Shift (12 page)

"I thought NDE was brought about by anaesthetics."

"That's the bright white light. Distortion of the visual cortex. What I'm talking about are the cases where a person finds him or herself floating above their body, looking down at the scene. There've been hundreds of accredited cases. Several where a patient was unconscious, their eyes closed, and yet they could recount everything that had happened around them—the conversations, what people were wearing, even the bald patch on a doctor as tall as a basketball player. They were up there," he pointed to the ceiling, "looking down the whole time."

"Is that what you were trying to do? To move your mind to the ceiling?"

He nodded. "And it almost worked didn't it? You saw how much it moved."

"But it didn't separate. You only shifted what . . . eight inches?"

He shrugged. "It was an early attempt. With practice I know I could do it. A little self-hypnosis maybe?"

"Why would you even want . . ."

A light bulb blazed into life inside Louise's brain. He wasn't? He was. She could see it etched in every contour of his face.

"You're going to fly to Upper Heywood?"

He smiled. "And I won't be knocking on any doors."

She still didn't appear to understand. He'd explained the position he was in. On the run—from the police and a crazed serial killer—with only one person believing in him—Louise—and even she was having second thoughts. What else could he do? He had to prove to her that Pendennis had escaped.

Okay, so perhaps there was an element of the untried and the experimental about his suggested approach but didn't she see the elegance, the potential, of what he was proposing? If it worked he'd be able to see and hear everything going on around him, to by-pass security, locked doors. He'd be able to search every cell and listen to every conversation. If Pendennis was missing, he'd find out. And then track down whoever was in charge and listen to whatever they had to say. A high-profile prisoner like Pendennis going missing was bound to generate a lot of audio traffic.

That had to make more sense than phoning Ziegler and trying to shame him into telling the truth. The man's job would be on the line. He wouldn't say a word.

"But it's a 130 miles to Oxford! You can't even fly eight inches."

"I didn't have the motivation then. I saw the images of my brain stretching on the HV and panicked. Now I'm motivated. Believe me."

Back and forth the argument raged. Yes, there were risks but what choice did he have? Give himself up and put his trust in the justice system? With all that evidence against him and a deranged killer ready to manufacture more?

Or stay in hiding? How long would that last? Two days? Three? Certainly not a week. Louise was on the verge of walking out already. She'd be climbing the walls by next week. And he had a career, a vocation. He couldn't drop out forever and devote his life to something else. He had to clear himself now. Take the initiative and prove Pendennis's guilt.

"But what if it doesn't work? What if that elastic thing snaps and you can't find your way back?"

"Look, Lou, I'm not insane. I'm not intending to fly to Oxford on my first trip. I'll test everything thoroughly first. A trip to the ceiling and back to make sure I can re-connect. And I expect that membrane or whatever it is to snap. There's no way it could reach the ceiling. And when it does break it'll make subsequent separation easier."

"You don't know that!"

"I can infer it! Thousands of people have had Near Death Experiences. And thousands more have experienced out-of-body flight. I'm not inventing anything new. I'm just bringing the light of science into a long neglected corner of our understanding."

And taking a sledgehammer to a centuries old wall of scientific dogma. If it doesn't accord with our understanding of the world it cannot be true.

Well, sometimes it could, even if shifting opinion was like trying to turn an ocean tanker with a rowing boat.

"Look, let's agree to differ for the moment," said Nick. "Don't you want to see Pendennis's scans?"

He retrieved the new Pendennis file and fed it into the simulation matrix.

"Watch this," he said, turning his head to speak to Louise. "Look for fractures."

And count them. He crossed his fingers. Thirteen fractures were what he was looking for. One along the physical boundary and one for every personality. Wouldn't that be amazing? The first ever clinical test for MPD. An incontrovertible proof!

And maybe an explanation for Peter's new-found memories of John Bruce. A chunk of higher dimensional matter adhered unconformably to Pendennis's brain. A chunk that he could map back to a missing portion from John Bruce—if NASA ever forwarded that brain scan he'd requested.

Pendennis appeared—half life-size—recumbent in his chair.

"I'll strip the chair away in a minute but look at this first."

He tapped at the presets, switched out the z axis and brought in the c. A blue image appeared, recognisably Pendennis and the chair but different, looking like a corroded statue after centuries on the sea bed, the shape distorted by decay and accretion.

"See how the chair itself—both the metal and the fabric—protrudes into the higher dimensions. Not much, but enough to give it substance and shape. The same for Pendennis's body."

His eyes raced towards the head. He could make out the boundary fracture but was that another? He leaned closer and peered. Difficult to make out at this resolution.

He hurried on to the next preset. Switched out the c axis and replaced it with the e. The chair disappeared. So did the body.

"This is the e axis. See how it's only the brain that exists here. If I wanted to pass through a wall all I'd need do is shift a few centimetres, maybe as little as a few molecules, along the e axis and there wouldn't be a wall to stop me."

Louise didn't answer. Her mouth was set and her eyes told him to get on with it.

He turned back to the image, re-centred it on the brain and ramped it up to twice life-size. There was more than one fracture but . . .

He rotated the image. The fracture wasn't complete. It was about six inches long on one side with nothing corresponding on the other. He flipped between the dimensions, swapping axes in and out. Similar results. Pendennis's brain was crazed with cracks but only one—along the dimension boundary—penetrated all the way through the structure.

Was he viewing the image correctly? Was there something he wasn't seeing?

Images flashed and morphed. Pendennis's brain was incredible. Wild, distorted, ruptured, lacerated. And looking more closely were some of those cracks almost complete? Not slicing though the structure to the other side but looking like the crack you'd get if you removed a chip from a piece of knapped flint and stuck it back together again.

Or pressed a piece of gum onto the surface of a bowl.

He strained to make sense of the images, increased the magnification. Did it look like Pendennis's brain had grown through accretion or by being teased apart? If only there was a mechanism for weighing higher dimensional matter or probing inside—some kind of higher dimensional ultra-sound that he could use to map the fractures and discover their depth and extent.

But there wasn't. This was as far as the technology had developed.

"What does it show?" asked Louise.

God knows, thought Nick. Those cracks could be minor rips or the mouths of large pockets. Large pockets containing chunks of discarded memory or personality that had been sucked inside and absorbed. Or they could be healing fractures, the last outward signs of a personality ripped into thirteen pieces and now slowly growing back together. Who could tell?

Without dissecting Pendennis's brain.

Late afternoon passed into evening. They ate, they talked, they surfed the holovision. And planned. It was dark outside, too dark for a debut out-of-body flight across the countryside but that didn't mean he couldn't practise. He dragged the bed out of the corner and placed imagers on either side. If he fed the imager data direct into the HV he could use biofeedback to help him separate.

"You're mad," said Louise.

"I'm desperate," corrected Nick.

He felt like a boxer who'd walked into two right hands before he'd even known he was in a fight. Now his head was clearing and he was out to prove to Pendennis and the police that he was both faster and smarter. The higher dimensions would be his edge. And he was going to use every inch.

He lay there, legs out straight, fingers laced across his stomach, eyes staring up at the holo-image he'd beamed above the bed. His brain stared back at him from the ceiling. A profile shot showing the fracture line along the boundary divide. All he had to do was concentrate, imagine the crack widening and think it into happening.

Minutes passed. He concentrated. He imagined. He tried to suck the ceiling towards him. Nothing. Not even a wobble. He closed his eyes, tried to float, tried to fill his mind with thoughts of weightlessness. He was a feather, a bubble of air, a floating spaceman.

He cracked open an eye. His brain stared back. The crack nothing more than a wafer-thin line.

"It's not working," said Louise.

He ignored her and tried harder. He squeezed his eyes shut, concentrated, pushed with his mind, strained. More minutes passed. Time meaningless in the struggle to break free. Pain. A pain behind his eyes. Was it concentration or something else? The membrane about to snap?

Panic. Suppressed but growing. What if the membrane wasn't meant to be broken? What if all those NDEs came from people who didn't have membranes? People who were genetically disposed to separate? People not like him? People ready to ascend?

More panic. Not only was he in danger but now he was defective. A Neanderthal trying to pass himself off as Homo Superior. Soon to be a comatose Neanderthal with mind and body irreparably cleft in two.

He opened his eyes, sweat beading his forehead. The image of his brain still sitting above him, the crack still wafer-thin.

He turned his head towards Louise. "Well?" he asked. "Did anything happen?"

She shook her head. "Some rapid eye movement but that was all. The image didn't change."

He tried again and again, failing every time. Perhaps the conditions weren't right. Perhaps he was trying too hard. Or it was the presence of Louise and all her negative energy. He could feel her, sitting on the edge of that box, looking as though she was about to pounce on him and drag his mind back to earth the moment it started to break free.

He'd try again tomorrow.

The first rays of morning sun teased open his eyes. He was half awake, drifting in and out between dreams and thought. He knew he had something important to do, but couldn't put a name to the task.

And where was he? There was an imager by the side of his bed, already mounted on a tripod and pointing directly at his head.

Recollection. He was at the Rectory Clinic. Louise would be in the room next door.

He stared at the ceiling. Why couldn't he reach up there with his mind? Other people could.

He closed his eyes. Maybe if he relaxed more. Maybe if he bolstered his belief with self-hypnosis. Told a few lies. Separation was easy. He'd done it many times before. A simple stretch of the mind and he'd be free.

He drifted back into the twilight realm between sleep and waking, imagined himself floating on an invisible sea, lifted up and down by slow, undulating ocean waves. Up . . . and down, up . . . and down, each wave lifting him higher than the former, his mind feeling as light as a feather, his body sagging, until...

Until nothing. He opened his eyes expecting to see his body laid out beneath him but saw the ceiling instead.

Why couldn't he separate? Thousands of people had had near death experiences? What was different about them?

Easy answer—death—or at least its proximity. The body close to the point of shutting down, the mind reacting to the extreme stress.

Something he could replicate?

Was he that desperate? Could he really put his life in danger? Throw pills down his throat, hold his head under water?

Or was there an easier way?

A surge of excitement. He could simulate an NDE with self-hypnosis! Put his mind into a receptive state then slowly think himself closer and closer to the point of death. It wouldn't have to be dangerous. His mind was incredibly receptive. One of the most susceptible minds to hypnotic suggestion around—everyone said so. And he'd build in safeguards. Okay, he'd never attempted anything as extreme as this but it had to be worth a try, didn't it?

He didn't give himself time for doubt. He closed his eyes and worked out the script. He'd keep it simple—visualise his body on a hospital life support unit. A nurse standing by, watching the entire process, ready to intervene at the slightest danger. And then she'd start turning the dial, reducing life support, taking it down slowly, reading off the numbers from the dial as she did so—ninety-five, ninety-one—all the way down to zero.

And then he'd be clinically dead. But only for a few seconds. Just time for him to separate and fly free. And underlying everything would be the knowledge, the certainty, that the finest medical team in the world were observing close by. One word from them and the dial would be cranked back up to one hundred.

It would work! He knew it would!

He memorised the script, burned it into his subconscious. It wasn't words any more, it was real. He could smell the hospital ward, see the nurse.

Down he went, taking himself deeper, following his prepared script of self-hypnotic induction. The hospital ward sharpened, overhead lights, sounds from the corridors. The nurse smiling as she counted—eighty-three, seventy-five. A feeling of light-headedness. Vision clouding, sounds elongating.

No! This was wrong. His chest was tightening, his breathing laboured. Stop! Pull back! Enough!

The nurse smiled through his failing vision, started turning the dial back up, reversing the count.

No! A strengthening resolve. He couldn't back out now. There was no other option. He had to go on!