The Theta Patient (3 page)

There were no results. Not a
single one. Not even misinterpreted results. Not even a result for
a man falling over drunk during a festival at Burnley Park. Not
even something about fireworks being set off there during a
holiday. Absolutely nothing.

Outside his window, an AeroCam hovered
by.

Pain began throbbing behind
Bradburn’s temples. He checked the history of his internet browser,
then clicked on the line that would take him back to the kid’s
blog. The site didn’t appear. Instead, a gateway error popped up on
his screen, telling him that the webpage he was trying to access
was unavailable. He tried the librarian’s page. The same error
message appeared. The third page, belonging to the guy who went on
and on about The Da Vinci Code, was also gone.

Do you believe in time
travel?

Is the world a better place today
than it was a hundred years ago?

If you could go back in time and
change any event, what would you change?

Closing his eyes and leaning back
in his chair, he knew all of this could only mean one thing: the
tyranny had seen something it hadn’t liked. And now, because of
that, all evidence of whatever had happened was gone. The only
remaining proof, as the Tyranny would think of it, was one of his
three new patients.

The next morning, no amount of
coffee could keep Bradburn from yawning. After reading the
questions Agent Cooper had given him, after seeing websites
disappear in front of his eyes, he hadn’t been able to sleep. It
didn’t help that his wife was snoring by the time he got home.
Without her, he didn’t have anyone he could talk to about what had
happened. Instead, he had remained awake, thinking about Agent
Cooper, the Tyranny, and the three new patients.

Those were the things he tried to
keep his focus on. However, he couldn’t help but let other thoughts
creep in: the questions he was supposed to ask each man, accounts
of people seeing a flash of light above Burnley Park and of a man
falling out of the sky, websites being there one moment and then
not being there the next moment.

None of it made sense. Why would
the Tyranny go to the trouble of erasing something so unrealistic
as a man falling out of the sky? Weren’t there more important
things for them to focus on?

One idea kept sneaking into his
thoughts. It seemed absurd, but it was the only answer he could
come up with. Based on the Tyranny’s own questions, based on the
attention they were giving these three new patients, only one
explanation made sense: time travel was possible. Not only that,
but the Tyranny didn’t want anyone to know about it. Instead, they
wanted to capture the individual who had fallen out of the sky. And
that meant the Tyranny wasn’t behind the event. If it wasn’t them,
there was only one other group who could have been responsible. The
Thinkers.

Do you believe in time
travel?

Is the world a better place today
than it was a hundred years ago?

If you could go back in time and
change any event, what would you change?

The Thinkers had figured out time
travel. And they were doing it, Bradburn guessed, so they could go
back in time and make the world a better place. It all led to one
conclusion: one of his three new patients wasn’t from this time but
was from some point in the future.

It seemed crazy. Every bit of his
analytical, scientific mind told him it wasn’t possible. People
didn’t just fall out of the sky. Time travel certainly wasn’t
real.

And yet the Tyranny thought it
was, and the Tyranny controlled what people knew. He began to have
the sneaking suspicion that maybe he knew less about what was
happening around him than he realized.

These were the things he had
thought about all night, and also when he finally got out of bed in
the morning without having slept a minute. They were the things he
thought about when he set up the camera according to Cooper’s
directions. And they were the things he thought about as he met
with each new patient for the first time, asking each man the
questions he had been given. When the interviews were over, he went
back to his office, closed the door, and thought about it some
more.

Almost immediately, though, his
door opened. Agent Cooper was there. Bradburn blinked over and
over, unsure if he had fallen asleep or if Cooper had coincidently
been near the hospital at that exact moment. Or, knowing the
Tyranny, maybe it hadn’t been a coincidence at all. Maybe one of
the Tyranny’s AeroCams had alerted the agent that Bradburn had
finished his interviews and was returning to his office. Or maybe
someone on his staff was paid by the Tyranny to report everything
that happened at the hospital. With the Tyranny, there was no
telling how much they knew or the measures they would go to get the
parts they didn’t know.

“
Doctor,” Agent Cooper said,
sitting down without waiting for an invitation.

“
Agent Cooper, nice to see you
again.”

Cooper snorted, knowing no one
looked forward to seeing him appear in their doorway while he was
wearing the black suit of the Tyranny.

“
How’d it go?” Cooper
said.

“
Fine. It went fine. I did
everything the way your instructions asked.”

Cooper waved away the remark, seemingly more
interested in Bradburn than in watching the taped
interviews.

“
Anything you want to say?” the
agent asked.

“
Uh,” Bradburn said, not sure what
Cooper was looking for. “They all seemed normal enough. For mental
patients, that is.” And then he gave a soft laugh but quickly
stopped when he saw the agent wasn’t entertained in the
least.

“
Anything else you want to
mention?”

Cooper asked the question from
behind sunglasses he still hadn’t taken off and that covered any
sense of emotion the man might otherwise have had.

“
Uh, well, none of them seemed
dangerous.”

“
Dangerous?”

“
Yes,” Bradburn said, thinking he
had stumbled upon something the agent might approve of. “Not a
danger to themselves, nor to others.”

“
To others?”

“
Well, yes,” Bradburn said, no
longer feeling the urge to yawn, feeling as if he couldn’t possibly
be more alert and awake. “I mean, I wouldn’t feel uneasy about one
of my nurses being in the same room with them, unattended.” He
didn’t want to say anything else, but when Agent Cooper only stared
at him, he added, “It’s hard to imagine one of them may be a
Thinker.”

The Tyranny’s man leaned forward.
With the thumb and index finger of one hand, he took off his
sunglasses.

“
Is it hard to imagine?” Cooper
asked.

“
Yes?” Bradburn said, but it came
out as more of a question that an answer.

“
Thinkers would destroy this
country if they could. They would do away with the Tyranny. Change
our entire way of life.”

“
Yes.”

“
They hide in the shadows because
they’re radicals.”

“
Yes,” Bradburn said again, even
though everyone had heard the horror stories of what the Tyranny
did with people it didn’t like, knew it was more sensible to hide
than be tortured.

“
But then again,” Cooper said,
“I’m speaking to someone who also likes to hide things. Am I
right?”

At that exact moment, another
AeroCam hovered past the window of Dr. Bradburn’s
office.

“
I don’t know what you
mean.”

Bradburn tried to smile—a way of
showing the agent that this must all be some sort of mistake. His
face betrayed him, though, and instead of looking happy, he could
hear the fear in his voice. The fear that must also be displayed in
his eyes and on his mouth.

“
You don’t like to hide things? I
guess you just didn’t feel like telling me you did some extra
curricular research into your new patients, right?” The agent shook
his head in disappointment. “I gave you a chance. I asked if you
had anything you wanted to tell me.”

“
I don’t... I—”

Cooper shook his head again and
Bradburn understood that he was supposed to stop
talking.

“
Did you read anything interesting
last night?”

“
Last night?”

“
Don’t make me ask you again,”
Agent Cooper said.

“
I... read about a flash of
light... in Burnley Park.”

“
Is that all?”

“
And a man falling out of the
light.”

“
And?”

“
And he climbed down from a tree
and disappeared.”

For a few seconds, Agent Cooper
did nothing but stare at the doctor. Just when Bradburn thought the
man from the Tyranny was going to reach across the desk, grab him
by the neck, and strangle him to death, he was surprised by a
completely different reaction. Cooper burst out laughing. He didn’t
just smile or give a polite grin. He laughed as if he were
listening to a comedian’s best material.

“
Do you hear yourself?” the agent
said. “You sound absolutely crazy. A flash of light? A man falling
out of the sky? That’s hilarious!” Then, just as quickly, Cooper
stopped laughing, rested his chin on a closed fist, and in a
completely emotionless voice, said, “It is crazy,
right?”

“
Of course,” Bradburn said. “Of
course it is.”

“
Good. And the next time someone
from the Tyranny asks you a question, don’t try to hide
anything.”

“
Of course not. Rules are
rules.”

“
Exactly. Now then, let’s start
watching the interviews.”

Bradburn plugged a cord into the
side of his laptop, then reached over and turned on the television
in his office. Everything he could see on his computer was also
visible on the television screen for Agent Cooper to
view.

“
How do you want to do
this?”

“
One question at a time,” the
Tyranny’s man said. “Play a question and answer from the first
patient, then the same question and answer for the second patient,
and so on.”

Bradburn clicked on all three
interview files so he could alternate between them. Before starting
the footage of the first interview, he looked to Cooper to make
sure he should proceed.

The agent said, “One more
thing.”

“
Yes?”

“
Before we start, do you think you
know which patient is the Thinker?”

Bradburn frowned. “It never even crossed my
mind.”

“
I told you one of the three men
is a danger to the Tyranny, a radical, and you weren’t concerned
which one it might be?”

“
I’m just so used to trying to
treat my patients as they come in. I guess I accept their behavior
for what it is.” When Cooper groaned in disbelief, Bradburn added,
“Which one do you think it is?”

“
Oh, I don’t think,” Cooper said.
“I already know which one.”

The doctor was about to ask why
they were going to waste time watching the three videos if the
Tyranny already knew which man was the Thinker. Bradburn had
already had to cancel three appointments that morning because of
the supposed Thinker. The last thing he wanted was to miss a fourth
and fifth. But he was also intrigued. As good as he thought he was
at treating mental ailments, he hadn’t picked up on whatever the
agent had figured out. If the Tyranny had ways to differentiate
between a man pretending to be crazy and a man who really was, he
wanted to see it for himself.

More importantly, though, was that
this was what Agent Cooper wanted. That was all that really
mattered. It was the old adage of being told to jump and
responding, “How high?” If the Tyranny said they needed to know
what everyone was saying and doing, you asked how you could help
them monitor your calls and emails. If they said they needed to
take your valuables during routine searches, you asked if they
would also like to take your watch. Bradburn never complained with
any of these things. After all, rules were rules.

On the television, an unshaven,
dark-haired man appeared. This was Anthony Station, the first of
the three patients. Following Agent Cooper’s direction, only
Station was on camera, sitting at a table that showed him from the
waist up. On the table was a small black box with wires protruding
from it. The wires ran to a set of five pads that each patient had
been told to slide onto their fingertips. The interview had been
conducted in a small room without any photographs on the walls.
Nothing but the table, two chairs, and the camera.

Doctor Bradburn’s voice could be
heard off camera as he read the very first question: “Have you ever
been to Burnley Park before?”

Station squinted in confusion.
“Burnley Park?”

“
Yes.”

“
Burnley Park?”

“
Yes.”

Station muttered, “Yeah, doc. I
was abducted there one time. By aliens. Mean things. Vicious. They
did experiments on me for ten years before they returned
me.”