“Aron, look at this,” Dr. Brian Soren grabbed the thin glass of the monitor and swung it into his research partner’s field of view.
The fellowship doctor pushed his glasses upwards on his crooked hawkish nose and squinted over the top of the lenses anyway. Dr. Aron Alvarez was older than his partner, but tried his hardest to match the younger doctor’s latent youthful energy. He pointed at the monitor with his well-chewed mechanical pencil, “What… is that?”
Brian shrugged. “It’s the output feed from Patient 23. The signaling appears to be correct, but that-“
“Yeah, that shouldn’t be there,” Aron rolled his wheeled chair closer to the monitor, shoving the poor pencil back between his teeth, clamping down viciously on its bright orange plastic octagonal barrel.
“So I am not crazy, that’s refreshing. That level of activation on his visual processing seems, off, right?”
Aron waved at the oft forgotten research assistant manning a laptop near the door. “Luce, pull up Patient 23 on the large monitor, then tap his chart to my tablet please.”
The large monitor nearby shifted to a view of a small section of the patient floor, in a simple room with only walls of hung fabric, and Patient 23 strapped to his bed, like any other patient on the floor. Nothing looked out of the ordinary.
“What is he looking at?” Brian wondered aloud. “Do you think this is a side affect of the interfacing protocol?”
Aron waved his hand over the tablet display, flicking quickly through the chart. “I don’t think so… it might be a preexisting condition. What was his baseline?”
“Yeah, not there. At least in this snapshot, I am not seeing activation like this. His baseline is drearily normal,” Brian looked back at the sampling feed on the now shared monitor. “I mean look at the seg2 beta waves, they are off the chart, and his gamma is elevating at a steady rate. His heartrate is up, and his breathing has increased. A panic attack, maybe? Should I get a nurse to the floor?”
“If they see anything concerning they will come running. Which means that while this is odd for our sampling, it is not odd for our nurses. At least not yet.” Aron dismissed the concern as he continued to flick through the chart. “Long medical history here, some psych evals. Possible schizophrenia, some other mental illness. I would say the bulk of them are within our parameters for the test candidates. He did get through the protocol.”
“He did get through the protocol,” the younger doctor concurred.
“Interesting. There is a deep brain stimulation referral in his chart from his mid-twenties, timestamp of March 2024.”
“But he never went through with it?”
“Appears that way, but doesn’t say why. And, again, he did pass through our protocol, which means that there was no foreign hardware in his head or his chest that would indicate a DBS surgery, it would have shown on the scan.”
“This is a crazy thought… do you think it is too soon to try an activation of the processing framework?”
“It wouldn’t hurt him at all. But it might fry our framework without the calibration steps,” Aron replied, but he again appreciated his younger cohort’s enthusiasm for the project.
“He is mostly calibrated though,” Brian pushed. “We are missing the spin up on the neural processors, but we could bypass those and just dump the raw data from his sampling-“
“Ah, yes, directly into the test framework,” Aron interjected. “That’s clever, Doctor Soren.”
Brian smirked. “Come on, its not that clever. We did it with the chimps.”
“Luce, can you shunt Patient 23’s sampling feed directly to the testing framework?”
“Of course, Doctor Alvarez,” the research assistant replied attentively. “Syncing, and the feed should be up in, three, two, alignment… and one.”
The monitor overhead shifted position as the viewpoint shifted from the overhead camera looking downwards at the patient to what the patient’s brain was interpreting as visual input. The screen was hazy, with only shadows and lights, like the patient was seeing nothing but an impression of the space he was within.
“He is awake, isn’t he?” Aron asked.
“He is definitely awake. Maybe the testing framework needs to be adjusted. Hold on.” Brian flicked to the tuning interface on his own tablet, and started adjusting the electrical signaling. Within moments the screen immediately tightened up, the lines emerged, and the shadows retreated.
“There is someone standing next to him? I didn’t see a nurse on the overhead,” Aron wondered aloud.
Brian looked up, and scrunched his eyebrows towards the bridge of his nose in confusion. “That’s no one I recognize.”
“That’s not one of our nurses?” Aron tried again.
The man on the large monitor was dressed in scrubs, but they were a darker color than they should have been, and his face was nearly gaunt, with sunken cheeks and only a wisp of gray hair at the center of what would be his hairline. His eyes were vibrant and shining, looking over the patient head to toe as if examining him.
“No, we only have Jerry on staff, the rest are women. And I am certain that is not Jerry,” Brian confirmed.
“His mouth his moving. He is talking to Patient 23. Shame we can’t pick up language yet.”
“Why is that again?” Brian asked.
“Funding.” Aron replied curtly.
“Shame,” Brian commented. “That would be handy right now.”
Aron stood abruptly. “Call my cell, I am going to go down there and see this for myself.”
“S-s-s-sure.” Brian stuttered. He picked up the phone and dialed.
Aron pushed his ear tab and answered as he walked out the secured double door towards the patient wing. The flooring was an impeccably white, somehow refusing to age like the drab yellowing paint that covered the walls. The lights overhead were their typical clinical glow, illuminating everything with a flatness that made the hospital stereotypical. Brian’s breath in his earpiece kept him company as he filed past the other patient’s beds heading directly to the privacy curtain of Patient 23.
Aron pulled the curtain back with energy, attempting to scare the strange man standing next to the bed. Best to have him out of sorts and ready to be verbally lashed. Strangely, Patient 23 was by himself, his eyeline locked into place towards the curtains at his side.
“Ah you arrived. Grab that man!” Brian exclaimed.
“There is no one here, Doctor Soren.”
“What do you mean there is no on there? I see him on the screen.”
“There is no one here,” Aron repeated. He glanced under the bed, into the curtained enclaves of Patients 22 and 24 on each side, and there was nothing out of the ordinary.
Doctor Alvarez approached the side of the bed and pulled his flashlight from his coat pocket, flashing the light in each of Patient 23’s eyes. The pupil response was normal, but the patient refused to turn his head, as he continued to mutter under his breath. The good doctor lowered his ear to the fumbling lips of Patient 23, trying to hear what he was muttering.
“…no idea. It was not their fault. You shouldn’t… I know… but… no… its not, its not,” Patient 23 whispered.
“Do you hear that?” Aron asked his compatriot over the phone.
“No. Just a minute. ‘Luce, switch over to the overhead.’ Its just you, Aron. There is no one else there.” Brian relayed, his voice jumping away from the phone every time he called over to the RA, “‘ Luce, back to the framework output.‘ Oh my god, Aron, that… that man is standing right next to you!”
Aron spun, only to find emptiness in the curtain enrobed space. He thought he caught a whiff of something in the air, a smell of cloves and the cold of a desert winter’s evening. It reminded him of the stars wheeling overhead when he camped with his dad out on the desert playa all those years ago, the dark absolute and all consuming, just the sound of the crackle of the fire and the far off calls of the owls amongst the cactus.
Contrasting the deep calm of the fireside memory with his dad, there was an overwhelming sense of primal fear tingling through his limbs, his sixty year old muscles tightening under his aged flab that would not melt away regardless of how many miles he put on his runners. A bead of sweat trembled down the center of his back, tracing his spine beneath his undershirt.
“There is no one here, Brian. Just the patient and I.”
“I swear to the heavens above, Aron, he is standing right next to you!” Brian was near manic, his voice escalating with the same fear Aron felt growing in his limbs.
“He is fine… I am fine… leave it, leave it. Its not their fault… So..mmm…” Patient 23 muttered audibly, his lips fading into unintelligible speech. His eyes remained fixed at Aron’s side, locked onto the empty space.
In his ear, he felt it before he understood what he heard. Click.
The phone disconnected, and Aron was alone with the Patient.
“He, uh… he… wants to talk…” Patient 23 muttered, pulling on his straps hard, as if he was going to escape.
“Where are the nurses?” Aron said aloud. The lights were dimmer now, as if the power had lessened on the entire floor.
“You do not need a nurse. You no longer need your technology. Such things are, what? Trivial? As they say?” An amused voice whispered delicately next to Aron’s ear.
Aron was frozen in place, as if time had stopped, entrapping him in a moment like an insect in amber.
The voice continued, “You know, humans are meant for more. This is just the first step, this place. You all fight for a place in your meager tiny universe, and for what, a blip of in the span of the smallest measure of time? In the math that makes up everything, everywhere, you are but a single mote of dust, less than. An atom of the dust. Your time is fleeting in this incubator of experience, where you are meant to gather your uniqueness like a coat gathered around your frame, and carry with you to the next stage, the transcendence of spirit onto the next plane, the next reality. But what do all of you do? Look for ways to muck it up.”
Aron felt his lips release, “Who are you?”
“Does it matter?”
“I built that machine to help others see, to capture their memories, in the hopes that it makes mankind better. And to discover that something is subverting my life’s work, it matters to me.”
“I am subverting nothing but your intentions. And your work here only matters to you. Your father knew what was important. When he met me, he wrapped his arm in mine and sang a song of his family as he walked across the bridges of flowers. What will you sing? Do you remember the songs? Do you remember the smell of the fire? The clove and cinnamon in your tea? Do you remember what your father was actually trying to teach you?”
“Stop it,” Aron said through gritted teeth.
“I am Death, Aron Alvarez. Michael here was trying to convince me not to take you and everyone else in this study, but I have not been swayed. Do you think that you can look through other’s eyes and discover truth? You cannot find truth through your own eyes! Humans are insipid, insecure, infinitesimal bags of wet meat that somehow have souls… these beautiful immaterial constructs of everything that their physical beings are not! You are born when you die! This world is but an egg for you to break free from, and yet, here you stand, believing that you are going to make mankind better,” Death paused. “Look at me, Aron.”
Aron turned finally, feeling his limbs loosen. On the floor, his cooling body laid, tears in his physical eyes. Next to him stood a very different person than what he had seen on the monitor. It was an older gentleman, dressed in the simple garb of a farmhand at the Agave farms. A poncho, well worn and nearly colorless from the merciless sun, was flipped over his shoulder.
“I am the Greshak. For Michael there, I am a kind psych nurse from his youth that illustrated selflessness. For you, I am the man that taught you the value of hard work. For Brian Soren, I am his liberal aunt that taught him the truth of being bold and brilliant among the dullards. For Lucinda, I will be her little sister, who was lost to cancer ten years ago and showed her what true love actually is. That is what this world is meant to be, Aron. Not a search for truth, not a hunt for what can be observed… It is meant to be a search for the connections, the things that bind your experiences together. Out there, beyond this place, is a new frontier for you. And if you cannot figure out the basics, you have same choice everyone gets.”
Aron looked around the floor, seeing all of the patients of his neural uplink study lying dead in their beds, somehow knowing that Brian and Luce were in the lab, slumped over in their seats. Somehow he knew his work was being destroyed by some unassailable force, the destruction of everything contained within the nuance of what would be labeled as a gas leak and an unfortunate series of failed storage drives. His life’s work, gone in only a moment.
“And what is that choice?” Aron responded.
The Greshak shrugged. “Oblivion.”
“Not much of a choice.”
“It is for many. Do you not see? The interconnectedness of your lives is what matters. Not the bullshit of what you think is important. Your experience is wholly shaped by others. As their experience is wholly shaped by others, including your own impact on their lives. Why would anything else matter? I can tell you that Brian was shaped by you, as was Lucinda, but you never thought of that did you?”
“I guess not.”
“You must think on these things. The universe is so much larger than you realize, and it gets, what is the phrase that is popular now, ‘it gets real’ out there. So for many, oblivion is actually a very simple and easy choice.”
“Do I have to choose now?”
“No.”
“When do I have to make the choice?”
“Tomorrow, Today, or Yesterday, after all, time doesn’t matter. But idling here will quickly disconnect you from the world you know. And no one likes a ghost. Just let me know when you are ready to be picked up.”
The Greshak was gone. Aron floated through the curtains, wandering the ward, but the bodies were already gone. The lights had changed. New windows appeared on one side, then smiling children with casts on their arms appeared one moment, then the next, a wall went up nearby, and he heard the cacophony of an emergency department cascade through the halls with overhead pages going faster than he could make out.
He stood there for maybe ten years? Maybe it was a hundred. It was impossible to tell.
Eventually, he knew he would call out for the Greshak. Eventually, he knew what his choice would be.