Monday, August 9, 2010

Dead Planet XIX


Dead Planet XIX

The kid & I found ourselves in a dim corridor. We worked our way cautiously deeper into the pyramid complex—another door dialed open for us. We looked at each other—I told the kid I’d go in front now.

Another Martian door dialed open—I’d just walked thru it when it suddenly dialed shut. Leaving me alone in what seemed to be—a small examination room. Then things got dark—and darker still.

I must’ve passed out or something. The next thing I knew I was on this examination table—Tyrell’s voice was talking smoothly thru the chamber walls. At least it sounded like Tyrell—emotionless, cool & precise as usual.
“I am sending signals into different parts of your brain—the cortex, the medulla oblongata, the brain stem. I’m studying your neural flow. You’ve been Nexus-trained by the kid—you can enter REM time spontaneously. Without any alpha-wave feedback gear—hooking you up now. Please enter your REM dreamtime now, Deckard. Please, do it for me.”

I was surprised by Tyrell’s hint of humaneness—I’d never heard him say please to anybody. So that calmed me down a little bit—enough to relax & get into a semitrance. The precursor trance—like the kid taught me. I drifted off into REM dreamtime quickly—without going thru the usual biofeedback cycles. The alpha, beta & delta rhythms—and all that. I closed down the periphery of my nervous system—as I went inward into my extrasensory sensations.

Dr. Tyrell said: “Now then, Deckard. There are energy connections leading to the kid—or should I say the young man in the other room. They are abnormally strong—the energy density involved is greater than the total mass-energy value of the entire universe. There is only one conclusion to be faced.”

I didn’t understand what Tyrell meant—so I tensed my muscles & tried to get up. I couldn’t move—I was paralyzed.

“Listen to me closely, Deckard,” Tyrell’s voice came soothingly—thru the darkened chamber into my trance state. I began to feel more—REM calm & precisely there & not here.

“This Martian pyramid is false—and all existence within it is illusionary,” Tyrell said. “You are an entity from a superior manifestation of reality now. Someone or something—a Deceiver—is projecting a four-dimensional energy-form thru your nervous system—to force you to create this false-reality around yourself. Based on your memories.”

What else could I do—but stay in the semi-trance dream state & simply listen to Tyrell opine on & on? It was like Tyrell was picking up—where the kid left off. The kid really didn’t train me—he simply let my dreaming synch with his. Who knows how much mind-melding went on between us. I taught the kid how to be more human—and he taught me how to be more Nexus. Whatever that means.

“This false projection is based on your memories. The reason I say your memories is that otherwise I wouldn’t be present in this dream I’m helping you to wake up from. I’m obviously a dream-element arising from your unconsciousness—not something the Deceiver would have chosen to put in this dream now at this moment. By tracing the nerve paths the outside force is using to create this illusion—I can neutralize it. And then we can get down to business.”

I tried waking up from the dreamtime—I always tried that because there’s usually a slight panic reaction to the Fabulation Effect. It was like fabulating that I was like being chased by someone or something in a dream—and not being able to run away from it. .

Everything was in slow-motion—I’d have this strange fatigue, a heaviness entering my limbs. A surge of slowness was running thru me—but then I’d been suffering from that since we left Hellas. The Nexus dreamtime was very strong—it sucked me into it with a will of its own it seemed like.

This is, I suppose, where the kid came in. Tyrell pressed a button on the control panel—and there was a low hum in the walls. I felt the activity in my other brain—the Nexus droid brain of the kid. The energy was surging thru me—into the kid’s head. A distorter trigger clicked in—without any conscious cue. The kid’s mind & mine—became one.

Tyrell was the chief Nexus One—for the Tyrell Corporation. Was he still on Mars—or on Titan. It really didn’t make any difference—the Voice I heard might not be him either—how was I to know.

“This Martian pyramid you chose to enter—it’s a good choice. Before you entered it—the interior was entirely argon and other inert gasses. We air conditioned it especially for you—the remnants of the martian civilization have been almost entirely preserved.”

“You’ll find the engineering skills of the pyramid pilots to be simply miraculous—my team of exo-archeologists barely scratched the surface. Our Nexus droid, your companion—is reporting back controlled radioactivity from the interior of this pyramid.”

In my mind’s eye I saw Tyrell’s team of scientists—glide over the Martian Amazonis Planitia. They passed smoothly over a stretch of red-grey lifeless ocean—over a peninsula of land as flat & red as the rest of the Amazonis plains.

“The material of these pyramids is an artificial form of matter—composed of locked positron-electron pairs. The Brownian motion of the atoms itself—produced their energy light and heat. A nearly inexhaustible supply.”

“The outer layers of the pyramids were designed to shed the excess as harmless radiation. We’ve found inside these megalithic structures—the remains of part of an artificial gravity mechanism. Used to stabalize—the planet during interstellar flight. The main energy centers—are probably off-planet as are the distorter engines.”

I became aware of somebody else in the room—besides Tyrell. A Zoid-A technician and a Predictress.
Besides them I sensed the rest of Tyrell’s team—scientists from high-energy physics departments, xeno-archeology and neurospsychology staff as well. All were equipped with heavy armor—electromagnetically shielded to block deadly X-rays. And the archeologist robotools were floating left & right—photographing something in the room.

“My seismic teams have already been used—to analyze the echo-reflection data from the machines at the pyramid’s core. Autopsy scanning—showed no dead Martian bodies.”

For the first time I heard the kid inside my head: “The future is about to blur in two minutes, right after Tyrell finishes making his speech.

“Is there something I should do?” I sent back.

“No way to tell—it may come as a result of your being there in the examination room.”

“It’s fairly obvious that the Martians were killed instantaneously by something. That’s why we needed a Predictress with the team. Her inner eye didn’t see mass—it was linked by cause and effect. Predictress droids cannot predict the decay of radioactive atoms—since one atom won’t effect anything in the environment. But they can predict the behavior of other sensitive droids.”

Tyrell alluded that the kid & I were co-joined significantly. When our brains were in a relaxed state—posthypnotic suggestions may be triggered. I now had the same ability—to overcome the illusion of time in more than one direction. Once I lived with the kid long enough—my brain became convinced subconsciously that it could reach backwards as well as forwards. Thus Tyrell could use us both—not only to envision the future, but summon up a vision of the Martian past.

“I’m seeing…millions of years in the past…Martian men & women, happy. They’re alert. They’re intelligent and very humanoid. The Martian sky is jet-black—something is happening. Half the solar system—has been swallowed up by a solar flare.”

Then everything became blurred.

“Tyrell! We’re getting strange readings here. Time-space just suffered a deflection from its normal metric.”

“I’m dead,” I said to the kid. “My memories of myself are gone—I’ve just synched with the dead Martians.”

The version of me back in Hellas Town—remembers me dying roughly a minute ago. My droid future memory of being a Martian—died with the Martians. I’m assuming a parallel time-continuum.

Some sort of alternate reality—created the moment I was attuned to the primordial Martian mindset. My conclusion was that—this was being done for my benefit—to demonstrate something to me.

“Is there any reason not to attempt the second phase of the experiment?” I heard Tyrell ask one of the scientists. “The results of Phase One have been fruitful—beyond all expectation.”

“We’d like to examine Deckard for side effects. If he made mental contact with the Martians—then its important to discover which is the primary and which was created by his Nexus telepathy,” the scientist said.

The exo-psychologist said: “You’re assuming a doppelganger principle? If one second of time is removed from the past-to-future manifestation of the Martian mind—it will distort its mass-energy to manifest a different, parallel personality? Once set in motion—that particular Martian mindset must continue.”

“I’m now= physicist,” Tyrell said. “I don’t know the volume of space described by Deckard’s memory of this Martian pyramidal space. We can perform all sorts of synch-tests to find out if our mass-energy calculations are correct.”

“The Martians are gone,” I said bleakly.

“In any case, we have one fact,” said Tyrell. “The Martian time-space contact we had momentarily—was created from someone’s else’s memories, not Deckard’s. Someone with a great deal more energy at his disposal than Deckard. I’d like to try the same battery of tests on the kid—and see if he remembers the imaginary character Deckard perceived. Whose identity—is now a part of the Deckard-Droid team.”

“There’s no time,” the Predictress said. “Deckard must help us form the connection again. That is what I see happening—I can tune into his droid other half. The kid and Deckard are already one—I can read the Nexus droid readings thru Deckard’s mind.”

“Working thru your neurohypnotic unit,” I said. “I’m going to try to strengthen the Zoid synch between me & the location I’m perceiving—this pyramid. I can’t force a Martian contact myself—I can’t perceive the location you want to perceive. But I sense biofeedback from your neurohypnotic unit—its functions are similar to a lie detector’s. It’s invasive rather than merely passive—and as I move nearer to what the unit registers as a condition of greater nerve-flow in my brain centers, I will activate what the Predictress guides me to. Ready?”

“I’m blind as soon as you use your ability, Deckard. But I’m curious as to what is on the other side of the blind moment.”

The high energy physicist said: “It’s happening again. Massive distortion in time-space.”

“Everybody stand back,” said the Predictress.

Then, I felt my body levitate. It stood me up & then leveled me into my normal vertical position. My skin was blacked and mummified. All life & light left my body. By the time I was completely vertical—my figure became a shadow-shape. A smoky Martian-like form.

“I can’t maintain this projection across time for very long,” I said. It wasn’t my voice—it was coming from the shadow-thing that once had been a Martian.

“In one sense,” the Martian said. “I’m a Deckard double—and Earthman doppelganger.”

“How many of you are there?” asked Tyrell.

“Who Deckard?” the voice said. It was coming from far off—and yet very close. “I feel closer to the kid not Deckard,” the Martian said.

A silence filled the already silent room.

“The kid,” the Martian said. “He’s Martian himself.”


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