الدفع,  الدفع”        

‘“Push!  Push!  Push!’  Holy Hell is more like it,” said Krauslin as he gazed at the screen.  “What in God’s name is that?”

***

A few weeks passed with little incident.  The Godard was now fully occupied, with sixty-five of its tenants as enrollees in the Keyhole Project.  Life seemed, for the most part, normal, given everyone accepted there wasn’t anything normal about the Project.  Richard and Gloria’s dreams got worse, then suddenly ceased to be at all.  Richard, thinking he was truly going mad, sought out more frequent visits with Dr. Onowa, and got a no scruples and expensive doctor to prescribe some drugs to keep him awake.

 Gloria began slipping into her rowing machine at night and putting miles of oar work between her and the sleep she dreaded. 

Roxanne continued her writing, waiting patiently for another thirty days to pass with still no payment from Leonard Turner.  She was ready to get tough. 

Even Sami was less frenetic at night, spending her time hanging with Jonah and her new discovery of diatonic and pentatonic scales.  Essentially, it appeared that The Godard was just another resident building with eccentric tenants.  That was the general impression—one that was appreciated by Quill, and more than challenged by Urian.

                                                      ---

Within the walls of the monitoring lab’s dome-computer farm, Dome 2’s surface presented an aura of kaleidoscopic colors, indicating that a virtual reality experience was taking place. 

“But, I am not convinced Keyhole is progressing as planned,” said Urian.   Virtual Reality, as Urian and Quill’s electronic mind doubles (virtual twins of the biological/Holographic Cloning, or HC) were programmed to enjoy, was a redeeming feature for the isolation of the outpost research.  Pleasure breaks to anywhere had replaced last century’s coffee break for them.  On this day, however, sitting on the VR induced beach of Tahiti, they were not exactly enjoying a break.

Quill bristled.  “Last month you said the same thing, Urian.  All because Richard and Gloria shared a dream.”

“Several, Quill.  Several dreams.”  He pushed his feet into the sand.

“Several, then,” answered Quill.  “I got them stopped, didn’t I?”

“You’re your own boss.  You can do anything you wish.”

“So, next subject,” said Quill, his haste to change the subject obvious.

Urian gazed at the stoic face of Quill, a sign that he was once again hiding his true feelings.  “Richard is more paranoid than ever.  He doesn’t know the dream exchanges are over.”

“He will, soon,” answered Quill automatically.

“How?” asked Urian.

“You.”

“Me?”

“There are some things that I’m learning can’t be dealt with from a monitor.  You need to make a visit.”

Urian took a sip of his iced tea.  “You’ve not had me visit before.  Why now?”

“KH5 handled recruitment well.  This is different.”

“I forgot about her,” said Urian.  “And what am I supposed to do?”

“There are several who are showing unusual abilities.  They need to know their dreams will be monitored.”  He rose.  “Come.  Let’s walk a bit and I’ll explain.  The surf is inviting, don’t you think?”

Their conversation continued along the beachfront, Quill pausing now and again to pick up shells.  As they returned to the beach chairs, Urian asked, “Why not have KH5 do it?”

“She’s a recruiter.  You’re a principal.  They’ll trust you.”

Urian stared out at the palm trees.  “Richard hasn’t exactly paved the way for trust with his upset over experiencing other people’s dreams, you know.”

“I didn’t say I was sending you on a vacation.”

“Now that you mention it, a break would be nice, you know,” said Urian.

“But premature.  Besides, what better way to avoid missing your wife than some VR in Tahiti.”

“An hour at a time is a bit of a tease, don’t you think?”

Quill eyed the native waitresses sashaying up and down the beach with their trays of drinks.  “Can’t afford to get you in carnal trouble.”  He rose and walked toward a woman lying alone.

Urian grinned.  “But you can.  Is that it?”

“Looking never hurt a single man.  I’ll fill you in on the trip a bit later.  For the moment…”  He continued to walk and gaze at the sun-tanned scenery.

Urian leaned his head back and closed his eyes.  If only Marsha’s brain had been HC’d, I’d be in heaven about now.

                                                      ---

Traveling as his biological self, Urian’s relatively short journey through the six-mile tunnel was pleasant, as he’d not ridden one of new model NanoSpace hovercrafts before.  By the time he reached the elevator that would take him topside, he was just getting the hang of total silence travel.  He smiled to himself as he picked up his over-night bag and exited the craft.  To think as a college student, I thought 3-D digital TV was IT. 

He stepped aboard the nondescript silver cylinder, pressed his eye into the laser-reading scan and within a few seconds of upward travel, exited into a walk-in freezer.   He pressed a switch and waited unit the light above the frosted door turned green, then he stepped out into the kitchen area of a diner. 

Entering the customer area of Mojave Cafe, the wall of windows revealed only two trucks were parked outside.  He climbed up on a counter stool and smiled to himself over the two drivers having a traditional meat loaf and mashed potato feast.

Clancy, the scrawny cook, waiter, owner, and trusted nephew of Quill, sprang through the kitchen door, carrying a fresh peach pie.

“Perfect, damn, how’d you know we were comin’,” said one of the drivers.

‘“Bout time you guys showed up.  This thing’s been frozen for a couple of weeks waitin’ for you,” said Clancy, sliding the steaming pie down the counter to the drivers.  “You need some milk with that?”

The other driver wiped the gravy from his lip and said, “Hell, Clancy.  Ain’t a Clancy pie without a quart of milk.”

“Figures.”  He turned and suddenly saw Urian sitting at the end of the counter.  “Urian!”

“Clancy, good to see you.”

Clancy wiped his hands on his apron, and shook Urian’s hand.  “Well… what brings you here?” he asked.

“Little business your Uncle wanted me to take care of.”

“He ain’t blown himself up yet, eh?”

“No.  Still working on it at mach speed, though.”

They exchanged a laugh.  “Hey, coffee?”

“No, got to catch a plane out of Vegas.  Car out back?”

“As always.”

“Charged?”

“That battery’s got enough juice to get you to the East Coast if you wanted.  Energy pop?”

Urian grinned.  “You’re still whipping those little suckers up, eh?”

Clancy reached under the counter and pulled out a rack of vials, each containing a corked orange liquid.”

As soon as one of the truck drivers saw it, he yelled, “Hey Clancy, put a couple of those fuckers on my tab.”

Clancy nodded, and turned to Urian.  “One or two?”

“Oh, Jesus, one.  Two and I’d be a jittery pile of nerves.  What you selling them for now?”

“Two bits.”

“They’ll never make a New World Party member out of you, will they?”

“Shiiit!  Just another name for greed.  Nope.  If I get a couple of pennies profit, fine with me.”

“Still with the same old chemistry set?”

“No, I broke down and bought somethin’ a bit bigger.  Had that old one since high school, you know.  Here,” and he put the vial in Urian’s coat pocket.  “You know what to do.”

Urian smiled.  “Gonna save it for a tough night.”

“Aren’t they all?” Clancy said cynically.

“Nights?  Only if I have to entertain.”

“I’ll take sloppy seconds, any time.”

Urian laughed.  “Haven’t heard that phrase since I was a kid.”

“Yeah, well, Quill won’t let some of us ever grow up and die, you know,” he said sadly.

Urian nodded.  “Things will get better.  You’ll see.”

“Love to have you pull the trigger.  Deal?”

Urian patted Clancy on the shoulder, “Sure, old buddy.  No problem.”

                                          ---

It was only a two-hour drive, but it felt much longer.  Urian longed to call Marsha, but his better self, the self that had been healed of sentimentality as he once knew it, wasn’t going to let him. 

He scanned the arid sands of the late morning Nevada desert as he drove, remembering it hadn’t been that long ago when lush trees, lakes and seasons were his steady diet.   Now, save for the occasions when Quill determined they should meet in a VR of his choice, all the Nanobot corrections of his neurons that were normally abnormal were humming along in perfect harmony, ‘beyond the understanding of garden variety humans’ as Quill had put it. 

No longer did Urian long for the way things were.  Quill and he were the first of a kind, having simply swallowed billions of Nanobots with a glass of orange juice.  The procedure had been non-invasive, with several months separating the initial ingestion and the beginning of any changes in their way of thinking.  But changes, there were.

Urian’s thinking processes became heightened.  His sensorial acuity seemed to go off the scale, especially when he realized he needed special earplugs to sleep, the movement of insects high above on the desert floor proving to be a formidable distraction.  Quill, suffering the same discomfort, quickly designed a new batch of molecular machines to combat the sensorial annoyance. 

The most disconcerting aspect of the whole process for Urian, however, was the waning of everyday emotional weaknesses, such as his expectant mild depression over being separated from Marsha, shedding tears over other people’s happiness—a trait that had been with him since childhood—and the tendency to become angry when things didn’t go his way. 

Then there were the changes in his tolerance of others.  Having doctorates in Nanotechnology and Astro-Sociology (a new field of study in preparation for commercial space travel) Urian had developed intolerance for the less educated.  That all disappeared, as well.  Now, he encouraged and used his education and experience to engage and empower others.  Thus, his value to Quill became irreplaceable in the Keyhole Project.