The Traveler

10

Dr. Richardson packed an overnight bag while Nathan Boone waited for him in the downstairs hallway. They left immediately and drove south to New York. When they entered Westchester County, near the town of Purchase, Boone turned onto a two-lane country road. The SUV rolled past expensive suburban homes built of brick and stone. White oak and maple trees dotted the front lawns and the grass was covered with autumn leaves.

It was a few minutes after eight o’clock when Boone turned onto a gravel driveway and reached the entrance of a walled-in compound. A discreet sign announced that they had arrived at a research facility operated by the Evergreen Foundation. The guard in the booth recognized Boone and opened the gate.

They parked in a small lot surrounded by pine trees and got out of the SUV. When they walked up a flagstone path, Richardson saw the five large buildings that filled the compound. There were four glass-and-steel structures placed on the corners of a quadrangle and they were connected to each other by enclosed second-floor walkways. A windowless building with a white marble façade was in the center of the quadrangle. It reminded Dr. Richardson of photographs he had seen of the Kaaba, the Muslim shrine in Mecca where they kept the mysterious black rock that Abraham had received from an angel.

“That’s the foundation library,” Boone said, pointing at the building on the northern corner of the quadrangle. “Clockwise from that is the genetic research building, the computer research building, and the administrative center.”

“What’s the white building with no windows?”

“It’s called the Neurological Cybernetics Research Facility. They built it about a year ago.”

Boone guided Richardson into the administrative center. The lobby was empty except for a surveillance camera mounted on a wall bracket. Two elevators were at the end of the room. As the men walked across the lobby, one of the elevators opened its doors.

“Is someone watching us?”

Boone shrugged his shoulders. “That’s always a possibility, Doctor.”

“Someone has to be watching us because they just opened these doors.”

“I’m carrying a radio frequency identification chip. We call it a Protective Link. The chip tells a computer that I’m in the building and approaching an entrance point.”

They stepped into the elevator and the door glided shut. Boone waved his hand at a gray pad built into the wall. There was a faint clicking sound and the elevator began to rise.

“In most buildings, they just use ID cards.”

“A few people here still carry cards.” Boone raised his arm and Richardson saw a scar on the back of his right hand. “But everyone with a high security clearance has a Protective Link implanted beneath their skin. An implant is a good deal more secure and efficient.”

They reached the third floor. Boone escorted Richardson to a suite with a bedroom, bathroom, and sitting room. “This is where you’ll spend the night,” Boone explained. “Sit down. Make yourself comfortable.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“It’s nothing to worry about, Doctor. Someone wants to talk to you.”

Boone left the room and the door clicked softly. This is crazy, Richardson thought. They’re treating me like I’m a criminal. For several minutes, the neurologist paced back and forth, and then his anger began to dissipate. Maybe he really had done something wrong. There was that conference in Jamaica and what else? A few meals and hotel rooms that had nothing to do with his research. How could they know about that? Who told them? He thought about his colleagues back at the university and decided that several of them were jealous of his success.

The door swung open and a young Asian man walked in carrying a thick green binder. The man wore a spotless white shirt and narrow black necktie that made him look neat and deferential. Richardson relaxed immediately.

“Good evening, Doctor. I’m Lawrence Takawa, the special projects manager for the Evergreen Foundation. Before we start, I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed reading your books, especially The Machine in the Skull. You certainly have come up with some interesting theories regarding the brain.”

“I want to know why I was brought here.”

“We needed to talk to you. Clause 18-C gives us that opportunity.”

“Why are we meeting tonight? I know that I signed the contract, but this is highly unusual. You could have contacted my secretary and arranged an appointment.”

“We needed to respond to a particular situation.”

“What do you want? A summary of this year’s research? I sent you a preliminary report. Didn’t anyone read it?”

“You’re not here to tell us anything, Dr. Richardson. Instead we want to give you some important information.” Lawrence motioned to one of the chairs and the two men sat facing each other. “You’ve done several different experiments over the last six years, but your research confirms one particular idea: there is no spiritual reality in the universe, human consciousness is simply a biochemical process within our brain.”

“That’s a simplistic summary, Mr. Takawa. But it’s basically correct.”

“Your research results support the philosophy of the Evergreen Foundation. The people who run the foundation believe that each human being is an autonomous biological unit. Our brain is an organic computer with its processing capabilities determined by genetic inheritance. During our lifetime, we fill our brain with learned knowledge and conditioned responses to different experiences. When we die, our brain computer is destroyed along with all its data and operating programs.”

Richardson nodded. “I think that’s clear.”

“It’s a wonderful theory,” Lawrence said. “Unfortunately, it’s not true. We’ve discovered that a fragment of energy exists inside every living thing, independent of the brain or body. This energy enters each plant or animal when they’re born. It leaves us when we die.”

Richardson tried not to smile. “You’re talking about the human soul.”

“We call it the Light. It seems to follow the laws of quantum theory.”

“Call it whatever you want, Mr. Takawa. I don’t particularly care. Let’s assume, for a moment, that we do have a soul. It’s in us when we’re alive. It departs when we die. Even if we accept a soul, it has no relevance to our lives. I mean, we can’t do anything with the soul. Measure it. Verify it. Take it out and place it in a jar.”

“A group of people called the Travelers are able to control their Light and send it out of their body.”

“I don’t believe in any of that spiritual nonsense. That can’t be proven in an experiment.”

“Read this and see what you think.” Lawrence placed the green binder on the table. “I’ll be back in a while.”

Takawa walked out and, once again, Richardson was alone. The conversation was so strange and unexpected that the neurologist didn’t know how to react. Travelers. The Light. Why was the employee of a scientific organization using such mystical terms? Dr. Richardson lightly touched the cover of the green binder with the tips of his fingers as if the contents could burn him. He took a deep breath, turned to the first page, and began to read.

THE BOOK WAS divided into five sections, each numbered separately. The first section summarized the experiences of different people who believed that their spirit had left their body, passed through four barriers, and crossed over into another world. These “Travelers” believed that all humans carried energy within their body like a tiger trapped in a cage. Suddenly, the cage door swung open and the Light was free.

Section two described the lives of several Travelers who had appeared during the last thousand years. A few of these people became hermits and went off to live in the desert, but many of the Travelers started movements and challenged the authorities. Because they had stepped outside the world, Travelers saw everything from a different perspective. The author of section two suggested that Saint Francis of Assisi, Joan of Arc, and Isaac Newton had been Travelers. Newton’s famous “Dark Journal,” kept hidden in a library vault at Cambridge University, revealed that the British mathematician dreamed he had crossed barriers of water, earth, air, and fire.

In the 1930s, Joseph Stalin decided that Travelers were a threat to his dictatorship. Section three described how the Russian secret police arrested more than a hundred mystics and spiritual leaders. A physician named Boris Orlov examined the Travelers held at a special prison camp outside Moscow. When the prisoners crossed over into other realms, their hearts beat once every thirty seconds and they stopped breathing. “They are like dead men,” Orlov wrote. “The energy of life has left their bodies.”

Heinrich Himmler, head of the German SS, read a translation of Orlov’s report and decided that the Travelers would be the source of a secret new weapon that could win the war. Section four of the report described how Travelers captured in occupied countries were sent to a concentration camp research facility under the supervision of the notorious “Death Doctor,” Kurt Blauner. The prisoners had sections of their brains removed and they were subjected to electroshock and ice baths. After the experiments failed to come up with a new weapon, Himmler decided that the Travelers were “a degenerate cosmopolitan element” and they became targets of the SS death squads.

Richardson felt no connection to the crude research performed in the past. People who thought they traveled to alternative worlds were suffering from abnormal activity in certain sections of their brains. Teresa of Avila, Joan of Arc, and all the other visionaries were probably epileptics with temporal-lobe seizures. The Nazis were wrong, of course. These people weren’t saints or enemies of the state; they simply needed modern tranquilizers and therapy to deal with the emotional stress of their illness.

When Richardson turned to the fifth section of the book, he was glad to see the experimental data was obtained using modern neurological tools like CAT scans and magnetic resonance imaging machines. He wanted to know the names of the scientists, but all that information had been crossed out with a black pen. The first two reports were detailed neurological evaluations of the people who had become Travelers. When these individuals went into a trance, their bodies went into a dormant state. CAT scans during this period showed virtually no neurological activity except for a heartbeat response controlled by the brain stem.

The third report described an experiment at a Beijing medical facility where a Chinese research group had invented something called a neural energy monitor. The NEM measured the biochemical energy produced by the human body. It showed that Travelers had the ability to create short bursts of what Lawrence Takawa had called the Light. This neural power was incredible, up to three hundred times stronger than the weak force that ran through a typical nervous system. The unnamed researchers suggested that the energy was connected with the ability to travel to other worlds.

Still doesn’t prove anything, Richardson thought. The energy overwhelms the brain and these people think they’ve seen angels.

He turned the page to another report and read quickly. In this experiment, the Chinese scientists had placed each Traveler in a plastic box-almost like a coffin-with special devices to monitor energy activity. Every time a Traveler went into a trance, an intense burst of energy was released from his body. The Light triggered the monitors, passed through the box, and escaped. Richardson searched through the footnotes, trying to find the names of the scientists and the Travelers. In each research report, a few words appeared like a casual comment at the end of a long conversation. “Subject returned to protective custody.” “Subject no longer cooperative.” “Subject deceased.”

Dr. Richardson was sweating. It was stuffy in the room; the ventilation didn’t seem to be working. Open the window, he thought. Breathe some cold night air. But when he pulled back the heavy curtains, he discovered a blank wall. There were no windows in the suite and the door was locked.