Writers of the Future, Volume 28 (18 page)

“What’s the Honeycomb
?
” I venture, careful to conceal my awe of the eccentric people on this ledge.

“You’re looking at it.” Lt. gestures wide-armed at the breathing universe of indigo-sapphire chambers and humans in stasis. He takes a knee, tucking a knife into a combat boot.

“The Honeycomb is the Collective Human Consciousness,” giggles the little boy, who has snuck back across the bridge. “This is where we are all connected. Hi, I’m Sebastian.” He puts out a hand. “
I’m
not afraid to talk about what I am.”

Tentatively, I shake it.

“What are you then
?
” I ask.

“I’m a cranky, ninety-four-year-old man.”

The kid’s pulling my leg.

“He really is,” asserts the amber-haired girl. “Ninety-four.”

“We can’t send him on recon outside the Honeycomb,” adds Lt., dubiously. “Too risky. His body’s on death’s doorstep, but his mind . . .” He taps his temple. “Sharp as a tack. Sebastian never served in any wars before the invasion, though.” Lt. shoots the boy a critical look, and Sebastian smiles and bounces on his heels.

A ninety-four-year-old man, I wonder. Then I think, wait. I have to remind myself that I’m not in physical reality here. This is
totally
interesting!

“I’m Avril, by the way,” the amber-haired girl introduces herself. “And in case you’re wondering, I’m an intellectual monomaniac, and I’m usually obsessed with only one kind of delirious idea.”

“Don’t listen to her.” Lt. waves her off. “Avril has plenty of good ideas. She’s one of my best.”

“It’s different outside the Honeycomb,” Avril rebuts. “It’s the same as your schizophrenia, Lt. You always tell us what it was like fighting in the war in Afghanistan, battling hallucinations, and paranoia, and delusions and disorganized thinking in the desert.” Avril turns to me. “Lt.’s the de facto leader of this COP. He set it up. He organizes the missions. He’s the most clear-thinking person in the Honeycomb.”

Self-satisfied, Lt. blows another ring.

“And yet he still experiences six distinct states of consciousness,” Sebastian clarifies. “Not the typical three, as an
aide memoire
of his condition.” I clink my jaw shut; it’s so weird hearing an old man’s wisdom coming out of a little boy’s mouth. Especially mixed with the giggling.

Lt. snorts. “Sebastian here has deduced that healthy human beings experience three states of consciousness. That’s Awake, Asleep and In-Between. But this group,” he gestures to the people on the ledge, “experiences at least four.”

“Hence why we are each awake in the Honeycomb.” Sebastian grins.

Lt. chews thoughtfully on his stogie and then takes a puff deep enough to turn an elephant green. “I’ve got six levels,” he says, eyes closed. “Great for recon.” Then his eyes pop open, and he rakes me, slit-eyed, with a stare so hot, it’s burning the hairs on the back of my neck.

“Six,” he repeats. “Six! I can go six places: Collective Consciousness—that’s the Honeycomb. Unconsciousness, Preconsciousness, Transcendental, Alpha Wave and Waking Consciousness. Almost got caught once by the Grunge, poking around in Alpha Wave.”

“The Grunge
?
” Now I’m really confused. “What’s that
?
” I can’t help myself. None of this talk about mental disorders and levels of consciousness is jiving. Acutely, I’m aware of that Pop-Fizz guy breathing down my neck, with his chains clanking together and his eyes lost somewhere behind his liquid shades. He’s pumping out a beat with his foot, trying to coax me into following.

“Not ‘what.’ ‘Who.’” Lt. gives me a dark look, then, singsong, courts my understanding: “The
Grunge,
dammit! They’re the enemy. The body spoilers.” He fills me in.

I raise a brow, trying not to freak. I think about the news broadcasts of the temples in Antarctica. “Those things in my house
?
That’s
what they are
?
”

“They came through a gateway the size of an atom,” confirms Sebastian. “And to think, all this time we’ve been expecting them to show up on the White House lawn and ask to be taken to our leader.” He winks at me. Then by way of an explanation, he continues, “They’re not extraterrestrial. Rather, they’re interdimensional. Incorporeal. Dr. Growlinger, that infamous scientist who was all over the news before our current—” He raises a brow. “—
predicament,
he was a colleague of mine. I told him not to thaw those pyramids. Some things are best left buried.”

“Alien scum,” Lt. sneers as Pop-Fizz goes snapping away and steals that redhead, Jin-Jin, for a dancing partner. “Grungy! Mark me, they won’t be master of
my
body for much longer. The team, we’re awake, and we’re waking up others. We’ve launched a campaign. Pain is what they’ll feel, they want bodies so bad. The Grunge are going to wish they never crossed into the physical dimension.”

I
’m on the cusp of a revelation here. These people are awake in the Honeycomb, while billions of others sleep, and I think I know why. I’m just not sure exactly how.

Squinting into the firelight, I study Lt., who has the perfect jawline for exuding that grim determination typical of a seriously misunderstood Marine.

“What’s your name, soldier
?
” he asks me.

“Janie,” I answer straight and flat. “Shouldn’t you be calling me a ‘recruit’
?
I mean, if you’re recruiting people into your COP
?
” Just look at me, I think. I’m in a nightie! It’s so
embarrassing.
“How do you know you can trust me
?
”

“Negative.” Lt. wags a gloved finger. “The day the Grunge seized human bodies, you were recruited. You have no ulterior motive. If you did, we would be able to see it. You’re in the Honeycomb. We can see into your mind. Literally.” He taps his temple. “If you posed a threat, you would have come amongst us looking a hellova lot different than a girl in a nightgown.”

And before I can pop from how red I’ve just turned, Sebastian pulls on Lt.’s Kevlar vest and Lt. holds up a hand. Like night terrors, the two of them retreat into the shadows of the ledge and whisper heatedly with Avril, Basely and all of Basely’s personalities.

Obviously, I’m the subject of debate. Kinda rude, you think
?
A hard lump solidifies in my chest—the first since I’ve been in the Honeycomb.

One of the Tibetan monks from around the campfire tries to hand me something just then, and, distracted, I make to turn it down. But then I can smell it, steamy and rich, curling into my nostrils. A heaping bowlful of rice.

Previous thoughts evaporating, I stare at it like it’s going to disappear.

“Eat,” says the oldest of the monks, a twinkle in his eye. “Rice has no feet to walk away on.”

I’m flummoxed. “I don’t understand. How did you get food
?
” I don’t see any silverware or chopsticks anywhere. The rice is sticky enough that the monks are eating it with their hands, scooping in mouthfuls with their middle and index fingers, like spoons.

Then I think, who cares! The smell is so intense; I inhale the entire bowlful! And it’s only rice!

Strangely, I don’t feel full. Only mildly satiated. One by one, I pop the last few grains into my mouth and curl them onto my tongue, savoring their flavor.

“We recall our food,” replies the older monk, whom I gather is named “Lobsang,” based on how several of his companions are addressing him while they collect the bowls.

Faces passive, the monks peer at me after they’ve seated themselves around the campfire again. I count sixteen of them.

“The mind is the seat of perception.” Lobsang looks at me askew. “All that we perceive through the body is produced in the mind. The mind is the nerve center. And through the mind, you may create or prevent the effects of perception.” He points to the space between his eyes.

His English is very good. Setting aside my bowl, I curl my knees under my nightie, wrap my arms around them and hum softly. Lt. and the others are still conversing on the ledge, by the void. It makes me feel more exposed than ever.

Lobsang claps his hands, making me jump.

“Look! I have hypnotized you!” he exclaims. “You have freely accepted my food and eaten it to the last grain of rice, taking for granted what is not actually there!”

Jolted back to his smiling, enigmatic face, I notice that the sixteen other monks are smiling too. Obviously, I’ve missed something here.

“Do you see
?
” says Lobsang. “You have eaten an illusion, yet it was no less real. Like the garments you choose to wear.”

Now I feel like I’ve been caught stealing. Don’t they know this is humiliating
?
Lobsang’s smile is mischievous.

“All products of the mind,” he asserts. “You cloak yourself in vulnerability with this sleeping garment.”

I curl into a tighter ball. But Lobsang leans forward, and for a moment, he hums a harmony to the tune I’m making up.

I taper off . . .

“All realities are in your mind,” he says, the Honeycomb’s network of bridges glimmering in his eyes. “Here in the Chamber of Perception, you may garb yourself in whatever you wish, eat whatever you wish, when you wish it. We are gods in our own minds, and we create worlds inside them. Hum
?
”

His smile is fantastic. I look down at my hands and realize I’m holding a bowl of cereal and a spoon.

“Did you—”

“No.” Lobsang shakes his head. “You did.” Then just like that, he goes back to eating a second bowl of rice.

“He’s perfectly healthy,” Avril whispers over my shoulder, returning. “Teacher Lobsang and his students have learned to disassociate themselves from their waking conscious minds. They don’t have fragmented personalities like the rest of us have.”

Ecstatic, I put aside my cereal bowl. I can’t believe that having a mental disorder is the key to being awake in here. It’s insane. With the exception of maybe Basely, everyone seems pretty normal to me. But then again, looking closer from one person to another along the prominence, I recognize the pieces of whole individuals, which is like looking through a filter. Like looking in a mirror.

“That’s the ticket.” Avril pats my arm. “Anything that helps people fragment their personalities in order to survive the vegetative state of the Honeycomb. But like I said, Lobsang and his students are the real exception. They’re our secret weapon for waking up sleepers. The sleepers have relatively healthy minds, you see, which is why they’re asleep, but if you wake them up
?
” She snaps her fingers. “They experience sudden fragmentation, which can drive a healthy person mad. They go into denial. We’ve lost people off ledges that way, and once they disappear into the void . . .” She shrugs, cryptically. “We’ve also lost people the other way, too. They’ll go wandering off into their other layers of consciousness outside the Honeycomb and never return. Or get put back to sleep by the Grunge. Lt. says it’s bad for business.”

“It
is
bad for business,” Lt. remarks, rejoining us with Sebastian, Basely and his motley crew. He nods respectfully to Lobsang, who nods back. “In here, you’re not shunned as crazy or sick. Fractured minds are what’re needed to wake up the human race and reclaim what’s ours. But we can’t do it alone. We need more consciousnesses.”

“Indeed, the fractured of mind need not be trapped.” Lobsang magics away his empty bowl of rice with a trick of his hands. Delighted, I see the faintest hint of a lotus flower hanging in space where the bowl was, before it, too, disappears in a coil of purple smoke. “The fractured of mind can be utilized to see what others cannot and express what is seen in a meaningful way. The only difference between an artist and a schizophrenic is that the artist can express what she sees. Information by itself is fixed, but perception makes that information unique to the individual, in essence changing it. The individual alters reality.”

“Just read the Good Book,” agrees Lt., who’s pretty traditional. “Everyone important in there woulda been diagnosed with something these days. God always did like people with issues. Maybe that’s what it means to be made in his image.”

He paces toward a doorway in the chamber, beyond the campfire, and I’ve just deduced that this is his ledge and campfire, because this is his COP. His doorway isn’t that dissimilar from mine, either.

“Come with me, Janie girl.” He gestures to the doorway. “It’s been agreed. You’re to be briefed on Outer Recon. What say you help us spy on the Grunge
?
”

I
have to ask it before it kills me. “What exactly do the Grunge want
?
” I step over the threshold. “I mean, if these things invaded our minds, basically stole our bodies overnight, what do they want
?
I don’t understand.”

Outside the doorway, I plunge into sand and rock up to my ankles. Lt.’s inner sanctuary isn’t a sparkling glen like mine; it’s a desert, a wasteland of shrubs beyond a sea of dunes and a ridgeline of tree-covered mountains that erupt like moldy fangs in a mouth of blue far away in the atmosphere. Afghanistan. This must be where Lt. feels at peace.

There’s something else, too. I’m wearing combat boots, just like Lt.’s.

“Well, well, well.” One of Basely’s personalities, Benjamin, I think (the one in the business suit), points rudely at my feet. “A fast learner.”

I didn’t do anything, I think in stark amazement. I swear!

“Most excellent.” The little boy, Sebastian, rubs his hands. “Lobsang’s teachings are like the falling of small pebbles that create an avalanche.”

Tromping behind, Lt. is clapping. Though, true to his earlier warning, Basely’s expression is one hundred percent sour grapes. Probably because I’m getting all the attention—and I didn’t have to split myself up for it.

I feel a fluttering sensation in my chest and the world goes spinning. Oops . . . I guess the boots have made me anxious. Teacher Lobsang did this, I think
?
No,
I
did. Lobsang only encouraged me to do it. But how
?