Second Paradigm (10 page)

The only problem with this theory was that it also involved some sort of machine or device that would allow an organic being to attain such speeds, but once again, that did not explain what had happened at the drugstore.

That frustrated him—the more he thought about it, the less sense it made. Whatever had happened in that parking lot was of
his
doing, not some machine. It was as natural as breathing to him, even if he couldn’t figure out how to do it voluntarily. It was part of his mind, or … soul? Chris had never been a religious man, but had always held some secret hope that he would come across something that defied any sort of scientific theory. He never thought of the possibility that he might find that something within himself.

He tried several times that night to duplicate the
freezing
that had happened with the two PolCorp guards. Once he felt like he brushed … something, just beyond the time-space continuum as it is recognized by humanity. A void filled with something intangible, but then it was abruptly gone again.
I’m tired
, Chris thought.
Imagining things.

But he wasn’t tired. He did feel like he had woken from a refreshing forty-one-year nap. He looked again for the sense of nothing—the nothing/something he had felt before—but it escaped him, like a dream evaporating upon wakening. He felt the impression of it, but the details fled his mind.
Like everything else in my head—there, in its shape, but invisible in its details.

Could this be why I didn’t age?
Chris thought.
Maybe this is something that I was born with, that only came out after I’d been shot—maybe it needed this world to come out. Maybe … maybe … maybe …

But no answer came as Chris waited for dawn, feeling only the emptiness where his life’s memories should be.
I need answers
, Chris thought as the sun rose over the steel and Plexiglas of North Denver.
And I need them soon, before I really do drive myself crazy.

Chris was up and out the front door of the hotel at six forty-five. Charlie hadn’t been at the front desk, replaced by a little hand-written sign that said “Back in five.” The old cleaning woman was still there, of course, asleep in front of the morning news on the ancient TV. The sound fritzed and the anchorman could hardly be heard above the sea of static.

He found the P.N.T. five blocks down the main strip that led to the GeoCorp Administration Building, attached to an Airbus terminal, with shuttles leaving every two minutes to Denver North. There was a sign for schedules to Denver South, as well, but it said only “ALL BUSSES CANCELLED” in large, red-lighted letters.

Chris had passed quite a few ground cars on his way to the terminal and he wondered how they managed to get into downtown—from the streets around the hospital, it seemed unlikely that anyone could drive a car through the rubbish and broken machinery that littered the streets there. The answer: the terminal itself was huge—two city blocks and twenty stories, of which the bottom eighteen was all parking. A mall and the actual terminal took up the top two floors of structure.

Chris took the lift to the airbus depot and spotted a sign marked “P.N.T.,” with a graphic of a figure sitting in front of a computer. The P.N.T. took up the entire western third of the top floor. There was only a low, dividing wall between the rest of the bus terminal and the rows and rows of cubicles that made up the main part of the P.N.T.

A sign at a little booth in the front entrance said, “One hundred dollars for thirty minutes or one hundred and fifty for one hour, prepay only.” Sitting behind the sign was a tired-looking Korean teenager who put on a plastic smile that didn’t reach his eyes—eyes that instead spoke with venomous hostility of the injustice of a world where he had to deal with assholes and bums who treated him like shit. “Welcome to the P.N.T., sir. How may I help you?” He sounded like he read a script, unsure of his lines.

“I need a terminal, please.” Chris tried to be polite and friendly, to help ease the boy in front of him. Those hostile eyes bored straight into Chris’s soul and exposing his inner monsters.

“How long, Sir?” He replied to Chris’s politeness by warming slightly and notching down the hate in his eyes.

Chris sighed, not wanting to go through this again. “I’m not really sure. I’m sorry.”

“No problem, sir. You’ll be on terminal double zero three nine. Fill out this form here, and I’ll need to see an identification card please.” The kid, whose nametag said Kim, pushed a form across the desk towards Chris.

“Oh,” Chris said. “The thing is, I lost my I.D. I, uh, need to apply for another one … I’m sorry to be a hassle.”

“No problem sir,” Kim smiled again, this time almost genuinely. “Then instead I can give you terminal zero five zero six, that’s in the next room—” He gestured vaguely over his shoulder, “—and you can fill out this form here—” he slid another form over to Chris and pulled the other one away in one motion, “—which stipulates that you are who you say you are and can be checked by PolCorp at any time to prove your identity—don’t worry, they never check—and if you sign here, here, and here, then pay the five hundred dollar deposit you will be all ready to go. Here’s your pass code for this session—use it to log on.” Kim handed him a small, red card that said:

HERCULEANPEDAGOGUE

Chris signed the name Geoffrey Garret—he didn’t know where it came from, but he liked the sound of it—paid the deposit, and followed the signs through the maze of cubicles to another room, far to his left. He saw several images of hard-core porn out of the corner of his eye, and wondered what Charlie thought was so “kinky” that it wasn’t allowed on public terminals.

The next room was smaller, though still vast, and noisier than the main P.N.T. area. The terminals looked older and dirtier. The dusty scent of overworked drives filled the air. With no dividing cubicles, the room was set up with ten terminals each on twenty or so tables. Through the open windows came the din of traffic flying around the bus terminal. There were a dozen people spread around in here, pecking away at keyboards; one man peered over a woman’s shoulder near the back wall.

A lone PolCorp security guard reclined at a desk at the far end of the room, looking at the ceiling like a despondent child. His feet beat to the rhythm of music only he could hear. Chris imagined he had committed some atrocious folly, either perceived or real, to earn this beat.
Library cop
, Chris thought out of nowhere, and smiled.
Keeping the silence—and not even doing that well.
The thought amused him, and to a small degree some vindication for how harassed he had felt by PolCorp and yesterday’s events.

Chris found the terminal with the digits zero five zero six hovering over it like the clock at the hospital and sat down, the numbers flickering out of existence as he did so. It occurred to him as he sat down that he may have no idea how to operate such a computer, but as the hologram flickered out the screen flickered on, revealing a blinking prompt that stated: “Pass code?” Chris stared at the computer. There wasn’t a keyboard.

He ran his hand over the space in front of the monitor, and asterisks appeared on the login. Chris ran his hand back over the surface and spotted a slight discoloration appeared under his fingers. Holographic letters were on the otherwise blank surface. He smiled and typed in “HERCULEANPEDAGOGUE” and the screen went blank, before bringing up the face of a beautiful Asian woman. “Good-morning!” she said to Chris. The monitor had the same three-dimensional feel as the screens at Jones Drugs, creating the uncomfortable illusion that he sat a foot away from this woman’s disembodied head.

The feeling passed as the woman faded and another blinking curser appeared, this time, “Find It!!” floated at the top of the screen in green bubble letters. Without hesitation, Chris typed in “Dr. Christopher Nost.” A long list of hits appeared, hovering within the flat monitor. Chris went to the first one, an article from July twenty-third, two thousand and three:

The ‘Memory Lost’ Murderer Shot after Conviction

Dr. Christopher Nost was shot by an unidentified assailant today, only minutes after his conviction in the much-publicized murder of Lucille Frost. No arrests have been made although several witnesses report seeing the assailant gunned down by police. Authorities will not comment on the incident but say they have several leads.

Judge Miller expressed sympathy for Dr. Nost after the conviction and reduced his sentence to the minimum 10 years in a minimum-security prison. He spoke bluntly to the court when he told those present that he had reason to seriously doubt Dr. Nost’s guilt.

Dr. Nost was shot while leaving the Courthouse, just as his attorney, Alan Dunwich, was addressing the assembled press …

Chris stopped reading—the rest of the article looked like interviews with witnesses who didn’t see anything—and went back to search “Lucille Frost,” and read the first article, dated August fourteenth, nineteen ninety-nine.

Head of Research Team Murdered in Office

The head of an Aerospace Physics research team based in Colorado Springs, CO. was found shot to death in her office around 7 pm Monday night.

Lucille Frost, 39, had led a team of 20 scientists for only about 18 months, but in that time managed to make her elite think-tank the forefront of Aerospace Physics, and was currently spearheading a privately funded project that was meant to revolutionize current theories on deep-space travel. Benefits to society had already been seen with the new high impact lightweight alloy the team designed in their first weeks of research. They had been known as ‘Lucille’s Team’ throughout academia in the short time they existed. The entire project has now been put on hold indefinitely while the murder investigations are under way.

Frost left behind two children, who at this time cannot be found. A kidnapping investigation is also underway over the fate of Mary, 10 and Markus, 16. Her ex-husband was not available to comment.

The article ended with a picture of Frost, taken in a park. Her face tickled something at the back of his mind but failed to spark recognition. Chris panned down through the other hits before he came across:

Arrest Made in Frost Murder

One of the leading physicists on Dr. Lucille Frost’s team was arrested on Tuesday as the prime suspect in her shooting nearly three years ago.

Dr. Christopher Nost, thought by many to be the backbone of the “Deep Space Dream Team,” was arrested without incident in his home in Colorado Springs.

“We have ample evidence which we have collected over the past three years—all of which points to Dr. Nost,” said Colorado Springs Police Chief Randal Holms. “We also have multiple reports from witnesses who say Frost and Nost got into frequent, heated arguments over how the project was run.”

“One witness claims that Nost once told Dr. Frost that he believed she was sabotaging their collective efforts. Many of his colleagues also say that Nost was bitter about having his ideas repeatedly rejected by the project head.” The prosecution, despite evidence, does not have an easy case against Dr. Nost, who suffers from a rare neural disorder that reduces his memory span to a little more than a year.

Dr. Eric Jorgensen, one of the world’s premier neurologists, was contacted via a phone call to his office in Sweden Tuesday night. Dr. Jorgensen has had Nost as a regular patient for the past 6 years and will be testifying on his behalf.

“It is an incredibly rare condition, and it is almost impossible at this time to identify a cause, but I can assure you that whether or not my patient is guilty, he has no memory of the event either way,” Jorgensen explained.

He went on to say that Nost’s condition is all the more unusual because he is capable of retaining learned, or abstract and conceptual memories. “The formulae and equations that Dr. Nost uses in his research, for example, are not affected, nor are his abilities to write or drive a car,” Jorgensen explained. “But he cannot remember his own family, or his childhood with them.”

“However,” Jorgensen pointed out, “if Dr. Nost were to come up with something new, some sort of breakthrough in his field, well, let’s just say he should write it down.” Dr. Sharon Peters, head of the University of Colorado Physics department and the person who discovered Lucille Frost’s body in the parking lot, expressed regret when notified of Nost’s arrest.

“I don’t think [Nost] could have done it,” she told reporters at a press conference held two hours after the suspect was taken into custody. “Either way, I think it is safe to say that without both Frost and Nost, the Deep Space/Light Particle project will have to be cancelled until other suitable minds can be found. Despite their personal differences and radically different theories, those two were without a doubt the heart and soul of the project, constantly keeping the other in check.”

Peters further pointed out that she was in the building around the time of the murder and although she heard no gunshots, the man she saw leaving Frost’s office was, she claimed, not Dr. Nost. Nost’s mother has been notified of the arrest, but has declined to comment.

As Chris finished reading, he became aware of someone standing behind him.

“Old news, huh?” a feminine voice purred behind him. “Now why would you be hunting through that stuff?”

Chris closed out the screen. “What’s it to you?” he asked, turning around.

Chris froze when he saw the woman standing behind him. She was young—probably in her early twenties, with reddish hair and an aquiline nose. Her body was well toned and easy enough to see under her tight, thin, slightly glowing bodysuit. She exuded an air of womanliness that was hard to see past.

It was not her sexuality that gripped Chris by his guts though—she looked exactly like the picture he had just seen of Lucille Frost. Despite the difference in age, the resemblance was uncanny. Chris swallowed and said nothing more, his hand nervously brushing the keyboard.

“Curiosity, really,” the woman said. “As I was going by I saw my name on your screen, so I stopped to have a look. When I saw you were reading about my grandmother’s murder, I couldn’t help but wonder why you were reading about it.”