Initiation

“Are you sure you want to know? Really sure?”

“I told you, didn’t I? I’m not doing this until I know everything.”

“Okay, but like I told you, it wasn’t pretty—”

“Hey, cut it out. Like I said, give it to me straight, or I’m not going in there.”

“That’s your call, man, but you know what happens if you don’t go in.”

“Are you going to tell me or not?”

“Okay, okay, fine. So it was a few years ago, maybe three or four. This guy Jake used to talk big about going caving all the time. Even called it splunking—”

“Spelunking.”

“—yeah, that. Are you telling this, or am I? Anyway. He wanted in just like you do. Me and some of the guys brought him out here, and we gave it to him straight. ‘All you have to do is get in that cave, find the key, bring it out again. Easy as pie. Think you’re up to it?’ Jake was pretty sure of himself, just smiled all cocky-like and went right in like it was nothin’.

“Of course before he’d gone in, me and the boys had been all through there. These caves, they split up somethin’ terrible, branching off all over the place. If you haven’t been through there a hundred times like we have, you’ll lose yourself and never be seen again.

“We set up speakers all through there, hidden ones, in the cracks and in holes, anywhere they wouldn’t be easy to spot.

“When he’d been in maybe five, ten minutes, tops, we started playing our special mix. At first it was real low and real soft, so he wouldn’t even really notice. Mostly it was just breathing—”

“Why’re you telling me all this? Doesn’t it wreck it if I know what you’re going to do before I go in?”

“I’m telling you why we don’t do it anymore. Now, like I was saying, at first it was real quiet, but we ramped it up gradually, really slowly, just so he’d start to kinda freak out a little, y’know? He started texting us then, asking for clues. It must’ve been getting to him, we didn’t know where he was to direct him, even if that had been playin’ by the rules. Guess he couldn’t have been too far in if he had signal to text with.

“By the time he’d been in there about forty-five minutes, his texts got way more freaked out. He was hearing it now for sure, but we didn’t really start to think anything of it until he stopped texting.

“See, we’d hidden the key close enough that he should still have had signal, but he went quiet for a whole hour.

“I don’t think I told you what the caves are actually like. They’re confusing as hell but that’s about as bad as it gets when you stick to the area near the entrance. Problem is, once you get past that, it starts getting bad pretty quick. And worse, you can’t always tell you’ve gotten that far away unless you know ‘em real well like we do.

“They get dark. REAL dark, like absolute pitch black. And the floors aren’t as smooth as they are up front, right? They’ve got all kinds of those big rock spikes off the ceilings and floors. The big ones aren’t so bad, but in some places, they have little ones, and those kinda scare me. It’d be so easy to trip and land on a bunch growin’ up out of the floor, right? They’re solid stone, and thin, too. They could kill you so easy.

“And that’s not all. It starts getting so you can feel the pressure, right? Like you’ve got all this stone around you, above you, to every side of you, crushing in, and it feels like the air itself is getting tight. It gets hard to breathe, drives some people crazy.

“Then there are the side-passages. I already told you the cave splits off into all kinds of branching paths, but not all of them are side paths. There are drops back there that’ll take you farther down than I’ve ever explored, and some of ‘em could maybe trap you, if you survived the fall at all. We’ve heard stories of people just disappearing without a trace in there.

“Another hour passed before we finally got a text from him again. It made no sense, just garbled letters and stuff. He’d attached a picture though, a shot of the caves he was in. His flashlight was running out of juice, you could barely see anything.

“The next text came a few minutes later, and he’d given up trying to type anything at all. He used his voice recorder. He was scared out of his wits by then, just babbling that they were coming for him, they were right behind him, they’d been chasing him for hours.

“That was the last we heard from him, but the message went on. A lot of heavy, scary breathing, no idea if it was him or something else. But the moans and the tearing and the ripping and the screaming … those, we knew those were nothing we’d had on our speakers. We were nearly sick, listening to it, having to imagine what was going on. It ended with a sick, wet dragging sound. I still hear it in my nightmares some nights.

“We were all of us bone-white with fear by then; we took off back to the cars and got out of there faster than you could spit. Came back the next day with the police. They mounted a search. Never found Jake, not even a sign he’d ever been there. The official conclusion was that he’d freaked out and gotten lost. They kept searching for days, but never found a single sign of him.

“Jake never got that key. It’s still in there, right where we left it, but once the police were gone … well, we heard what we heard, y’know? We’ve never gone back in. And we’ve gotta get that key back if we want any more members.

“So … are you game?”

“… You guys really expect me to believe all that crap? News like that would’ve been all over town. You’re so full of it. I’m goin’ in.”

<> 

“Dude, I can’t believe he went in.”

“Shhh, he might still be able to hear. Are you all set on the audio?”

“I’m all—wait, no, still gotta plug in the main amp.”

“Uh, you mean it’s not plugged in right now?”

“No, just about got—”

“Then what’s that that sound?”

The Price of Entanglement - Chapter 12, pt. 3

The examination was brief, confirming Dr. Toure’s prognosis. The burns were healing. Her right arm was still fairly painful, but the redness was gradually fading. “So that’s it, then?” she asked.

“That’s almost it,” he smiled. “I’d like to give you one more treatment of the burn cream for your arm before you go. A little time should take care of the rest, provided that you rest.”

She sighed audibly. She’d been forced into an awful lot of resting lately. She was getting tired of it. The sounds of a group of people passing outside the door reached her. They were talking; one of the voices sounded subtly familiar, but she couldn’t place it.

“How long do I have to …” she trailed off, her head filling with a familiar buzzing, prickly dizzy sensation. She lost her balance and slumped where she sat on the edge of her bed, catching herself with her arm. Dr. Toure reacted with admirable speed, catching her by the shoulder to steady her, face a study in alarm.

“Ms. Rush. Jo! What is it? What’s wrong?”

She felt both drained and suffused with energy, the room around her transforming. She was in her room in whatever facility it was she’d been sent to, but she also seemed to be deep in a forest she didn’t recognize. It was very old growth, if the size of the trees was any indication. She could see them super-imposed over the room, over the doctor, over everything. She clutched at Dr. Toure’s hands; they were reassuringly solid. “Do you see it?” she half-whispered, gaze wandering up the trunk of a massive tree that must have been four feet around; nothing like it grew anywhere near the city.

“See? See what, Ms. Rush?” He tried to get her to lay back down again. She didn’t resist at first, thinking it a fine idea, until she saw him.

It wasn’t Archerd, of that she was certain. Nor was it the young man she’d seen under the ironworks. He was dressed wrong; he looked like he was from the present, her own time. He wore dark clothes, a t-shirt, black jeans and boots. His hair was dark brown and somewhat ragged and spiked. Her gaze was drawn to him like a magnet. He stood out clearly to her against the backdrop of the forest. His back was to her, but he looked familiar. A name danced on the tip of her tongue, frustratingly close but out of reach.

She sat up, pushing Dr. Toure’s arms aside as though he wasn’t there. He was shouting something behind her, but her attention was all on the young man ahead of her. He was looking around, apparently trying to get his bearings.

She tried to walk toward him, but slammed into the wall of the lab room and grunted in pain. Okay, that’s still solid, no matter what it looks like, she thought in a corner of her mind. She started making her way around the wall toward the door. On the way, she slammed into one of the trees of the forest; they were quite solid too. Dr. Toure tried to restrain her, but she slipped his grasp and darted out through the door and into the hallway.

The hall beyond was surprisingly long. She started running but was forced to slow to a walk when she found the forest floor uneven enough to protrude above floor level in places. She nearly tripped several times on tree roots and branches and simple unleveled ground. The young man was several dozen meters ahead of her, but not moving terribly fast; it still took her more time than she’d have guessed to catch up to him. “Hey,” she called out.

He turned, startled, and faced her. As he did, his head brushed a leafy tree branch; he knocked it aside. His eyes widened in shock. Hers must have done much the same. He was like a younger version of Gran, his face several years younger than hers but already weathered with scars and signs of hard living. “Philip?” she gasped.

At the sound of his name, he turned and bolted. She stood and stared after him, emotional confusion overwhelming the light-headed feel of her altered state. The forest faded around her; she settled back to the hallway floor off the root she’d been standing on. What was Philip doing here? He’d been moving like she had, seeing both the hall and the forest at once. He’d touched that tree branch. “What IS this place? What’s going on?”

The Price of Entanglement - Chapter 12, pt. 2

True to his word, Dr. Toure kept her overnight for observation. She’d been given a burn cream that, she was told would be particularly effective in dealing with the burns she’d sustained. When morning came, she awakened early to find most of the pain had gone away; her right arm still pained her and still looked somewhat reddish. Elsewhere, the red had faded, leaving her arm to contrast beautifully with her otherwise ghostly skin.

She rose and searched about the room, quickly finding a set of clothing in the closet. She was in a double-occupancy room, but was the only occupant, so she had to assume the clothes were for her; her original clothes had been burned after her exposure. They weren’t quite what she would have expected. They were new, but they looked store-bought, not like something a hospital might keep on hand. She dressed and sat down to wait. She didn’t have to wait long; Dr. Toure himself stopped in to deliver breakfast. He nodded approvingly upon noticing the clothes. “Good morning! I see you’ve been looking around. That’s good. How are you feeling today?”

In the distance behind him, she could hear other voices, people arriving for work, greeting each other in the halls and labs. She smiled at him. “I’m much better, thank you, Doctor. Where did these clothes come from?”

“They were supplied by your employer, Ms. Rush,” he smiled. “We don’t keep such things on hand. Now we should really examine you and hopefully let you get on your way, no?”​

The Price of Entanglement - Chapter 12, pt. 1

When she awakened, she was in an unfamiliar location and had no idea how much time had just passed. Her room looked like a refurbished hospital relic from the 20th century, only with worse lighting and slightly run-down facilities even by the standards of the time. She repressed a shudder as she looked around. There was nobody else in sight.

She lay for what felt like half an hour before voices attracted her attention. She’d considered getting up and leaving, but a lethargy like she’d never felt kept her fastened to her bed more effectively than any restraint could.

The voices got closer and stopped outside the door to her room, where they remained for a minute. They were just muffled enough that she could make out that the voices were male, but not what they were saying. Footsteps retreated away just as the knob turned and a middle-aged man of dark complexion and warm, friendly brown eyes entered the room.

“Ms. Rush, I’m glad to see you’re awake,” he began. “I’m Dr. Toure. There were some … complications with your anti-radiation treatment.” He had a pleasant voice, low in timber and pitch. It was the sort of voice that was made for telling stories, or doing voice-over narration. She decided she liked him.

“Ah— … complications?” Her mind raced. She felt much better than she had before she’d been moved, though she still felt like she was suffering a mild sunburn over much of her body. It felt worse in her right arm, she realized, moving it for the first time since she’d awakened.

“I’m afraid so, yes. It looks like at some point during your trip into the ironworks, your right arm came into contact with electrite. The effects were relatively mild; the contact was brief, and through your clothing. You’ve suffered first degree radiation burns to much of your body; most of that has already healed. Your right arm suffered second degree burns. We transferred you to this facility as a safeguard. We’ll need to keep you under observation for a time.”

“But you said it’s first and second degree burns. Why couldn’t I have stayed in the hospital? What is this place?”

“We’re a lab that specializes in radiation, and we’re more experienced in treating it than the hospital staff.” For the first time, she detected a trace of hesitance in his otherwise pleasant bedside manner. He was keeping something back, she thought. “As for why we moved you here, electrite radiation is … unique. Prolonged exposure is known to affect the quantum state of the exposed matter. The effects of short-term exposure are temporary and largely unnoticeable. Your exposure was, as near as we can determine, short enough that you’ll probably not encounter any trouble. But we want to be sure. The brain … there are a lot of quantum interactions up there in our skulls, so it’s best to be sure of what we’re dealing with.”

She just stared at him for a moment. “You’re saying it could be affecting my mind?”

“I don’t believe it is,” he said. “It was hard to tell while you were unconscious, but if you’d suffered dangerous levels of exposure to your head, your behavior would probably be erratic. We’ll keep you under observation to make sure,” he smiled, “but I strongly suspect already that you’re okay.”​

An Improbable Reference

"Things aren’t always as they seem,” my daddy used to tell me, “but sometimes they are.” Early on he’d taught me that the books with the flashy covers might not be the most interesting, or that the movies with the colorful posters could be boring. Later it was the pretty girls, that sometimes they were the last ones you wanted to talk to. It was a lesson that sank in well, at least until the next flashy cover, colorful poster or pretty girl came by.

Those were always my biggest weaknesses; book covers, movie posters and pretty girls, and never more than the time two of ‘em worked together to make my life hell.

She was a beaut, maybe a year or two younger than I was, working at the new high-tech library downtown. Saw her walking down Main Street one day when she dropped a hair comb. Beautiful thing it was, delicate wood inlaid with what looked like gold to my young eyes. It was almost as beautiful as she was.

Of course I grabbed it and followed after her, thinking of how lucky I was to have a sure-fire way to introduce myself to her. She’d be grateful to get something like this back.

I saw her head up the great front steps of the library and disappear inside, so I did the same. I’d never been there, it’d only opened recently. I have to admit I was pretty shocked to see it didn’t house any books at all. What kind of a library has no books?

The place was huge, with all kinds of sitting spaces and partitions I had to assume were for studying and reading. Maybe they were tryin’ to be the first all-digital library or something, I don’t know. I didn’t see the girl, and that was what concerned me the most. There weren’t that many people around, and I wasn’t that far behind her, shoulda been able to spot her easy.

“Welcome, library patron!” a voice said to me. “Is there anything I can help you with today?”

“I—yes—well,” I said, not being comfortable with voice interfaces. “Is there a screen interface I can use instead?”

“There are several information terminals by the front doors. Please enjoy your visit!”

It turned out to be pretty easy to get a list of people to go to with questions about the place, and she was one of ‘em, but she wasn’t on that particular duty that day and I didn’t want to ask any of the others to get her. Just felt like that’d be goin’ a step too far. In retrospect, I really wish I had, or even that I’d asked the voice interface. Would’ve saved me a world of trouble.

The terminal had a list of ways to get in touch with employees you needed to get hold of, and I looked those up. There were the usual ways, you know, video chat, text message, even email, though nobody ever did that anymore. But the one that caught my eye was way older than email. Pneumatic tubes! You used to see those in old TV shows and stuff. You put messages or small items in little plastic capsules and stick ‘em in a pressurized tube, and WHOOSH, the capsule was sucked away to wherever you wanted it to go. It was the best thing I’d ever seen!

There was one catch. A note beside the pneumatic tube option stated that in order to use the tube system, you had to be a member of the library. Well, of course that settled it. I wanted to talk to that girl, and the tube system seemed perfect. I could write her a note, enclose her lost comb, and tell her I was waiting out front. I had no doubt she’d be out right away to see me. It was perfect! All I had to do was figure out how to join. The terminal interface looked so simple.

I started poking around right away and it wasn’t long till I was deep in the sign-up process, and believe me, it was quite the process. I’d gotten library cards before, but none of them had questionnaires quite like this one did. It was exhaustive, going over all of your reading, TV watching and movie-going habits; hell, it even wanted to know whether you wrote at all, and what you liked to write about, if so. The one that really caught my eye though was this: “Would you like to share your knowledge and experience with other library patrons through our MindShare program?”

That one sounded a little weird at first, I have to admit. It gave me a funny feeling. I thought back to daddy’s words though; after all, what harm could sharing knowledge with others do? I could at least find out more about it, and make a final decision then. So I checked off that yes, I’d like join the MindShare program.

As soon as I touched that option on the screen, I felt the most curious jolt I’d ever felt in my life. It was like something snapped; I got real light-headed and dizzy, couldn’t tell up from down, left from right. My vision got funny too. Everything was kind of grey and fuzzy. Have you ever seen a really old TV, the kind from before cable, with the big antennas sticking up on ‘em like rabbit ears? They’d get all fuzzy and snowy-looking if they weren’t tuned to the right channel. My eyes felt like that for a while.

After a few that faded though. That’s when I started to know that integration had taken hold, and that I’d been worked into the network with no trouble at all. I started to know other things, too. I knew that this was a new kind of library that didn’t need books to interface with all the knowledge humanity had to offer. That it did in fact carry almost every ebook ever published. That that girl I’d followed in now knew me better than I’d ever known anyone before, and that I knew her just as well. And that I would never be leaving the library again. At least, the copy of my mind I’d agreed to share wasn’t going to be leaving.

Through the library’s video cameras I saw myself put the girl’s—Jessica’s—comb in the tube and send it off with a letter. I couldn’t tell what her reaction was; the Jessica I knew was a copy like me. I saw myself leave with her a short time later.

I can’t begin to tell you what that felt like. I couldn’t follow. I was, most improbably, one of the library’s living references, and the real me probably didn’t even know.

“And that, dear patron, is how I came to be here answering your questions. Is there anything more I can help you with today?”

The Price of Entanglement - Chapter 11, pt. 3

A short time later Dunn dropped in to see her. “Ms. Rush, you look like hell.”

“Thanks, just what I always love to hear,” she said. Her voice sounded rougher than she expected.

He smiled. “The docs tell me you’ll be fine. You and Mike both.” His smile vanished. “You gave us quite a surprise. We were expecting you to be in there a lot longer. What happened?”

She lay back and closed her eyes. “The radiation was stronger than we’d expected. We knew there’d be a lot, but … what’s happening there? What we saw was so much worse than anyone told us.”

“That’s exactly what we’d hoped you’d be able to tell us,” he said with a frown. “I won’t make you go over all of it right now. You’re weak, you need rest. But when you’ve recovered, we’ll have a full debriefing. I want every detail.”

Her heart sunk a little at that. Dunn meant exactly what he said; he was going to want to hear everything. So far Quinn and Mike had both been okay with what she’d had to say about these visions of hers, but she wasn’t looking forward to spilling it to Dunn. She knew how it was going to sound.

They were sent to the hospital overnight; just for observation, Dunn assured her. He also promised to have more information for them about what had happened with the radiation. “We’ve got some guys in the lab who can check into it and give us some answers.”

“Why weren’t they sent in first?”

“They should have been. Had we had any idea that the radiation was worse than we’d thought, they would have been.”

It wasn’t a very satisfying explanation, but it was what she had.

<>

The next day she felt like she had a full-body case of the worst sunburn she’d ever had in her life. It was all she could do not to scratch until she bled, until the nurse she’d been assigned came by with a round of medication to help. Within an hour she was red and slightly swollen all over, but felt vaguely numb, the burning sensation distant, as if it were happening to someone elses’ body.

Mike was in the same room, but a privacy sheet separated them from one another. As she lay drifting in the place between sleep and wakefulness, she overheard a doctor drop by his bedside.

“What’s the good news, doc?”

“There’s no permanent, short-term damage. You’re going to be fine.”

“Short-term? What does that mean?”

“With radiation exposure at these levels, there is always the chance for long-term effects. They may be mild or more severe. There’s just no way to know. We’ll be adding skin cancer screening to your regular suite of tests. Your regular MD can carry itout during your regular checkups.”

“How long will I be here?”

“We’ll want to keep you at least a few more hours for observation. Maybe a day or two at most.”

She drifted off then, mind occupied by dreams of scenes and people from the past.