Sci-Fi-O-Rama presents the seventh installment of “A Colour Like Orange: Stories from a Broken World“, a series of interlocking stories from Toronto writer CG Inglis.
In this month’s story an amateur journalist meets with a former Institute employee who is eager to tell his story now that he’s found someone who might be crazy enough to believe him. He says his work at the Institute took him deep into other people’s dreams and into contact with something that lives on the other side. Something better left undisturbed.
Find out what lurks beyond in “The Canary“.
–
“The Canary”
posted 11:17 AM by @sadieslens
A week ago I received an email from a former employee at the Institute for Applied Research. He told me he had information about an experimental and potentially dangerous procedure taking place in the capital. More shocking than the allegation was the fact that he was making it; Institute personnel all sign non-disclosure agreements, but beyond that, the place has a reputation for inspiring fanatical, almost cult-like loyalty in its people. James is different. Regardless of the consequences, he wants this story told.
Currently living in the northern mines, he seems happy when I suggest holding the interview at his local in Northside. Born in the district, he is blessed with all its social graces, and he makes sure to introduce me around. “This is Sadie,” he says. “She’s a writer. She’s doing a story on the Institute.” Not once does he say I’m doing a story on him. He’s either modest, or hoping that his part in the story is over. Either way, he makes sure to sit with his back to the wall, and several times throughout the interview I catch him scanning the crowd over my shoulder. Despite his show of confidence, it’s clear something has him spooked. Given everything I’ve learned about the Institute over the years, I’d say he has every right to be paranoid.
–
James: So, welcome to Northside.
Sadie: Thanks. It’s actually my second time. I did a profile on a couple of the local DJs last year.
J: I’ll have to read that. A few of the guys I went to high school with are spinning now.
S: Tell me about growing up here.
J: Besides straddling the poverty line? [He laughs.] It was alright. None of us had much, but there were some good times. Things are different now. The district’s changing. Gentrification and all that. More artists than miners, these days.
S: How about your parents?
J: My mom died when I was young. My dad’s a miner. Both grandfathers too. Growing up in the tenements, that’s just how it was. Everyone knew someone who worked in the mines, and most of us figured we’d wind up there ourselves. Once I called it a family tradition. I must have been about thirteen. Dad didn’t like that much.
S: Why not?
J: Said he wasn’t breaking his back in the pit so I could follow him down. Told me to focus on school. He tried to turn it into a joke, but I could tell he was serious. I guess it made an impression.
S: You went to college in the capital.
J: On scholarship, can you believe that? Dad wore a tie to the graduation. After he got a couple beers in him I heard him bragging to a few of his buddies that at least his kid had gotten a real education. Maybe to him that meant I’d already made it. I don’t know what he pictured for me. Some white-collar job in an office. Maybe an admin role with the government. As far as he’s concerned, working in the mines is punishment for growing up ignorant. Dad’s felt exploited all his life. He wanted something more for me.
S: And when you got the job at the Institute, how did he react?
J: Said it beat mining. It was a long time before I told him what I really did there.
S: Since you left the Institute you’ve been pretty vocal about what you experienced, posting on social media, even contacting a number of other news outlets trying to get your story out there.
J: You’re the only one who responded.
S: Writing a blog has its advantages. For one thing, I’m free to choose the stories that interest me, but I’m curious as to why you want this one told. Aren’t you worried about a response from the Institute?
J: Like a call from their lawyers? I don’t mind talking to them, or in front of a judge. Doubt the Institute is interested in that kind of attention. It’s easier for them just to deny everything. Paint me as some kind of head-case.
S: I was thinking more about a response from their agents. I’ve been writing about the Institute for a couple of years now, and in my experience they do not play around when it comes to their intellectual property.
J: What they’re doing is dangerous. People have a right to know about it. If the Institute wants to shut me up, they know where to find me. They’re already having me watched. Noticed a few new regulars in the bar recently. Been shadowed a few times on my way home, but so far that’s as far as it’s gone, and I can handle being followed.
S: Let’s start with the experiment itself. What was your role?
J: I was part of a team working in people’s dreams.
S: You say that so matter-of-factly.
J: It was matter-of-fact. They sent us inside a subject’s dreaming mind and had us poke around for anything unusual. When we saw something, we tagged it. The technicians collected the data and sent the subjects packing. The next day we came in for a debriefing, and a few days later they called us back to do it all over again.
S: What constitutes ‘unusual’ in a dream?
J: You’d know it pretty quick. Even when they’re twisted, dreams have their own logic. But sometimes there was something else. A feeling, or a presence. That’s what they had us looking for.
S: Can you walk me through the process?
J: Every shift started the same way. We clocked in at security and changed into a sterile suit and boots upstairs. We all had our own changing room. They did their best to keep us apart. I never met any of the other taggers.
S: That’s what they called you, ‘taggers’?
J: It’s my word. Never really got a formal job title.
S: How did you get involved in something like that?
J: There was an ad calling for participants in an experiment. At the time, I needed the cash, and through sheer luck I wound up with the job. Anyone can be a subject, but not many are cut out for tagging. After running a few tests, the technicians found my brain is wired a little different than most. No surprises there, I guess. My dad would tell you the same thing, but he wouldn’t mean it as a compliment. Anyway, the Institute seemed pretty excited about it. They put me through a short training session, and I got started the following week.
S: You weren’t worried about the experimental nature of the work? Potential side effects?
J: I can’t say it was always smooth sailing. But you know how it is. It’s not so easy finding steady work. Besides, a lot of jobs are dangerous. Just ask my dad. This one wasn’t so bad. I guess if things hadn’t gone the way they did I’d still be there.
S: When did things start to change for you?
J: I guess it was when they assigned me that new technician. Those guys are on a regular rotation, and none of them worked with us for long. They all wore standard white jumpsuits and gloves. Surgical masks too, and that was the first thing I noticed when he came in. He wasn’t wearing his mask. It was the first time I’d seen a technician’s face. He had dark skin and eyes, and a bit of an accent, but besides the mask there was nothing so unusual about him. He led the way to the procedural bay and we got started.
S: What did the bay look like?
J: It was wide, with mirrored walls. They might have had people watching on the far side of the glass. There was a bank of computers and electrical equipment, two surgical tables with matching swing lamps, and the hub suspended from the ceiling.
S: The hub?
J: The hub was the port. The way into another person’s dreams. The thing was huge. Stretched all the way across the ceiling. Looked more like a slab of meat than a piece of technology. A few cables hanging from its sides, and every so often they let off a spray of mist to keep the surface moist. Once I heard a couple techs talking about how they’d grown it in a vat.
S: Did you notice anything different about it that day?
J: No, nothing. I just got up on the near table and made myself comfortable. There was the usual whine as the system warmed up. The clock on the opposite wall showed nine in the morning. Staring up at the hub I started thinking about my dad. He’d have been on his way down by then, taking an elevator into the pit. You know the Tanning Corporation, the company that owns the mines? They put on a show of worker safety, but accidents happen. The equipment they use is dangerous, ceilings cave in. Guys disappear down there. My dad would throw himself in front of a truck before admitting he was scared, but I could see it in him sometimes. When he left for work in the morning, there was always a chance he wasn’t coming back. But lying there under the hub, waiting to dive, I was almost jealous. Death at least makes sense. The things that can go wrong hooked up to that thing are a different class of problem.
S: Who was the subject?
J: A woman. They always seemed to pair me with a woman. The techs had it timed so the subjects were sedated and entering REM as they wheeled them in. This one was tall, maybe 25 or 26, and pretty enough it seemed like she should have been able to find a better gig. Maybe she was up to her eyeballs in debt. Who knows? You want to get a feel for the state of the economy, take a look at the number of people signing up to get experimented on.
S: And you entered her dream via the hub?
J: Through the cables attached to it, yeah. These were long and thin, like crawling vines. Rust-coloured, almost orange. Once the girl was up on the table the techs got to work attaching the soft end of a cable to her forehead. Then it was my turn to get hooked up. The cables were all weirdly fleshy. The soft end felt like having a filleted fish on your head. When the tech was satisfied, he looked at me and I gave him the go ahead. He pressed a button on his tablet and I dove in.
S: What was it like?
J: It’s hard to describe.
S: Take your time.
J: Well, a room has four walls right? It’s got a floor and ceiling. Six interlocking surfaces, that’s a room. In a dive, all of that sort of detaches. The joints come undone, the floor and ceiling are the same thing, the walls line up, and meanwhile you’re nothing. You’re nowhere. A pair of eyes watching the angles flatten.
S: How did it feel?
J: Good question. A little like a backwards fall I guess. Everything sort of rushes away and when you get it back you’re somewhere else. I came to on a beach. No sand, just a strip of volcanic rock. Waves beating against the shore. A little ways off was the subject. She was squatting by the water, dressed in a black hoodie and jeans. I walked over to see what she was looking at.
Under the water was a pinkish blob. It was maybe the size of a kid’s fist, and covered in hairs or little veins. Didn’t look like any animal I’d ever seen, and more importantly it just felt wrong. You asked about unusual? This thing was it. You have to keep in mind that when you dive, the subject is everything. They’re literally all around you. In this dream she was the girl in the hoodie, but she was also the beach and the ocean and everything else. It was her dream. She made it, so it was all made of her. You follow me?
S: I think so.
J: But this thing in the water was different. It wasn’t a part of the subject. Felt that as soon as I laid eyes on it. It came from outside, and the girl was just as confused as I was.
S: What did you do?
J: My job. I tagged it.
S: How does that work, exactly?
J: It’s a kind of mental trick. Tagging’s not exactly hard, but like I said, not many people are built for it. In my case, I could look at something in a subject’s dream, and if I concentrated hard enough it would pass right through me and into the hub. The worst part is that you can feel it going down, like swallowing a half-chewed bite of steak. A lump of data working its way down your throat.
S: So anything you tagged was cut out of the dream?
J: No, only the data got tagged. The ‘signature’, the techs called it. The actual dream object stays put. I must have tagged dozens of objects, but I could tell right away this one was different. It was worse somehow, nastier. The meat was rancid maybe, and it took awhile to swallow. The weird thing was I could have sworn the girl was waiting on me to finish.
S: Was she?
J: I’m not sure. The subjects weren’t supposed to be aware of us. Taggers were ‘observational principles rather than participants’, at least according to the techs.
S: None of the subjects ever noticed you?
J: This one did, eventually. But at that point she was more interested in the thing in the water. The hairy lump of flesh. She reached out to grab it. Soon as she touched it, all its hairs or veins or whatever sort of shivered. She brought it out of the water. I could see its back rising and falling, like it was breathing. Then she put it behind her ear.
S: What?
J: Like a piece of jewelry. And the thing was happy about it. Once the girl got it in place, all its veins started spreading out, working their way through her hair. The whole time the girl just sat there with a frozen look on her face.
S: She didn’t react?
J: She was pretty out of it. I’d seen that kind of thing before. People shutting down in a dream, letting things happen to them. It was always a response to something from outside the dream.
S: What happened to her?
J: Nothing, at least not at that point. The thing just made itself comfortable behind her ear. Meanwhile the girl got up and started off down the beach. I walked a little ways behind her. There was hardly any sound. Not everyone dreams the same way. Some are louder than others. This one was like a muted TV. I could barely hear the waves. Not that the volume mattered, especially. The girl just kept on walking. She was headed for a gray hill, or mound in the distance. We were almost on top of it before I realized it was a beached whale. Looked like it’d been there awhile too. Rotting skin, and deep cuts in its sides with the blubber spilling out. Bad vibes all around. Something was definitely off, but by then we weren’t alone anymore. A group of men showed up from the opposite direction.
S: Men?
J: I counted 11 of them. They were wearing robes. Long ones, with the hoods up so we couldn’t get a look at their faces. And they were carrying torches. Nothing about this looked good, but the subject just stood there and waited. This was her dream. Like I said – twisted but logical. The men were there to burn the whale. She knew it, and so did I. She’d put the torches in their hands, dressed them up in robes. But there was something more, that presence again. It was stronger now. I couldn’t see it, couldn’t have told you where it was, but I knew it was there. Maybe the subject felt it too. She had her arms wrapped around her chest and her mouth clamped shut. She was scared.
S: You think she knew something was wrong?
J: Maybe. Dreams are strange. A lot of emotion there. The Institute was working on a theory that the dreaming mind could operate as a sort of membrane. Meaning our dreams are permeable. The techs running the training session kindly explained that word to me, ‘permeable,’ ignorant Northsider that I am. I’d rather they told me what they expected to pass through. Because think about it – if your dreams are a membrane, what’s on the other side?
James signals our waiter for another beer. I’ve barely touched my own. Coming here, I’d resolved to take everything at face value. Through the course of my work, I’ve spoken to a number of employees at the Institute about what goes on there, but James is the first who was willing to go on record. The question is, how much of this story am I prepared to believe? As he continues, I can feel my thoughts growing looser. I’m drifting along in his current. Our waitress has been by our table three times already, checking up on our drinks. Maybe she’s just enthusiastic about customer service. Or is she trying to listen in on our conversation? If the dream world is a membrane, how different is waking life? Paranoia is a virus, and I may already be getting sick.
S: I’m curious about what you think the Institute was hoping to accomplish by all this.
J: No idea. Maybe they were hunting something. Maybe they built the hub and wanted to see what it could do. No one ever bothered explaining it to me. Why would they? It was all above my pay grade.
S: Did you tag the men in hoods?
J: No. They were just dream constructs. They made a semi-circle around the whale, and then they lowered their torches. I mean they had this thing down, like they’d been practicing for weeks. 11 torches lowered in the exact same moment. There was a hiss as the flames touched the whale’s skin. Pretty soon they had a blaze going. A huge column of smoke went up and drifted over the water. Beside me, the subject was shaking her head. She was in a bad way by then. You could almost taste her fear. But my eyes were glued to that thing behind her ear. Its veins were getting longer, working their way over every inch of the girl’s head.
Next thing I know a huge chunk of skin is falling off the whale. Its ribs were showing now, and you could see all the way into its chest. Right down to the heart. The thing was massive, with veins as thick as my arm, and it was beating. The whale was definitely dead, but its heart kept on pumping. Looked a lot like that thing behind the girl’s ear, to be honest. Bloody, covered in veins. Pumping away inside a burning whale. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Not until the girl started screaming.
He shakes his head. Like most people from Northside, James is a good storyteller. They’re raised on stories here. Go to any bar in the district and you’re sure to hear a few. Narrative is bound up in the fabric of the place, and a part of James has been enjoying this. But now he stops. After a nervous glance around the room, he takes a rough swallow of beer and wipes his lips with the back of his hand. He is not looking at me. He seems a long way off.
J: Her screams were hard to take. They were piercing, loud enough to hurt my ears, and the sound was coming from everywhere, not just the girl. The beach, the water. Her screaming shook the dream, and at the same time the thing behind her ear was beating against her skull. Pounding in time with the whale’s heart. There’s no question the two were connected. The girl dropped to her knees, tearing at the veins in her hair. The men in robes just watched her. I thought her skull was about to crack open. I didn’t have time to think. I reached to rip the thing out of in her hair.
They’d warned us. The techs, over and over again. Warned us about direct contact with a subject. It was supposed to be dangerous, and worse for the techs since it tainted their data. But her screams must have rattled me. I couldn’t leave her like that. I put one hand on her shoulder and with the other I grabbed the thing in her hair and pulled. The veins just twisted tighter. It wasn’t about to give her up so easily. Then I realized the girl was looking at me. She could see me, and blood was pouring from her ear. Her eyes were begging me to help. Somehow I managed to tear the thing off her. She collapsed like she’d had her strings cut. The thing in my hand was still moving. Its veins were around my wrist. There was a sharp pain and just as the dream crashed I felt the thing burrow inside me.
S: Inside you?
J: Under my skin. When I came to on the table my arm was throbbing. I had to claw my way back from the dive. It was like trying to swim in mud. When my vision finally cleared, I glanced at my arm, but there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with it. The tech was busy at the computers. The other two were unhooking the subject. They wheeled her from the room before I could get a good look at her. I thought her eyes were open.
It wasn’t the first nightmare I’d tagged. It was a bad one, and there was the pain in my arm, but I told myself it was fine. The hub was still hanging there. The room hadn’t changed. The clock on the wall showed quarter to ten, and there was a bad taste in my mouth. A blend of metal and rotting fruit. I forced myself to sit up. The tech finally got around to unhooking me. He asked if I was alright. That was off too. Debriefings were done with research, never the techs. He’d get everything he needed from the hub. I told him I was fine. Once I was sure my legs wouldn’t give out underneath me I got off the table and left.
S: You said you felt a pain in your arm. Was that normal?
J: It wasn’t exactly surprising. Sometimes there were residuals after a dive. A feeling like being watched, or the colours in a room might be off. Brighter. Some hallucinations. The techs said it was nothing to worry about. It wasn’t until I got on the train that things went bad.
S: What do you mean?
J: The train was packed. I was crammed in there between a business man and a mother and her kid. It was hot in the car, and I was sweating. My throat was dry. I had to hold onto one of the ceiling straps to keep upright, and the pain in my arm was getting worse. I noticed the kid staring. She was maybe 7 or 8. Her eyes were huge. She kept tugging on her mother’s skirt, pointing at my arm. I looked up. Sure enough there a vein was bulging under my skin. A big one, fat as a worm. I jerked my arm back. The woman beside me gave a scream as I stepped on her foot.
All I could think of was getting out of the train. An announcement came on saying we’d reached Coniston station. That was close enough. I pushed through the crowd at the doors and squatted on the platform with my back to the wall. I must have looked crazy, sitting there with my eyes screwed shut and my hand pressed to my arm. After a while the pain died down. Now it was more of an itch, like a bad mosquito bite. I forced myself to look. Something was there, under my wrist. A small bump, and I could have sworn it moved. I balled my hand into a fist, stared across the tracks and counted to ten. When I looked again the bump was smaller. At least it had stopped moving. I could almost pretend it was gone.
I decided it was just a residual. I’d never had one that bad, but what we were doing with the hub was experimental. Like you said, there were bound to be side effects. Besides, I’d touched a subject, and they warned me never to do that. It made sense for this dive to be worse.
S: You didn’t tell anyone about it?
J: Sure. First thing I did when I went in the next morning. But the woman running the debrief didn’t seem worried. So what if there was an itch in my forearm? Skin itches sometimes, that’s all. Except that it got worse. By the end of the day I’d scratched myself raw. I popped a few antihistamines before switching to pain killers. I couldn’t sleep. I wrapped a wet towel around my arm and started drinking to take my mind off things. I was halfway through a bottle of whiskey when I was interrupted by a knock on the door. The tech from my last session was standing in the hall. Must have gotten my address from the Institute’s records. He was upset, and barged his way into the apartment before I could stop him.
S: Who was he?
J: Just a tech. Said he’d been working for the Institute for years, on all kinds of different projects. He was born on the low continent, and when the Institute announced they were looking into dream research he put in a request for a transfer. Dreams are a big thing on the low continent. Something to do with their religion. Never had much time for religion myself, but now I’m not so sure. This guy knew enough to pay attention, which is more than anyone else can say. Told me he’d seen something off in the data from my last dive. The equipment was calibrated to measure all kinds of stuff. They monitored our heart rate and body temperature. Checked our weight after every dive. According to the tech, I was around a hundred grams heavier than before I’d gone in.
That was enough for me. I showed him my arm. The bump was there, pulsing, just under the skin. If anything it was bigger than before. The tech looked like he wanted to be sick. He said I must have brought something back.
S: Back from the subject’s dream?
J: That’s right.
S: Is that possible?
J: I wasn’t going to argue with the guy. Not with this thing in my arm throbbing like it had a pulse. Whatever it was, wherever it came from, I wanted it gone. I had the technician help me cut it out.
S: You did it yourself?
He lifts the sleeve of his shirt. Running from his wrist almost to the elbow is a ragged scar. I have seen this before; he sent me a photo before we met, but a picture is one thing, and seeing it with my own eyes is something else. I can feel my mouth going dry.
S: The tech warned me not to go to a hospital. The Institute is plugged into every database in the city. Soon as they heard I was in there they’d send someone around to collect me. Like you said, Institute security is no joke, and I didn’t much like the thought of having them poking around inside me. I guess I wasn’t thinking too straight by that point either. I told the tech to grab an old box cutter from the closet. One of those plastic knives with the disposable blades. Been there since I moved. The tech and I did the thing together in the bath tub. He had me get in while he got a bucket and some towels ready. You saw yourself what we dug out.
In his initial email, James sent me four pictures. One was of the scar. The second was a close-up of his bloody arm. The wound was fresh, the skin held back by another pair of hands. These must have belonged to the technician. Bulging from the incision was something that looked like a mollusk or sea cucumber. Its back was covered in thin spines, or hairs, all of which had burrowed deeply into the flesh.
The third shot was centered on a bucket. Resting in a puddle of blood at the bottom was the thing they cut from James’ arm. The thing he claims to have seen lying under the waves in another person’s dream. An alien thing, twisted and misshapen.
The last photo was again of James’ arm. Inside the wound were dozens of what looked like tiny soap bubbles. These were eggs, he tells me. Whatever they’d cut from his arm had laid them there.
S: I can’t imagine going through something like that.
J: It wasn’t pretty, but we washed the eggs out and cleaned the wound as best we could. The technician bandaged me up and now that it was done we thought we could risk a hospital. The doctors did some tests, ran a few x-rays. Everything came back negative. They assumed I’d tried to kill myself. Put me on suicide watch. When I got out the tech was long gone, and someone had gone through my apartment. The bathroom was spotless. No trace of blood or any eggs or the thing we cut out of my arm. It was like it never happened. Probably Institute security. I guess the technician could have called them in, but I doubt it.
S: How can you be sure?
J: I’m not sure of anything, but why would he bother showing up at my apartment on his own? If he wanted to, he could have brought the agents in from the beginning. I don’t think he trusted them any more than I did. The higher ups don’t care about religion. Dreams might have been sacred to the tech, but to the Institute they’re just another exploitable resource.
S: Has anyone from the Institute tried to contact you?
J: I got a letter from a lawyer informing me I was in breach of contract. They mentioned ‘inappropriate interaction with a subject.’ I took that to mean I was done.
S: They never sent anyone around, never called you in for an examination?
J: Not officially. Maybe they got everything they wanted back at my apartment. Or like I said, could be they’re watching us right now. Taking a good long look to make sure I don’t show up with any more scars.
S: What did your father say when you told him all this?
J: He doesn’t believe me. Not about the scar, or the thing we pulled out of my arm. None of it. As far as he’s concerned, I got my head screwed up in some clinical trial that went bad. He’s angry. Said he couldn’t believe I’d worked that hard in school just to turn myself into a canary.
S: A canary?
J: Like in the mines. The old timers used to bring birds down to test if the air was toxic. That’s how my dad sees me now. As a canary in a coal mine.
–
When James contacted me looking to tell his story I did a little digging. The Institute confirmed he’d participated in an experimental procedure, but refused to tell me anything about it, citing confidentiality agreements. I spoke with a professor of neuroscience at the capital university, and he rejected out of hand the possibility of the technology James described. According to him, not even the Institute for Applied Research has the resources or expertise it’d take to build something like the hub.
I also had the pictures James sent me analyzed. There was no sign of digital tampering, but that doesn’t preclude the possibility that they were faked. Then there is the matter of James’ family; his mother was diagnosed with severe depression and hospitalized on several occasions for self-harm. Using a box cutter, she took her own life when James was 11 years old.
They have a saying in Northside: ‘It’s realer the second time around.’ What they mean is that to tell a thing, to turn it into a story, is to give it life. Since my interview with James, I haven’t been sleeping well. I lie awake for hours, just staring at the ceiling. I think of James or someone very much like him lying under the hub, waiting to dive. I picture the subject on the opposite table, a young woman with money problems who wouldn’t think twice about signing over her privacy and the content of her dreams to a corporation. I picture the thing James ripped out of his arm, and the eggs he described, those little pustules of life he brought back from another world. As a writer, it wasn’t until I started covering the Institute that people took me seriously. In some sense, I owe my career to the place. The Institute is a massive entity, and its tentacles extend into every facet of our lives. From government legislation to consumer goods, its influence is undeniable. Could that influence one day extend as far as our dreams? When it comes down to it, maybe the reason I’m not sleeping well is because I’m afraid. Afraid of what I could encounter in my own dreams, and all the things that might be waiting to follow me home.
–
Visit us again next month for “The Night Blossom“, the next installment in “A Colour Like Orange: Stories from a Broken World” by CG Inglis.
Follow CG Inglis on Twitter @viscereal
The post The Canary: Fiction from CG Inglis, Part 7 appeared first on Sci-Fi-O-Rama.