He tried to shift his focus to the task he needed to accomplish today.
Killing the doctor.
Honestly, he had no idea why the old man needed to die, but he doubted it was revenge, which left the most common reason you would hire someone like Glenn — the guy knew something he was not supposed to know.
Perhaps something to do with Akinsanya, the man who seemed to be behind everything? The one who’d connected his employer with him in the first place?
Glenn wasn’t sure.
It was too much to think about.
He closed his eyes and disappeared into the swirl of euphoria and irritation and adrenaline that the wound and the OxyContin gave him.
Dancing pain.
After a long moment he drew in a breath that seemed to be made of liquid air, opened his eyes, collected himself, and pulled out the manila folder his employer had given him, then flipped through the sheaf of papers until he came to the doctor’s schedule.
Personally, he would’ve preferred taking care of the old geezer this morning while he was asleep in his cabin, get the photo of the body, and get out, but for whatever reason the man who’d hired him wanted it done this afternoon at three, during the doctor’s office hours.
Just another odd demand in a series of odd demands. This guy was obviously used to micromanaging his people, and Glenn did not like being micromanaged.
He was tempted to leave a message that he was going to take care of this assignment on his own time frame, in his own way. But admittedly that might not be the most prudent way to get paid, so although it was tempting, Glenn decided to stick to the original plan.
Three o’clock this afternoon.
Tanbyrn’s schedule: the doc would begin the day at his cabin, get breakfast at the dining hall, head to the Prana building for a meeting with the people in his research study, then spend the rest of the morning and the early afternoon working with them before heading to his office from two to six.
Where he would die.
At three.
Yes, there might be other people in the building, but the place had a state-of-the-art design, and considering the method Glenn was leaning toward in regards to taking out the doctor, he was sure that collateral damage wouldn’t be a problem.
Well, okay, not sure, but at least reasonably sure.
Glenn tried the guy’s number again.
Still nothing.
Alright. Enough.
He’d gotten a pretty good look at the couple in the chamber, and he didn’t figure it would be that hard to hack into the LRC’s computer files, see if they showed up on any surveillance footage, see if—
So then why’d you even go there last night, Einstein? If you could’ve just hacked in? Why did—?
The anger he was feeling at himself was eclipsed by the subtle shift in the way he was experiencing his limbs, his legs, his hands, the stab wound in his thigh.
It felt like the drugs were beginning to wear off. He was tempted to take more OxyContin but was hesitant to do so. He needed to be on top of his game today.
Focus.
See if you can find the files, then find out who those two people are.
Start with the staff and current retreatants — that shouldn’t take too long — then move out from there.
Focus.
He went to find his laptop to see if he could hack into the Lawson Research Center’s video surveillance archives. To find this couple he’d decided to kill for free.
A little pro bono work.
Two photos to add to his collection.
The Cane
The interview and pretest procedures take longer than I expect and end up chewing up most of the morning.
As time passes, three more couples come and meet with other research assistants, but Philip stays with us.
I’m getting frustrated that things aren’t moving along more quickly, and by 11:30 I’m seriously annoyed and wondering why all of this couldn’t have been taken care of before we came to the center.
A few minutes later, Serenity enters the room, pushing a cart containing our lunch — coffee, a platter of fresh fruit and veggies that I imagine were probably grown here at the center, and vegetarian subs on gluten-free bread.
I eat quickly.
Just as I’m finishing, Dr. Tanbyrn arrives.
He looks like he’s in his early eighties and walks with an elaborately carved cane. He’s bald with a grizzled beard, wears thick, out-of-style trifocals and thrift-store clothes, and has a dusty, professorial look about him.
At first I catch myself thinking that he doesn’t dress anything like a Nobel laureate should dress, but then I’m struck with the thought that he’s wearing exactly what I would expect an eighty-year-old physics genius to wear.
After a cordial greeting and some genteel small talk with all four couples, Tanbyrn spends some time reviewing the study’s procedures, most of which Charlene and I are already familiar with. And, frustratingly, some of which Philip had already gone through earlier.
I want to ask Dr. Tanbyrn about the center’s connection to RixoTray, who the assailant from last night might have been, or what he might’ve been looking for, but I know that if I bring up these issues with him at all, it’ll need to wait until we’re alone sometime after the test. After all, I’d have to admit that Charlene and I were sneaking around the Lawson building after hours, and after hearing something like that, it would be reasonable for him to demand that we leave the center.
When my wandering attention shifts back to him, he’s in the middle of a sentence. “… so quantum waves are not elementally trapped in space and time as we are — or at least as we appear to be. Because of this, because of their entanglement with each other, even though they might be separated by time or distance …”
“They really aren’t separated at all,” one of the men interjects.
A nod. “Quite right. One thing is certain in quantum physics: the more we learn, the more we realize how little we know; and subsequently, the less sure we are of ‘knowledge,’ the blurrier the lines become between our understanding of animate and inanimate objects, our definition of life, our understanding of what it means to be alive. And the more mysterious the universe seems.”
The woman next to me looks reverently at Dr. Tanbyrn. “It’s so mystical, so spiritual.”
“Beneath the veneer of the visible is an entirely different sphere, a fabric of dimensions and reality that holds this physical, observable one together. I am not by any means the first to explore this inexplicable quantum entanglement — this nonlocal connection between subatomic particles — but my research does lean in a slightly unique direction. Here at the Lawson Research Center, we are looking at the matter that those particles make up. In this case, organic matter.”
“People.” It’s the woman beside me again. “To see if they’re entangled.” She giggles lightly, then corrects herself: “If we are.”
“Yes,” Tanbyrn replies. “Although I perhaps misstated myself. I’m not just looking at how people might be entangled or connected, but how their awareness of reality might be. In other words, how one person’s individual consciousness might nonlocally affect another person’s awareness, thoughts, or physiology.”
There it is. The crux of the whole matter.
He announces that Charlene and I will be the first couple to do the test, then takes us to a side room and meets with us privately. “Have you decided who’ll be the first sender and who’ll be the first receiver?” His voice is aged and faltering but also kind, and he reminds me of my grandfather, who died when I was still in my teens.