Preternatural

Preternatural

by Roger Ley

Roger Ley  was born and educated mainly in London, but spent some of his formative years in Saudi Arabia. He worked as an engineer in the oilfields of North Africa and in the North Sea before starting a career in higher education teaching computer-aided engineering.
His stories have been published on a multiplicity of websites and broadcast on BBC Radio.
He lives in Suffolk (UK).

Visit his website at rogerley.co.uk

More TTTV Stories by Roger Ley: https://talltaletv.com/tag/roger-ley/

His Amazon author page is at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Roger-Ley/author/B01KOVZFHM

 

In the final year of his medical training, Dr Wilkinson spent several months in the Intensive Care Unit. It was a pleasant assignment after the stress and drama of his previous placement in the hospital’s Emergency Room. The patients in the ICU had an individual nurse attending each of them, and as most of them were unconscious, he could study for his next set of exams while he was on duty, a great luxury for a medical student. When he made his rounds at midnight, the ward was usually quiet, a tranquil scene, a time for contemplation as he looked across the motionless forms of the coma patients and heard the soft hiss of their ventilators. There they lay, supine, apparently indifferent to the world, but he knew something was going on in their minds. The lines on the screens of their electroencephalographs didn’t lie.

He could accept that short-term unconscious patients were dreaming, that was standard for sleeping humans, but the long-term ICU patients were different, those that were lucky enough to awake from their coma often reported strange experiences that had seemed very real at the time. The medical community ignored these episodes, of course, seeing them as hallucinations or nightmares brought on by drugs or injuries, but they fascinated Wilkinson, and he couldn’t dismiss them out of hand. Some of the patient’s experiences seemed like random horror stories: blood gushing out of mountains and drowning them, being chased and devoured by lions, burning in a tar pit. Others were gentler and more positive. He kept a record of conversations he’d had with these “reality surfers,” as he privately called them, and toyed with the idea of publishing their collected experiences as a book if he could collect enough of them. It would have to be suitably anonymised, of course, and published under a pen name.

Dr Wilkinson’s interest in the world of the unconscious continued after he qualified as an anaesthesiologist. He routinely asked patients who’d been anesthetised for long operations about their “dreams,” and discerned a certain consistency to them. They weren’t usually as prolonged and detailed as those of the coma patients and fell into one of three patterns.

Some people had out-of-body experiences: floating above the bed, looking down on themselves lying on the operating table. They could often repeat conversations they’d heard among the medical team during their operation.

Then there was the scenario where the patient floated through a tunnel of light and was greeted by relatives who had already passed on.

Last, there were patients who reported going to a heavenly place and communicating with a supreme being; the exact details usually depended on the patient’s religious beliefs. Sometimes, the last two were conjoined.

Wilkinson wondered if, under anaesthetic, his patients had contacted a deeper reality, a reality that was hidden from normally conscious people, a reality that was only perceived by an unstimulated human brain. But he realised the idea was outlandish and didn’t discuss it with his colleagues.

Then the headaches began.

At first, he put them down to dehydration, overindulgence in alcohol, stress, overwork — the usual suspects. But they got steadily worse. An MRI scan showed a tumour; a biopsy proved it to be benign, but the pressure on his brain, which was causing the headaches, dictated that it be excised. Fortunately, it wasn’t deeply embedded, and his surgeon, Dr Thorneycroft, was confident he could safely remove it. Wilkinson had often worked with Thorneycroft, and, despite anaesthesiologists jokingly referring to surgeons as plumbers, he trusted his competence.

On the day of the operation, Wilkinson found it strange to be on the other side of the fence, a powerless patient in the efficient hands of nurses and doctors who were normally his friends and colleagues. It would be a long operation, but the sedative they’d given him dulled his anxiety. He knew the routine: the mask over his face. ‘Count backwards from a hundred for me, please, Dr Wilkinson.’

‘One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight…’ he slurred through the fentanyl as darkness descended.

The anaesthesiologist nodded, and Thorneycroft made a start. The patient’s head had already been shaved, so he made his first incisions into the scalp and lifted a flap of skin, then used the cranial drill to remove a piece of the skull and expose the dura.

‘Now the fun begins,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing like a craniotomy before lunch to help work up an appetite.’ The anaesthesiologist nodded absently, intent on his gauges.

*

It was dark, completely black at first. Wilkinson couldn’t feel anything, but he heard disembodied voices, and his vision slowly cleared. He found himself floating about two metres above the operating table, looking down on his own motionless body, dressed in its hospital gown, and surrounded by the doctors and nurses of the theatre team. The anaesthesiologist seemed quite relaxed, which was a good sign. Dr Thorneycroft was delving into the side of his head, evidently attempting to expose the tumour. He too seemed relaxed, which was also reassuring. Wilkinson floated down and peered into the opening in his skull as Thorneycroft extracted a blood clot and dropped it into a kidney dish.

‘There go the piano lessons,’ he said. None of the team laughed; they’d heard it before.

‘The old ‘uns are the best,’ muttered the anaesthesiologist as he adjusted a valve on the breathing machine.

Wilkinson looked around the operating theatre and slowly realised it was a sham. The people were fuzzy; they didn’t move smoothly. They were caricatures. The equipment was incomplete; details were missing; the breathing machine wasn’t making any noise; the endotracheal tube sticking out of his mouth wasn’t connected to anything. This was a clumsy imitation, almost an artist’s impression.

‘I don’t believe this,’ he said as loudly as he could. ‘Not for one moment do I believe this.’

There was a moment of darkness and silence, which slowly cleared. He was sitting in an armchair, next to a coffee table, in a conventional-looking office. An attractive middle-aged woman wearing a black business suit was pouring coffee for the two of them. She looked up and smiled as she put the pot down.

‘Yes, you’re right, Dr Wilkinson. This situation isn’t real either, neither am I, but we’re doing our best to make you feel comfortable. The coffee also isn’t real, but it will taste just fine. Try it.’

He did, and it was pretty good.

‘So please call me Farina. You are here partly because you are questioning reality, the reality we went to so much trouble to construct for your species. The reality where you work as an anaesthesiologist. Is that right?’ She raised an eyebrow and paused, waiting for his answer.

Wilkinson said nothing. He took another sip of his coffee to give himself time to think.

‘Well, you’ll be reassured to know that you’re right; there’s an ancient design flaw. Your people have been getting glimpses behind the curtain for tens of thousands of years now. In the old days, when fatigue, illness, drugs, herbal remedies, insanity, self-flagellation, or various other causes induced the experience, people treated it as “mystical or religious.”

Then, when you discovered basic science, observers considered these episodes hallucinations. Now that you’ve developed a digital technology and there’s a fashionable belief that your existence might be a computer simulation, some people wonder if the “hallucination” is the deeper reality. Is that the way you are thinking?’

‘It occurred to me.’

‘If only it were that simple. Your everyday reality is much more sophisticated than a simple computer simulation. We have to maintain your entire infinite universe down to the quantum level. It’s not easy, believe me. The “hallucinations” are just an unwanted by-product, a glitch, if you will.’

‘So it’s a construct then, normal life, I mean?’ he asked.

Farina nodded. ‘Correct.’

‘So why did you go to so much trouble to create our universe?’ he asked.

‘Look, Dr Wilkinson, do you think you could explain your motivations, hopes, and fears to an ant?’

‘Not really, they don’t have the mental capacity to understand any of those concepts.’

‘Precisely. So you see my problem in trying to explain our motives to you.’

‘Okay, you’re obviously much more advanced than us, but I suspect you didn’t bring us into existence out of altruism. I assume you have a hidden agenda?’

Farina smiled. ‘One of your “scientists” said that the universe is not only queerer than you suppose, but queerer than you can suppose. How right he was.’

‘So could you try to explain?’ he asked.

‘In the universe we’ve constructed for you, consciousness is a fundamental property, like magnetism, or electric charge, or gravity. The Hindu religion is closest to the truth with its infinite manifestations of God. Even the people of the book, the Jews, Muslims, and Christians, believe in an all-pervading God, a God who is everywhere. Sorry to say it, but the religious types are ahead of your scientists on this.’

‘How so?’ asked Wilkinson.

‘Well, can you explain to me how the cells in your brain manifest consciousness? How can something made of matter generate self-awareness if it isn’t already there? Sentience exists in every particle of matter to some small degree; it’s just that your brains manipulate it skilfully, in the same way that your vocal cords manipulate sound to produce speech or song. You’re a very adaptable species.’

‘But still you haven’t said why you constructed this universe for us?’

‘Well, Dr Wilkinson, we come from elsewhere; that’s all I can tell you. We have our own reality. Eons ago, we used to have a physical presence, but we abandoned our universe and left the world of matter behind. Now, we live in a higher realm.’

‘How nice to be free of corporeal shackles.’

‘Yes, but leaving our bodies was a mistake. Over the eons, in our new realm, we found we lacked stimulation. We discovered that true consciousness requires embodiment. Without a material existence, we began to fade, to cease to be. We tried to re-embody ourselves, but we found we couldn’t go back. We’d burned our bridges, so to speak.’

‘So how does this universe that you’ve constructed for us help your situation?’

‘We let you live your lives without intervention, but we observe you closely and experience what you experience: love, hate, sex, disappointment, food, drink — the list goes on. We are with you all the time. Your lives give meaning to our own.’

‘So we entertain you?’

‘It’s not as simple as that, but in terms that you can understand, yes.’

‘You are emotional vampires then? You live vicariously by stealing our experiences?’

‘It’s more complicated than that. You cannot fully comprehend. Anyway, you eat meat and harvest plants. What’s the ethical difference?’

‘Okay, so, the big question: what happens when we die?’

‘Again, the Hindu explanation is probably closest to the truth. They believe that after death, a person’s soul joins with, and becomes part of a supreme cosmic spirit. Close, but unfortunately wrong. When you die, your personalities do not survive, but we harvest your memories. They join the vast collection that we hold. That’s the simplest way I can describe it.’

‘So why are you telling me this if you see me as comparable to an ant?’

‘Humanity has much more to offer than ants do; otherwise, we wouldn’t find your lives interesting. But on a personal level, you, Dr Wilkinson, are currently part of an experiment. That’s the other reason you’re here. The Elite are considering a change to the parameters. They contemplate revealing themselves to your species.’

‘That doesn’t sound like a good idea,’ said Wilkinson. ‘If the sheep knew why the shepherd was taking such good care of them, how would they feel about him? Not that they could do much about it.’

‘You may be right. The last time we tried this was four thousand of your years ago in the Indus Valley. Humans were not ready for it then, but the Elite feel that perhaps, having evolved a science-based civilisation, you are ready now?’

‘I don’t think so. It depends on where you hope to be after the deed is done. Could you undo it if it didn’t work?’

‘Not really, but time would pass, and to humanity, we would become myths or gods or angels once again.’

‘Or devils and demons. No, I wouldn’t advise it, but do as you think best. As a matter of interest, what sort of our memories are best for you: love, war, hatred, affection?’

‘What you would call positive experiences, but they don’t all have to be sweetness and light; there can be positive experiences even in warfare.’

‘Well, as I said, you must do as you think best. I’m not really qualified to advise you.’

‘True, but you’ve been very helpful. I thank you on behalf of myself and my siblings. You will be rewarded.’ She smiled as Wilkinson’s world turned back to black.

*

He awoke in the recovery ward, muddled from the anaesthetic and painkillers. He slept for ten hours, then woke again feeling better and drank some broth. In the afternoon, Dr Thorneycroft came to see him. Wilkinson was sitting up in bed by this time.

‘How did it go?’ Wilkinson asked. ‘Any complications?’

‘None to speak of, old boy, smooth as silk, actually. We expect you to make a full recovery. One, er, issue though.’ The surgeon looked decidedly uncomfortable. Wilkinson waited for him to continue.

‘We didn’t find the tumour,’ Thorneycroft said apologetically. Wilkinson noticed how his use of the plural, “we,” spread the blame to the whole surgical team. If the operation had been without complications, he guessed Thorneycroft would have used the singular “I” and claimed all the credit. People were disappointingly predictable.

‘There was a void where the tumour should have been, but it wasn’t there anymore. Not a trace of it. Strangest thing I’ve ever seen.’

‘Perhaps it was reabsorbed?’ suggested Wilkinson.

‘There wasn’t time; we only scanned you a couple of days ago. I assume the void was filled with fluid, and the radiologist misinterpreted the results.

‘I guess so,’ said Wilkinson, secretly admiring the surgeon’s skilful shift of the blame. If the radiologist had misinterpreted the results, then the operation, with all its trauma and danger, had been unnecessary. Both men knew it was bad form for a doctor to sue a colleague, but if anybody was going to be sued, Dr Thorneycroft was making sure it wouldn’t be him.

Wilkinson didn’t mention the biopsy. The void hadn’t been full of fluid when they took the sample that prompted the operation. Thorneycroft made his excuses and left, a little hurriedly, Wilkinson thought. He suddenly felt exhausted and lay back and closed his eyes.

Life would never be the same, knowing that Farina and her friends were constantly peering over his shoulder and sharing his every moment. What was that old film where the protagonist didn’t realise he was living his life on an enormous sound stage?

Thanks for giving me a bit-part in your soap opera, guys, he thought as he drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, he awoke feeling refreshed, and with no memory of his encounter with Farina.

She’d delivered on her promise.