Page 34 of I Dream of Danger
“Brain activity massive. But your body went into lockdown. BP 80 over 60, heart rate 60, temperature 96°. No change whatsoever for the six hours.” Sophie’s deep-blue eyes, warm and sharp, examined her carefully, the anxiety back. “We were really worried.”
Six hours. Wow. Elle’s recorded journeys so far—to San Francisco and to Boston—had taken just a few hours. And she hadn’t felt as wiped out as she did now. “That new iteration of SL is powerful.”
Sophie blew out a breath. “We need to tweak it. Not everybody would react as well as you have.”
They were working on ground-breaking research. A young intern on the team joked about working on a project that would win the Nobel in twenty years. No one had laughed.
Elle and Sophie had both earned their PhDs from Stanford—Elle in neurobiology and Sophie in virology—with dissertations that formed the backbone of the Delphi Project. It was run by a small specialized lab called Corona Labs, funded by a major pharmaceutical corporation, Arka Pharmaceuticals, which owned a majority share.
Sophie came from a wealthy family, but Arka had paid for Elle’s studies from her junior year on. To pay back her scholarships, she undertook to work for Arka for four years.
The work was fascinating and no hardship, except for the head of the project and CEO of Arka, Dr. Charles Lee. He took a personal interest in the study they were conducting. Very personal. Though he worked at the Arka Pharmaceutical Corporation headquarters in the Financial District of San Francisco, these past few weeks saw him here at the research lab in Palo Alto more often than not.
His interest was keen, almost feverish, and he was pushing for them to keep a pace that was almost unscientific. Sophie had several times gently suggested that ‘given the controversial nature’ of the study, progress should be made step by step, making sure that they were on solid ground before going forward.
They were investigating what used to be known as ESP, or paranormal abilities, though the field was now being folded into general neuroscience. Some of their data was irrefutable, but science progressed slowly, and there were always those whose entire careers were spent in one paradigm and would fight to the death before admitting that another paradigm could apply.
Elle had tried to recuse herself when an fMRI showed that she had the same enhanced part of her brain that the other test subjects had, but Lee would have none of it. He wanted her as part of the protocol and part of the scientific team at the same time. And then, she and Sophie had found out that a number of the researchers had similar fMRIs.
Elle knew that she was jeopardizing her scientific reputation, but she wasn’t unhappy at playing both roles. For the first time in her life, she was beginning to suspect that her Dreams were true out-of-body experiences and not some horrible pathological form of subconscious escape.
That she could think of them as journeys and not as dream craziness was a huge step forward. This had been the subject of her doctoral dissertation, funded entirely by Arka. She’d been very lucky at Stanford in finding a professor who didn’t chuck her out for harboring dangerously lunatic ideas.
And then, another miracle, in the form of the brand-new Department of Psychic Sciences at Stanford. It was predicated on the existence of extrasensory perceptions, studied at a neuronal cell level, and had been established thanks to a huge grant by Arka.
Elle swung her legs over the side of the cot, carefully planting her feet on the ground and testing whether her legs would carry her weight. She’d nearly given herself a concussion at the last test, trying to stand up and dropping straight to the floor.
Her out-of-body experiences took an enormous amount of energy. The enzymes in her body showed that it was the equivalent of running a marathon, and in one test she’d actually lost half a kilo.
She tried to stand up, but her legs wouldn’t hold her. Sophie tried and failed to keep scientific detachment in her voice. She glanced down at her tablet then back up. “Well?” She cleared her throat, bit her lips. “Did you do it? Did you get there?”
This was the longest trip in Elle’s experience, the longest trip in recorded projection history. Halfway around the world, to a specific point Elle had never seen, and could hardly imagine. Merely on the basis of GPS coordinates and a Keyhole 16 photograph of a complex that was mostly underground.
“I did,” Elle answered softly. She waggled her head left then right, feeling tendons pop. Coming back was always hard. Much harder this time, considering where she’d gone.
“Yes!” Sophie beamed, and held her fist up for a fist bump, then sobered. She looked around uneasily. Every word was being recorded. “Honey, protocol says that I need to debrief you immediately, but you’re looking pale. Maybe we could do this tomorrow?”
“No.” As long as she was sitting, Elle could do this. She wanted to stick to the protocol as much as possible. Besides, she needed to get something out. Sophie would understand.
Elle closed her eyes, thought back. Unlike dreams, her Dreams didn’t recede quickly into forgetfulness. Mostly they were images and they lingered. “Dark,” she said softly. “So it must have been night. Everything was strange and different. The shapes of things, the alphabet.”
“The one you studied?”
Elle nodded. “Mongolian.” She shivered. Her soul or whatever part of her travelled had gone far, far away. She felt lost, disoriented. Completely outside herself. The weakness in her legs was bad enough, but there was also a hollowness inside her chest, as if her internal organs had disappeared.
The disorientation was complete. It hurt to move, but still she lifted her head, trying to focus on her surroundings. As she looked around, everything seemed new. A lab she’d worked in every single day for the past year, and it looked odd, foreign. Different and slightly unreal.
Elle closed her eyes as the room started to revolve, opening them when she heard Sophie’s voice.
The protocol called for at least two researchers to be present during debriefing but they were down because three hadn’t shown up.
“And you were?—”
“In a facility. A military facility. It looked like a research station.” In reporting, she started to come back into herself, the world filling out, becoming a little more real. “I saw the symbol of the Mongolian Defense Force—their Army. And there were the red-and-black flags of the Mongolian Republic on flagpoles.”
Sophie was tapping on her tablet. “Okay. Were you following a particular person?”
“Yes. A very broad-shouldered man, of medium height. In a gray-and-green military uniform. He had three stars on his collar.”
