Broken Pixels (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 4) (7 page)

“I work intimately with both biological and synthetic physiologies on a regular basis. After a few years, you develop an eye for it—the subtle differences in skin texture and muscle tone, shading and coloring. Although I have to admit that this is the first time I’ve been put to the test—it’s not like I run into animate biological adults every day.”

“So you are a medical doctor?” Ping asked.

She gave him an odd look. “Of course. Who else would be running a repository? You wouldn’t ask a plumber to plug you into a synthetic body and then take care of your biological one, would you?” She held open one of the doors and waved them in ahead of her. “Though the three of you haven’t ever addressed that particular question, have you?”

“I suppose not,” Ping said.

Dr. Canfield pointed them down the hall and to the left. After passing several doors, she entered one labeled Diagnostics. Again she held the door and herded them through. Inside, a round smoky-gray Plexiglas table surrounded by backless chrome stools sat in the center of the room. The wall to the right appeared to be made of the same gray Plexiglas, while the one perpendicular to it—the wall opposite the door—was clear glass. When they approached it, they could see into an examination room one floor below. On a table at the center of the lower room was Cam’s headless body. Off to the side, on a raised oval platform, stood a three-dimensional transparent likeness of Cam—all of him, head and body—gesturing and talking to one of the attendants who had retrieved him from the van.

Mara pointed into the examination room and asked, “Is he actually talking to Cam?”

“Yes. We can generate a holographic representation of him through which he can interact with us. From Cam’s perspective, it is much less disconcerting, especially since he has been decapitated, and we have yet to retrieve his cranium,” Dr. Canfield said.

“He was definitely disconcerted about being decapitated. He got snippy a few times while we were carrying around his head,” Sam said.

The doctor looked appalled and said, “What?”

Mara frowned at her brother, raised a hand to catch Dr. Canfield’s attention and said, “I’m not sure it’s possible to retrieve his cranium. I have reason to believe that it may have been destroyed.”

The doctor looked doubtful but asked, “When did this occur?”

“The last time I saw Cam’s head was five days ago, and I believe it was lost soon after that,” Mara said.

Dr. Canfield walked over to the Plexiglas wall and tapped it. It lit up and displayed a row of white buttons in a line about chest high. She touched one labeled Geolocation. After rapidly choosing a series of options and dismissing several screens, she stepped from the wall and pointed to a map of downtown Portland with a red dot flashing on it.

“We are still getting a signal from the cranium. It appears inactive, but there’s every reason to believe that it may be intact and recoverable,” she said.

“Isn’t it possible just to fabricate a new cranium?” Mara asked.

“Assuming you could survive if I chopped off your head, and then I gave you the option of reattaching it or growing a new one in a petri dish, which one would you choose? Cam could survive with a newly fabricated cranium, but the engrams contained in it have evolved since they were taken from his biological body. What he had become as an individual, how he has been shaped by his experiences, all would be lost.”

“His memories would be lost?” Ping asked.

Dr. Canfield shook her head. “No, but how he felt about them and how those feelings molded his personality would be lost.” After a short pause, she asked, “Why am I having to explain all this to you? Even a schoolkid understands the basic concepts of synthetic physiology. Who
are
you people?”

A soft
bing
ing sound filled the air, and Dr. Canfield turned toward the Plexiglas wall that she had used a few moments earlier as a computer interface. Instead of tapping on it again, she spoke to it and said, “Yes, Brett. Is something the matter?” She glanced to her right and waved to the attendant talking to Cam’s holographic image.

A window opened on the wall, and the man’s face appeared. “I’m not sure, but I think you will want to conduct the diagnostic interview with Cameron personally. Some of the events he reports that led up to his injuries are quite extraordinary. I’m concerned that his core memory may have been damaged or inadvertently altered in some way. His account of what happened is simply incredible,” Brett said.

“How so?” the doctor asked.

“He claims that, during a plane crash, he traveled to an alternate universe and, while there, was involved in a traffic accident.”

“That sounds like it could be a simple case of contextual dysphasia. You should be able to deal with that without me getting involved directly.”

“He also mentioned that last week a person named Mara disconnected his head and used it to track down a dragon. It does appear his head was disconnected intentionally—he was not decapitated during the accident that caused his other injuries.”

“I see. Suspend the interview for now and let Cam know I’ll be with him shortly.” Dr. Canfield shifted her gaze to Mara and said, “Let me guess. You are Mara.”

Mara nodded and said, “I’m Mara Lantern. This is Sam, my brother, and Aristotle Ping, a friend.”

“Why on Earth would you remove Cameron’s head? Did you access or tamper with his core?”

Mara shook her head. “No one tampered with anything. Well, that’s not exactly correct. I met Cam at the hospital after his accident, and his faceplate had been knocked off. When I picked it up, it became animated, and then he contacted me through my phone.” Mara slid her phone from her pocket and held it up.

Dr. Canfield looked alarmed. “What is that device? Did you use it on Cameron?”

Mara shook her head and said, “It’s a simple communication device we use in the alternate reality that Cam visited—the one we’re from.”

The doctor’s face went blank for a second, and her eyes narrowed. “Say that again.”

“It’s a simple—”

“No, the last part.”

“In the alternate reality that Cam visited,” Mara said, then added, “It’s true. That’s why we don’t have synthetic bodies. In the realm we come from, people live out their lives in the flesh and bones they were born with.”

Dr. Canfield turned in stunned silence to Ping, who smiled and nodded. After a moment, she said, “You people want me to believe that you came here from an alternate reality? To what do we owe the honor of your visit?”

“We came to return Cam. We couldn’t do anything for him in our realm, so we brought him here to get help,” Mara said.

“You call removing his head
helping
? I call it an atrocity, a crime—and once I find out exactly what you have done to his memory, I will be reporting it to the authorities,” she said.

Ping stepped forward and pointed to the table. “Dr. Canfield, can’t we have a seat for a few minutes and sort out this situation? Clearly we are not trying to perpetrate anything untoward, or we could have easily abandoned Cam’s body at the hospital and left, but we wanted to ensure that he got the care he needed.”

She moved to the table and said, “Only because I need to understand what you did to tamper with Cameron’s memory, not because I’m buying any of this alternate universe nonsense.”

As they moved to the table and took their seats, Ping said, “I would recommend that you allow Mara to recount what happened and, if possible, reserve judgment until she is done. After that, we’ll cooperate with whatever you would like to do, including talking to the authorities. We understand our story is hard to believe, but we have nothing to hide, and our primary purpose for being here is to help Cam. Is that agreeable?”

“Very well,” Dr. Canfield said. She nodded at Mara to begin.

“Like I said, Cam was injured in the traffic accident, and the hospital didn’t know what to do with a person with a synthetic body, so they called a friend of mine who is a police detective. He asked me to go to the hospital with him, and that’s when I met Cam.”

“I’m sorry. Why would a police detective call a teenager to investigate the discovery of a synthetic body in a world where they don’t exist?”

“I was on the flight that Cam mentioned, the one that crashed into the Columbia River. On that flight, all the passengers—the ones from my realm—were replaced by their counterparts from other realms, except for me. I was the only person from my realm who actually survived the flight and knew what had happened.”

Dr. Canfield shook her head. “There was no airline accident. According to the reports in Cameron’s file, he disappeared while on a trip to San Francisco, but his flight arrived intact, as far as I can tell. Believe me, if an airplane had crashed into the Columbia River, I would have heard about it. He went missing for several weeks, and, a couple weeks ago, we received tracking data from his cranium. Then today his core came online at Cascadia Community Hospital.”

“You got a signal from his head a couple weeks ago? That’s not possible. It’s been less than two weeks since the traffic accident in which he was injured, and his head was taken from us five days ago,” Mara said. She gave Ping a confused look.

“We know from your previous journey using the Chronicle that time between the realms is elastic. Either time runs at a different pace in different realms, or it’s possible to slip from one time period into another during the journey. It’s difficult to discern which is happening—both may be possible in the correct circumstances,” Ping said.

“
Chronicle
? What Chronicle?” Dr. Canfield asked.

“The Chronicle is the device we used to travel from our realm to yours,” Mara said.

“Actually it’s simply a talisman that allows Mara to focus her ability to travel between realms,” Ping said.

“Let’s not get bogged down in the details,” Mara said. “It’s not completely surprising that the airplane accident didn’t occur in this realm. However, the triggering event was the crash of the same flight in my realm—and that caused Cam, and the other passengers, to cross over.”

“So you’re saying an entire planeload of people disappeared? I think I would have heard if a couple hundred people went missing all at once from the same flight.”

“No, no. Each passenger appears to have come from a different realm. They all didn’t come from here.” Mara paused and looked up at the ceiling, trying to figure out how to explain things. After taking a deep breath, she stared at the doctor. “You’re not really buying any of this, are you?”

Dr. Canfield shook her head. “No, not really. And, to be perfectly honest with you, I don’t have the time to sit here and figure out what it is you’re attempting to explain. We’re expecting several returnees for processing today, tomorrow and the next day. Now I’m not sure if that means anything to the three of you, since clearly none of you have ever transitioned, but we can go a whole year without a single person being so damaged that they must return to their repository.”

“Returnees? Why are they returning?” Mara asked.

“You people really do act like you’re from a different planet,” the doctor said. “Look, routine damage, even serious injuries, can be handled at a hospital or other medical facility. People only come to the repository in cases where they might require a fresh extraction of engrams from their biological brains, and we are only allowed to do that in cases where the person has not surpassed 80 percent of their life expectancy.”

“Wait a minute,” Mara said. “Cam said no one with a synthetic body has ever died. If you have a life expectancy, that seems to imply there’s an end to your life.”

“Death is expiring by disease or accident before a person completes their life expectancy, and you are correct. Since the advent of synthetic physiology, everyone has completed their life expectancy.”

“Individuals have a finite life expectancy?” Ping asked.

“Of course they do. If people were immortal, they would cease to be human, wouldn’t they?” Dr. Canfield said. “Each synthetic body is tailored, based on its owner’s biological DNA, and a dynamic program utilizes that genetic information in conjunction with environmental factors such as diet, exercise, exposure to toxins, etcetera, to calculate each individual’s duration of life.”

“This program just kills them when they run out of time?” Sam asked, wide-eyed.

“As I said before, we make a distinction between
death
—a life left unfinished—and what we call
completion of life
. Completion of life can happen suddenly in some cases. In others, the program will implement changes that simulate aging, such as wrinkles, less flexible joints, etcetera. Synthetic physiology promises a complete life, not an endless one. Besides, the world would get awfully crowded if we didn’t make room for our children and grandchildren. Wouldn’t it?”

“What about a person’s biological body? What happens to it?” Sam asked.

“The receptacle in which it is stored is terminated, and the body is cremated.”

Mara leaned forward and said, “You mean, you pull the plug on them. Isn’t the biological body still alive when you do this?”

Dr. Canfield furrowed her brows and pressed her lips together but didn’t say anything in response.

Ping put his hands over Mara’s and said, “It might be best for us not to impose our moral expectations on the people who live in this realm. After all, the way they live is simply an adaptation to the circumstances they’ve faced in this realm.”

“Maybe you’re right. What’s the point in understanding each other? Cam is where he needs to be to get help, and we’ll be out of here in a few minutes anyway.” She turned to Dr. Canfield and said, “So, if you are getting a signal from Cam’s head, all you need to do is retrieve it and reconnect it to his body. Is that correct?”

“If or when we receive his cranium, we would assess it, and, if everything checks out, that’s exactly what we would do. However, given the circumstances, we cannot simply run out and pick it up,” Dr. Canfield said.

“What circumstances? Why not just go get it?” Mara asked.

The doctor looked a little surprised at the question. “Repository personnel are in lockdown—we are not allowed to leave the facility or exchange signals directly with anyone aboveground for now. You were driving around up there. Didn’t you see what was going on? Don’t tell me marauding hooligans, anarchy, fires and explosions are commonplace in the realm where you people come from.”