Chapter 3: Cerebral Camelot

Professor Jules Hephaestus drawn from memory: one of the most brilliant minds of this generation. The helmet upon his head gave him an almost Kingly demeanor.

The parting steel doors revealed an atrium like chamber, perhaps twenty feet in diameter and lit from certain panels in the floor and the areas where the walls met the ceiling. There were, however, no hard corners in the chamber at all. Where wall met floor and ceiling there were gentle curves melding one to the next, and the chamber itself had the form of a perfect circle. The doors of the elevator we were standing in were located at one far end of the circle, and directly opposite us, across the chamber, were another set of the same style steel doors, shiny and clean. The sterile antiseptic smells from the lab above were replaced with the soft scent of flowers, and the music we heard in the elevator, Debussy, was now clear and I recognized the tune as his famous Clair de Lune.

As we stepped from the elevator I saw that, embedded in the walls on either side of us, were large fish tanks that looked quite deep. The bottoms of the tanks were about waist high going about three feet in height toward the ceiling. At the base of each was a small table built into the wall, jutting out perhaps a foot and running the length of the fish tanks. As I looked behind us I noticed, on either side of the elevator doors, two identical vases, each about three feet high and designed in an art nouveau style. It dawned on me that the entire chamber had an old world art nouveau style as well, so the vases fit in well. Each vase was filled generously with flowers.

“Wow”, Rachel regarded the chamber in awe as she spoke. “This is quite an office. Those are beautiful flowers. What a change from the torture chamber you’ve got going on up stairs. Are those Chrysanthemums?”

“Yes”, Dr. Athenia said with a half grin. “White Chrysanthemums, historically symbolizing truth. Then there are Delphiniums, representing boldness, Begonias symbolizing deep thoughts and then the pink Carnations...” She trailed off.

“What do those represent?” I chimed in.

Dr. Athenia looked up. “Gratitude.” She turned back to Rachel. “I understand your opinions regarding the work we do upstairs, but I want to remind you that without the type of research we do here, and at other facilities around the world, the quality of human life and scientific progress would hit a stand still. For some areas of study, such as the brain, there is simply no other way to advance forward and learn.”

“Well that’s a nice rationalization, but c’mon? There’s no other way to advance science than the prolonged torture of one of God’s creatures? I don’t buy it.” I could tell Rachel did not want to get into this, but she would not back down from her opinions either.

Dr. Athenia frowned. “You simply don’t understand it, even though you reap the benefits of it. Animal testing is what allowed scientists to develop vaccines against diseases like the mumps, measles, rubella, polio, TB…the list goes on. Tell me something, have you ever known anyone who has had heart bypass surgery?”

Sensing trouble I tried to change the subject. “Dr. Athenia I had a question about the monkey upstairs…”

Rachel interrupted. “Yes, my father had it when I was a teenager and he had another one about three years ago. I see where you’re going with this but it is no excuse…”

“Rachel, without animal testing your father would have died when you were a teenager.” Dr. Athenia was now quite stern, yet, defensive. “Open heart surgery techniques were developed on animals like the one you saw upstairs; animals who did not survive. Those techniques supplied you with the privilege to keep your father into adulthood.”

“You know”, Rachel shot back, “that can be contested. What you are doing to that poor creature up there is an abomination. I don’t believe there was no other way to develop that surgery. I’m not convinced.”

“Only because your ignorant to how the results of this testing affects your life. Every day!” Dr. Athenia looked pained as she continued. “Look, I’m not like Dr. Nyx. I don’t enjoy doing it. But I see the necessity and I know we need to…”

I finally cut in. “Ok ladies, I’m sorry but that’s quite enough. Dr. Athenia, I appreciate your feedback on this issue, it’s obviously something you feel passionately about but we are not here at this hour to debate the ethics of your job.” As I said the last few words of this sentence I looked back at Rachel. “If I’m not mistaken Professor Hephaestus is waiting for us. May we proceed with what we came her to do please?”

Dr. Athenia shook her head and turned away from us. “I haven’t slept in over twenty two hours. I’m a little punchy. Forgive me.”

Behind her back I motioned to Rachel. Take the olive branch!

“Ah, um, I’m sorry too Robyn. It was out of place for me to question your job.” Rachel made a fake plastic smile on her face.

Dr. Athenia looked back at the flowers for a moment and paused, as if in her own little world. Stirring from her trance she turned back to face Rachel and I.

“Ok, down to business. Each of you were given a security code word before coming her tonight and were instructed not to share that word with anyone or write it down. You remember your code words, right?”

Rachel and I each nodded.

“Good, step over here please.” Dr. Athenia took us over to one of the fish tanks. As we approached, I realized these were not fish tanks at all, but huge video monitors, curved to fit the shape of the room, showing video of fish swimming. Dr. Athenia touched a button on the table at the base of the monitor and the video suddenly switched to an image of a large grid with the alphabet embedded in it. She then opened a small drawer and pulled from it a cap, sort of like the thing you wear to keep your hair dry while swimming, with many wires attached to it. “Ok”, she continued, “you will both need to do this simultaneously so listen close. Place this cap over your head so that the front is on your forehead, the back is at the nape of the neck and the sides are as far down as they can be at the ears. Here, Rachel you take this one, Joey you go over to the other monitor and use the one in that drawer.” She motioned to the other side of the room where the fish tank had also been replaced by the grid of the alphabet. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

I walked to the other side of the room and fitted the cap on my head as I was told. The wires coming from the inside of the drawer were long enough for me to stand comfortably. When I looked back up at the video monitor I could see a highlight square now blinking quickly and randomly around the letters in the alphabet, one letter at a time. This blinking highlight moved at a very fast but constant rate from one letter to the next.

“Ok, now I want you to spell out the code word in your mind, one letter at a time. Focus on the one letter and as the highlight blinks on that letter on the screen tell your self ‘yes’.”

At first I thought this was ridiculous. Or I thought it would not work. However as I started to think of the first letter in my code word I could see the highlight begin to blink a little more frequently on the letter I was thinking of. Each time it would highlight I would think ‘yes’ until my letter highlighted brightly for an instant and then appeared in a window below the grid. The whole process took maybe ten seconds for that first letter. “Astonishing”, I mumbled, thoroughly intrigued by this device. I continued in this manner, thinking ‘yes’ each time my letter was highlighted and watching it get highlighted more frequently as I focused on it. By the fourth letter I had picked up the pace so it only took me about five seconds to ‘manifest’ it into the digital window below the grid.

Before I knew it I had the word “edgi” successfully spelled out in the digital window. I looked back at Rachel, who was equally impressed with this technology and smiling back at me shaking her head. I could see the word “tesla” written in her window. Just then a powerful ‘whirring’ noise filled the atrium all around the walls, and with a very subtle jerking sensation I felt the whole atrium rotate, probably clockwise. Although it was faint, I also had the impression that the entire atrium was sinking deeper into the ground. When this noise ceased I could just barely feel the atrium slowly stop and the steel doors at the opposite end from the elevator opened with a hiss.

Rachel and I took our caps off and proceeded to the door where Dr. Athenia motioned for us. As we approached her she reminded us, “Remember what I told you in the elevator.” Rachel and I both nodded. I began to ask a question when Dr. Athenia put a finger to her lips and motioned for me to move forward.

As we walked through the doors we entered an enormous chamber, probably twenty five hundred square feet in size. In the center of the chamber was another perfect circle, maybe seven feet in diameter and with the same lemon glow as the elevator we originally come down on. Again, the first thing that stood out was the absence of corners as the walls, floor and ceiling seemed to grow into each other with that same art nouveau style to it as seen in the atrium. The chamber was filled with equipment, but was very dimly lit so it was hard to see what the devices actually were. Along the wall to the left was an exposed elevator shaft going from the floor we were on up one story to a platform that comprised approximately one quarter of the chamber, but on a level above the floor. Stark black shadows were everywhere yielding shafts of different colored light off in the distances. Looking up at the platform, in the distance, I could see light emanating from a panel parallel to the ground at about waist height. This cast a shaft of light up into the end of the chamber. Just in front of this light, yet still off in the distance on that upper platform, I could make out the silhouette of a man, stoic and unmoving.

A large video monitor mounted from the high ceiling then flashed on in front of us, and a mechanical voice, spitting words as regular as a metronome with an artificial inflection that seemed to rise and dip in all the wrong places began to speak from the darkness.

“Welcome. I was just finishing my review of your dossiers. If you please…”

On the monitor above I suddenly saw my own face, with a written report to the left of the photo.

“Terrance Blakeney. Age: thirty five. Height: five feet ten inches. Weight: one hundred sixty five pounds. Hair: brown. Eyes: brown. Graduate of Stanford University Physics Department (under scholarship program), Cum Laude. Area of interest: Cosmology. No sports, no extra curricular activity. Masters Degree, UCLA. Returned to Stanford for Doctorate Degree but left eight months into the program. Spent four years as a mountain bike tour guide with Worldwide Touring, Inc. Led tours in France, Italy, and Spain and various locations in the United States. Winters spent as ski instructor, Vail, Colorado, Chamonix, France, and Val d'Isere, France. Founded company manufacturing t-shirts; filed bankruptcy two years later. Hired by the Rockwell Foundation three months ago in the division of Fashion Design and Research. Artistic proficiency. Never married.”

The image on the monitor then switched to Rachel’s face.

“Rachel Barrows. Age: twenty eight. Height: five feet four inches. Weight: one hundred fifteen pounds.”

Rachel broke in loudly. “I weigh one hundred and FIVE pounds…hello?”

The mechanical voice continued on unflinchingly. “Hair: black. Eyes: green. Graduate of Cornell University Anthropology Department, Magna Cum Laude. Area of interest: Cultural Anthropology. Two years women’s soccer. Ph.D, School of Human Evolution, Arizona State University. Participated in major excavations in Sudan, Egypt, Turkey and Ethiopia. Spent three years in management affiliated with LVHM (Moët Hennessy / Louis Vuitton); worked in divisions of Berluti, Donna Karan New York (DKNY), Givenchy, Emilio Pucci, Fendi, and Louis Vuitton. Acquired position initially through a friend in the parent company. Left affiliation with LVHM to form small company importing shoes. Company purchased by Rockwell Foundation. Moved to Fashion Design and Research two months ago. Artistic proficiency. Never Married.”

Now the image switched to that of our boss, Steven Rockwell.

“Rockwell Foundation. Steven Rockwell founder. Age: thirty eight. Height: six feet. Weight: classified. Hair: classified. Eyes: classified. Graduate: Harvard University Department of Economics, Magna Cum Laude. MBA, Wharton School of Business. Founder: Rockwell Technologies, details classified. Founder: Rockwell Institute, details classified. Founder: Rockwell Foundation, details: conglomerate company consisting of many distinct smaller companies. Companies include, but are not limited to, divisions in solar power, wind technology, medical technology, microcredit, fine art, video games, feature film animation, perfume and fashion design. Steven Rockwell is known as an eccentric adventurer who professes a love for starting companies. Married sixteen years with two children.”

The electronic tambour of the artificial voice had barely dissipated when the video monitor was shut off and another light appeared above us on the upper platform. The man who had cast the silhouette I’d seen earlier had made his way closer to us and now was directly overhead. An orange light from an illuminated table top now revealed him to us, shining directly at him and casting a medieval shadow far up the smooth wall behind him. He was horribly crippled; unable to move even the smallest muscle in his body. His hands were twisted and contorted and his legs were covered with a thick blanket. He wore a suite, without a tie, and his countenance seemed to be unmoving, with a thin smile forever entombed on his face. Just above his thick glasses was a helmet that completely covered the top half of his head. From this headpiece thousands of small wires came out and up, forming some kind of crazy electronic wig atop his head. The wires twisted and looped in a chaotic fashion before disappearing behind the high back rest of his wheelchair. Before we even realized it, the platform we were standing on began to rise into the air to meet him. It stopped right at the edge of the platform he was on so we were now at his level. In a slow mechanical gesture, his head moved to look at us. It was obvious from the quality of the motion that a mechanical device behind his neck was doing this. Seeing him up close was like seeing the great king of a crippled society. His wheelchair, outfitted with various electronic contraptions, consumed him, like a magnificent technological throne. His helmet glinted in the light, forming a makeshift crown atop his head, haloed by the electric wires. It was in this moment that I first saw the black band I would continue to see throughout my journeys. On the small finger of his left hand I could make out the shiny black ring, a lone band with the word “edgi” engraved on its face.

Then, from the speakers placed throughout the chamber, we heard the ubiquitous mechanical voice once again, all of us now staring directly at it’s source. His face was frozen in a serene expression while his words engulfed the chamber.

“No secret of the cosmos can be kept from those who find passion in wonder. You are here because you have such passion. I am here to extol this virtue in you to efflorescence. I am Professor Hephaestus.”