Translucent (21 page)

Karena’
s mind was in a whirlwind
. First, Shawn had betrayed her by turning out to be the Sandman. Then, it turned out that the Sandman had actually been trying to help her all this time, and that she had been the assassinator of the most important figure in the world. And now it turned out that the Sandman didn’t even think she’d done it.
It was too much information at once, and she had to force herself to slow down for just a moment, to not ask another question for the time being, and to try to understand what was going on. But she didn’t need to ask a question, because the Sandman spoke first.

“I looked at the evidence, and even though you went to court and were deemed guilty as charged, I suspected that there was something more to it. You weren’t the culprit. Very soon you’ll be remembering all of this, and you’ll remember exactly what happened. I intend to let you live.”

Karena couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The Sandman had not only shortened her sentence, but was also not going to kill her, despite the fact that she’d been accused of murdering the most important figure in the world. She didn’t know what to say. She was sure that she would never do anything like murder, it wasn’t like her. And so this creature, the Sandman, was saving her life.
It seemed hard to believe that this was the actual Sandman, and the scar that he had left on her life was still there from all those horrible years. But now that she was in reality, it was as if she was coming to the light and could see things from an entirely new perspective.
It’s like when one wakes up from a dream and discovers the truth about everything that had happened in the dream, and that their thoughts in the dream were misguided. Indeed, that’s exactly what it was.
She understood now what was going on, crazy as it may be. The Sandman actually had helped her.

Finally, she sputtered out: “Thank you.”

“Yes, well, it was only logical that you shouldn’t be killed since you didn’t even commit the crime. So really there’s no need to-”

“I don’t care.”

Karena could hardly believe her change in feelings towards the Sandman
. J
ust like that, she
found herself trusting him more than she had ever trusted anyone else except Shawn. The most ironic thing perhaps was that he was Shawn, and had been the entire time.

“Come with me now,” the Sandman said. “I need to get you to somewhere I won’t be questioned by the others.”

The creature took off, and Karena had a hard time keeping up with him as he practically whizzed down the hallway in the direction he’d come, even though it was apparent that he was trying to make an effort
to slow down for her. She found that she could go quite fast in this cord body of hers,
th
ough not as fast as the Sandman was able to.

“Okay, here’s the plan,” said the Sandman as they flung themselves down the seemingly endless corridor. “You have several transmitters inside of you that will track you wherever you are, and so of course these need to be removed if we’re going to have a successful escape.
I already disabled my own transmitter so that other humans can’t hear what I’m saying. But of course, they’ll be suspicious, because we’re only supposed to turn it off in extreme circumstances, so we need to hurry.
Also, we need to disable a shield around the facility that will vaporize anything going in or out.”

“Wait, anything leaving this complex will be vaporized?”

“Yes, except for a 15-minute window at the end of the day and at the beginning of the day when the employees switch
shifts. Other than that, we’re
stuck in here.”

Karena’s mind was in a whirlwind. This entire thing was crazy. They were escaping the facility, actually escaping, after being held there for so many years. And they had a chance. But Karena
still
had a burning question that she needed to ask.

“Why am I a bun
dle of cords?” Karena asked as they continued on their way.

“I’ll explain everything later. And anyway, you’re going to get your memory back soon, so there won’t be any need for that. We need to focus on getting out of here now.”

“Please, you can explain while we’re fleeing. There isn’t any guarantee that we’ll actually survive this.”

The Sandman was silent for a moment. “I know,” he said finally. “And it’s insane that I’m risking my life for this. But I suppose I can tell you this now. So long as we don’t run into trouble for the time being.

“T
here are two main inhabitants of the pla
net Earth,” said the Sandman, speaking very quickly.
“There are the humans, such as I, though we are not the sort of humans you would be familiar with, as your dream took place in the 21
st
century, correct?”

“Yes, but wait, you’re a human?”

“I am. You, on the other hand, are a
pherick
e
, which basically started out as an experiment to create an efficient machine that went horribly wrong. It is clear to us now that it is impossible to create sentient life through science. Numerous experiments have shown this. However, somehow the pherick
e
became sentient, not through the doing of science. We can’t explain this, really, but the point is that now there are almost just as many pherick on earth as there are humans.
”

Karena had a hard time taking this all in as she continued to fling her way down the hallway. Very soon, probably even within minutes now, she’d get her memory back, and she’d know all about this new world.
But like she’d said, they might not make it, though she didn’t dwell on that prospect long.

All of a sudden, Karena felt deja-vu. It was similar to that time all those years ago when she’d had deja-vu at her second birthday party. There was a sudden feeling inside of her, a feeling that she’d done this before. A feeling that she’d seen this place before now.

Pherick
e
. She had heard that
strange
word somewhere before. But where could she have heard it? There was no way she could have remembered that from her past life.
Did this mean that her memory was returning?

“Why have you stopped?
” the Sandman asked from ahead of her. Karena found that she had, indeed, stopped.
But she hardly cared. Something was c
oming back. She was sure of it now. It was as if an entity was within her brain, trying to push its way out slowly.

“Quick, Sandman,” she said. “Do I have a name?”

“A name? Well, yes it’s…”

The name said by the Sandman is, I’m afraid,
impossible to write
down here. Some words in the language of earth in this time period can be written down, such as pherick
e
, but the name spoken by the Sandman is not pronounceable in regular English. You will just have to imagine that the creature said this by rippling its flesh, and that immediately Karena recognized it.

Karena recognized the name the Sandman had said. At first, it was unclear where she’d heard it. But the name triggered something within her, something she couldn’t explain, a strong feeling of recollection, thought she couldn’t quite grasp what it was she was recollecting. She searched deep into her thoughts, trying to come up with where she’d heard that name. Could that have really been her name, in another time and another life?
A life in this strange world of humans and phericke?
And then,
all of a sudden,
she remembered. In a burst of realization, Karena wanted to smack herself for being so stupid. Of course that was her name. She remembered everything about this world, about the humans and the phericke. She remembered the court case where she was accused of murdering the Figure, where she’d been sentenced to death after serving a long sentence in the dream chamber. She remembered it all.

“Wha
t is it?” the Sandman asked her, seeming to forget about the urgency of the situation for a moment.

“I remember,” Karena said. She didn’t even think of herself as Karena anymore now, of course, but for the purposes of the book I will put down that name instead. “Well, you all did go and wipe my memory after all. Oh well. At least I have a plan B.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you seriously think I was just going to let myself be killed by you all? Did you think that I wouldn’t get out of here? I had planned to get out before you put me in the dream, but I don’t suppose it’s any matter now. By the way, how long was I in there?”

“Just a few months. But you have to listen. I’m not going to let you be killed. I just told you, I know that you weren’t the one who assassinated the Figure.”

“Oh?” Karena said. “Well, I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

The Sandman didn’t speak for a second. His motions conveyed that he was unsure about what she was saying, in quite a state of surprise. “What is that supposed to mean?” he asked very quietly.

“What I just said,” Karena replied. “You think that I wasn’t the one would assassinated the Figure, and I’m telling that if I were you I wouldn’t be so sure that I wasn’t. And the reason for that is that I did do it. I assassinated the most important figure in
the universe
.”

The Sandman could not believe what he was hearing. All these months he’d been trying to help this phericke, to shorten the time that it would be in the dream chamber and to try to decrease its suffering, and even to save its life, and now it was full-out admitting to him that it had assassinated
the F
igure, that it was, indeed, guilty as charged. He’d gone through all the pressure to go to the council and try to persuade them to believe that his plan of shortening its time would work, despite the fact that it went against regulations and protocol, and now everything had changed.
He’d risked his job and even his life in trying to help it escape, and now it was betraying him.

“That’s right,” Karena said. “I’m surprised, frankly, that they were even able to find out it was me in the first place. After all, I made sure there was a lot of evidence
to show that couldn’t possibly have been
me.”

“But…” the Sandman stuttered, which was something that only very rarely happened to humans. “But you were a mile away when he dropped dead. You were in your house. There was no earthly way you could have killed him. I was there. I don’t know who did it, but it couldn’t have been you.”

“That’s what I wanted people to think,” Karena said. “And it would’ve worked if I hadn’t been betrayed.”
Here it
paused for a minute, appearing to be quietly reflecting on a certain incident that had led her to be betrayed.
“
Anyway, I did it a way no one could possibly dream of, not even one of you humans.”

The Sandman was terribly worried now.
In an instant, he decided that he would ensure
this phericke did not escape from the compound. He decided that he would buy some time. “How did you do it?” he asked.

“Well, let me just put it at this. The phericke were created through experiments, trying to create an effective machine, correct?”

“Yes,” said the Sandman. He found it strange that he had been explaining this to it only moments before, and now it was explaining it to him.

“Well, it was never publicly released what these machines were supposed to be doing. After all, something went wrong, and that’s what happened. And yet some of them still fulfilled their original purpose, because some of them were taken back to the laboratory and experimented upon, just to see what would happen. Of course, the fact that the machines had developed a conscience posed quite a problem. However, the experiments went on, nonetheless, and the original purpose was fulfilled in some of the phericke. I was one of those.
They took me back to the experimentation facility and performed numerous tests on me, trying to create what they had failed to do with the first experiments. Except this
time,
they succeeded.
”

“What was the purpose?”

“They were intended to be used as a weapon. A weapon th
at nobody had ever conceived of, save a small group of elite scientists in a secret underground compound, all hidden from the public.
And because they experimented on me and implemented that weapon into my body, I was able to quite easily assassinate the Figure.”

“But how does it work?”

Karena turned around. “I’ve told you too much already. I have no reason to tell you about how it works.
Besides, all you’re doing is trying to stall for time while you desperately rack your little brain trying to think of a way to prevent me from escaping. Well, you should know two things. First, I’m not interested in escaping. I’m here to do something else. Second, you couldn’t prevent me from escaping even if I was trying to. So now if you’ll excuse me,
I’m leaving here.”

With that, Karena zipped away quicker than any human could ever go, and she wasn’t go
ing
down the hallway, but rather up. Since she had regained her memory, she now had perfect control of her body, and what the Sandman could see that she’d done was uncurl one of her cords, wrapped it around a beam, and flew up to the ceiling at lightning s
peed, all in a matter of less than two seconds
. And then she was gone.

At first, the Sandman was too shocked to speak. He’d been so sure that this phericke was innocent. He’d been almost 100% positive. And now it had gone and done this. Admitted that it had assassinated the Figure, that it had special abilities and weapons implanted in its body, and then ha
d disappeared just like that.
The irony, perhaps was the worst thing. He’d betrayed it by acting as Shawn for a long time, through many of its lives. But now it was betraying him by grinding to dust all his hard work of the past few months in trying to save it. Except this betrayal was far more real.
He wasn’t able to move, so great was his shock.

And then, he sprang into action. He activated his
internal communication device and spoke into it.
“I have a tan alert on corridor 32,” he said as quickly as possible. “One of the convicts has escaped. It’s a phericke, and I have to warn you it claims to have some sort of special powers.”

“Why did you turn off your coms devices?”

“Just never mind that, this is very important. I repeat, a tan alert. The most dangerous convict in this facility is on the loose.”

“Which way did
it go?” the voice asked. They
responded instantly due to the fact that it was a tan alert. All other incoming signals would have to wait.

“It just went into the ceiling, and I can’t see it any more. But it moves extremely fast, and it could be practically anywhere by now.”

“Affirmative. We are on our way.”

The Sandman wanted to hit himself for wasting all that time standing there in shock after it’d escaped. He knew now that it would
now
be twice as hard for the guards to catch it. He pictured them all coming out of the office, flying down the corridor at unimaginable speeds due to the special equipment with them. But if what the phericke had said was true, then they
would still be no match for it.

The Sandman began to
go swing
ing
down the corridor, searching for any clue about where it might have gone. He knew though that it was pointless. But the complex was huge,
and heavily secured.
Surely it couldn’t get all the way out.

Suddenly, the Sandman detected a voice echoing down the corridor, and he was instantly alert. “Hello there!” said the voice rather cheerfully. “Don’t worry, I’ve manipulated the ripple waves so that they can only be detected by you, so that way no one else can hear me. And you still have no idea where I am.
Child’s play, really.”

The Sandman
was surprised at first that it was speaking to him, but he quickly yelled out its
name. “You have to stop this!” he cried. “It’s not too late! I can still help you!”

“Oh, please. Do you think I need your help with what I’m doing? I already have plenty of help, and that help is far more helpful than your help would be.”

“What do you mean?”

“I really don’t want to talk right now. I only called you to tell you this. You and your little soldier friends should leave while you still can. Wasting lives is so pointless, but my mission can’t fail. You were going to help me escape. Now I think you should
be focusing
on escaping from me.”

The voice stopped, and the Sandman still had no idea where it was.
He couldn’t detect anything anywhere, no matter how hard he looked.
Frantically, he began to move forward again, terrified at the situation.

He thought about that time when he’d been in the phericke’s manipulated dream. He’d been everyone at once, including her friend Shawn. He hadn’t actually been inside of Shawn’s
body;
in
fact,
he had been quite disconnected the whole time. It had been more like he was an aura, an essence that controlled all of the simulated bodies created through the vortex technology. But the whole time, he had paid particular attention to the body of Shawn. Sometimes it felt, even though it was entirely ridiculous, as if he were Shawn. And he legitimately did want to comfort Karena. Of course, his job was to increase her anxiety and to make her despair, that was the job of every
dream master
.
But it hadn’t been what he’d wanted to do at times.
And sometimes he had failed in increasing anxiety, and instead had lowered it. This was made up for by the betrayal, of course, something no human had ever tried on a convict. And it had worked brilliantly.

All the same, h
e was different from other humans.
There was something about him, a certain quality, that the other humans lacked.
He couldn’t quite identify what it was, though.
He was just able to tell that there wa
s something different about him, and about the way he reacted to things.
He didn’t think it was the ability to fully feel emotions, that was something that humans hadn’t been able to do for centuries. But maybe he could partially feel them. Or maybe he just had some sense of irrationality that changed him to the extent that it seemed as if he could feel. Whatever it was, though, he realized that it must have been
why he had helped the phericke. And that was also why it had outwitted him and escaped. If he’d just killed it before it’d regained
its memory, then everything would have been fine.
Now he’d be fired for sure, and a
dangerous criminal would be on
the loose.
Perhaps even worse, he would be killed, if what it’d said was true. But he didn’t dwell on that.

Suddenly, a signal came from the Sandman’s internal com
s
device. “We found it,” the human said. “
T
he phericke. It’s in the Translucent chamber.”

The Sandman was surprised that they’d managed to find it. And he was also surprised about where it was. The Translucent chamber? That was in the center of the complex, and they were near the end of it. Even at the speed it had been travelling, he didn’t see how it could have gone that far.
And why would it be going there anyway? He suspected that it actually did have a plan, and that it wasn’t going to benefit him or anyone else working here.

“I’m on my way,” he replied
, and he began towards the Translucent chamber.