A Mirror for the Stars by John Ploskina
6
I pulled my hair back into a tight ponytail and splashed cold water over my face. It didn't help to ease the tight band of tension that had settled in over my eyes, or quiet the nausea rumbling around in my belly. I sighed and made sure that I'd tied a good, tight knot in the belt of the bathrobe I was wearing before I stepped out of the lady's room. The air conditioner was running, and goose bumps popped up on my arms and legs.
Steve must have been waiting in the hallway, because he pounced on me before I was even out the door.
"Are you sure you're ok with this?" he asked, pushing his glasses up his beaky nose with one finger.
"Yeah, I'll be alright."
Steve leaned in close, and I caught a whiff of his aftershave. It was Old Spice or something like that. Ordinarily it might have been pleasant, but I was on edge and it pushed me that much closer to puking.
"Thank you, you're very brave. This should be the last time. We've got enough material to blow this place wide open," he whispered.
I shushed him and kept walking. "I've been practicing my meditation techniques. I think I can keep the hallucinations under control this time."
Steve pushed open the door to the Oneirology Lab. All my coworkers were there, pale-skinned and thin-faced, with tired eyes gazing out from sunken sockets. I suppose I probably didn't look much better. We'd been putting in a ton of overtime over the last year, as Project Zaqar came to fruition and the Rapid Eye Movement Imaging Machine came to life.
Looking them over, I suddenly realized that I felt sorry for them, and the emotion took me by surprise. They were unethical scientists, pioneering a new tool that the Establishment would only use to control and manipulate people. At the same time, they were a bunch of really nice guys. A little nerdy for my tastes, but still, really nice. They quoted Battlestar Galactica and The Walking Dead, and had arguments over which superheroes would win fights against other superheroes. They tripped over their own feet trying to flirt with me. It was... kind of pathetic, actually.
Once Steve and I collected enough evidence, including some results from the first successful tests of the REMIM, we were going to the press. All those sad nerds who fought over my attention would probably find themselves out of jobs. It might be the end of their careers.
"Karen," said a friendly, energetic voice behind me. "Ready for another round in the chamber?"
"Yeah, boss," I nodded.
With his perky demeanor, cheesy grin and incessant stream of compliments, Doctor Hasanovic was more like a motivational speaker hawking a self-help book on an infomercial at four in the morning than a demented genius in charge of top secret government project. His precise quaff and perfect white teeth gleamed in the harsh light of fluorescent bulbs.
"The timing is right. We've got fourteen women and eight men in REM sleep in the Control Group, twelve and sixteen in Group A, and seventeen and ten in group B. It's your time to shine, Kare."
"You bet."
I hated it when he called me Kare. Jack tried to call me Kare when we first started palling around. I hit him until he stopped. You can't hit your boss, unfortunately.
In the center of the room was a big, sleek, white plastic pod. As I approached, the upper half opened and lifted up, revealing a shallow pool of water. That was the sensory deprivation tank. There was a privacy curtain hanging from the ceiling, kind of like what you might see in a hospital room with more than one bed. I pulled it shut and undid the knot in my bathrobe.
I guess I should try to explain my role in all this. The purpose of the REMIM is to broadcast images and concepts directly into people's brains while they sleep. At first, we tried streaming pictures and video from a computer, but that never seemed to work. When we asked the subjects what they dreamed about, they described a bunch of vague, colorful blurs.
Doctor Hasanovic had the idea that it might work better if we tried streaming content directly from one mind to another, without trying to artificially encode a digital signal in the electro-magnetic frequencies used by the brain. We all took turns at it, but I was the best source brain. No one's sure why, but the subjects reported more frequent and more vivid dreams when I was broadcasting. The sensory deprivation tank was supposed to remove any possibility that my surroundings might influence the broadcast. I hated the sensory deprivation tank. White. Hot. Hatred.
I slipped off my bathrobe, self-conscious in spite of the privacy curtain. I could hear computers whirring, keyboards clicking and the guys shooting the shit. Being naked at work is just... too weird. I climbed up into the tank, awkwardly covering myself incase the privacy curtain spontaneously blew open. I liked my coworkers, but I did not want to be center stage in their pathetic wank sessions any more than I already was.
I sank into the tepid water and there was a faint mechanical sound as the lid slid shut up above me. The light of the office shrank to a little crescent and winked away. There was only darkness and the sound of the water sloshing around in the tank.
It was so dark that there was really no difference between having my eyes open and having them shut. It was as if I didn’t have eyes at all. The water slowed and became perfectly silent and still. Without the sound of the water and the feeling of ripples tickling my skin it was as if the rest of my body had vanished along with my eyes. All that was left of me was my mind and the slow, steady rhythm of my breathing. In and out. In and out.
This is the meditative state I needed to attain before I could begin the broadcast. Perfectly relaxed and free from distractions. Doctor Hasanovic had chosen an old painting of an apple orchard for that night’s experiment, and I’d spent an hour every day staring at it and memorizing every detail. I imagined the painting and placed myself inside it with my mind’s eye.
I was standing in the apple orchard. Neat, perfectly even rows of trees spread out in every direction. Behind me there was an old farm house, long abandoned and fallen into ruin. Only one window had any glass left, and it was just a few shards hanging from a ratty frame. Behind the broken glass there was just an empty, black void where the painter had neglected to add any detail. It was like looking into a black hole. When I thought of a black hole, I worried it might suck me inside and pull me down into the formless darkness until I went completely mad.
Suddenly, I felt gravity start to pull me in. Apple trees raced by me on either side as I rocketed toward the farmhouse. I was falling sideways, to be shredded by the shards of glass and vomited into an abyss.
“Ok, focus, Karen, focus on the painting,” I said. “I’m standing in an apple orchard. I’m standing in an apple orchard.”
The world slowly righted itself, and I was standing on the path again. The sky was a dreary, steely gray, and the slight breeze was just a little too cold to be comfortable. I hugged myself as I walked down the bare dirt path between the trees. Up ahead, the orchard stretched forward forever, an eternity of apple trees. It hurt my mind’s eye to look out that way, and I felt a rush of panic up my spine.
“Ok, just need to add some detail. How about a mountain?”
A great, snowcapped mountain sprang up out of the ground, enormous and shrouded in dainty wisps of cloud. It looked wrong somehow, jagged and exaggerated, like something I’d doodled when I was a little girl. A wave of vertigo hit me like a punch in the guts. I looked down at my feet and waited for it to pass.
An apple had fallen down onto the path. It looked firm and ripe, with shining red-and-yellow skin. I picked it up and prepared to take a bite, when the apple blinked open and became a baseball-sized, blood-shot eye, staring into me with cold malice. I shrieked a little bit, an embarrassingly small and feminine sound. Somehow, that brought me back to my center.
“It’s not an eye. It’s an apple. It’s just an apple.”
The eye did not wink back into an apple. It just glared at me. I felt the pace of my breathing quicken and my pulse started to pou
“It’s an apple. It’s an apple. It’s an apple.”
The eye rolled over to my left. I followed its gaze and was pounded in the guts with nausea. All the apples on every tree were eyes now, all staring at me.
“I’m in an apple orchard. I’m in an apple orchard. I’m in an apple orchard.”
The sun was an eye. Even the Earth itself was an eye. I was standing right on top of a vast pupil. I was naked. I was alone. Some horrible, insane entity was watching my every move through thousands and thousands of eyes.
“NOOOO!!!!” I screamed and tried to cover my face, but even my hands were eyes. “AAAAAAUGH!!!!”
My strength of will completely melted, and I was just a frightened little girl flailing through her own mind for something, anything comforting and safe.
The scene shifted.
I was walking through a parking lot, cast in pale shades of yellow by flickering old street lights high overhead.
“Meh, don’t worry about it too much,” Jack said. Like always, he was wearing a beat up old leather jacket and a shit-eating grin. He shrugged his broad shoulders and looked up at the stars. “So what if no one came to the show? The bands all sucked anyway, and at least you got your picture in the paper. Maybe someone will see the article and send some money to... whatever it was you were doing.”
“Sassafras Grass Roots! They’re trying to get keep a fracking project from getting started in Ohio to protect the Reticulated Proboscised Funnel Mosquito.” I sighed. “Don’t you even fucking care about what we’re doing?”
“Nope,” he said. “I just want to hang out with you.”
“You’re an asshole,” I said, but not unkindly. If you hang out with Jack enough, your perception of human emotions goes sideways and “asshole” almost turns into a compliment.
“That seems to be the general consensus. Want to hear a joke?”
“No.”
“What does the Dalai Lama say when he walks up to a hot dog stand?”
“I don’t care.”
“He says ‘Make me one with everything’,” Jack said, wiggling his fingers and dropping his voice into an exaggerated, mystical tone.
“That’s fucking retarded and so are you.”
“Yeah, but you’re giggling.”
“No, I’m not,” I said, trying to keep the giggles under control.
“Yes you are. Go on, laugh at the retard.”
I did laugh, and some of my frustration slipped away. Jack put his arm around me, and I put my head on his shoulder.
The scene changed again, and now I was just Karen in the sensory deprivation tank. Alone with my thoughts, I was aware of a deep and painful nostalgia. I mean, I wouldn’t go as far as saying I wish I hadn’t dumped Jack and left Pittsburgh. That needed to happen, but he was funny, and sweet in his own... assholish way. It’s hard to explain.
“I wonder what he’s doing now?” I thought to myself.
The darkness inside the tank parted, and then I was looking at Jack. He was sitting by himself on the couch in his apartment and he looked terrible. He’d lost a lot of weight, his clothes were filthy, and he’d fallen asleep in front of the television with a slack-jawed expression. There were empty candy wrappers and fast food bags on the floor. That was very unlike him. Something was terribly wrong.
He looked up, and his eyes met mine.
“What the fuck?” he said.
His face was hilarious. The look of complete and utter shock and amazement was just too funny. He’s always so cynical and filled with obnoxious, sarcastic comments about everything. I couldn’t help but grin.
“Karen,” he said, and his eyes were sad.
“Jack,” I whispered. Then, something strange happened. I just started rattling off my new phone number. “Seven-seven-three. Nine-five-eight. Oh-one-one-eight.”
I don’t know why I did that. It just happened.
And now he’s sitting across from me in the diner and he clearly doesn’t grasp the urgency of this situation. He looks like a kid whose Mom just took him to the toy store, gave him $50, told him to pick out whatever he wanted for his birthday.
“Goddamn it Jack, stop looking at me like that,” I said. “This is...”