Brainstorm Read online

  “Okay. Listen. I got to go to this damn meeting where I’m supposed to be this knight in ─ well in tarnished armor so I can save all our jobs. So why don’t you file everything away under ‘pending’ and we’ll leave it at that. Okay”

  “If you say so.”

  His voice was light hearted but she could hear the catch in his tone. See his sad and thoughtful face. Both felt a sense of foreboding. Of some impending tragedy. Vicky feared for Connie. Thought he might kill himself. And Connie? Well, he just feared everything. While admitting nothing.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  There was a crack in the universe. An opening into some kind of unfathomable void. Connie felt it even though he couldn’t quite put the sensation into words. It wasn’t just because of what Vicky had told him. What she had wanted to imply. Some other-world meaning to what he and the mystery disappearing man had thought they had experienced. He had felt it ever since that first night of the dream. A crack in rationality. Like an earthquake fissure. Only a hairline to begin with so the desire to know what lay below the crack and why it had opened up hadn’t formed yet. It was just this vague feeling that there was something out there. Out in the world beyond himself. It haunted him. Teased his doubting rationality. There was something in the darkness of this crack. Like the furies in Pandora’s box. Something he should be aware of but wasn’t. This sense of fear that seemed to be stalking him. Not so unreasoning if he believed he was going crazy or had a brain tumor. It was pursuing him. This fear. Hidden. But waiting. And every time he looked for it. Turned around when he was sure there was something or someone there. There was nothing but the sense that there was something or someone there. With every occurrence of the dream, the sensation had become stronger. That crack was opening up. Widening. Either in his head or in his imagination. It didn’t matter which. And one day, he was going to fall into that crack. And then it would be the end of him.

  These thoughts shivered his imagination in the elevator as it went down to the floor below.

  While he tried to shake off any significance that Vicky was trying to impress upon him. This coincidence. This mystery man’s similar hallucination. He couldn’t. It only widened the crack. Only convinced him that he had to put some words to these feelings. To get help to sort them out. Before it was too late and he lost complete control of himself.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “We got a problem here.”

  Connie, the CEO Suzuki and the three VPs who had been in the lobby with the CEO sat at one end of the conference table in the board room. Suzuki at the end because of his exalted position. The others on either side of the table. Connie hadn’t gotten around to ask for the team leadership. Suzuki had been grilling the VPs on the progress of their divisions.

  “Hal might not have been the brightest light bulb,” Suzuki went on, “but he knew enough about the DNA project that if he passed it along to the other players in the field. Well, we’d be in deep shit.”

  “How do you know he did that?” one of the VPs asked. Ethan Morris. Consumer products.

  “I don’t. But people don’t disappear without a reason. What do you think, Connie?”

  Connie shrugged. He didn’t want to get involved in the possible murky world of Hal’s disappearance.

  Nabil sat next to Connie. He head was hung over. Looking down at the table top. Like he was hung over. Connie gave him a glance from time to time. His eyes did. Not his head. (When Suzuki talked, he liked to see your head pointing in his direction.) Nabil certainly looked as if he was recovering from something. Dark circles under his eyes. Pale, almost grey lips. A face that looked as if it had been photoshopped into black and white.

  “Connie,” Suzuki said, “how much does Hal really know about what you’re doing?”

  “He doesn’t have to know anything. Everything we do is free for him to copy on a micro stick.”

  “Nabil. What do you think? You pal around with Hal. And you always have an ear out to what’s happening among the competitive bushes. Heard anything? Think he’d do that?”

  Nabil shook his head. “I don’t feel too good.”

  “I didn’t ask you how you feel, goddamn it.”

  All eyes were on Nabil.

  “Jesus, man,” Jackson Weller, VP of their European divisions, said. “What’ve you been doing to yourself? You look like shit.”

  “Yeah,” Nabil mumbled. “I feel like shit.”

  “Well, besides your death rattle,” Suzuki said. “Have you heard anything that might tie in to Hal’s disappearance?”

  “No.” He suddenly put his hands on either side of his head. “Fuck!” His face erupted into cascading perspiration. “I gotta go. I think I’m going to throw up.”

  “Damn it, Nabil. Can’t it wait?”

  But Nabil didn’t want to wait. He jerked his body out of the chair and stood up. His shaky legs nearly sending him into Connie’s lap.

  “Steady man.” Connie shot out an arm to keep him upright.

  Suzuki’s permanent scowl followed Nabil to the doorway of the room.

  There was a moment of silence after Nabil ran out. Contemplative. You didn’t leave in the middle of a Suzuki meeting. Not if you valued your job. Last fall, a new girl in Home Apps ─ the team leader ─ had excused herself halfway through the weekly debriefing meeting. Suzuki had immediately sent another girl to tell this new girl not to bother to come back to the meeting. So some of the contemplative thoughts were about Nabil. Usually one of Suzuki’s favorites. Connie wondered if he’d even have to ask for the team position. Maybe he’d get it by default. The two VPs wondered why Nabil had bothered to come to work if he felt so lousy.

  A minute went by. Then another. Suzuki scowled. The VPs exchanged glances when the CEO’s scowl wasn’t looking at them. Connie thought of Vicky and the news story and dismissed it. Wondered about it. And dismissed it a second time.

  “Okay,” Suzuki blurted out as if he had concluded something they were talking about. “Ethan. Go see what’s happened to Nabil. If he’s still throwing up, tell him to take some Pepto and get back in here.”

  Ethan left the room.

  Suzuki turned his scowl to Connie. “How long?”

  Connie was staring at the door. Not thinking about Nabil. But he heard the question. Even if he didn’t understand it. “Excuse me.”

  “How long before you can do something other than make a fucking bunny do something?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, damn it, you better be sure. The stock holders meeting is in June, two months from now. We got to have something to show them. Well?”

  “Well … I’m working on … I think I’m getting close to replication.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well … The code I’m working on can build a DNA molecule. Well, almost. That’s what I’m working on. That’s what we’ve been working on.”

  “So when?”

  Connie didn’t know.

  Suzuki waited for an answer. “I was against this from the very beginning. Too risky even if you could pull it off. I can see litigation into the next millennium if and when there’s a fuck up in a real patient.”

  “We’re not going to bring anything out until we’re sure. Until we’ve had extensive field trials.”

  Suzuki doubled his frown. “And when will that be? When we’re all dead and buried?”

  Connie didn’t know.

  “In the meantime, you and your team are eating up over fifteen percent of our overall budget.”

  “Sir. Mr. Suzuki.” Ethan was standing in the doorway. Suzuki directed his frown at him. “I can’t find Nabil. He’s not in the men’s room or in his office. He must’ve gone home.”

  “Shit!” Suzuki exploded.

  Connie didn’t know whether to be relieved or not. He didn’t want to become team leader. And didn’t want Nabil to be it either.

  14

  Something was not quite right. Everything and everyone seemed out of balance somehow. Out of kilter. And not just
himself. That’s what Connie thought as he took the stairs back up to the twelfth floor. After this morning’s elevator ride, he wanted to avoid the elevator. At least for now. At least until he had a moment to think about what wasn’t quite right. Just in case he had another episode. That’s what he had come to call his psychotic freakouts ─ episodes.

  He took the stairs two at a time. Not pausing on the landing between floors. In a hurry. He didn’t want to give the stairs the same chance as the elevator to induce another episode.

  He stopped on the twelfth-floor landing. In front of the door leading to the floor. To catch his breath. It had been a while since he had clambered up a flight of stairs. Not since his exuberant youth. He thought about that. Those first months in university. God, had he ever been that young? he asked himself as only someone in their late twenties would imagine lost youth.

  He took deep breaths and waited for his breathing to calm down. He didn’t want to enter the sanctum of the twelfth floor as if he had just run a race. He was Mr. Cool. That’s how he thought everyone thought of himself.

  But he wasn’t Mr. Cool now. He was on the edge of something that wanted to possess him. He had to get a grip on things. That’s what he told himself. Work would do that for him. That is, after his obligatory head-to-head with Marlene. She’d want to know what happened with him and the suits.

  He reached out his ID tag to press against the door lock and then suddenly felt that damn headache coming back again. “Shit,” he cursed. Whatever was happening to him, he wished at least it wouldn’t affect his head. And of course, with the headache came the sick stomach. So he added another wish. That these episodes also wouldn’t include nausea.

  He should have added paranoia to his wish list. For as suddenly as the headache arrived, he felt the sensation of being watched. That there was someone or something in the stairwell besides himself. Someone or something coming to get him. He listened for any sounds. Looked down the stairwell.

  “Anybody there?” he called out. Only his echo answered him.

  He went down to the mid-floor landing. Looked over the railing at the floors below. He could see no one. He closed his eyes and listened but the only sounds he heard were his deep breaths.

  He walked back up, looking over his shoulder ever few steps just to check.

  Crazy. This was what he meant by something wasn’t quite right. Not right with him. He made up his mind to see Evie at lunch time. To get the name of the doctor she had told him about.

  Once again, he reached out his ID tag to the door lock but stopped before he pressed it against the lock.

  There it was again. The sensation that there was someone behind. He held his breath and thought. Paranoid. That’s what he was becoming.

  All he had to do was turn around to end the sensation. He realized that. Either there was someone there or not. That’s what his rational-self told him. But he didn’t turn around. Not at first to confront this feeling that someone was behind him. Lurking. Staring. Watching. The sensation quivered his imagination so powerfully he couldn’t think. Just react. Like a prey animal. When he did spin around to face he knew not what, all his defenses were on alert. Like he had been cornered in a dead-end alley by a mugger.

  Naturally, there was no one there. That’s what logic had told him. That’s what his eyes could see. There was no one on the landing. He looked down the stairwell. Listened. There was no one there as well.

  Crazy!

  He smiled to himself. A sheepish smile. A grin to admit how foolish he had become. What he should do is get himself off to the hospital. Right away. He must have a brain tumor. That’s where his crazy came from.

  But right away wasn’t going to be soon enough. His hands flew to the sides of his head. Suddenly it began to hurt. Unbearably so. Heart rhythm pounding. Crescendos of unbelievable pain.

  “Shit!” The curse burst out of his mouth as if his breath wanted to escape his pain and fear. And that helped a bit. His curse. Strangely calming himself. The curse somehow able to fend off what he felt inside.

  He walked back up to his floor. He took off his ID tag and pressed it against the door’s lock. He had to get out of here. Take some pain killers and get himself to a hospital. Hell, he thought. He was not only losing his mind, he was becoming a junkie.

  Like the elevator to the twelfth floor, you needed the proper ID to enter from the stairwell. Only when he pressed the tag, nothing happened. He tried again. Went to turn the door handle. Nothing happened. The door remained locked.

  “Shit!” Then he remembered. Security had changed the stairwell lock code. He hadn’t gotten around to updating his ID tag.

  The two more “shits” that followed didn’t totally relieve his sense of fear. Of paranoia. It was still there. Below his conscious thoughts that were trying to put some logic to what was happening to him. But they helped. This was just another episode. And like the other ones, he’d get through it.

  Take some pain meds. That’s what he should do. Then get himself to the hospital. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.

  So. All he had to do, he told himself, was to go back down to a floor below that didn’t need a security ID tag. Then take the elevator to the lobby. Flag a taxi instead of driving himself ─ in case he began to lose control. And check himself in to Emergency.

  He took several deep breaths in hopes that they would calm his aching head. They didn’t. He started down the stairs. Not two at a time this time. One deliberate step after another. For now, with every step he took, his rational-self seemed to take a step backwards. Not quite up to the task of fending off this feeling of paranoia. As illogical as it seemed.

  Once more, he looked over the railing to the landings below. Just to make sure. Just to allay his fears. And once again, there was no sign of anyone. He heard nothing, either.

  The stairwell walls were plastered with faded wood wainscoting that long ago had lost its varnished sheen. Fluorescent light sconces flickered and hummed their sixty cycle pulses. Windows on the mid-floor and floor landings added grey morning light.

  On the eleventh-floor landing, he stopped. The pain in his head wouldn’t let up. He leaned on the railing for support. Looked over the railing, his mouth open in a vain hope that somehow it would release the pounding pain in his head. The sight made him feel dizzy. The only thing that threatened to come out of his mouth were the remains of his meagre breakfast. He leaned away from the view.

  Okay, he thought. Get a grip.

  He started down the stairs but stopped after a few steps. A nearby light suddenly sputtered out. Then what seemed like a dark cloud in the sky dimmed the brightness coming in from a window. Dimmed it so much, it looked like it was night outside.

  He automatically reached for the railing. He allowed himself a groan for his aching head. And then continued on down. Now more slowly.

  When he reached the tenth floor, it was dark there, too. No fluorescent light. Not any light coming in from the window. He leaned over the railing to look below. Carefully, for that still made him feel dizzy. (He had never been good with heights.) He could see nothing but darkness. Shit, he thought. The power’s out. That’s all he needed. But at least he hadn’t taken the elevator.

  Crazy, he thought for the hundredth time. Like everything about his life.

  How frightened can a person be? He thought he knew. There on the bridge. The woman banging on his window, repeating the dream girl’s words. Thinking he was being sucked up by some slimy substance. Believing he was becoming insane. How utterly horrified can a person become?

  He was about to find out.

  That hidden sense of paranoia surfaced once more. Only now, it had companions.

  Out of the blackness below. At first sounding like a rush of wind. A rustling of fall leaves. A whisper of sounds. Came a hissing sigh that grew louder and louder until it shrieked. And as it shrieked, it became a chorus of terrified voices. Human voices. Cries. Wails. Moans. Beseeches. They rose up from the darkness, as if ascending
one floor at a time. Spewing their sounds so violently, when they reached him, their force shook his body. Knocked him over. He lay on his back, his legs sprawled onto the steps below. His head pounding unmercifully. Pressed against the stair treads as if a great weight was on top of him. Threatening to crush the breath out of him. His head hurting so violently, it was like it was being struck over and over again.

  The darkness now was total. He couldn’t see his hand. And the wailing voices, they now seemed to be surrounding him. Circling around and around above his head. He had the thought, when his mind wasn’t shrieking in terror, that each voice had weight behind it. For they suddenly began to strike him. These voices. He could feel their jabs hitting his body every time a shriek came near him. But it wasn’t until he felt one of these alien shrieks actually enter his mouth that he truly knew terror. For now, he was shrieking without any control over what came out of his mouth. And along with his wail came this alien scream. Together. His and these demons. Both coming out of his mouth.

  He couldn’t move. Wanted to even as he continued to wail. While more of the invading shrieks entered his mouth every time he opened it up to scream. And with every invasion, he could feel their shrieks trying to capture his breath.

  “NO!” he managed to yell in between these chorus of shouts. The cry seemed to give him some kind of strength, for he somehow managed to get to his feet. To stand. While at the same time, his body trembled uncontrollably. He scrambled up the stairs to the next landing, slipping several times because he couldn’t make out the treads. The voices still pursing him. Still inside his body. Still shrieking out of his mouth. Beside himself with terror, he tried to rip his clothes apart each time he fell onto the steps. Tearing at them. Trying to reach his skin. To get at what was inside him.

  Somehow he found the door to a floor. He didn’t know which one. Hoped it wasn’t the twelfth. He yanked on the handle in a frantic effort to escape. Not thinking logically. Not thinking at all. Like a runaway horse fleeing a cougar. Flight not thought. Only the handle wouldn’t turn.