c. 2024 Rod Ice
All rights reserved
(11-24)
After the failed realignment via Hidecki’s infamous chair, Dr. Judson Baines was in no mood to cooperate with any of the Mars authorities. He held on tightly to the secret of being visited by Esmeralda Jonovic, in her otherworldly form. This refusal to reveal what occurred was his right under the colonial constitution. A privilege that could not be usurped by any figure in the planetary hierarchy.
But as Lieutenant Kelly Strafe began to recover from her own session in the treatment device, doctors at the Argyre Planitia research center focused on using her as an informant. Something she would never have agreed to do, directly. As her mental faculties were revived, they allowed her to visit with the university professor in a private setting. A place where both could be monitored by clandestine means.
Their conversation seemed sure to be informative, and perhaps, even shocking.
When Strafe arrived, she was still dressed in the casual clothing of a medical patient. Her longish hair was messy and unbrushed. She trembled slightly, from spells of vertigo. Yet had regained the sharpness of a trained intellect.
Both of them had grown more unkempt during their separate ordeals.
“Juddy! You look like a mountain man. Unshaven and beastly! But I get it, they’ve put you through the program, just like me. It’s akin to having brain freeze from eating ice cream too quickly. But the sensation lasts for days or weeks...”
Her cohort from the school at New Cleveland was amused by this description.
“That’s right on target, actually! The sensor pods made my skull ache. It felt like getting hit with a baseball. Or a meteor frag circling Jupiter. Those things fly around when you’re doing reconnaissance missions, at one of its moon stations. Despite the helmets those grunts use to keep atmosphere available, and guard against impact. When you get hit, there’s a resonance factor involved. It stims your gray matter!”
The inactive lieutenant smiled and kissed him gently on the forehead.
“So, what happened with the chair? I heard that there was a power drop or something...”
Baines looked around with suspicion. He could not see anything that appeared out of order in the small cubicle. But sensed that their privacy might have been compromised.
“Yo calda pree. Nodaman ko quarte. Quarte werta. Quarte no fala dee!”
Strafe was puzzled at first. Then, she realized that he had spoken in an alien dialect that evolved from contract workers who were assigned to a distant camp on the Jovian satellite Callisto. They used it as a sort of code to keep in touch while subverting the military chain-of-command.
“Okay, you had me guessing there for a minute. Quarte ja fala?”
Her scholarly friend nodded and leaned back in his requisitioned settee.
“There must be bugs all over this room. Otherwise, they’d never have allowed you to visit so soon after my release. We are probably on an audio/video stream, right now!”
The sidelined soldier went wide-eyed with disbelief.
“BUGGING DEVICES? THAT’S AGAINST THE MARTIAN PRINCIPLES, JUDDY! YOU KNOW BETTER! THAT’S A TRICK FROM THE DAYS OF OUR SPECIES BACK ON EARTH!”
Baines scratched his reddish facial hair. His beard had grown long enough that it actually itched.
“Sitting in that mind trap has changed my perspective. How long did it take before you could hold an independent thought, after your session?”
Strafe shuddered when recalling the memory of her own realignment.
“Weeks maybe, I don’t really know. I drifted through a dreamscape, for a long time. There were people from my past, characters from stories I had read, all jumbled together...”
Her geek counterpart nodded again.
“The Hidecki machine taps into cycles of cranial activity. It’s a marvel of sorts. The original intent was to cure mental illness. And it worked wonderfully, according to the journals of that day. People who were violent, impulsive, and dangerous were pacified. It was a gift to individuals who had suffered for years. But then, the chair got imported to our colonies, here at home. I don’t know what spurred the thought that it could serve to straighten out rebels and dissenters. And dammit... now I’ve said too much! Yo calda pree! No tonda Hidecki!”
The lieutenant cocked her head to one side. She was silent for a moment, listening intently. Then, whispered low enough that her voice barely made a sound.
“Never mind, Juddy. I get your vibe. So long as you can remember what happened, then they weren’t able to erase your thoughts...”
Baines sat up straight, and squared his shoulders.
“I haven’t taught classes in almost a year. But there’s a symposium at the Percival Lowell Institute. I heard one of the aides discussing it in a corridor on the Morningstar III. That’s my cue to jump back into the continuum. I’ve got plenty to offer. Scans of my great-grandfather’s notebooks, artifacts retrieved from the Evergreen Estates site in North America, and my own anecdotes about the wellness device.”
The noted archivist was certain that every word he uttered would be relayed to ReTrainer Fargo Bolden, Admiral Nauga, and the Martian high council. Yet he decided that being spied upon would help rattle the cage into which he had been paced. His declaration was an act of defiance. One which he hoped might arouse the authorities and motivate them to reveal their strategies.
Kelly Strafe put her arms around his midsection. She purred gently, while pondering.
“Won’t they just put you back in that thing, again? It’s a hellish way to lose yourself. It empties everything, all your personality, your free will, your soul...”
Her mate from the university nodded again. He did not know what would result from willingly being pegged as an outsider. But cherished that label as a badge of honor.
“Maybe? I have no idea. They could erase everything, and dump me as a husk of flesh. Yet I think that would leave them curious about why the Hidecki creation failed. There’d still be loose ends left, untied. I know as a scientist that those kinds of riddles don’t sit well. Answers fit the bill. Theories and conclusions, even speculations. Anything! But not just an empty vessel. That doesn’t work for anybody. It won’t form the basis for a hypothesis. That’s the currency of a thinker, regardless of their discipline.”
The lieutenant put her head across his lap. She had turned decidedly pale. Tears welled in her eyes.
“I don’t want you to sit in that chair, ever again! The people that use it are criminals! I hate them all! That piece of garbage should be destroyed for all eternity!”
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