Final Disposition (2 page)

      The brittle tree limb was lying perpendicular to the long axis of his boot trail, positioned almost exactly equidistant between two of the rapidly filling boot prints, and buried beneath eight inches of fresh snow.  All it needed was a moment of carelessness … a misplaced boot, lunging downward, then …

      SNAP!

      A sharp pain ripped through his ankle, causing him to scream out.

      He instinctively dropped down into a modified sprinter’s stance, his gloved hands and left knee braced against the compacted mass of frozen snow, ice and dirt that comprised the now-barely-visible trail … tensed against the possibility that the rest of the ground he was crouched on might suddenly give way.

      But it didn’t.

      So after a few moments, he brought his left foot forward and started to push himself up — to free his right leg — and the limb snapped again, in two places, creating a much more complex and interesting noise for the local forest dwellers.

      This time, he managed to contain his vocal reaction to a muted yelp of surprise.

      But, an instant later, the magnitude of his error flashed through his stunned mind.

      Oh, shit.

      The loud cry … and the surprised yelp; he wasn’t supposed to have done either of those things.

      He was supposed to have stayed as quiet as possible, because …

      Suddenly, off to his left in the rapidly growing darkness, he heard the sound of movement — a distant far-away sound, barely audible, but distinct nonetheless.

      And then, a moment later, another similar sound, equally distinct and distant, but off to his right.

      Grunting from the exertion, and ignoring the sharp pain in his ankle, he wrenched his trapped leg loose, and frantically hopped and scrambled up and away from the trail in the direction of a barely-visible mass of boulders on a nearby branching slope about thirty yards away.

      It was a steep climb up a rocky slope, almost a sixty-degree angle in some places.  The snow was falling furiously now, and the snow drifts were several feet deep in spots.  But he never wavered in his frantic, gasping determination to reach shelter, before …

      He didn’t know what ‘before’ meant … didn’t want to know.  And the feral creature in his brain that was very much alive – and intended to stay that way – wasn’t about to waste time with explanations.  It was very busy jamming the backpack into a small, concave depression etched by wind and rain and time into the base of a huge granite boulder … then pulling both of them into the remaining space … and finally reaching out and dragging a pair of recently broken Douglas Fir branches — still covered with tens of thousands of tiny green needles — over the mouth of the depression.

      As he lay there, afraid to move and barely willing to breathe, he could hear — and even see — the snow dropping onto the needle-filled branches, filling in the tiny spaces, and slowly creating a concealing blanket that grew perceptively thicker and colder and heavier with every passing minute.

      However, he didn’t care about the growing weight or the dropping temperature; both life-threatening issues, to be sure, but not imminently threatening.

      He was much too busy listening — with every fiber of his being — for the approach of something much more imminent … and far more dangerous.

CHAPTER 2

      
Colin Cellars had been alert to their presence for almost a half hour, ever since the loud grinding noises had brought him out of a deep sleep and up into a subconscious state of semi-awareness.

      The noises were loud, metallic, and seemingly random, like a piece of heavy machinery starting to tear itself apart.  His frontal lobes didn’t like the sound of that at all, and were prepared to initiate flight-or-fight commands to his relaxed muscles the instant the sounds became any more threatening.

      But his cerebellum, locked into the tonals, quickly detected an underlying and predictable sense of timing and rhythm that more interesting than threatening.  The cerebellum instantly fired a specific set of neural impulses, signaling the brain’s central reasoning and logic center that all was well … for the moment.

      Satisfied that the loud grinding noises were, in fact, non-threatening, the frontal lobes reduced that incoming data flow to a minimal volume, set it aside — knowing that the cerebellum would continue to monitor timing and rhythm — and looked for other inputs that might require analysis.

      They quickly discovered that the auditory cortex had been busy receiving and scanning a barely-discernable flow of words and sounds coming out of the two-way communication system built into the fMRI Unit — essentially an audio-link between the patient in the fMRI and the instrument operators in the separately-RF-shielded Console Room — for immediate relevance before placing them into temporary storage.

      The frontal lobes immediately accessed this second data flow, determined there were two male voices — one clearly authoritative over the other — and began to listen.

      “Did you see that?”

      “What?”

      “Synapse activity … right in the center of that temporal lobe lesion.”

      “I didn’t see anything … probably just noise.”

      “No, I’m sure I saw something.  I’m going to try shifting the background to black, see if that … there it is again!  See it now?”

      “You’re right.  Definite synaptic action … weak, but it’s definitely there.  It looks like he’s processing information in the middle of the lesion.  I’m printing that out now.”

      “Suddenly retrieving stored data, while unconscious, after — what? — three days of no activity at all?  What kind of sense does that make?”

      A hesitation — a beat — and the cerebellum instantly reengaged.  Timing was its game, and it was always happy to multi-task.

      “No, I don’t think he’s trying to retrieve stored data.  Look at the synaptic pattern.  It looks more like he’s processing incoming data.”

      “But in
that
area?”

      Another hesitation … longer this time.  The cerebellum heightened its focus.

      “He has some significant external head injuries.  We could be seeing some major re-wiring; a classic example of neural plasticity in action.”

      “Okay, but why would the re-wiring start in the middle of a lesion … and especially one of that magnitude?”

      Another long beat, the frontal lobes rapidly assembling relevant data as the cerebellum continued to share the complex groove of the faint signal source with the basal ganglia, its close associate in composing rhythm, tempo and meter.

      “So you’re saying his brain damage may be transitory; not necessarily permanent?”

      
That
got everyone’s attention.

      
Significant head injuries?

      
Lesion?

      
Permanent brain damage?

      
Shit.

      The frontal lobes were still in the process of crunching the data — seeking correlation and meaning from the stream of contradictory implications — when the easily-frightened auditory cortex panicked.

      An instant later, adrenaline began to pour into his bloodstream.

*     *     *

      Semi-conscious awareness — followed instantly by a flurry of discordant images, sounds and voices — burst across the expanse of his clouded mind like a salvo of fireworks rockets suddenly erupting across a blackened sky.

      He tried to make sense of the dizzying array of shapes and colors and echoing sounds, his frontal lobes demanding immediate and priority access to his hippocampus and interior regions of his temporal lobe as they desperately searched for the stored information — the personal memories — they needed to interpret the signals ASAP.

      But there was nothing there.

      Only blackness.

      Startled — and then deeply frightened — by a vast sense of emptiness never experienced before, his limbic system launched into action.  Thousands of fear-flight-related neurons fired in timed and pre-planned sequences.  The instructions were primitively simple: specific muscle groups were directed to move in a rapid and coordinated manner to get his brain — and the rest of his body — the hell away from the terrifyingly unfamiliar images
right now,
if not sooner.

      But that didn’t happen ... couldn’t happen.

      Instead, he became aware of a heavy and restraining — but not suffocating, as the cerebellum noted with maddening precision — membrane that seemed to encase his entire body.

      He tried to lunge upwards, snarling and fighting to tear himself loose, but he couldn’t move … couldn’t move at all.

      Stunned and ever more frightened now, the subconscious portion of his frontal lobes prepared to launch an even more desperate sequence of motor actions … but then hesitated when an abrupt surge of pain threatened to send him tumbling backwards into that dark-clouded semi-awareness from which he’d just arisen.

      The grinding noises suddenly stopped, and there was the sound of a heavy door opening … and then rapid footsteps.

      “Let’s get him out of here, now!”

      One of the early voices — male, young, with an underlying technical precision — his frontal lobes decided after quickly scanning the cerebellum’s unceasing input.  But the pitch was now shifted by a sharp, echoing and now-easily-discerned reverberation; the kind of effect generated by a medium-sized enclosed space with a lot of solid reflective surfaces.

      He felt his still-completely-encased body being lifted and then moved — horizontally and completely out of his control — into a discernibly larger space with a lot of softer and much more absorbent surfaces … punctuated by the sound of a heavy door closing with a solid CLACK.

      He tried to tear himself loose one more time, but to no avail.  He was completely trapped and helpless.

      Then, suddenly, a new voice — this one much softer, melodic, and soothing — penetrated the thick fog.

      “Don’t fight it, Colin!  You’re okay!  You’re safe … you’re not in any danger!”

      It was a familiar voice.  Timbre alone told him that.

      And it was also a safe voice.  Memory residing in a short-term storage area of his brain told him that; but there were no corresponding long term memory data that told him who or why or how.

      
I should know that
, he thought. 
In fact, I have to know that; it’s my job
.

      But he didn’t know who she was, or why she was designated as being ‘safe’, much less how he would know any of that.

      Hell, I don’t even know what my job is.  Do I have one?

      “It’s okay, Colin,” the voice repeated in a softer tone that sent a torrent of dopamine into his nucleus accumbens — the pleasure center of his brain.  “Just relax now.”

      “Feels good,” he whispered.

      “What feels good, Colin?”

      “Your voice.  Feels good … feels wonderful.”

      He willed his muscles to relax, feeling the oddly flexible but ultimately restraining membrane loosen slightly around his arms, legs and torso … and then gasped suddenly as another bolt of pain seared into his brain.

      “What’s the matter, Colin?” she asked, her voice sending another dose of soothing dopamine into the depths of his still-anxious brain.

      “That hurt.”

      “What hurt?”

      “Ankle … right ankle … better now.  Keep talking.”

      He felt a pair of hands pull a lower portion of the membrane away and take his bare right ankle in a firm, probing grip.  Warm soothing hands.  He could feel his nucleus accumbens humming with pleasure now.

      And
that
got his attention.

      
My what?

      He had been serenely aware — at least at a subconscious level — that distinctly separate portions of his brain had been performing their assigned tasks in a coordinated, inter-active and clearly discernable manner.  And his awareness of those activities had seemed perfectly normal and reasonable … at the time. 

      But the abrupt realization that he actually knew the scientific name of one of the three major elemental structures of his brain’s pleasure and reward system — much in the way he knew the names and functions of his hands and feet and knees — and was consciously aware of what that specific structure was doing in real time suddenly seemed … odd.

      
Am I supposed to be able to do that?

      He didn’t think so … but he didn’t have a frame of reference of what he was able to do, because
that
data had been stored in an area of his brain which seemed to have been — what? — razed?  Burglarized?  Emptied out?

      That didn’t make any sense either, and he tried to dig deeper into the problem.  But he kept on being distracted by the humming of his nucleus accumbens as the warm hands continued to gently massage his ankle.  It really felt good.

      
Don’t stop
, he thought contentedly. 
Keep on doing that … and that too
.

      “I can’t feel anything wrong with your ankle.”

      “Broken,” he pointed out, annoyed by the cold analytical tones that had suddenly intruded into her voice, hindering the flow of his favorite neuro-chemical.  “Felt it snap … should have stopped … but had to keep running.  No choice … had to.”

      “You haven’t been running, Colin; at least not for the past few days.  And there’s nothing wrong with your ankle.  See, I’m going to move it —”

      “No, wait — don’t!”

      He tensed against the expected lightning bolt of pain.

      “And it articulates just fine.  It’s not broken.  See —”

      He felt the warm hands manipulate his bare right foot around in a series of rotational motions.  No pain, just the delicious physiological and neurochemical warmth.  Felt even better now.  Wished he could remember what she looked like; but his hippocampus and temporal regions kept coming up empty.  No matching image for that wonderfully soothing voice.