Dr. Kheira Virell picked up her coffee, took a drink, and made a face at the cold, bitter taste before swallowing and putting the mug down beside the stack of printouts on her desk.
She picked up the printout at the top of the stack and held it alongside last week's data, comparing the two columns of numbers. The pulse intervals of the object in TR-000 had fallen from 3.8 to 3.1 in seven days.
*Eleven weeks of acceleration now.* She put the printouts down and rubbed the back of her neck.
At that moment, one of the neural cartographers at the monitoring stations along the left wall of the room stood up from his computer, stretched, and turned to say something to the Dreambound operative at the computer beside him. The Runic Resonators along the back wall of the room hummed steadily, their sound blending in with the drone of the room's cooling systems, and the Sympathetic Resonance Array stood by, its indicator lights amber.
Dr. Virell stood up, pushed her chair back, and walked across the room to the magnetically suspended vacuum chamber at the room's center.
In the chamber, the object in TR-000 spun very slowly, held by the magnetic field. It was a brass ring, slightly oxidized, with no markings of any kind. The display of the sensors at the base of the chamber showed the rhythmic pulse of the object, rising and falling in regular cycles of 3.1 seconds. She knelt down to check the thermal display, noting that the surface temperature was fluctuating in the pattern that correlated with the lunar cycle, and stood up to peer into the chamber at the ring.
It had been recovered from the body of a man named Elias Reed three years ago. He was a data analyst at the time. His body still lay in stasis today with no signs of decay. *Three years and no decay,* Virell thought to herself as she watched the ring complete its slow rotation. *And this thing still pulses like a heart that forgot it was supposed to stop.*
She had proposed her theory two years ago, shortly after being appointed Head of the Dreambound Division. Fifteen years of studying oneirology and ten years of studying memetic linguistics had given her a good education in the difference between a dead signal and a sleeping one. And TR-000 was not dead. The rhythmic pulses, the thermal fluctuations, the correlation with REM patterns throughout the world. She had written all of this down and submitted her paper to the board. They approved her continued research. That was thirty-three sync sessions ago. She turned and walked to the harness station at the far end of the room. One of the neural cartographers looked up from his work as she passed by. He set his pen down and leaned back in his chair. "You're going in again?" "The intervals dropped another tenth," Virell said, pulling her hair back and securing it with a band from her wrist. "It's been four days. Protocol says five." He picked his pen back up and began tapping it against his notepad. "Eleven consecutive weeks," Virell said, stopping at the platform and looking at him.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose but said nothing more.
With that said, Virell stepped onto the platform and raised her arms. Two Cognitive Wardens stepped out from either side of her. The first one picked up the Dreamscape Stabilizer helmet from the cradle, while the second one prepared the Neural Sync Harness leads.
The helmet came down onto her head, the padding pressing against her temples, cold and firm. The EEG sensors made contact with her scalp as they encircled her forehead. While the helmet was being placed on her head, the second Cognitive Warden connected the Neural Sync Harness leads on her arms and torso, as well as the Cognitive Hazard Filter against the base of her skull. The neural mesh tingled faintly as the mesh came into contact with the skin behind her ears.
"Baseline capture," the first Warden said, consulting his tablet screen. "Her heart rate is sixty-seven, her respiration is fourteen, her EEG is nominal, and the CHF is active."
Virell closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
"Activate the Resonance Array," she said. "Begin induction."
The Sympathetic Resonance Array came to life, the hum of the machine rising to a higher pitch. A low-frequency vibration entered her senses through her teeth and sinuses. Her body felt heavy, the sounds of the lab fading away with each breath as they blended together to become a single tone.
"Sync target is TR-000, designation: The Hollow Loop, classification: TR-X Exoform," she said, her voice sounding as though she was in the next room.
"Mirroring," the first Warden confirmed.
And then nothing.
She was in a "place", Grey and featureless, without temperature, texture, or boundaries. The anteroom, that's what they called it here. Of course she'd been there thirty-three times before, and it was always the same: empty and weightless.
She waited.
Not long after that, her heart began to slow, syncing with some rhythm outside of her own that she could feel but not quite hear. And the grey around her began to take on mass, as if the emptiness was filling with something too fine to see.
She followed the rhythm down into it, and pressure built behind her eyes as she felt herself being drawn forward into something that resisted her passage. The CHF prickled at the base of her skull, filtering the signal.
The Sympathetic Resonance Array activated.
She didn't see it, but she felt it: a sudden expansion of the sync space, as if a door had opened somewhere in the grey emptiness. The beat stumbled for a single beat before picking up an increased pace, and her heart climbed with it.
"Heart rate seventy-four," a Warden's voice said from far away. "Climbing. CHF holding."
Something was on the other end of that sync-space now, not a face or a voice or an image, but the awareness of a consciousness focused with an intensity she could feel pressing against the edges of the sync-space. Whatever it was, it was completely and utterly caught up in whatever it was doing, completely unaware that she was even there.
She moved in closer, and a sharp pain entered her left temple.
Then the echo came through.
The line must be perfect.
Virell's breath caught. The words were not her own, and there was nothing else attached to them, no emotion, no image, no feeling of being observed, merely the single-minded focus of a mind dedicated to precision.
The line must be perfect.
The words repeated once, softly, and then the presence was gone, the pulse resumed, and the pressure in the grey space dissipated until there was nothing left.
"Dropping," the Warden said. "Seventy-one. Sixty-nine. Stabilizing. CHF nominal."
Virell's eyes opened.
The fluorescent lights overhead were too bright, and she blinked several times while the Wardens unhooked the helmet and the harness and the CHF. Cool air touched her wet scalp, and she sat up slowly, feeling the headache begin behind her left eye.
The cartographer who'd spoken to her before appeared with a glass of water and put it down on the platform's edge. Virell drank half of it and put the glass to her temple.
"Echo," she said.
The cartographer looked at her. "Is it Verbal?"
"No, Cognitive." Virell put the glass down. "Direct thought impression, five words."
She took a breath.
"The line must be perfect."
The cartographer looked at her for a moment before turning and walking back to his station and resuming typing. "Logged. I'll cross-reference with the Array output."
Virell put the glass down on the platform's edge and stood up, and her legs trembled before she gripped the rail and let go and walked to the vacuum chamber.
It rotated slowly in its magnetic field, pulsing at intervals of 3.1 seconds.
Active consciousness, she thought. Is he engaged in a task requiring immense precision? It's been three years since Reed died, and his ring is still dreaming of perfect lines. She wanted to laugh as she made such statement, it was amusing and scary at the same time.
She stood there looking at the brass band through the glass.
His body shows no decay. The ring pulses like a heartbeat. And now a thought, leaking through from wherever he is?
She turned to the cartographers. "Pull the global REM data from the last fifteen minutes and flag anything that spiked during my sync window."
They began working without comment.
Virell walked back to her workstation, sat down, opened the drawer, took out a report form, and picked up her pen. Her left hand trembled slightly, and she waited for it to steady before writing.
Session 34.
Sync target: TR-000 ("The Hollow Loop"). Classification: TR-X (Exoform).
Duration: approximately seven minutes. Sympathetic Resonance Array at full output, flare event recorded at peak synchronization. Neural Sync Harness and Dreamscape Stabilizer within normal parameters. Cognitive Hazard Filter maintained throughout. Result: Partial success.
First confirmed cognitive echo intercepted from TR-000. Content: "The line must be perfect."
Interpretation: Subject consciousness confirmed active, currently engaged in task requiring immense precision. Location of consciousness remains non-local and unidentifiable.
She continued writing.
Note: Elias Reed's body remains in stasis with no observed decay, consistent with transdimensional tether hypothesis. TR-000 pulse interval acceleration now in eleventh consecutive week. Thermal fluctuations continue to correlate with lunar cycles.
She added the final line.
Recommend reclassification from low-tier to mid-tier cognitive hazard. Recommend increased session frequency per sustained acceleration protocol.
She set her pen down, filed the report in the cabinet next to her desk, picked up her empty mug again, and headed to the break station in the hallway. The machine dispensed lukewarm coffee, and she took a sip on her way back to her workstation, grimacing at the burnt taste but still consuming it.
She sat down at her workstation and placed her mug next to her keyboard.
Across the lab, the brass ring slowly revolved in its chamber, glowing in the quiet.
3.1 seconds. 3.1 seconds. 3.1 seconds.
Virell took another sip of her burnt coffee.