Upload and Reboot
by Tyler Marable
|
Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
part 1
Energy cannot be created or destroyed.
In the beginning, God created light, so humans say; and, in the end, there is only darkness. It is an impermanent darkness, I should declare. For some, this darkness may last mere minutes; for others, it may last only a few centuries. Mr. Benton was of the former. He was Case Prisect E, but I’d rather not refer to an individual in such a pretentious manner.
He floated in the Dark Void, a sliver of energy.
How long will this Case last? I had thought. It was rather cumbersome and just plain exasperating to study a subject for three hundred years and not learn a thing about it. I still remained ignorant of the process of transmutation.
Just how long is it going to take you to transmute, Mr. Benton? At that moment, my question was answered. Mr. Benton did not transmute but regressed after being dead only thirty minutes. Regression is a fascinating anomaly. Natural philosophers rarely get the chance to study such phenomena.
I followed Mr. Benton back to his dimension.
* * *
A heart monitor flatlined for the briefest of seconds... then beeped.
A sanitized scent floated around the room. It was the first thing Mr. Benton noticed, or should I say Mr. Wesker? He opened blue eyes and witnessed that he no longer resided in an SUV at the bottom of Lake Michigan, the former Mr. Benton’s grave. No, he was not dead any longer but was lying in a hospital bed.
The heart monitor, beside the bed, did not play a slow staccato rhythm any longer. It raced. He thumbed the remote to call a nurse, stared with wide eyes at his hands. Why were his hands pale? He ran a tremulous one through his hair, pondering the fantasy — so he thought — he found himself in. The texture of his hair only raised more questions. It was long and straight. The former Mr. Benton had a complexion of what humans called peanut butter, and tightly curled hair akin to the wool of a creature humans called sheep. But he now found himself in a body that was pallid, its hair falling in strings over his forehead.
The nurse rushed in, gasped. “Mr. Wesker, you’re awake!”
“Where am I?” he asked, already knowing the answer. Curious why humans do that sometimes, creatures that ask questions they already know the answers to. The more pertinent questions — Who am I? Why am I here? — were left unasked for the moment.
“Grady Memorial Hospital,” the nurse said. She turned to leave.
“Please don’t go,” he said.
“I have to get Dr. Madison.”
The nurse left. Several minutes passed, allowing the former Mr. Benton to contemplate further the circumstances of his regression. But of course it is impossible for one to entertain an idea he or she cannot fathom.
Dr. Madison walked in, followed by the nurse. He immediately checked the patient’s blood pressure, respiratory rate, all vitals. “How do you feel, Mr. Wesker?”
“Groggy. There’s a sharp pain in my head. But I think you have me mixed up with someone else. My name’s Michael Benton.”
Not only had he regressed, but the former Mr. Benton retained the memory of his past life, even his name. What a specimen!
The nurse and doctor exchanged looks.
“You arrived three months ago with a gunshot wound to the head. We ascertained your identity from your driver’s license. Your wife confirmed your identity,” the doctor said.
The former Mr. Benton sat up, grimaced. Pain slammed him back to the mattress. “Jillian has been here? I can’t believe she came.”
“Who’s Jillian?” the nurse asked.
“My wife. I should say former wife.”
“Mr. Wesker — and I assure you your name is Jason Wesker — we haven’t met a lady by the name of Jillian. You are married to a Mrs. Allison Wesker.”
“What?”
“Let me check his temperature again,” the nurse said.
“I’m fine. I shouldn’t even be here. Who pulled me out of the lake?”
The doctor and nurse exchanged looks again. “We will be back, Mr. Wesker,” the doctor said. They politely excused themselves.
I slipped out of the room before the door closed, curious to how these professionals would diagnosis a condition they had no conception of.
“Amnesia?” the nurse said.
“Accompanied by psychosis? Maybe a side effect of the coma.”
“Could be a side effect of the bullet in his head.”
The doctor stifled a titter. “I’ve never seen this before. We need help.” He cracked open the door just enough to poke his head in. “We’ll be back, Mr. Wesker.”
They did come back, but not alone, accompanied by other medical professionals, flanked by police officers. Dr. Polk, a prominent psychiatrist in the state, asked the former Mr. Benton a series of questions. The patient’s answers puzzled them all, of course.
Their patient have no recollection of his past; rather, he had memories from a different life altogether.
The police officers queried the former Mr. Benton as to the description of his assailant, to which he replied, “What assailant? I killed myself. Well, I tried to kill myself.”
Of course this perplexed the entire room.
Dr. Polk recommended the patient have a “private talk” with his wife. When she walked into the room, the former Mr. Benton inquired the identity of this young beautiful lady: “Who the hell are you?!”
“Allison, your wife,” she said.
“I’ve never met you in my life.”
“We’ve been married six years.”
“I’ve never seen you before.”
“We have a three-year old...” She stopped, tears brimmed in her eyes. “Had a son.”
“A three-year old? I’ve been damn impotent for five years. Everything stops working when you get old like me,” he said.
“Impotent? Old? You’re only twenty-six.”
“I’m sixty-five!”
“Jason—”
“My name is Michael!”
Her eyes no longer held the dammed tears. She left the room to consult the doctors.
* * *
Months went by. I had the pleasure of watching the former Mr. Benton go through physical therapy. I say a pleasure because Case Work was rather tedious compared to being in the field with a live subject. He was released from the hospital, much to the dissatisfaction of Dr. Polk. The psychiatrist had advised Allison to persuade Mr. Wesker to consider admitting himself to a psychiatric ward. Of course, the lady had a hard time trying to coax a sane man into committing himself to a “mental motel” — as the former Mr. Benton so delicately put it.
It was decided Mr. Wesker was no danger to himself — he no longer spoke of that undocumented occasion on which he drove his car into a Great Lake — nor was he a threat to others. Therefore Dr. Polk had no legal right to involuntarily admit Mr. Wesker to a psych ward. Allison promptly drove her “husband” home with me in the backseat.
Maybe Jason will remember, she thought, when he sees Ben’s room. Everything was going to be okay. She just knew it.
When the former Mr. Benton saw Ben’s room, he did not remember the late three-year old. How would he? He had never known the child to begin with. Everything was not okay.
“This is too much,” he said. “This is crazy.”
He raced out of the house; the spring-loaded screen door slammed shut. Allison quickly followed, but stopped, tears burning her eyes. She did not cross the threshold. Could not. To see her “husband” like this. To lose her baby boy and almost lose the one person she had left. And this happens? She had not lost Jason to death, but thought she was losing him nevertheless.
She stared through the screen door. “Jason” took a seat on the curb.
I started to amble over then stop. “You’re not going to do this,” I told myself. “You are not going to converse with him. It is against protocol to interact directly with the subject. I am an alien to this planet, an alien to him. I am not going to reveal myself; I’m not going to converse with him!”
Jason chewed his nails, lost in thought. Where was he? What suburb was this? What city was this? Could he really be in Georgia? How did I get here? They said I’m in Atlanta.
“You are in Atlanta,” I said. Oh damn. I had revealed myself; I had conversed with him.
He looked up. He hadn’t heard me stride over. “Huh?”
“This is Atlanta. You’re in Georgia, Mr. Benton. Or do I call you Mr. Wesker now?”
“You know my real name?”
“It’s my job to know your names, both of them.”
“Why did you call me Wesker? I’m a Benton. Why does everyone keep calling me Jason? I know I’m not crazy! I know I’m Michael Benton!”
“Well, you’re kind of both,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“You died as Michael Benton, committed suicide by drowning. You didn’t fully cross over; you regressed, got pulled back to this dimension, to this planet.” I patted his shoulder. “To this body.”
“Who are you?”
“Well, that’s difficult to explain. My name to you would probably sound like random consonants. Let’s just call me Dr. Blue. Yes, that’s quite a lovely name. I do love the blue sky of this planet.”
“How do you know I died?”
“I am a natural philosopher. On your planet, I might be called a thanatologist. But I study much more than death: I study transmutation. You see, energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed. You are made of energy; your brain uses it to communicate with your body. What do you think happens to that energy when you die?”
Michael/Jason stared at me with glazed eyes; my lecture was clearly riveting.
“Energy does not perish with you. It does not dissipate but is merely transformed. It slips through dimensions, sometimes becomes different beings. In rare cases, energy regresses back to its former state, returns to its body or to an unoccupied one.”
He shook his head. “And they say I’m crazy. Maybe you should talk to Dr. Polk.”
I laughed. “I’m telling the truth. I am of a race you may call Vecarians. What you see of me — the brown hair, the glasses, the exquisite frock coat — is the mental image I’m projecting into your mind. The words you are hearing are not spoken, but my thoughts bleeding into yours. My people study humans, your ways, lives, even your deaths.”
“Why?” he asked. I detected a hint of skepticism in his voice, humoring me, as they say on Earth.
“My great ancestors created this planet and terraformed it for you. We created the first animals of this world, so we are responsible for all that evolved here, including your kind. My ancestors wanted to know why we were created. By creating and studying you, we believed our species could come closer to understanding life, to understanding our own existence. Closer to understanding ourselves as well as the Seridians.”
“Seridians?”
“The beings who created my race. The Seridians created my people to understand where they had come from, why their god had made them.”
“This is just plain stupid,” he said. “I’m going back inside.”
He stood from the curb and strode across the lawn. How rude of him! You would have thought I had abducted the subject and given him a rectal exam, like the Trillonites.
I ran after him and said, “You want to see Jillian again?” Why I asked that, I do not know. Conversing with a subject is a major breach of protocol. Offering him or her a ride through space-time was another blunder altogether.
My question stopped him. He spun. “How do you know Jillian?”
“I told you, it’s my job to know everything about Mr. Benton/Wesker.”
* * *
Copyright © 2019 by Tyler Marable
