I’d forgotten about the coffee date with Mary. “I, uh…” The goggles give me a list of possible replies. “I have to reschedule.”
Her mouth shrinks to normal; she crosses her arms. I ignore the goggles’ interpretation of her body language because it makes me feel uncomfortable.
“Is it okay to reschedule?” I try again.
“It’s fine,” she says, but the goggles tell me it’s not fine.
I leave to find Ava. Ava’s in trouble and I’m like a superhero weaving through the New York streets. Howard would never be able to do this. My goggles give me my powers. Howie rescues children from burning buildings. Howie saves the girl.
Dr. Ennis’s office is on the third floor. In the lobby two security guards step in front of me.
“I need to speak to Ava Jones.” I’m assertive. Howard is never assertive.
“You can’t go in without an appointment or a visitor’s pass.” They block me from the elevator as if I’m the bad guy.
“Let me talk to Ava. I need to talk to Ava.” I try to walk through to the elevator. I wish I had a badge. Maybe I should call Eddie. But it’s the sixteenth and Eddie is being a jerk.
“You don’t have an appointment. You have to leave.” One guard grips my arm and I yank away.
The other guard snaps to my side and wraps his body around me. In the scuffle, I lose my goggles and the lights attack me from above. The lobby music snakes into my ear. The elevator door is too shiny; it opens like a robotic mouth to suck me into the abyss. I scream for Ava.
A woman’s voice shouts, “Let him go.”
The guards continue to wrestle me to the ground.
“Howard? Howard!” The woman is Ava. She’s all right, so I relax. “Somebody help him!”
“Let him go.” Dr. Ennis’s smooth voice joins in.
The guards let me go, but I stay on the ground. The lights are too bright and the music is too loud. I’m in a building I don’t know, in a part of town I don’t know, and I’m Howard again, shaking, rocking.
When I don’t respond to Ava, she calls Eddie.
When he arrives, he lies on the floor, encouraging me to get up. Ava rubs her hands and watches me while talking to Dr. Ennis.
When I get off the floor, Eddie hands me the goggles. “Don’t take these off.”
I want to tell him that the guards took them off, but he’s already in the corner with Ava. She’s nodding a lot and looking at me.
I rock and rock. Through the attempts to calm the nerves sparking around my body, I hear Ava and Eddie whispering in hushed voices. They talk as if I’m not in the room. No Howard. No Howie. I’m a puppy that made a mess in their absence. Now they have to clean it.
“…He would never hurt me,” Ava’s voice cracks.
Eddie sighs. “Are you sure about that?” He pauses for a long time and he uncrosses his arms making his jacket rustle. “No, you’re right. He’s harmless… We can tell the captain he was worried about you,” Eddie says.
“I don’t want him suspended.”
“They know him. How he is. Nobody’s pressing charges. This is just another episode to the upper brass. Don’t tell them about Dr. Ennis and I’ll take him home.”
She hesitates and rubs her shoulders as if a huge weight has been set there. “No, I’ll take him.”
The ride on the trolley does its job to calm me. Before I know it, I’m walking up the stairs to my apartment.
“Howard,” Ava says, clearing her throat. “Eddie told me about what you thought. About Dr. Ennis.”
I stare at my door handle.
“Do you think that you might have imagined it because of a fear of the procedure? When we talked yesterday, I got the sense you were afraid, not really for me, but for you. At the consultation Dr. Ennis assured me—”
“I’m not afraid.”
“But—”
“I think I should get a consultation, too.” I’m sick of being Howard, the autistic guy in Digital Archive.
She straightens. “Well, okay. I’ll set something up with Dr. Reg.”
“What about Dr. Ennis?”
“He does the initial, but I talked to Dr. Ennis about you, and I think we could get you right in to Dr. Reg. They take a scan of the brain, then redesign the parts that are damaged and insert the fix into your mind. I did my scan today. He said PTSD is an easy redesign—once we get approval.”
She takes a deep breath.
I exhale. “I’m sorry about today.”
She nods. “It’s good to know you have my back.”
I escape into my apartment.
In the morning, there is a message from Eddie on my computer. Maybe this will help you let it go. It’s the medical files from Dr. Ennis’ patients. The siphons without halos. Dr. Ennis wouldn’t release the files if he were guilty.
This doesn’t help me feel better, but I look at the files anyway because even with the goggles on I can’t give up. Nothing would show up on these files anyway; I need autopsy reports. I didn’t look at them yesterday.
The autopsies don’t reveal much. Each person had an fMRI scan done for the Mind Transfer Project in hopes that the redesign treatment would be approved. But thousands of other people have had scans done for the Mind Transfer Project and none of them have died.
I do a quick check of other siphons that have also had fMRI scans for the Mind Transfer Project; they all have halos.
In the victim who committed suicide, the autopsy report shows a brain bleed in the frontal cortex, along with temporal lobe damage. The absent halo case with the PTSD case shows lesions in the amygdala. My brain buzzes with some sort of connection.
If I take off the goggles, I could see it, but I promised Eddie that I won’t take them off.
Ava is waiting for me at the door. She must have been able to get me in with Dr. Reg. We take the trolley down to the Bellevue Research Center.
“The scan doesn’t hurt,” Ava says.
My mind is chewing on the autopsy information. Something doesn’t add up, but I have to stop thinking about it or I’ll relapse, and this time Eddie will tell the captain the truth about me wrongfully suspecting Dr. Ennis.
I tap my fingernails on my teeth. “I’m not worried.”
We go into the building, and this time the security guards let me into the elevator. I skirt around them, flinching when I get closer, but they don’t even acknowledge me.
Dr. Reg greets us before we can even sit in the waiting room and we are ushered right into the scan room. The walls are grey and the floor is tan Berber. It should calm me, the plain colors, but the fluttering starts in my stomach when the nurse motions for me sit on the exam table. I lie down on the table, breathing evenly.
“We’re going to have to take those goggles off.” Dr. Reg says.
My heart thumps hard. “Can you dim the lights?”
The technician dims the lights and leaves the room to prepare the equipment.
Ava leans over and helps me.
“We have good news.” Dr. Reg turns to Ava. “We have approval from the research committee for a small subset of test subjects, and your file came up as a candidate. I’ve got the redesign in my office, and we can start the treatment.”
“Right now?” Ava asks. She bites her lip and looks at me.
“You can go.” My voice breaks at the end.
“Are you sure?”
“You’ll just be waiting outside anyway.”
She leaves with Dr. Reg, and I try to lie still while the scanning technician insists that I’m in fact not still.
When I get situated, I think about the autopsies and the parts of the brain affected. Depression in the frontal and temporal lobe areas, PTSD in the amygdala. It clicks. Those are the parts of the brain that would need to be “redesigned.” I wonder if all seven absent halo cases were candidates for th
e redesign. How many of Dr. Reg’s patients got a redesign?
I wiggle off the table and the technician calls for me to stop.
I push away from the nurses and dart for the hallway.
The hallway is lined with exam rooms, surgical rooms, and a room marked Transfer. There’s a commotion down the hall as the nurses call my name. I slip into the transfer room before they see me, and lock the door.
I’m relieved by the darkened room.
I trip on a cord and my shoulder jams into a metal cage. The cage clatters and a high-pitched squeal pierces the air. Cedar shavings spill onto the floor. Then there’s a flurry of activity. Rats bang against their cages, running along squeaky wheels. I hug myself, humming.
A light from a door at the other end of the room blinks like a beacon. Stop blinking, stop blinking, stop blinking. There’s canvas hanging over the top half of the door, obstructing the light from what appears to be another room. I pull it down.
I peek through the window and see Ava lying back in a chair. Wires snake out from her head and wrap around her neck like a noose.
“Just one more minute,” Dr. Reg’s voice says to her.
I hear Ava moaning inside, but the door is locked.
I yell through the door, “Leave her alone.”
Dr. Reg startles and holds up his hand. “This is a very delicate procedure. Stay back.”
“The other patients didn’t have halos.”
The doctor looks confused, so I try to think of how the goggles would tell me to explain it. I pat my pockets and then remember that my goggles are in the exam room.
I try again. “The other patients died.”
“The other patients didn’t get the correct treatment. I’ve fixed it,” Dr. Reg explains, his voice muffled.
“I don’t want to do this.” Ava is crying now on the table, wires tangled in her hair, her face contorted in pain. A machine beeps next to her and the doctor connects another wire from the machine to Ava.
“She wants you to let her go.” I flap my hands, slapping at my neck, imagining the wires around my body, trapping me.
Dr. Reg adjusts the dials on the machine. “She’s in pain now, but I’ve given her a solution to help her forget the pain after the treatment.”
I think about the skips in Sera Turner’s file. I repeat Sera Turner’s case file number over and over.
Someone knocks on the door to the rat lab behind me.
Dr. Reg pulls out a remote from his pocket. He flips the lights up to full brightness, and the doors to the transfer room lock with a rapid, resounding click, trapping me inside.
I cover my eyes and collapse against the wall.
“Howard, help me,” Ava begs, her voice fading.
I want to reassure her, but now someone is banging on the door. The sharp noise scares me and I press my body into the wall, shivering and rocking.
“The treatments should be working.” Dr. Reg leans against the window between us. “My daughter was diagnosed bipolar.” His eyes are round and red. The ends of his mouth point down, twitching before he pushes off the wall and paces the room.
I scratch at the door and realize I’m never going to get out.
Dr. Reg knew about the deaths of his patients. Dr. Ennis must not have known, otherwise why did he send the paperwork?
Dr. Reg won’t let me leave; if I leave people will know. I imagine the images the coroner will siphon after I die.
The doctor continues stammering about the treatments and I struggle to look at Ava, who is trembling, staring up at the ceiling. Her hand breaks free from the restraints and she reaches for the wires, pulling at them. Dr. Reg continues pacing, preoccupied.
ILLUSTRATION BY LUIS MENACHO
I clench my fists and throw myself at the door, scratching and clawing. My mind rages in blind panic as sensations assault me, but I force myself to focus on Ava. I have to save Ava. I yell at her to hang on and she stops thrashing. I grab an empty cage and crash it against the glass until it shatters. The door behind me buzzes and opens. A guard rushes in and pins me to the wall.
Ava lies unmoving on the table. I scream for the guard to let me go, I scream about the missing halos.
When the guards check Ava’s vitals and pronounce her dead, I scream that the doctor killed her, and then I just scream and cry and shake until Eddie shows up an hour later.
The doctors and researchers tried to explain to me their theories of how the redesign had affected patients’ brains. Each of the patients suffered varying side effects as Dr. Reg adjusted the treatment, causing different forms of death.
The detectives found bullets in Dr. Reg’s gun that matched the same slug that killed Sera Turner. Evidence recovered from Dr. Reg’s email showed that Sera had been complaining of massive headaches, and threatened to expose Dr. Reg to the medical board when she discovered the treatments had never been approved.
He felt that he needed more time to complete his research. He became desperate for answers, and his unstable mind saw Sera as a threat.
No one could explain the missing halos or the short siphons. Dr. Ennis said that the redesigns left each individual’s consciousness out of sync. Father Solomon said it was a sign that the victims’ spirits were never guided into the light. I like to think that they have found their way now.
Ava’s siphon has yet to be rendered. At first, I didn’t want to render it, because I’m afraid of what I will see. Will her last memory be of me cowering in a corner while she begs me to help her? But I need to know one thing.
The frames are blurry and I spend hours tweaking and adjusting. Before long, I see myself rendered clearly, looking directly at her before I move away from the wall. I look determined as I fight to get to her. I look like a superhero.
The door behind me buzzes and opens.
Eddie comes into the dim room wearing his badge.
“Hi, Howard.”
“You hate Digital,” I say. “You said you’d never come back.”
“I know what I said.” He pauses, looking at the looping render. “It’s lunch time; you need to take a break. I’m going down to Pierre’s.”
I like Pierre’s; they’re next to the waterfront in a no-advertising zone. The crowd is usually small, lights dim.
“I’m not going to wear the goggles. You said I had to wear them.”
“Yeah, I said that.” He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “You don’t need them. You did good…” He chokes on the rest of the words and instead holds out his hand.
I think about the millions of germs on a human hand, how a handshake is so strange. I think about the sensation of touching, and Eddie’s sandpaper knuckles. A statistic pops into my head about the percentage of people who no longer shake hands as a custom. Eddie waits for me, his hand suspended in the air.
I suddenly know what to do. I shake his hand, then leave without the goggles. I like being Howard.
I glance back at my desk as the door closes and pause long enough to see Ava’s perfect halo fade to black.
The Manuscript Factory
BY L. RON HUBBARD
Having now completed its first twenty-nine years, the L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Contest remains true to the purpose for which it was created: “To provide a means for new and budding writers to have a chance for their creative efforts to be seen and acknowledged.”
Robert Silverberg, Science Fiction Grand Master and judge since the Contest’s inception, noted in recognition of the program’s success, “What a wonderful idea—one of science fiction’s all-time giants opening the way for a new generation of exciting talent! For these brilliant stories, and the careers that will grow from them, we all stand indebted to L. Ron Hubbard.”
As one of the most celebrated writers during America’s Golden Age of
pulp fiction, Ron began his career in the summer of 1933 in the California coastal town of Encinitas, just north of San Diego. There he wrote and submitted a half-million words of fiction, shotgunned out to a dozen markets. He saw sales from the start, with his first published tale being “The Green God,” a routine story at the time of a Western intelligence officer in search of a stolen idol. What made this yarn different, however, was that the young L. Ron Hubbard had actually walked the gloomy streets of Tientsin in China—and in the company of a Western intelligence officer: specifically, a Major Ian Macbean of the British Secret Service.
Ron’s rapid ascent to success as a writer can be greatly attributed to the fact that his stories were drawn from genuine firsthand experience. This was best described in October 1933, a few short months after his emergence onto the pulp fiction scene, by the editor of Thrilling Adventures when he wrote, “Several of you have wondered, too, how he gets the splendid color which always characterizes his stories of faraway places. The answer is, he’s been there, brothers. He’s been, and seen, and done, and plenty of all three of them!”
Ron saw over 200 of his fiction stories published during this time; he wrote in every popular genre, from adventure of every sort to mystery and thriller, to science fiction and fantasy, to western and even some romance. He wrote anywhere from 70,000–100,000 words a month, writing only three days a week, affording him the time he needed for further adventuring.
Regarding the necessity of devoting oneself to the task of writing, Ron had this to say:
“If you write insincerely, if you think the lowest pulp can be written insincerely and still sell, then you’re in for trouble unless your luck is terribly good. And luck rarely strikes twice.”
He featured this and several other topics in instructional essays, which he penned on the business of writing, addressing concerns common to both the novice and experienced writer alike. Initially published in such magazines as Writer’s Digest, Writer’s Review, Author & Journalist and Writers’ Markets & Methods, these articles covered topics such as how to get a story idea, how to create suspense, how to create story vitality and even what not to tell a writer. These essays would eventually become the backbone of the now-famous Writers of the Future Workshop as taught by Tim Powers and Dave Wolverton. The Workshop provides the basic skills of story writing, combining compassion with encouragement for the fledgling writer, while continuing to offer insightful lessons in writing techniques.