PART 3

FLATLAND

26

John Dicks and Dr. Veronica Staples stood in Lab 002, surrounded by very expensive looking machines, probably designed for highly complex scientific experiments.

"Is it really contained?" Dicks asked, leaning over a cube-like structure that sat on a stainless steel operating table. Its walls pulsed and shifted unpredictably, disappearing for a fraction of a second only to reappear millimeters from where they had been. They were also transparent and shimmered like soap bubbles.

"This... this... contraption of yours seems unstable,” Dicks added coldly as he walked around the operating table. “We can call ourselves lucky they only killed a few expandables outside the city. I do not need to explain to you what a PR disaster it would have been, if they had turned up downtown." 

Inside the cube, one of the Cerebros banged its body against the walls, trying to escape the soapy prison.

"Don't worry, Mr. Dicks," Staples said, sliding her horn rims over the bridge of her nose with her index finger, “I have a working theory on how these creatures operate. What looks like teleportation may be their use of higher dimensions. And the hypercube in front of you is designed to warp its wall into exactly those higher dimensions to keep the creature from phasing in and out. And with one of the …”

"English, Doctor. English."

Staples turned away from the hypercube and grabbed a yellow Post-it note and a piece of paper from a desk nearby. She flicked a pencil from her lab coat, drew the letter D on the Post-it, and placed it in the center of the paper.

"Let's pretend that this piece of paper is a world, let's call this world Flatland. And this Post-it is one of its inhabitants, Donald. Donald runs a big corporation in Flatland and is on his way to work. But since Flatland is a world with only two dimensions, he can just move left, right, back and forth."

Staples placed a finger in the Post-it and moved it across the page.

"But Donald is not the upstanding citizen he likes to portray, and he has been convicted, found guilty and sentenced to life in prison for, let's say, interfering in foreign elections."

Staples stopped and looked at Dicks to provoke a reaction.

"Funny doctor. Will Barney the purple dinosaur come out of the closet next and we break into a nursery rhyme together? Carry on but treat lightly."

Shyly, the doctor pushed her glasses back up her nose and drew a rectangle around the Post-it note.

"Trapping someone in Flatland is as easy as drawing a two-dimensional wall around them. Escape, impossible, since flatlanders can only move in two dimensions, unless - we introduce a third dimension,” (dramatic pause) “up.”

Staples took the Post-it and lifted it.

"We lift our friend and he disappears before the eyes of his flatland friends, so long as he is in the third dimension..."

She flew Donald over the ballpoint walls and set him down outside the rectangle.

"...and magically reappears as soon as we bring him back down."

"Good. Good, good, good," Dicks said as he walked along the long side of the table. He leaned close to the cube, eyeing its occupant, who was either fast asleep or unconscious from banging its head against the wall for the last two straight hours. He tapped on the spastic walls like he'd done at his aunt's aquarium when he was boy. But this time there is no auntie telling him to stop because it is stressing the hell out of the fish. Nobody tells him shit anymore. He is the head honcho of the most influential corporation in the goddamn world. No more little Dicky. Suck on that, Aunt Gladys. "Gooood." He turned and picked up a Post-it note from the desk and walked back to Staples. "When will it be ready for military use?"

"That's hard to say, since the dimensional anchors and 4D manipulation require a constant..."

"Doctor," he cut her off harshly, his voice as soft as a newborn kitten, "your little project has cost OCP an enormous amount of money, and the investors are beginning to have concerns about its viability. They're breathing down my neck like a pack of starving wolves on a freezing winter night, and they are ready to tear me apart if I don't throw them a fat rabbit of ROI soon."

"W, we, we have one of the survivors..."

"But more importantly, Dr. Staples," Dicks took a pen from her breast pocket and drew an S on the Post-it. "I am tired of your constant ridicule and insubordination." He pulled a lighter from his pants pocket, lit it, and held it under the note. "With the prospect of you researching the next soda flavor of the month, I ask you again...," the post-it caught fire and burst into flames. "...when will it be ready for military use?"

"How about six months," Staples said meekly.

Dicks was on his way out. He held up his hand with the lighter in it and closed it with a snap, "Make it two."

27

Where other people would pop Xanax or other little helpers in the benzo family to tame their thoughts and feelings, Veronica Staples, at the tender age of five, found a way cheaper and less addictive solution: She would spin herself around in endless circles until she got really dizzy. And it still worked like a charm: She kept spinning in one of the lab chairs until she had to stop by putting down her rubber slippers, causing them to squeak on the linoleum floor. And even though her body had stopped spinning, the fluid in her head that contained her brain hadn't. And as long as it did, it gave her that wonderful feeling of disorientation. Staples got up and staggered to the operating table, placed her hands on the cold silver, and let out two happy gasps. With the calming liquor, her thoughts came back in an orderly fashion, as they always did after a swirly dirly (the name her five-year-old self gave to the self-regulation). Then she squatted down beside the table, rested her head on her intertwined fingers and watched the Brainiac with fascination and impatience as it slept in its ever-changing prison, snoring softly, its brain-body rising and falling gently.

"Good afternoon, Dr. Staples." The door to the lab had opened and an operative in scrubs was pushing a wheelchair in. A person was slumped in the chair, wrapped in a thick gray blanket, which it had thrown over its head too. The hood cast a black shadow where one would normally expect to see a face, making it look menacing like a Sith Lord.  The only thing Staples could make out were hands, as gray as the blanket under which they protruded. Lifeless gripping tools, sucked dry skin, that hung loosely from its bony structure. Only their constant shaking indicated that their owner was still alive.

"Well, hello. Our guest of honor has finally arrived," Staples declared, standing up with her hands buried in the side pockets of her lab coat.

"Bring him over here," the doctor pointed next to the opening table.

"Certainly." The operative deftly turned the wheeler one hundred and eighty degrees, parked it parallel to the table, and locked the brakes on each wheel. Then she saluted Staples and spun on her heels as mechanically as only a soldier might. The good doctor envied her: Every step taken, decreed by a higher authority. How nice it would be to only be the hand that pulls the trigger and not the brain that chooses the target.

Beep! Beep! Beep! Lights flashed. Beep! Beep! Beep! The wall, covered with hundreds of lights and measurement readouts, lit up like a Christmas tree. The hypercube was losing its integrity, causing the Cerebro to pick up where it left off - ramming itself into the prison walls. Staples was in her element, leaping to the metal wall, pressing buttons, flipping switches, tapping gauges until the alarm silenced and most of the lights turned to a steady green. Then she yanked the blanket from the Wheelie and threw it over the hypercube, hushing the cerebro and leaving Ronny exposed in the wheelchair.

He was still shifting, his body in a constant motion blur. His upper body was covered in scratch marks, nothing Staples had not seen after a night of passion with a junior scientist. Ron's left shoulder missed a chunk of muscle. The deltoid must have erupted like a volcano, spewing blood and then slowly coagulating into a grotesque crimson crust making it look like dragon skin. But these wounds were superficial compared to what had happened to his head.

"Fascinating," Staples said, coming closer, pushing her glasses up to get a better look.

And it was quite a sight to see. Half of Ron's head was missing, replaced by a Cerebro hanging limply from his side. It must have died when it bit into the skull. In a way, it looked like the Cerebro was half of Ron’s brain, since it matched so perfectly in size, shape, and color. From a distance, it could have been mistaken for only a severe head injury. The odd couple vibrated heavily. Head tremors like Parkinson's in overdrive.. How the hell is he still alive? Staples wondered, and found something else that tickled her curiosity. Ron and his close friend were covered in brown dust. She rolled closer on the lab chair, took a small spoon and scraped some of the powder onto a microscope slide. Then she pushed her way to the other side of the lab, placed the slide under a microscope, adjusted the magnification and, with eyes pressed to the ocular, said, "Ha, funny."

28

"Vitals are fine," Staples said to herself as she rattled one of the myriad tubes/cables that ran from Ron's body and converged in the lab's computer unit. It translated the incoming data into dancing info graphics and displayed them on a monitor on Staples desk.

"Let's see if we can stabilize you," the doctor rolled over to the desk and started to type commands on a keyboard. Ruby red fingernails flew down the keypads while her eyes remained transfixed on the monitor. She looked like one of those gifted pianists, completely absorbed in their work, incredibly skilful at coordinating their fingers whilst surrendering their soul to the gods of art.

"OK, let's see," she said, pushing up her glasses, hitting the Enter key.

The computer unit digested the commands in a nanosecond and ejected a purple ooze into the tubes and directed it towards Ron. As it entered the body, his eyelids twitched for a moment, he stabilised for a few moments and the numbers and graphs on the monitor responded: Numbers turned from red to green, pie charts changed their main color from yellow to purple, graphs grew, others shrank; and all of this satisfied the good doctor.

"Almost," she said to herself again, this time louder, the excitement in her voice audible.

She rolled back and forth between Ron, the computer and her desk, pulling tubes, punching keypads, checking readouts. The tubes carried more purple ooze, eyelid twitches became full facial grimaces, and the information on the computer screen played in tune and turned more erratic. After the third go-round, Ron jerked awake like Frankenstein's monster who had just received a five hundred thousand volt wake-up call. The phasing had stopped and his head thrashed from one side to the other. His eyes seemed to be desperately clinging to something. Nothing on the outside, that something or someone was inside him.

"Alexa! Alexa!" He screamed, like Rocky Balboa screamed for Adriana with his eyes punched shut at the end of Rocky, "Aaaleeexaaa!" 

He cried out a few more times, but each Alexa was weaker than the one before. The phasing started again and the last Alexa was so sad, it sounded like he had given up, lost her in whatever fever dream he had met her in.