Jintao Read online

  “Hello?” he says, craning his neck forward, squinting. The sands are coalescing into a figure. Too small to be McGowen. Maybe von Ang. Features are becoming more defined. It has a face. Recognition sets in. It’s him . . . standing there . . . staring . . . the lips unmoving. It’s his father!

  Taken aback, Quan says, “Father?”

  Inside his head, a voice reverberates. [I am.]

  Quan is stunned. He looks closer.

  Drifts of particles circulate within the face. Wisps stream out, then loop back and reconstitute.

  The voice in his head comes again. [All is as it should be.]

  “Is it you, Father? Are you okay? What are you doing?” He reaches out, grasping the arm. His fingers find nothing solid. “Come here. What happened? Why haven’t you returned?”

  The face is forming and re-forming. The mouth unmoving. Words reverberate in his head. [Infinite consciousness. Infinite manifestation.]

  Quan’s sense of security evaporates. Fear takes over. The words don’t ring true—not the way his father would speak. He pulls back. “No. You’re not him! I don’t know what you are.”

  [I am.]

  The particles begin to leave, as if being blown away by an unseen wind.

  “Wait, wait,” shouts Quan. “Father, if it is you . . . if you’re alive . . . what happened? Why are you still here?”

  The particles coalesce again. [One cannot be trapped in one’s home.]

  “You call this place home? What are you saying? You’re at home here?”

  [Here, there. One in the same.]

  “Come back with me. Come back to the other side where we live—back home.”

  [All is one.]

  Again, the apparition begins to discorporate. Swirling flecks lift away in eddies, merging with the maelstrom. Soon there is no trace. Quan stands there, stunned—the smell of electricity in his nostrils and an aching in his head—billowing sheets of dust all around him. Mesmerized by what he has seen, perplexed by the specter’s words, he struggles to walk. Reaching the extent of his tether, he turns, walking in a circle until he realizes what he’s doing. Then, one foot in front of the other, he heads back, walking a straight line. Finding the mesh, he lies down.

  ~~~

  He lay there for what seemed like an eternity, not noticing that he had returned to the room again. McGowen’s strong hands were on him, helping him down. Still hazy, he took off the belt with instruments dangling from it. Handing it to McGowen, he heard himself say, “I don’t think these work.”

  McGowen handed the instruments to von Ang.

  “I’ll download the registers and look at the memory buffers,” said von Ang. “Maybe we recorded some data.”

  “The instruments may be working but I couldn’t read in there. It’s difficult to see,” said Quan. “The numbers looked erratic.”

  “The machine broadcasts powerful wave forms. It’s possible there is electromagnetic interference with the components,” said von Ang. “I might need to add shielding.”

  “What did you see where you went?” McGowen asked.

  Quan paused, collecting himself, deciding to keep the strange encounter to himself. “The air is opaque,” he said. “Shapes form and then disappear. It’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s not. There may have been something or someone, but I’m not sure. It could have been an illusion.”

  Minutes later, the medi-bot completed its scan and its chromium arms retracted, parking themselves in alcoves on either side of the display field. Seventeen vital measurements lit up in amber.

  “All good. Values are normal,” said McGowen. “You seem fine.”

  Intrigued by Quan’s lack of detail, he prodded, “Go on. Tell us what happened.”

  Quan sat on the edge of the gurney, making a circle in the air with his forefinger. “I walked full circle at the end of the tether. That means I walked through the walls and through the equipment. There doesn’t seem to be any physical boundaries in there, just the ebb and flow of energy and particles. I may have walked through you, as well. Now that I think about it, it’s curious that I was walking on a surface. How could I walk through objects and not fall through the floor? Some of our physical laws must still apply. I found the mesh somehow, and climbed onto it. But, I walked through everything else. How is that possible?”

  “I can tell you one thing,” said McGowen. “The tether didn’t move. I watched it.”

  Dr. von Ang interjected, “We didn’t sequence the tether—only the instruments and the belt.”

  “Aye. What do you make of that?” said McGowen, looking at von Ang for a response.

  Quan stood up. “That’s perplexing. When I reached the end of the tether, I thought I felt a tug. I’ll have to pay more attention next time.”

  Von Ang put in, “The physical laws are obviously very different. Most interesting is that we can exist in both places without harm. It leads me to think that other place is a different part of a larger physical spectrum. Something we normally can’t see, but something that is ever present.”

  McGowen returned to his previous question. “You said you saw something. Did it look like your father? What did you see?”

  Determined to leave details for a later time, Quan said, “Everything is so loosely defined. I saw shapes . . . or imagined I did . . . like in those connect-the-dots drawings. I can’t be sure it means anything. Maybe my mind is trying to organize chaos into something recognizable. I saw something that I imagined looked like him . . . then again, maybe not. I need to think about it.”

  McGowen suspected there was more, but now wasn’t the time to apply pressure. “Perception is a funny thing.”

  “Indeed,” said von Ang, unclipping the last instrument from the belt. “To paraphrase Einstein, ‘Matter is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.’”

  Quan felt a sudden chill, remembering how he’d tried to grab his father’s arm—as if somehow he could pull him out of the Braneworld. Instead, his hand passed through and in that moment their eyes connected and he saw the unmistakable authority in those eyes—a look that said, I am your father. There was a purpose in those eyes and he didn’t know what that purpose was.

  Quan left the laboratory within the hour, gliding low over the steely blue waters with GPS turned off and von Ang at the controls. In his mind’s eye, he could see the multicolored face that appeared to him. He played the scene over and over again. Eventually the image began to abstract, like the memory of a memory.

  Was it real? Was it a hallucination driven by his desire to find his father? And what about the voice? What did it say? Infinite consciousness? Infinite manifestation? Totally unfamiliar phrases—yet so concise. Where his father had elucidated so eloquently, these phrases were terse—not like him at all.

  Quan needed to talk about these things with someone he could confide in. Normally he would turn to his banlu, Sealy, but he wasn’t sure she would welcome the conversation. His participation in the experiments worried her and he knew she wanted him to stop.

  The glide banked and slowly descended to the penthouse aeropad.

  20.

  Quan was back inside the penthouse and into his pajamas by eleven thirty. He piled three oversized pillows against the headboard and plunked himself down next to Sealy.

  “You did it again, didn’t you?” asked Sealy.

  “If you mean the experiment, yes.”

  “You worry me. You realize that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but believe me, it’s safe. They check me before and after, and I’m fine.”

  “You told me, no one understands that contraption. So, why take the risk?”

  “You know why. I’m still looking for my father.”

  “And have you found any trace of him?”

  There was a long pause.

  “I saw something that resembled him—but very strange. It was a figure . . . about the same size as my father but made of sand. The skin was green, tinged with orange. The eyes were purple . . . black where the whites sh
ould be . . . looking like a psychedelic painting. It was like something an artist would dream up . . . like some crazy multicolored sand sculpture. It was his overall shape but it only lasted for a few minutes, then it just dissolved into the sandstorm.”

  “Maybe you were hallucinating. Do you feel alright?”

  “I’m okay,” he said, feeling his head. “My head feels different somehow, but I’m okay . . . just trying to make sense of what I saw. If that was him, then he’s alive in a way I don’t understand. It’s as if he’s become part of that other place. A voice spoke to me—said that place is his home. Maybe I was hallucinating. Maybe it was my imagination. But if that was him, I don’t know what to do.”

  “The thing you saw, it actually spoke to you? This makes me uncomfortable. Something’s not right. You know, when you leave here for that island, I try hard to be okay with it, but I don’t understand these experiments and I don’t know what you’re doing. I really try to be understanding. Maybe if I could go there with you I might be able to accept what you’re doing, but from where I am, it sounds like what you’re doing is very weird and it makes me uncomfortable.”

  “These are controlled experiments and they haven’t harmed me. Here. Touch me. I’m here. I feel good. I’m okay.”

  “You’re not going back there again, are you?”

  “It’s the only way.”

  “What if I went there with you. I’d like to see what’s going on.”

  He shook his head. “We have to go to the island undercover each time and there’s always the possibility we could be caught.”

  “I didn’t mean just to the island. I meant I could go into the other dimension with you, so I could see it.”

  “I would never let you. Last time, my head felt like . . .” He caught himself.

  “Like what?” she demanded.

  “Nothing. Forget that. Half of what I do in there is scientific research. I just don’t think you should be part of the experiments.”

  Sitting up on top of the bedspread, Sealy pulled her legs under her and glared at him. She wanted to yell at him . . . and tell him he could end up like his father. She wanted to set out every reason she could think of why he should never enter the Brainworld again . . . but she knew it wouldn’t change his mind.

  Instead, she spoke her feelings. “I’m afraid and I’m asking. Please, let someone else take the risk.”

  Quan listened and nodded, acknowledging her point of view. In the end, he countered with, “I know what I can handle and what I can’t. Trust me. I’m the best person to be doing this.”

  “I do trust you. That’s not the issue. It’s about the risk. The thing you saw—what if that’s what happens to a person when they do this too much?”

  “I can promise you, we’re taking every precaution. The experiments will go on because they are of great scientific benefit. I promise I’ll stop after I understand what happened to my father.”

  “It might be too late for you by then. No one knows what the long-term effects are.”

  “I understand how you feel but I have to go one more time.”

  Sealy turned away from him and faced the wall, and for the rest of the night she brooded over his lack of consideration. When it was time for bed, Sealy turned her back on Quan and pulled the covers up to her chin.

  Quan lay there for an hour, eyes closed, think over the situation he was in. He could tell by the pattern of her breathing that Sealy had fallen asleep. Then it began. His nervous system began flinching. Electric currents were flashing from the back of his head to his extremities. The twitches came in bursts. He lay there, flat on his back, trying to calm his system, concentrating on his chi meridians. He followed the signals and forced his body to even out the spikes. His nervous system felt like it was on fire and his head felt as though his brain was pressing against its encasement, trying to break free.

  His mind filled with the images he had seen: patterns . . . drifts of quantum flux . . . shapes . . . cascading forms . . . intersections . . . and the bizarre image that resembled his father.

  What is that place?

  Thinking about the flux between the two realms, he envisioned a systematic correspondence . . . a correspondence of particles . . . matched pairs . . . matched pairs across time and space . . . moving through dimensions . . . aligned by the machine . . . polarized by the forces . . . spinning around poles . . . planets spinning around suns . . . orbits . . . orbiting particles . . . particles through a membrane . . . through the Brane . . . all of this came coursing through his brain. Somehow, it was all related.

  A few minutes before 2:00 a.m., he rolled quietly from under the sheets and went to the study. As he slipped into the sling of his Sosai workstation and the view field instantly lit up around him. Visions swarmed in his head. He wanted to capture the essence of the experience. He wanted to interpret and catalog it. He wanted to clear his mind and get the images out where he could see them.

  He began typing, jotting down ideas as they came to him. Words were not enough. He needed something more substantial. He sent crawlers to the web, searching for references. They bought back vidi clips, Mandelbrot sets, excerpts, and simulations. They brought back references, quotations, equations, and verse. He sorted through the trove, throwing out more than he kept and arranging the rest as fast as he could, trying to keep up with the deluge. His thoughts became sharper and brighter—a fountainhead flowing from his cross-dimensional experience. It was therapeutic, a way to express what he felt. Patterns began to form. He was gaining on it. And yet, there was a sinking feeling. Something was eluding him, something he had a sixth sense about. He had to find a way to coax it out into the open—to see its hidden nature.

  He was enmeshed and unable to see the whole—unable to see the essence of it. He needed other eyes—eyes that could look at it objectively.

  Fresh eyes to see and make sense of it. Strangers’ eyes. Why not show it to everyone? That’s it. SHOW IT TO EVERYONE.

  He registered a virtual domain and, with a keystroke, sent his montage streaming to the web. Part static, part animated, part annotated—it was complex and colorful. “LÓNG” was the name he gave the domain. It meant “dragon” in Chinese.

  Working directly online, not caring that others might see his live edits, he stitched in 3-D images and set jumper links. Thoughts flooded his mind and flowed into the domain, filling the space with sound and imagery. Continuing to rummage through what his spiders dragged in, he worked at an accelerating pace—reviewing, picking out relevant bits and knitting them together. A pixel storm raged across his view field and the data flowed to his new domain in torrents. Fingering faster and faster, he edited and added, expanding the content.

  There’s so much. Don’t fear the complexity, he told himself. It leads to clarity.

  Quan set up a proxy to obscure his identity, leaving only an untraceable autoresponder with a simple message: “This is all for now. More will follow. Your comments are welcome.”

  As dawn climbed the walls of South Point, he made his way back along the central corridor. His legs moved by themselves. His mind was a million miles away and the hallway illuminated as he passed. With images still reverberating in his head, he slipped back into bed.

  While he slept, news of the LÓNG site spread across the web like wildfire. The new domain received over thirty thousand queries within the first hour, and seventeen new discussion groups sprang up, posting reviews that ranged from defamatory to ecstatic. It was branded by some as a treatise on existential philosophy, while others saw it as a wholly original form of art. Some declared it was a work of genius while others decried it as nonsense. Some drew correlations to religion while others related it to quantum theory. Someone spoofed it as the long-awaited awakening of the internet as a sentient being and a few radical bloggers claimed it contained hidden messages—signs of the beast —Satan’s handiwork.

  At 10:30 a.m., the sound of a secure channel on his wrist disk woke him. It was McGowen.

  “Jo sa
n, young master. Sorry to disturb you. We may have a problem. I’ve got three G-suits here, and they’ve posted a notice outside your father’s lab. Says the room is sealed. No one can enter without government clearance and they’re demanding access to your father’s files. Dr. Hao and the attorneys have them pinned down in the conference room, telling them what they’re doing is illegal. I suspect they’re going to be here for a while. They’re dug in . . . saying it’s part of some ongoing investigation. And they’re asking to talk to you.”

  Quan wondered if there was some way his website was drawning government attention.

  “I’m not surprised,” he told McGowen. “Don’t worry. Let them snoop. I’ve taken care of it. Nothing of value in the lab now. Tell them I’ll be in early tomorrow if they want to see me.”

  The conversation drew Sealy’s attention. She came to the bedside and asked, “Are you going again?”

  “No. I’m going to stay and work from here today.”

  “Good.”

  Fully awake, Quan threw on his robe and returned to the workstation. With fresh eyes, he clicked on the LÓNG website. It was a dense and bewildering sight, a barrage of moving images and scrolling data. It was too complicated and didn’t seem to make sense. He looked for patterns but there was no obvious syntax and it lacked a clearly stated purpose. It would be easy for others to get lost in the jumble and not see the whole picture.

  The only thing that was perfect was the name: LÓNG. It summed up the sensation he felt of entering and returning from that other place. Dragons epitomize transition. They’re mystical creatures, living in harmony with nature, capable of shifting into different forms. Born of water, they live in rivers, curving with the flow. They ascend in clouds above the mountains and thunder down in every drop of rain.

  His fingers began to fidget, adjusting and editing, galvanizing the bits and pieces into a logical sequence. Shuffling through chunks of data, his mind was working everywhere at once. Gradually, like a moth from a chrysalis, a central thought began to emerge. It was a prickly truth, a truth that seemed to resist coming to light.