Seldom Seen in August

CHAPTER SEVEN

Wade was sweating again, but this time he was glad of it. Enough lubrication and he stood a better chance of slipping free of his restraints. Not a much better chance, but anything was better than nothing. And if he got free, the first order of business would be to strangle the boring old bastard with his own tie. He could think about what to do with the cops upstairs—assuming they were still there—later.

“So what’s next?” he asked Cochran.

“We’ve already run through the first stage. Exposure to select memories to gauge your reaction.”

“Which was disappointing if the reviews are to be believed.”

“Yes, but as I said, hardly surprising.”

A thought occurred to him then. “You said you weren’t able to isolate individual memories, didn’t you?”

Cochran seemed pleased. “So you were listening after all?”

“Can’t help it,” Wade said. “My ears don’t listen to reason.”

“Well, you’re correct. We weren’t able to isolate individual memories. But we figured it out. Now, not only can we pick and choose the memory, we can transfer them.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means,” Cochran told him. “That the memories you experienced upstairs didn’t significantly affect you for a good reason.”

“Which is?”

“Not all of them were yours.”

“Hardly a shock,” Wade said. “I wasn’t there to see the kid die. I’ve never even seen the old w…your wife before. And…”

“Correct, but the last one, the hooker, couldn’t have come from anybody’s brain but yours.”

For the first time since meeting the old man, Wade felt a pinch of anger in his belly. There was no denying that Gail, a girl he had loved, if only for a short time, had been a prostitute. God knows she’d turned him away enough times or asked him to wait in the diner downstairs because she was “entertaining” but then as now, he hated hearing her called a ‘hooker’. It was, he knew, the typical reaction of the blind, those people who judged her based on how she looked and what she did rather than who she was. And if they’d known, they might have been surprised to find that she had a college degree (though in what, he no longer recalled), and a six-year old child she’d adored (but who lived with her mother for obvious reasons), and that she’d played piano like a virtuoso. She hooked to make enough money to buy a house for herself and her son, and she’d been pretty close to realizing that goal when she’d decided she’d had enough of Wade. A violent man by nature, he nevertheless managed to rein in his temper for her. Hurting her wasn’t the way to secure her love, to persuade her that her life would be better with him in it, even if it only served as a constant reminder of what she’d done in the years before she made a clean break. So instead of beating her, he’d introduced her to drugs, and that had worked like a charm. She’d grown to depend on him again, to appreciate him, and that had lasted until the night she threatened him with his own gun. By that time, the drugs had completely taken hold of her, leaving her delusional, unreachable. When she’d pleaded with him to let her go, he knew she was talking to the cocaine in her system, in her brain, so that when he killed her, it was a mercy.

“Did I strike a nerve at last?” Cochran asked.

“Nope.”

“Ah well,” Cochran said, sounding not at all disappointed, “There’s plenty of time.”

Wade sighed. “Okay, let’s quit fucking around. What am I doing here?” As he spoke, he tugged his arm up as much as the restraint would allow. The zip tie caught on his wrist-bone and moved no further. It would though, he was sure of it.

Cochran smiled broadly and gestured at the room around them. “It’s actually quite clever. I shifted the focus of the project as needed to keep its validity in the eyes of those who might be swayed to pull the plug.”

Wade closed his eyes, exasperated. “Good for you.”

“I proposed, instead of concentrating solely on mental patients, that we expand our scope to include violent criminals. Not that I believe there’s much of a difference, mind you. I suggested we build a fully functional neighborhood right in the middle of Harperville’s black zone, where recidivism is out of control.”

“Black zone?”

“The area worst affected by crime.”

“Careful Reverend Sharpton doesn’t get wind of that.”

“It was to be, what my workers affectionately called a ‘glue trap’. The objective would be to lure or force pre-selected criminals into the house chosen for them.”

“Where they would be visited by the ghosts of Christmas past,” Wade said with a smirk.

“In a sense, yes. Each house contains two-dozen hosts, which are units installed in the walls behind perforated plaster. When triggered—remotely, of course—they send out spores, nanobots, which are then inhaled. Once inside you, they begin to acquire your information, much like a system search on a hard drive. When they find what they want, they shoot signals against your eyes like a cathode ray will shoot electrons against a television screen. So what you’re seeing in front of you, isn’t really there.”

“But why images that weren’t mine?”

Cochran’s smile disappeared. “A personal touch. A signature. For that, I’m sorry. It’s not something I’m permitted to do, but I wanted you to see them. You’ve gone so long not feeling a damn thing for the lives you’ve destroyed. You killed a man. A child killed himself over it, and his mother went mad. I married her and watched it happen. And I didn’t help. Didn’t know how. Instead I buried myself in my work. Dedicated myself to finding a way to make remorseless killers regret what they did, and experience in vivid detail the pain they’d caused.”

“Doesn’t seem to have worked though, does it?”

“We’re not finished, Wade.” Cochran tilted his head and spoke in a low voice to someone who wasn’t there. “Monitors, please.”

Immediately the bank of screens behind him came to life. Each one showed a different man, and in one case a woman, exploring rooms similar to those in the house above Wade’s head. Some of them had weapons, others looked as if they were the weapon.

“Who are they?” Wade asked, but already knew the answer.

“Criminals, just like you,” Cochran said, without looking at the screens. “Murders, rapists, drug-dealers, arsonists…”

“And you think the glue trap is going to work on them?”

“That’s the hope, yes.”

“Rats in a cage,” Wade said bitterly. “To me it doesn’t look like you’ve come that far from sixth grade biology.” He watched as, on one of the screens, an enormous man riddled with tattoos, bent down to inspect something on the stairs in front of him. It looked like a jack-in-the-box.

“Perhaps,” Cochran replied. “Or perhaps the key to our worst fears can be found in childhood games.”

Wade thought of something and studied the television screens for a moment before he brought it up. “Where’s Cartwright?”

“Hmm?” Cochran said, the faintest hint of a smile on his lips. “Oh, Cartwright, yes. He’s not currently active.”

“Active? You killed him?”

“I didn’t, no. And the intent was never to take his life, but it would appear we still have a few bugs in our system.”

“Huh.”

“Does that surprise you?”

Wade nodded. “A little. You talk about this project of yours like it’s going to be the greatest gift to mankind, but don’t blink when you talk about someone dying because of it.”

“It would be hard to defend my position without sounding like a Bond villain, Wade. Or worse, making me sound like you.”

“Why stop now? I was enjoying the monologue.”

“I’m sure, but I’m afraid you’re not the only subject I have to deal with today.” He half-turned and indicated the monitors with a sweep of his hand. On one of them, Wade saw that the woman was fishing through the kitchen drawer. She stopped and withdrew a long carving knife, then smiled.

“There’s something I don’t get,” Wade said.

“Yes?”

“What was with the text messages?”

“How do you mean?” The sparkle in the old man’s eyes suggested he already knew exactly what it meant.

“Who sent them?”

“Why, Cartwright, of course.”

“What did they mean? That he’d talked to you?”

Cochran nodded. “Yes. Unfortunately, he was not as inclined as you were to follow the predetermined path. He strayed, so we had to rely on backup to bring him in. From the outset he knew the house was a ploy of some kind. He just didn’t understand the nature of it. Before he died, we asked him one question, and one question only. It concerned you, and he was most forthcoming.”

A chill spread like cold hands across Wade’s back. He jerked on his restraints, to no avail, and decided he might have to try dislocating his arm. “What was the question?”

Cochran stood and checked his watch. “I must be off. The day’s only a quarter done. I will, of course, check back in with you later.”

“Wait.” Wade tried to keep his voice calm, but it was getting difficult. The implications of what Cochran had said about Cartwright nagged at him.

“Yes?” Cochran asked, clearly amused.

“What did Cartwright tell you?”

The old man seemed to consider his answer, then smiled. “Something that proved that the host settings for each subject need tweaking because not every mind is the same, and the ability of a subject to repress memories may be stronger in some than in others.”

He nodded his farewell and walked around the table. In frustration, Wade tried to lunge at him, hoping at the very least he might be able to pin the scrawny old man down with his body weight if he timed it just right. But Cochran merely stepped aside and Wade hit the floor, still bound, the dirt floor rough against his skin.

“I’ll kill you, you know,” he promised. “When this is over—”

“When this is over, Wade, you won’t feel the need to harm anyone ever again. And I suspect you’ll be referred to as the project’s greatest success. They only gave us a month, you know. They gave us August, the hottest month, which suited us just fine. Nothing pushes a man closer to the edge than heat, and entrapment. I think we managed to recreate that scenario quite well, don’t you? The pressure, the panic, the cops, the backstabbing friend… ”

“The cops….”

“Actors.”

“I killed one of them. I saw it.”

“You saw a hologram. No cop would be dumb enough to stick his head out knowing you were armed. They would have waited for the SWAT team. You know that.”

He did, but it hadn’t occurred to him at the time. He’d been fighting to survive, to escape. Now it seemed he’d been feeling that way because it was how they’d wanted him to feel. They’d played him like a chump from the very beginning, and somehow that, above all else, enraged him. He began to thrash against his restraints, but only succeeded in making the ties slice through the skin on his wrists.

“While you’re waiting,” Cochran said, and he sounded farther away now. “It might do to ponder something else about this month that’s of personal significance to you. I must apologize in advance that we had to condense the experience into what’s left of it.”

He exited and a moment later, the lights went out. The indigo glow from the television screens was the only illumination in the room.

Behind him, Cochran’s voice: “Goodbye, Wade,” followed by the sound of a door closing.

He was alone.