"WAKE UP!"
Harold was jolted out of his
sleep and rolled off of the couch and onto the floor. He looked around and
realized that he had been dreaming. Even as he tried to recall the dream, it
had almost immediately faded away. He got up and made his way to the bathroom
where he relieved his nearly-full bladder before washing his hands. He splashed
some cold water on his face, the icy sting shocking him fully awake. He smiled
at himself in the mirror and the face in the mirror smiled back. He had stayed
up late studying for his Physics exam and he was as ready as he would ever be.
---
Four days later, he was rudely
awakened again. This time it was his sister calling.
"Hi, Sis! What's up?"
"Turn on your TV! Now!"
she said, the excitement clearly showing in her voice.
"Do you know what time it
is?" He fumbled around for the remote and turned on the television.
"What am I looking for?"
"It's on every channel,
Harold. We're under attack!"
He stared dumbfounded at the
World Trade Center as the two towers burned. The chyron said something about
the Pentagon. "What's happening?"
"No one knows, but Mom and
Dad are at work today." Her voice caught in her throat, "I can't get
hold of either of them!"
He watched blindly as the first
tower collapsed into a heap of billowing rubble. He was dimly aware that it was
the one in which his parents had their offices.
His sister was still on the
phone. "Harold are you there?" she asked.
"Oh my God, Sis! They're
gone!"
---
Harold, like many others, spent
the next few weeks in a daze. Classes were cancelled, but he was unable to fly
to New York to be with his sister since all air travel had been suspended. The
deaths of their parents had not been officially confirmed, but there wasn't
much doubt as to their fate. During a phone call, his sister triggered a
thought in his head that suddenly pushed itself to the forefront.
"It's really too bad someone
can't go back in time and warn everyone," said his sister, somewhat
wistfully. "We know who to look for and when and where to find them.
Prevent them from getting on the planes and it would prevent the whole
tragedy."
"That'll never happen, Sis."
However, even as he said it, he asked himself, Why not?
Harold quit going to classes,
although he met several times with a number of the professors in the Math and
Physics departments. None of them took his idea of time travel seriously. Even
if it was possible, they pointed out, there was no known way to make it happen.
For the next few months, Harold
read everything that he could about time travel and was finally ready to
concede that the professors had been right. It was at that moment when it
dawned on him that he had been there. His brain and its particular waveforms at
the moment had experienced everything. They were still part of his organic
being and, he theorized, they could be linked to his present self. All he had
to do was reproduce the brainwaves he experienced at some point prior to that
day.
Over the next year, he
developed a hairnet of sorts that contained 1,024 powerful electro-magnetic
coils that were wired to his computer. By donning the hairnet and running
through combinations of power and frequencies, he discovered that he could
induce a dream-state in which he had control over what happened. What some
would call lucid dreaming.
He created a program that would
cycle through billions of combinations of settings within this narrow range of
power and frequency and spent twenty hours each day, seeking a match to a
pattern in the past. For the next year, he dreamed his way through many of his
past lives, but never stumbled across one that was suitable.
Then came the day when he finally
made contact. It was firm and solid and rooted in the studying he had done for
the Physics exam. He could feel himself lying on the couch, with a light REM
state going on. He took over the dream and detailed to himself what needed to be
done. As the contact weakened, he finished up by yelling as loud as he could:
"WAKE UP!"
Harold was jolted out of his
sleep and rolled off of the couch and onto the floor. He looked around and
realized that he had been dreaming. Even as he tried to recall the dream, it
had almost immediately faded away. He got up and made his way to the bathroom
where he relieved his nearly-full bladder before washing his hands. He splashed
some cold water on his face, the icy sting shocking him fully awake. He smiled
at himself in the mirror and the face in the mirror smiled back. He had stayed
up late studying for his Physics exam and he was as ready as he would ever be.
---
Doctor Williams led the procession
of four interns to a room at the end of the hallway. Standing before the door
to 622, he gave them a quick summary.
"You're in for a rare treat
today," he said. "In here, we have a patient that has been with us
for twenty years now. He's technically in a coma, but we have no idea what's
causing it. As you will see, the lights are on and someone's home, but they're
not answering the phone."
He opened the door and stepped
into the room where the patient lay on the bed. Above him was an array of
monitors displaying real-time vitals. Williams waited until they were all
gathered around the bed before continuing.
"In a moment, you'll see
something that only occurs every two years, twelve days, seven hours, and
thirty-seven minutes. For this, we have temporarily removed the feeding tube
which has kept his body alive all these years." He glanced at his watch.
"Keep your eye on the EEGs. Notice how they're beginning to fluctuate. If
this was an electro-cardiogram, we might say that they were going into
fibrillation."
"What's happening?"
asked one of the interns.
"It's like two separate
waves running as echoes, or something," commented another.
All of the interns jumped when
the patient's eyes opened and he yelled, "WAKE UP!" His eyes
fluttered shut as the encephalograms returned back to normal.
Doctor Williams smiled,
"That's it for another couple of years."
"What do you suppose is
going through his mind?" asked the first intern.
"Maybe one day he'll come
out of his coma and tell us," answered Williams. "However, I suspect that
we will never know." He held the door for the interns as they left the
room and closed it behind him.
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