Blackwater Files: The Immortal Keith Clinton, part 2
The Interview
Oh, the joy of technical difficulties. Due in no small part to some issues with my home recording software and the scheduling issues of the Christmas season, what was originally intended as an audio drama to follow up part 1 will now be presented as a more traditional tale to be included with the rest of Project Blackwater by .
Dr. Pleasance settled back in his seat. The leather and the metal of the well worn office chair creaked beneath his weight as he leaned back. He wasn’t a heavyset man by any means. A touch overweight perhaps, but no more than would normally be expected of a man in his early fifties. The creaks were more due to the fact that the chair was simply old, and as such it was appropriately uncomfortable, too. He often found himself shifting position in it as he conducted his interviews, causing his tapes to be peppered with creaks and groans.
Well, that wouldn’t be a problem after today, he supposed. The Doctor ran a final check of his equipment, one last look to ensure everything was working properly before he began. Satisfied that everything appeared nominal, he reached into his white coat and removed a personal tape recorder. The record button clicked as he depressed it, then he slipped it back into his coat to keep it hidden from sight. He didn’t want Dr. Karasevdas to know about the personal recordings he’d been taking if he could avoid it. After today, they might just be the only recourse he had left to continue studying Keith’s condition.
“Well everything appears to be in order,” Dr. Pleasance said. “I think we can finally begin the interview now. Keith, are you ready to begin?”
Keith nodded slowly, his chest still rising and falling as if he were asleep. Dr. Pleasance reached to a control board at his right. A series of switches, knobs, dials, buttons, and LEDs were laid out across its matte black surface. Most of the lights were off, but three of them gave off a soft green glow as he flicked their switches to ON. Descending from the ceiling around the life support station, three separate cameras were lowered on automated booms, each with a green light to match those above the switches glowing softly behind their lenses. The cameras were all trained on Dr. Pleasance and his patient.
“Okay, cameras are running and the mics seem to be picking us up,” Dr. Pleasance murmured. Then he sat back in his chair, took a deep breath, and began the interview.
“This is Dr. Samwell Pleasance, PhD, speaking on behalf of Elysium Pharmaceuticals. As usual, today I’ll be conducting a progress interview with Blackwater participant #34011-3, Keith Clinton. Good morning, Keith.”
Keith was silent for a long moment. The quiet air between them filled with the rhythmic beeps and hisses of his heart monitor and respirator. After nearly twenty seconds, Dr. Pleasance cleared his throat.
“Can you still hear me, Keith?”
“Yes,” Keith replied.
His voice was soft, breathy. He sounded as if he were on the verge of falling asleep, which wasn’t very far from the truth. The concoction that was fed into his breathing tube brought him into a particular state of lucidity, a sort of half consciousness that allowed him to be aware enough to understand and answer Dr. Pleasance’s questions, but wasn’t potent enough to actually pull him from his coma. At one point, the Doctor considered trying a more powerful dose to actually wake Keith, but chances were much higher that increasing the dosage would cause some sort of brain damage or may even result in suffocation. Rousing Keith from his coma would take more than a simple chemical concoction, not that it mattered now with the decision that’d been made.
“Good morning, Dr. Pleasance,” Keith continued. “How are you doing today?”
“I’m alright, Keith, thank you. Though, I’m afraid I’ve got bad news.” Dr. Pleasance sighed and leaned forward in his chair. Once again, it creaked beneath his shifting weight. “This will be our last interview together.”
Keith’s face twitched, an attempt at showing some kind of expression. They never worked. Something about the particulars of his comatose state made it impossible for him to display facial expressions beyond brief twitches.
“The last one?” he asked. “Does that mean I’ll finally wake up?”
There was a long pause, the silence filled once more with the hiss of the respirator and the beep, beep, beep of the heart monitor.
“Doctor?” Keith said. There was a tinge of desperation in his tired voice.
“I’m sorry, Keith, but I don’t know.”
Another pause, about half as long. Despite the familiar sounds in the silence, Dr. Pleasance could feel how much more tense this one was.
“You told me you’d be able to help me,” Keith said. There was an angry edge to his tone.
“I did, Keith, and I meant it,” Dr. Pleasance replied. “That’s why we’re going to conduct this interview as thoroughly as we can, to see if we can finally find a way to bring you out safely. Now, may we begin?”
“Yes,” Keith murmured. The slight sense of enthusiasm he began the interview with was gone.
“Let’s begin, then. We’ll go ahead and begin with the usual slate of opening questions, if that’s alright,” Dr. Pleasance said.
Keith answered in the affirmative and they began the usual checklist of introductory questions. Name, age, sex, marital status, living situation, surviving relatives, all were answers Dr. Pleasance was well acquainted with at this point. Keith Nathaniel Clinton, age 37, was an unmarried Caucasian male who worked a construction job. It was typical blue collar work, mostly involving things like putting up drywall, laying roof tiles, installing insulation, and so on. No real specialty to speak of in terms of his field. He also had no surviving direct relatives other than a younger sister from whom he was estranged. His parents both died within the last five years, his father from a rare strain of lung cancer and his mother from liver failure brought about by alcoholism after her husband’s death. Tragic, but hardly an unheard of story.
With the background information accounted for, it was time to go onto general memory and awareness. “Do you know where you are, Keith?” Dr. Pleasance asked.
“Yes,” Keith said.
“Can you tell me in detail?”
“Medical facility run by Elysium Pharmaceuticals.”
“And why are you here?”
“Volunteer in sleep study.”
“That’s right,” Dr. Pleasance said. “Your answers all match up with our information. I think we can move onto-”
“Should’ve been six weeks,” Keith muttered.
Dr. Pleasance frowned and looked at him. He’d never interrupted the interview process before. “I’m sorry, Keith?”
“Study should’ve been six weeks,” Keith said. “Instead, it’s been five months. I want to wake up.”
Dr. Pleasance pressed his lips into a thin line and cursed under his breath. This wasn’t a good sign. He’d need to proceed carefully. “I understand, Keith,” he began, but Keith wouldn’t hear it.
“No, you don’t!” he snapped, and a knot formed in the Doctor’s gut. Keith had never yelled during one of their procedures before. He’d never had the energy.
“I want to wake up!” he cried, “I’m tired of being stuck in this dream!”
“I know, Keith,” Dr. Pleasance said as diplomatically as he could. “We’ll do everything we can to get you out once the interview is finished. I’ve got some techniques that I hope will-”
“You’ve been saying that for months,” Keith hissed. His body started to tremble and Dr. Pleasance winced as a painful ringing started to echo in his ears. “It’s not good enough anymore! Your ‘hope’ isn’t good enough!”
“Keith, please calm down,” Dr. Pleasance said. He tried his best to sound calm, but he could hear the nervous edge in his own voice. It was just a small reflection of the unease that made his heart race in his chest. “I promise you, I’m doing everything in my power to get you back to us. Just as soon as we’ve finished our interview I’ll… what’s that sound?”
He wasn’t sure when it started, but Dr. Pleasance was sure he could hear something dripping behind him. He was about to turn around to see what it might be when Keith spoke up again.
“You know what it is, Doctor,” he said.
Yes, he did know, and the mere thought of it was enough to turn disquiet into fear. Dr. Pleasance realized that his breaths had become heavy, audible, and there was a tremor in them. That tremor carried over to his voice when he spoke. “Keith, are you saying that the tank has been ruptured?”
The tank in question referred to the sensory deprivation tank that sat closed on the opposite end of the room. Usually the patients were immersed in them when their dreams were induced, the better to maintain the integrity of the Lobby and the dreams they entered beyond that. However, lately there had been a spate of ruptures caused by errors and overloads. Cracks and splits in the tanks led to spills, and in many cases those ruptures appeared to be caused in areas where the tanks swelled, as if something overfilled them. The culprit of that overfilling was the same in every scenario, and as Dr. Pleasance peered over his shoulder at the leaking tank he prayed that he wouldn’t see the same inky substance leaking from it.
It wasn’t, but that only raised more questions. In the cases of all other ruptures, they occurred while the patients were still immersed. Keith wasn’t. He was laying on a hospital bed right in front of Dr. Pleasance. So how had the rupture happened?
As if in answer to the question he didn’t voice, Keith said, “Maybe you should see for yourself.”
Dr. Pleasance whipped around to face Keith again, his mouth open and starting to form the question, “What do you mean?” He never actually got to ask that question, though. All that came out was a gasp of surprise as his world went stark white, and then gray. The Doctor blinked rapidly, eyes darting back and forth as he took in his new and unfamiliar surroundings.
He found himself in a cold, steel gray room. Pipes, cables, and mechanical booms that ended in small and delicately articulated robotic clamps and medical tools lined and jutted from the walls around him. Almost all of them converged on a single object in the back of the room, an inverted glass jar with a metal bottom. It was some kind of encasement, and the pale blue human head he saw inside would’ve frightened him if not for the fact that every single thing in this room was marked with a black outline.
Keith emerged from behind the Doctor, stepping past him to look down at the severed head. Billows of cold mist hissed from the pipes and ribboned into wispy tendrils as Keith stepped through them.
“Keith, did you…” Dr. Pleasance’s words trailed off as he once more took in his surroundings. “Did you bring me into your dream?”
“What’s it look like to you?” Keith asked flatly.
“It, well… It honestly looks like you pulled me into a cartoon of some kind,” Dr. Pleasance said.
Keith nodded. “Yep. So, what do you think? Dream or reality?”
“Fair point,” the Doctor answered. “But how did you bring me here?”
“Describe it,” Keith said bluntly.
“I’m sorry?”
“For the recording. For your colleagues,” Keith said. “They can’t see what’s going on here. You’ll need to describe it for them.”
Keith was right. Dr. Pleasance went on to describe the scene aloud, down to every detail he could. As he did, the largely still scene started to move around him. The dim lights in the room brightened and what he presumed to be a lifeless head opened its bright red eyes as a door behind them hissed open. Turning around, he saw a shapely brunette woman in a lab coat and thigh length pencil skirt walking into the chilly room. Despite the fact their lips moved, there was no sound other than the hissing from the pipes.
“As I mentioned earlier,” Dr. Pleasance said, “it all looks like some kind of old cartoon, possibly from the 1990’s or the early 2000’s, I’m not entirely sure.”
“Batman Beyond,” Keith said.
“Excuse me?”
“The name of the cartoon is Batman Beyond. It’s before our time, but my Dad was a fan of the old Batman cartoons from the 90’s and 2000’s, back when he was a kid. So congrats, Doctor, you got the era right.”
Keith paused, pointing back to the head. When Dr. Pleasance began describing what he saw again, Keith bluntly told him to shut up.
“Look at the head, Doctor. That character is Victor Fries, or Mr. Freeze as he’s known by his villain name. I never read many of the old comics, but my Dad told me he used to be a generic bank robber who happened to have a freeze gun until the people who worked on the 90’s cartoon rewrote his character into a cryogenics researcher who froze his wife to try and keep her in stasis until the incurable illness she had could actually be treated.”
Keith started to pace around the muted scene as it played out again, continuing his explanation. “Thing is, Victor conducted the experiment on the time and dime of the company he worked for, and the ruthless corporatist who owned the company interrupted it. They get into a scuffle, he boots Victor into a table full of chemicals and they end up altering his body so that he can’t exist outside of subzero temperatures.”
Despite his still unsettled nerves, Dr. Pleasance couldn’t resist a chuckle. “That sounds rather farfetched to me, Keith.”
“Yeah, that’s superheroes for you,” Keith said with a shrug. “Important thing is, while he’s on his quest for vengeance, he starts learning some things. Even manages to save his wife’s life eventually, which would’ve been great for him if she didn’t abandon him after the fact. Ultimately that causes him to go full nihilist and he tries to freeze the world or something, I don’t remember. Regardless of what he did, in the end he turned out like this.”
One more, Keith pointed to the muted talking head behind him. Dr. Pleasance looked between them both, confused. What was Keith trying to get at? Keith must’ve understood the reason for his confusion because he grinned knowingly.
“Don’t quite get it, do you?” he asked. “That’s fair. Probably should let you hear it so you understand.”
Sound suddenly filled the space around them. The hiss of the pipes was joined by the mechanical whirr of the door opening, and then Mr. Freeze’s surprisingly baritone voice rang out. The scene repeated before the female doctor began to speak, replaying through the severed head’s speech on immortality and death.
“It’s certainly compelling writing,” Dr. Pleasance admitted. “Well acted for a kid’s show, too, but I don’t see what this has to do with anything.”
Keith scoffed and rolled his eyes. The scene went silent again as he did so. “You really still don’t see it, Doctor?” he said, his tone rich with a mockery that threatened to dig deep under Dr. Pleasance’s skin.
“Humor me, Keith,” the Doctor said plainly. “What are you trying to tell me?”
Keith shook his head. “Well that’s disappointing, but fine. I’ll spell it out for you.” The younger man paused, and his dark brown eyes locked on Dr. Pleasance’s. It made the Doctor feel like Keith was staring directly into his soul.
When Keith spoke again, he did so with a sense of genuine authority. “I know what you and Dr. Karasevdas and the rest of Elysium are actually doing,” he said. “I’ve seen it, over and over again. Where it leads. What it does to people. It doesn’t work.”
Dr. Pleasance was taken aback, though he did his best to hide that fact. “I’m not sure what you mean, Keith.”
“Don’t fuck with me, Pleasance!” Keith snapped. The dream space around them began to tremble, cracks appearing in the repeating animated scene as if they were spiderwebbing their way through glass. “You mother fuckers have kept me under for five goddamned months! What, did you think that just because I’m some blue collar schlub I wouldn’t be smart enough to figure it out? Well surprise, I did! I know all about Dr. K’s crazy plan and his Faustian pact with whatever the hell that Blackwater stuff really is!”
Dr. Pleasance felt the knot in his gut tighten again, but he wouldn’t let shock get the better of him. Standing upright, he slipped his hands into the pockets of his lab coat and sighed. “Fine, Keith. I won’t ‘fuck with you,’ as you so colorfully phrased it. But humor me, at least. This is our last interview, after all, and if you’ve figured that out then I’m sure you know what they really want me to do once this is finished?”
“Oh don’t worry,” Keith chuckled. “That part’s been obvious from the start. Even if I hadn’t heard them say they wanted you to pull the plug on me, I’d have figured it out on my own.”
This time, Dr. Pleasance found it impossible to hide his shock. “What do you mean you heard them?!” he barked. “How is that even possible?!”
“Just what the fuck do you think goes on here, Doctor?” Keith laughed. “You’re not just messing around with people’s heads, you actively linked their dreams together through that ‘dream lobby’ you guys invented. Did you brainiacs seriously not stop to think what might happen when you get a bunch of people traveling back and forth through the exact same space?”
He was at a loss for words, and not just because Keith was right. All this time, he’d never considered that passing people through the Lobby might cause it to act in some ways like a real world common room. He still had trouble even processing the possibility, and yet Keith was implying - no, he was explicitly stating exactly that! Was it true? Could he have overheard the dreams of others through the Lobby?
“How much did you hear?” the Doctor finally asked.
Keith’s grin widened. “I did a lot more than just hear, Doctor. I saw things, too. Even had the benefit of some first hand experiences.”
“Meaning, you were able to enter the dreams of other people through the Lobby,” Dr. Pleasance said, and Keith nodded in response.
“Last horse is finally about to cross the finish line, eh, Doctor?” he said mockingly. Then he threw his hands out as if presenting something and the cracked scene from the cartoon shattered, replaced by a decrepit, dimly lit, and ransacked version of the Lobby. “Yeah, I overheard and saw lots of stuff in here, and the more I did, the more I realized just how much further I could go. And how much more I could do.”
Keith walked over the elevator and wrenched open the scissor gate with a hard pull. The metal shrieked as it struggled to be moved, but it wasn’t the cry of metal on metal. It sounded more like someone’s pained wailing. Then the cable jerked and a loud bang echoed up from below. a moment later, the mechanical moan of the elevator sounded as it was drawn up.
“What are you trying to tell me, Keith?” Dr. Pleasance asked as they waited for the elevator to arrive. “When you say you found how much more you could do, are you suggesting that you found a way to expand the lucidity you have in the Lobby into your own dreams as well?”
“See, I’ll bet it’s that kind of clever deduction that got you that tenure at Johns Hopkins,” Keith said. “But that’s only part of it.”
Dust and debris fell from the ceiling as the elevator rumbled its way up toward the Lobby. Dr. Pleasance frowned as Keith stood by the empty shaft, tapping his foot impatiently. “The dreams of others in the program, too?”
“Getting closer,” Keith said.
The elevator chimed when it finally arrived, and as it did Dr. Pleasance’s eyes went wide. “No,” he breathed. “You can’t possibly mean…”
“Say it, Doctor,” Keith demanded as he stepped inside the elevator.
“The staff as well,” he muttered. “You’ve been able to access their dreams, too?”
Keith’s grin was harlequin-like in how widely it split his face. “That’s a bingo!” he shouted, grabbing hold of the lever that set the elevator floor and wrenching it off as if it were nothing more than a twig!
“That’s right, Doctor!” the younger main said as the space around them started to warp and deform.
It was like watching an old film reel burn away inside a too hot projector, only instead of giving way to white light, it revealed a forested seaside cliff drenched in winter rains. Soon that rain fell upon their heads and the air around them was filled with the crash and swoosh of ocean waves slamming and receding against the cliffs.
“How?!” Dr. Pleasance cried out. “When?!”
“You’re the doctor!” Keith said. “You tell me!”
The answer came easy to him. There was only one point at which that could’ve become possible, the sole instance during his studies of Keith’s brain patterns that stood out as unusual and unsolvable.
“Your plateau of brain activity,” Dr. Pleasance said. “That wasn’t your brain function becoming stagnant as you entered the coma, they were… you were leaving your body behind to explore other dreams!”
Keith laughed, almost as if he didn’t believe it himself. “Who’d have thought, right?” he said. “Ordinary, average, unimpressive Kieth Clinton with his dead end drywalling job and no girlfriend or close family to speak of! Picture perfect choice to perform deep dive experiments on because, hey, who’d miss me, right?”
The accusation came with a lance of fear that stabbed into Dr. Pleasance’s subconscious. It was foreign, and given the control someone with his knowledge should’ve been able to exert over his own mind within a dream space he should’ve been able to resist it. But it was overwhelming in its presence, and he immediately found himself paralyzed in abject terror.
“Now that’s unreasonable, Keith,” he spat out. “We were never trying to-”
“Bull shit you weren’t!” Keith’s voice boomed like thunder, and Dr. Pleasance recoiled, covering his ears. He felt like a terrified child hiding under his bed from a thunderstorm.
“Do you honestly think I’m too stupid to connect the dots here? You couldn’t have made this picture more obvious unless you called and told me that’s what you planned to do five months ago!”
“Okay, Keith!” Dr. Pleasance acquiesced. “But please, just calm down! There’s no need to-”
Suddenly, the raging torrent of rain halted, and Keith’s thunderous voice was calm again, as if they’d been speaking as old friends this entire time. “Whoa now, you look stressed, Doctor,” he said. “Hey, look, it’s okay. I know I came on a little strong but I promise, I’m not looking to hurt you or anything like that. I just… I need you to understand, well, just how little people like you and Dr. K and the rest of your medical staff understand what's really going on here.”
Dr. Pleasance took a deep and shaky breath, then slowly rose to his feet. He didn’t even realize he’d been curled up with his hands over his head. “Alright, Keith,” he stuttered, “please explain to me what you learned in that time.”
Keith went on something of a tirade after that, comparing the staff of Elysium to John Hammond and the scientists of In-Gen when they recklessly used their knowledge of genetics to recreate dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. He was particularly keen on painting himself to be akin to Ian Malcom, recognizing the danger of their apparent folly where medical professionals like himself or Dr. Karasevdas couldn’t. To say that didn’t make Dr. Pleasance angry would’ve been an understatement, but Keith’s focus was so squarely on laying into him from his perceived moral high ground that he’d let his control over that emotional spike he plunged into Dr. Pleasance’s subconscious slip. That left the Doctor with an opportunity to assert control for himself, one he wasn’t about to pass up on. He just needed to assert a position of control over this conversation first. Then, if he could get Keith on the back foot, he could start pushing against him.
“Okay, Keith,” Dr. Pleasance said, speaking up immediately after Keith tried to preemptively counter the idea that these studies were being conducted to create advancements in the realms of human medicine. “Why don’t you tell me what we’re really after, then, since you’re so sure you know the truth?”
This was it. Doubtless Keith would default to another tirade, and from there Dr. Pleasance would be able to use his knowledge to pick it apart piece by piece and assert control. But he didn’t. Instead, he gave the bluntest answer he could.
“The key to immortality,” Keith said. “It’s basically right there on that leaflet Elysium handed out to all the desperate people like me that Dr. K wanted to lure into this mad science experiment of his. Of course, he hasn’t had any luck with that. None of you have. You’ve been looking and looking, but you can’t find it. Although, I do know what Dr. K thinks it is.”
Dr. Pleasance scoffed. “Is that so?” he said. “And what would that be, exactly?”
“The Blackwater,” Keith said.
Shaking his head, Dr. Pleasance crossed his arms and laughed. “That’s nothing more than a byproduct produced by our sensory deprivation tanks,” he said.
“So that’s what they trained you guys to say about it,” Keith chuckled. “I’d always been curious. Well, that’s not what it is, and it’s not the key to immortality like Dr. K thinks, either. It’s more like the… antibodies of the collective subconscious. Well, that’s how I see it, anyway. It might disagree with me.”
Dr. Pleasance tilted his head in surprise, his brow furrowed. “It might disagree?” he repeated. “Are you implying the Blackwater is sentient?”
“No, I’m saying it,” Keith said. “The Blackwater’s sentient, and it’s not the answer Dr. K thinks it is. But…”
Keith paused for a long time, letting the anticipation linger. Damn it all, he was being played again! He needed to ignore it, to not engage. Dr. Pleasance knew that much! But it wasn’t so simple, not with curiosity gnawing at his mind. Had Keith truly figured this all out? Surely not. He had to be bluffing. And yet, he’d done things that Dr. Pleasance hadn’t heard of any other dreamer achieving. Could it be possible? He knew he should just turn away, ignore the obvious goading, but he couldn’t resist. He had to know.
“But?” he repeated, trying to spur Keith on.
“But I do. I found the key.” Keith’s unnaturally wide grin widened even more, making him appear more monster than man. “See, funny thing is, I spent so much time exploring everyone’s dreams from the Lobby - which, by the way, you really should rename as a crossroads or something. That’d be a lot more accurate. Anyway, I spent a lot of time exploring everyone’s dreams. Patients. Staff. You.”
What?! That was impossible! Dr. Pleasance swallowed nervously. “You’ve been in my dreams?” he asked in a shaky tone.
“Of course! Why do you think you were never able to figure out what I was doing?” Keith asked. “Once I figured out the answer I realized I couldn’t just let you keep doing things the way you had been. I mean, you’re one of the world’s best neurobiologists, you’d have figured me out in less than a day if I didn’t do something.”
Dr. Pleasance couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His head began to spin. This was impossible! The only way Keith could’ve possibly done what he was implying was for him to…
No. No, that couldn’t be done! And yet…
Dr. Pleasance was trembling. He almost couldn’t form the words he wanted to speak, but he barely managed. “Do you mean to say you’ve altered my memories?”
“Well, yeah!” Keith said. “I couldn’t just let you figure me out, so I started imprinting some false memories to override anything you learned that I didn’t want you to know. I figured it out on that first night my brain patterns plateaued. Tested it on… Oh jeez, what was his name? That druggie guy that was in here… Koen! That’s it!”
“You were the one responsible for his death?!” Dr. Pleasance barked.
Keith looked legitimately surpised by that. “What? Oh, no, that was all him. I just made him go a little, y’know, whackadoo. But that’s besides the point. What matters is while you were busy rooting around in my head trying to figure out the immortality thing, I was learning some new tricks of my own. Things like implanting and erasing memories, viewing memories, and instilling new behavior patterns.”
As Keith spoke, Dr. Pleasance’s ears began to ring. This was all impossible. None of it should’ve been remotely doable! Granted they were attempting to push the limits of human ability, unlock cures for disease and the secret of becoming immortal, but this was far beyond anything the doctors at Elysium could’ve anticipated! However, the more he heard and saw, the more Dr. Pleasance realized that it wasn’t a sense of the impossible that stopped him from accepting this. It was his own ego, his on beliefs in what he’d learned and been taught. He was of the foremost minds on the planet when it came to neurobiology, yet here he was, playing party to a man who was nowhere near his level of education but had managed to unlock secrets of the mind that he never would’ve thought possible.
And the more Keith spoke, the more Dr. Pleasance believed, because all the puzzle pieces were falling into place. Keith hadn’t been inactive, just hiding. The anomalies in his brain activity lined up with those that occur during vivid dream states. It was simply that the constancy of them caused that plateau to appear, presenting an oddity within the data that Dr. Pleasance couldn’t help but examine. He should’ve been able to figure it out. It was so obvious now that Keith had mentioned it! But if Keith really was toying with his own mind by blocking out the memory of these revelations, then of course he’d never be able to put the pieces together.
However, the picture was only complete once Keith told him about the ride he hitched. Dr. Pleasance wasn’t sure how to take his meaning at first, but a simple explanation was enough to make it clear.
The Doctor felt cold, and he knew he was going pale. His stomach tightened to the point he felt nauseous. He didn’t want to consider the implications of what Keith was telling him, yet he couldn’t help himself. Hitching a ride, Keith called it? What an awfully mundane name for stealing the control of someone’s body from them.
It was a recent discovery. By Keith’s own admission, he’d only figured it out within the last week. His test subject? None other than Ernie, the nurse who’d been assigned to him while Dr. Pleasance was away at his conference. As Keith explained it, he quietly inserted himself into Ernie’s subconscious during one of their extremely brief interviews. From there, it was all a matter of exercising his will over the nurse when his consciousness began to falter. Before Ernie had even fallen asleep, Keith had taken over, and taken his body for a nighttime joyride around Ernie’s neighborhood.
The blank spots in his memories of that night were excused with false ones that Keith implanted. A night of heavy drinking after dealing with that damned talking vegetable. Why wouldn’t the higher ups just pull the plug on him, already? Whatever. Rum and vodka and tequila were a great way to wind down after a day like that, and the perfect way for Keith to cover his tracks. All that was required come the morning was the feeling of a massive hangover. Easy enough, Keith just had to trigger the right impulses from Ernie’s brain and the illusion was complete.
Dr. Pleasance was looking right through Keith at this point. That he’d achieved so much in just a few months time was unfathomable. Worse still, it was terrifying. The rain had started again. It pelted them with cold, fat drops carried on a howling wind. The sea churned below them and beneath his feet, Dr. Pleasance felt the cliff crumbling away.
He didn’t fall. Neither of them did. They floated through that dreamscape together, the Doctor staring, the Patient laughing. Soon that laughter faded into silence, along with the churning ocean and the pelting rain. Then the world went dark. All sensation left Dr. Pleasance.
He was alone.
He was empty.
He was adrift in a void of subconscious nothingness.
Suddenly, he heard something, a distant and quiet sound that cut through the ringing in his ears that he didn’t know was there.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The heart monitor. Then there came the click and puff of the respirator, followed soon by the slow and rhythmic breath of the comatose body lying on the medical bed. In the background, barely audible above all of that, was the drip, drip, drip from Keith’s sensory deprivation tank.
But the strange thing was that while Dr. Pleasance could hear these things, he couldn’t see them. He tried to open his eyes, but they wouldn’t open. He tried moving his arms and legs, but they were weak and unresponsive. There came another sound, a quiet beep that was followed then by three clicks and a dull whirr. And then, a familiar voice.
“Well Keith, I’m afraid this is it,” he said, only it wasn’t himself speaking.
Dr. Pleasance could feel his heart racing in his chest! No. No! He couldn’t! His breathing grew faster and the heart monitor started to race!
“Okay, calm down now, Keith. Everything’s going to be alright.”
He felt movement next to his ear. Something hot and damp was blowing against it. Then his own voice whispered to him.
“I forgot to mention,” he said. “After I took my little ride with Ernie, I figured out how to make the switch permanent.”
He could scream! He wanted to scream! He wanted to thrash and fight, to kill that weaselly comatose bastard! He was going to steal his life!
Then he heard him laugh.
“That’s right,” he breathed. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do. Congratulations, Dr. Pleasance. You just figured out the key to immortality. Just too bad you won’t get to try it for yourself.”
Something clicked and he started gasping for breath. What had he done?! If only he could see! But he didn’t need to see to know. It didn’t take more than a few seconds for him to realize that the respirator had gone silent.
His lungs burned. The muscles in his chest ached. He tried to breathe, but he couldn’t. Keith’s body had atrophied too much. Second by second, consciousness faded, and just before it went out he heard a constant tone reach his ears.
His heart had stopped. The last thing Dr. Pleasance heard was his own voice spoken by a man that wasn’t him calling out for nurses that couldn’t save him.
All that research. All their work. They tried so hard to unlock the secret, to ascend from mortal men to immortal gods. It should’ve been them. Instead, it was a coma patient, a blue collar construction worker with barely any education to his name who figured it out. Stealing the bodies of others, what a ridiculously farfetched notion. Yet, that’s exactly what he did. As long as he could keep that up, then he really would become what so many men have dreamed of.
The Immortal, Keith Clinton.
Nite nite Doctor. Good one! I love a good body snatchin'
Wow.. amazing. Great buildup of intensity, and I love the way Elysium’s disregard for their “patients” has backfired on them.