Richardson looked down at his patient. “How are you feeling, Michael?”
“Is this going to be painful?”
“Not really. We’re using anesthesia for safety reasons. During the procedure, your head needs to be completely immobile.”
“What if something goes wrong and this injures my brain?”
“It’s just a minor procedure, Michael. There’s no reason for concern,” Lawrence said.
Richardson nodded to Dr. Lau and the IV tube was attached to a plastic syringe. “All right. Here we go. Start counting backward from a hundred.”
In ten seconds, Michael was unconscious and breathing evenly. With the nurse’s help, Richardson attached a steel clamp to Michael’s skull and tightened the padded screws. Even if Michael’s body went into convulsions, his head wouldn’t move.
“Map time,” Richardson told the nurse. Miss Yang handed him a flexible steel ruler and a black felt-tip pen, and the neurologist spent the next twenty minutes drawing a grid on the top of Michael’s head. He checked his work twice, then marked eight separate spots for an incision.
For several years neurologists had been placing permanent electrodes into the brains of patients suffering from depression. This deep-brain stimulation allowed doctors to turn a knob, inject a small amount of electricity into the tissue, and instantly change a person’s mood. One of Richardson’s patients-a young baker named Elaine-preferred setting two on the electronic meter when she was home watching television, but liked to turn her brain up to setting five if she was working hard to create a wedding cake. The same technology that helped scientists stimulate the brain would be used to track Michael’s neural energy.
“Did I tell him the truth?” Lawrence asked.
Dr. Richardson glanced across the room. “What do you mean?”
“Can the procedure damage his brain?”
“If you want to monitor someone’s neurological activity with a computer, then you have to insert sensors into the brain. Electrodes attached to the outside of the skull wouldn’t be as effective. In fact, they might give you conflicting data.”
“But won’t the wires destroy his brain cells?”
“We all have millions of brain cells, Mr. Takawa. Perhaps the patient will forget how to pronounce the word Constantinople or he might lose the name of the girl who sat next to him in a high-school math class. It’s not important.”
When he was satisfied with the incision points, Dr. Richardson sat on a stool beside the operating table and studied the top of Michael’s head. “More light,” he said, and Miss Yang adjusted the surgical lamp. Dr. Lau stood a few feet away, watching a monitor screen and tracking Michael’s vital signs.
“Everything okay?”
Dr. Lau checked Michael’s heartbeat and respiration. “You can proceed.”
Richardson lowered a bone drill attached to an adjustable arm and carefully cut a small hole in Michael’s skull. There was a high-pitched grinding noise; it sounded like the machinery in a dentist’s office.
He pulled the drill away. A tiny dot of blood appeared on the skin and began to grow larger, but Miss Yang wiped it away with a cotton swab. A neuropathic injector device was mounted on a second arm that hung from the ceiling. Richardson placed it over the tiny hole, squeezed the trigger, and a Teflon-coated copper wire the width of a human hair was pushed directly into Michael’s brain.
The wire was attached to a cable that fed data to the quantum computer. Lawrence was wearing a radio headset with a direct link to the computer center. “Begin the test,” he told one of the technicians. “The first sensor is in his brain.”
Five seconds passed. Twenty seconds. Then a technician confirmed that they were picking up neural activity.
“The first sensor is working,” Lawrence said. “You may proceed.”
Dr. Richardson slid a small electrode plate down the length of the wire, glued it to the skin, and trimmed off the excess wire. Ninety minutes later, all the sensors had been inserted into Michael’s brain and attached to the plates. From a distance, it looked like eight silver coins were glued to his skull.
MICHAEL WAS STILL unconscious, so the nurse remained beside him while Lawrence followed the two doctors into the next room. Everyone pulled off their surgical gowns and tossed them into a bin.
“When will he wake up?” Lawrence asked.
“In about an hour.”
“Will he have any pain?”
“Minimal.”
“Excellent. I’ll ask the computer center when we can start the experiment.”
Dr. Richardson looked nervous. “Perhaps you and I should talk.”
The two men left the library and walked across the quadrangle to the administrative center. It had rained the night before and the sky was still gray. The roses were cut back and the irises were dry stalks. The Bermuda grass that bordered the walkway was dying. Everything looked vulnerable to the passage of time except for the windowless white building at the center of the courtyard. The official name for the building was the Neurological Cybernetics Research Facility, but the younger members of the staff called it “the Tomb.”
“I’ve been reading more data concerning the Travelers,” Richardson said. “Right now, I can anticipate some problems. We have a young man who may-or may not-be able to cross over to another realm.”
“That’s correct,” Lawrence said. “We won’t know until he tries.”
“The research materials indicate that Travelers can learn how to cross over on their own. It can occur because of long-term stress or a sudden shock. But most people have some kind of teacher to instruct them.”
“They’re called Pathfinders,” Lawrence said. “We’ve been looking for someone to perform that function, but we haven’t been successful.”
They paused at the entrance to the administrative center. Lawrence noticed that Dr. Richardson disliked looking at the Tomb. The neurologist stared at the sky and then at a concrete planter filled with English ivy-anything but the white building.
“What happens if you can’t find a Pathfinder?” Richardson asked. “How is Michael going to know what to do?”
“There’s another approach. The support staff is investigating different drugs that could act as a neurological catalyst.”
“This is my field and I can tell you that no such drug has been developed. Nothing you take into your body is going to cause a rapid intensification of neural energy.”
“The Evergreen Foundation has a great many contacts and sources. We’re doing everything we can.”
“It’s clear that I’m not being told everything,” Richardson said. “Let me tell you something, Mr. Takawa. That attitude is not conducive to a successful experiment.”
“And what else do you need to know, Doctor?”
“It’s not just the Travelers, is it? They’re only part of a much larger objective-something that involves the quantum computer. So what are we really looking for? Can you tell me?”
“We’ve hired you to get a Traveler into another realm,” Lawrence said. “And all you need to understand is that General Nash does not accept failure.”
BACK IN HIS office, Lawrence had to deal with a dozen urgent phone messages and more than forty e-mails. He talked to General Nash about the surgical operation and confirmed that the computer center had picked up neural activity from every section of Michael’s brain. During the next two hours, he wrote a carefully worded message that was e-mailed to the scientists who had received grants from the Evergreen Foundation. Although he couldn’t mention the Travelers, he asked for explicit information about psychotropic drugs that gave people visions of alternative worlds.