Note: this was written for
‘s joint story project, Project Blackwater. For the original post, read below:
For my part in the saga, read on…
“All right, Eleanor, just try to relax if you can as the medication kicks in. I’m going to go in the back and start the introductory video.”
“Of course,” she said, her voice still rasping as much as she tried to hide it. She wasn’t used to talking; who needed it when you were one of the world’s most powerful telepaths? She wasn’t here as Audrey of the Phenomenal Four, though, which was why she was talking to a nurse and waiting for a chalky-tasting pill to kick in.
No, Audrey was there as Eleanor Smith, random citizen responding to an advertisement requesting volunteers for a neuro study run by an outfit called Elysium™. Audrey wasn’t one to scan for advertisements normally, but this one had caught her eye as she had turned past it to the editorial page. It felt odd. Why would they be looking in individual dreams for a cure for mortality?
It didn’t compute to her, and she’d said so to her associates that night at Natalie’s house. Over bags of Shrimp Crisps™ , they’d agreed that they should check it out. Audrey being a telepath, she was the natural choice.
So here she was, watching a video of a handsome blond guy in a white coat going on about psychology and so forth. The chryon under the video identified him as Dr. Robert J. Karasevdas. She couldn’t get telepathic readings off a video and she wasn’t interested anyway, so Audrey tuned him out and tried to read the nurse before she went under. Curious, she thought. She couldn’t get anything. The nurse was practiced in blocking her thoughts. That was odd…
Suddenly she found herself in a plush hotel lobby. “Fancy,” she thought. Black and white checkered floor, a red-carpeted staircase lending up to a pair of elegant golden doors, a revolving door on her right and a concierge desk on her right. A chandelier glowed overhead no less, and a song played discretely in the background. “We’ll meet again…don’t know where…don’t know when…”1
“I would rather not meet anyone down here, thank you,” Audrey thought, and turned the song off with a gesture. She looked over the lobby, quickly grasping the metaphor. “Hm,” she thought. “Interesting. I assume the revolving doors lead to the outside, thereby causing me to wake up. Accordingly, if I go up the stairs and try these doors…ah. An elevator. And only two buttons: up or down. Very nice. This is a very realistic setup, with a touch of flair; I wonder whose textbooks you’ve been reading? Greevey? Logan? Cerreta perhaps? If you incorporated Cerreta’s Synthesis on Subvolitional Theoretics than, perhaps…”
She gestured at the elevator. The lower button lit up, she floated inside, and the elevator began to descend. “Thank heaven,” Audrey thought, grateful that her powers still worked inside here. That meant her internal psychic walls were safe. There were things every telepath kept locked inside for fear of getting out, and she was no exception. For example, if-
The elevator shuddered. Audrey hesitated. That had been close. She closed her eyes and surveyed her psychic walls. They looked secure. No danger there. No problem. She could continue her mission. The elevator continued smoothly downward.
“What mission is that?” came the doctor’s voice. She’d forgotten his name in the moment.
“How…ah,” she thought. “Headphones. Or perhaps they’ve stepped up to a sonic conducer. Lovely.”
“Indeed,” the doctor’s voice said. Now, suppose you tell-
Audrey shut him off with a wave and nudged the elevator down a little faster. No one intruded on her dreams. She made sure of that. That was the point of the psychic walls-oh, they’d stopped.
She stepped out into a small room, awash with pillow, blankets, and beanbags, in which a younger version of herself and various other pretween girls were watching movies amidst giggles.
“No,” she thought. “I don’t want to be here.”
The TV flickered. It was an old film from the aughts, or whatever decade they called it now. A psychic someone or other had died, only he hadn’t really because he’d sent off his consciousness into someone else. They hadn’t got to that scene yet; at the moment a man in a helmet was lifting a bridge. Some of the girls were laughing; a few others were pleading that they change the selection to something they all wanted. The younger Audrey wasn’t saying anything. She was thinking. She was thinking very hard.
The TV cracked in spiderweb lines that traced across the entire screen. Then it exploded. Everyone screamed and the scene blurred away into chaos and the elevator shot downwards again and Audrey closed her eyes and clasped her hands to her hand and thought “No no no no no no not again not that!”
She had to run. She had to wake up. She couldn’t let them see. Couldn’t let them know. If they learned about-
If what they wanted coincided with
The walls were already straining under the pressure.
Now, they broke.
The nurse was calmly adjusting a dial, not even looking at the patient when it happened. Every monitor, every screen, everything electric in the place went haywire. Sparks flew everywhere. Windows shattered. Alarms shrilled and suddenly died.
She started to run, to call for help.
Then everything else exploded.
When she opened her eyes again, she saw the sky, a gleaming patch of blue amidst the shattered wreckage of the building. She couldn’t see where the doctor was. She didn’t care really; he was such a tool. But-
Then she saw Eleanor, the patient she’d last seen completely knocked out and strapped down no less. She was neither now. Now she was standing, floating, above the ground, and she did not look happy.
“You want to know how to live forever?” the patient said.
“Let me show you.”
The nurse had time for one last thought before her consciousness dissolved. In that last instant, she couldn’t help wondering why she smelled Shrimp Crisps. It was the oddest thing to be thinking about but you never knew did you and-
Audrey and Audrey shrugged in tandem. Funny. You never really did know. She was going to have to get used to being in two now. Weird. Elysium’s fault though. Shouldn’t have let the other one loose.
Gosh what a fun take! The concept of someone with extremely powerful mental fortitude having their boundaries pushed and tested leading to disaster is fascinating. Gives me Phoenix vibes from the x-men.