Phase Shift (13 page)

He sets Mickey down in the middle of an
island counter in the centre of the lab and ushers me into the far
corner. We hold hands in silence, waiting, squeezing each other's
hand in anticipation. It's the longest thirty seconds of my life. I
am counting silently (one Mississippi...two Mississippi). I reach
thirty Mississippis and nothing happens, but I continue to count.
When I reach thirty-five, Palmer and I look at each other in silent
question. I am tempted to ask him to double-check the timer to see
if the solenoid has fired, and then it happens: Mickey disappears.
Just like that: poof! Into thin air with a short gust of wind.

Palmer and I stand there, dumfounded. Afraid
to speak. Afraid to move. I am so taken in by what has just
happened I forget to start counting again.

"What just happened?" I ask. I start to look
around the lab, beginning on the floor around the island, as if the
very second we averted our eyes was the very second Mickey chose to
take a sprint off the edge of the counter. "Where did it go?"

"It worked," Palmer says. His statement of
the obvious comes out as a faint whisper. I'm paralyzed at the
thought. My heart beats faster than it should. My pulse races at my
right temple. I can't take my gaze from the spot at which Mickey
left this world. If what Prescott said was true, he will
rematerialize on the exact same spot.

Surely thirty seconds has passed by now. If
I thought the last countdown took forever—

I am about to resign myself to the fact
Mickey has become a permanent resident of Gaia when I hear a
squeak. I look up. Mickey has returned with the absence of
flourish.

"What just happened?" I ask again. I think
I’m in shock. I think we both are.

Palmer grabs Mickey—he's so bogged down by
the electronics he can only walk in what looks like a drunken
stupor—and cuts the surgical tape. He squeals as Palmer pulls the
tape off his belly, poor thing. When he’s done, Palmer pops him
back into his cage.

Palmer takes an EMF reading from the
modulator. It’s still strong. “My calculations (if they're correct)
indicate it's only been depleted by a few percent at most,” he
says. He takes the memory card from the camera and slides it into
the USB reader connected to my laptop, and boots up the
software.

The results are anti-climactic.

Static. It recorded nothing but static.

"What happened to the picture?" I ask.

"I don't know." He shakes his head. "EMFs
can wreak havoc with anything that runs on electromagnetic
impulses, everything from electronic devices to the human nervous
system. Maybe the EMF is so strong it's interfering with the inner
workings of the camera."

He plays with the software for a few
minutes. While he does, I watch Mickey in his cage. He takes a sip
or two from his water bottle and then begins running on his wheel,
seemingly no worse for the wear. "So it's okay then. Mickey seems
fine. I can go, right?"

Palmer looks up at me, surprised. I don't
know why—wasn't that the purpose of our experiment in the first
place?

"Bare with me," he tells me. “I'm not
convinced it's safe, not yet. One more experiment, one more
test.

"Let's see," he says. Palmer opens Mickey's
cage and puts him in the maze. He pinches off a piece of cheese,
places it at the other end of the maze, resets the stopwatch, and
lets Mickey go.

“Amazing!” he says, watching Mickey as he
gnaws at the cheese. “Twenty-eight seconds.” Okay, so not as great
as the last time, but he’s got to be a little fatigued from having
to carry around what essentially amounts to more than double his
body weight for the last few minutes.

"Like I said, Mickey's okay. I can go."

"I don't know, Moll," Palmer says, "I'd like
to try it one more time, just to be safe."

"Why? What's that going to accomplish?" He’s
never going to be okay with letting me go, I realize. We’re going
to sit here all day testing Mickey’s stamina until the charge wears
off.

"We don't know how much juice is left,” he
says, “how much energy it takes for each trip. Does it deplete
according to body weight or time spent? Another trip could tell us
that."

Frustrated, I just glare at him.

"Okay,” Palmer says. “If Mickey stays for a
longer amount of time this time—say a minute—then when he comes
back we see if the same amount of energy has been expended, or if
there's more. If it's the same—a few percent, say—then we know the
rate of expenditure is relative to body weight, regardless of the
time. If the rate of depletion has doubled, then we know it's
relative to time spent."

"I don't know, Palmer."

"Well I do," he tells me, sounding firm.
"Scientific experiments aren't accepted as breakthroughs until they
can be duplicated, right?" He pauses briefly, but then continues
before I have a chance to respond. "If we can duplicate our
experiment and compare the data, then we'll have a pretty good
sense of if it's safe or not."

I feel myself biting at the inside of my
cheek, my forehead muscles have grown taught.

"Bottom line?" Palmer pauses. "Bottom line
is the only thing at risk here is your life. That's something I'm
just not willing to gamble."

"So you're saying no matter how many times
we test this thing, you'll never be willing to let me try it for
myself."

Palmer thinks about this for a moment.
“Never in a million years,” he says. “Look, Moll, let's give it
just one more try with Mickey and see what happens. Okay?"

What other choice do I have? I nod, feigning
agreement.

Palmer rigs up the mouse once more, this
time setting the first trigger for thirty seconds, the second for a
full minute. We are treated to an exact repeat performance. The
mouse disappears after thirty seconds and reappears after sixty.
The EMF has depleted no more than a few percentage points and there
is no video to speak of. Mickey aces the maze in twenty-seven
seconds.

Palmer passes me the modulator and camera
and asks me to strip it of the tape while he does the same for
Mickey.

Suddenly there’s a gust of air.

I don't know what happened. One minute I was
in the Anth lab, listening to Palmer go on about gauss measures,
loss percentages and Mickey, the bionic mouse, and I was trying not
to break a nail while removing the damned residual adhesive from
the medical tape, when all of a sudden the room grew silent. The
first thing I noticed was the absence of the incessant whine of the
ceiling fan. It took a moment to realize the buzzing I was hearing
came not from the overhead lighting, but from within my head.

I look up and the Anth lab is gone. Instead,
I find myself in a long, cream-coloured corridor, standing on a
cream and grey marl floor peppered with mouse droppings.

All of a sudden I'm aware of the weight of
the modulator enmeshed in a death grip in my right hand. I force my
fingers to relax. An imprint of the device is etched into my palm.
I stare at the modulator dumbly for a moment. It vibrates almost
imperceptibly, sending pins and needles through the palm of my
hand.

"This is a restricted area. Please state
your designation," a voice says to me from behind, giving me a
start—up until that moment, I was sure I was the only one standing
in the corridor. I wheel around to see a man standing in close
proximity to me—too close. He's dressed in an ankle-length tunic
the color of Crème Brule, over white pants, which allows him to
blend nearly perfectly with the surroundings. Particularly
unnerving about the man is that he moves without sound or air
displacement. Not only that, but I can't hear him breathe. When he
moves, there's no rustle of material, even as the fabric moves
against his form. The only proof he's actually standing there is
that I'm witnessing him do so.

Odd. He had said, "State your designation".
Not state my name or title, nor did he ask to see my papers, but
rather, to state my designation. What the hell did that mean? "You
nearly scared me to death," I tell him. I fumble with the modulator
as I clip it to the waistband of my jeans.

The man cocks his head slightly to the left
as if trying to hear something from a distance. "Vital signs
indicate while your pulse has escalated since my appearance, you
are quite...healthy."

Is this guy for real?

"Please," he says once more, blandly, "state
your designation."

"Where am I?" I ask, skirting the question
once more.

"You are in the main seminary of Theran
Prefecture."

Theran...?
"What's your
designation?"

"I am Avatar."

"Avatar? That's like a computer simulated
representation of something, isn't it?"

"I do not know this word...'computer'."

"You're like...a hologram? A holographic
projection."

"A proto-sentient, three-dimensional light
projection, yes."

Proto
-sentient? "Very cool," I say. I
reach out to touch him and my hand passes through him. Through him!
It's almost too much to believe! I don't know what I expected when
I reached out for him—mass? Something fleshy, perhaps? Sure as hell
not nothing entirely. "Very cool," I say again.

"Data stream...interrupted," says a female
voice. The voice is directionless, seeming to come from everywhere,
yet from nowhere in particular.

"I must ask that you do not interrupt the
data stream," Avatar says.

"Sorry."

"Matron, I remind you: you are in a
restricted area. You must inform me of your designation or I am
bound to alert The Enforcers."

I think about this for a moment.
Matron?
Enforcers?
"Are they like the police? Law enforcement?"

Avatar doesn't answer. Instead, he cocks his
head to the left once more and says, "I regret to inform you: you
have been detained for failing to reveal your designation as
requested. The Enforcers will be arriving momentarily. Please
wait."

Great! Just great. My first thought is to
run, but where to? It's not like I'm in downtown Toronto in the
middle of the U. of T. campus, terrain I know like the back of my
hand. If I ran, where the hell would I go?

"Please wait," Avatar repeats.

"Shit!" I blurt, and the urge for flight
takes over. I begin to run. A few steps later I chance a look over
my shoulder to see if he's followed, but the corridor's empty. I
look back in the direction I'm traveling—Avatar's about six feet
directly in front of me. I try to stop, but I'm moving too fast and
he's too close. I manage to slow down, but only slightly so, and
wind up running directly through him.

"Data stream...terminated," the female voice
says and Avatar slowly disintegrates into thin air.

My attention must've been diverted by
Avatar's abrupt exit because I never saw the second one
materialize. By the time I'm aware of his presence, it's too late.
I hold my breath and close my eyes, prepared to run through the
second one as well, but I hit a wall of flesh and bone instead.
This one, it seems, is real. The force of the collision would have
knocked me to the floor if the man hadn't grabbed me by the
shoulders to steady me. A million different scenarios as to how
this whole thing could play out run through my head,
simultaneously. I have no idea how to react. I want to laugh. I
want to cry. I want to see Palmer. I want to look into his eyes and
know this will all work out. I want him to know I'm okay.

The man seems unshaken by the blow.

Once I'm able to gather my thoughts, I look
up and into the face of a man about my age. He's at least as tall
as Avatar was. He wears his hair long, allowing it to fall in dense
waves to his shoulders. He needs a shave. His eyes are intense
ice-blue, the likes of which I've never seen before. He's dressed
in the same type of tunic as Avatar, only his is the color of ripe
plums, which compliments a flawless, olive complexion.

When he finally lets go of me, he stands
with perfect posture, arms crossed over his chest. "We've been
expecting you," he says in a voice so perfectly rounded, he has to
have had some kind of choral training in the past. He smiles
without revealing his teeth. "Please. Come with me."

He leads me into a large lecture hall with
deep, hunter-green walls mixed slightly on the yellow side, and
mahogany wainscoting. He motions for me to sit in the first row of
tiered theatre seats. The seats are the same colour as his tunic,
slightly worn, yet firm. They are overstuffed and too comfortable.
I wonder how people are able to remain awake for prolonged periods
of time while sitting in them.

The man sits beside me leaving an empty
chair for breathing space. We look at each other and then look
away. His eyes melt a little when he smiles, but only slightly so.
He has been silent since we entered the room, as though he were
contemplating my presence.

When at last he speaks, it is in a deep
baritone: "I see you have met Avatar." He watches me with a
judgmental stare, his face expressionless, as he patiently waits
for a response. I choose to say nothing.

"Avatar," he says, voice bellowing as if
projected from deep inside his gut, "is a three-dimensional
projection of diffracted light. This is a new technology for us and
it is still experimental in nature. The projections are typically
unstable, especially to interference. That is why it ceased when
you touched it."

He pauses. I remain silent.

"The goal is to simulate a life form where
it would be hazardous to place a true life form. The trick is in
conquering the light versus solid dichotomy."

Once more he pauses as if waiting for me to
keep up my end of the conversation.

"Right now," he continues, "the sole purpose
of Avatar and others like it, is here at the prefecture, ushering
dawdling disciples off to their lectures and such. It seems like
such a waste of a precious resource to have the prefects themselves
wandering through the halls."