Changing of the Guard

14

Jay paced, his thoughts fragmented. He was back on the beach where he’d started his nightmare. But he had a theory, now.

I’m in a coma.

Like most answers, it was incomplete, just a tiny bit of information that resolved only a part of the larger questions: So how did I get here? And what now?

He didn’t have to worry that he’d been kidnapped by the enemy, he wasn’t in a dream, and he probably wasn’t crazy. All good news. On the other hand, he couldn’t wake up, was trapped deep inside his body, and couldn’t be sure about whether he was in a new coma or the one that had nearly crippled him before.

What if everything that had happened since the tiger was all part of a delusion? What if he had never come back? That Saji, work, his life, none of it had actually happened?

That thought terrified him. The idea of waking up to find that Saji was not part of his life, that he was not about to become a father… That would be unbearable.

He had made some progress, however. He’d gone from “Where am I and how do I get out of here?” to “I know where I am, now how do I get out of a coma?” One of his college professors had said something along those lines a few times during a software app class: “When you move from ‘what’ to ‘how,’ you’re on your way.”

Of course he didn’t know where the way was, in this case.

He looked at the water and willed it to stop, picturing each wavelet stilled in motion, a sudden death to the motion of the sea.

The scene flickered for a minute, but water kept flowing, rolling in as before.

He frowned, but nodded. Something, anyway, but not enough.

He was in his own body, his mind was his own — should be a piece of cake, shouldn’t it? He should be able to control his environment like he’d done in dreams before. But it didn’t work. Which meant that something was wrong.

What?

Two answers presented themselves, neither pleasant.

The first was that his head had been hurt so badly that he couldn’t focus his will sharply enough to create solid images.

Which is bad, but—

The second was worse: Maybe some part of his consciousness didn’t want to have control. That idea, extrapolated, meant that he didn’t really want to come out of it.

Whoa.

Why wouldn’t he want to wake up?

Nothing occurred to him. He had the best job in the world, a great relationship with his wife, was happy — assuming that was all true and not just a dream he had within this coma, there was no reason he could think of why he’d be afraid to leave this place and head back to reality.

In his dream research, Jay had found many theories for why people dreamed. Wish fulfillment, clearing the slate, making sense of the day… No one really understood the total why of dreams. But he wasn’t really in a dream. That was part of the problem. He steered his mind back to the topic.

What do I really care about why I can’t affect things here? I just want out!

He started struggling to control the environment again: He tried freezing one wave, imagined a seagull in the air, turning some of the sand into salt. Again, nothing happened. Frustrated more than he’d ever been in his life, he sat on the beach, the warm sand making him drowsy.

How was he going to get out of here?

What’s wrong with my brain?

He stared out at the waves, watching them ebb and flow. There was an almost perfect rhythm to them, the up and down, the amplitude of each crest to trough a perfect curve.

Wait a minute… Something there…

Jay remembered something he’d read after his coma — at least he thought he’d read it, assuming he wasn’t still in that coma.

Brain waves.

There were four basic types: Beta, Alpha, Theta, and Delta, each one operating at a different frequency. Beta were the most active — the waking mind, the thinking mind. It ranged in speed from ten to thirty hertz.

Alpha waves were the meditation ones, the relaxed state of being. They produced a general feeling of reduced anxiety and well-being. These were slower, between seven and thirteen hertz.

Theta were even slower, the brain waves most commonly found during REM sleep, the time of dreams, at about five to eight hertz. Hallucinations — Dreams “R” Us.

The really important ones, at least to him now, were the Delta waves — produced during deep, deep sleep, or comas, when the body repaired itself. Deltas were slow — between two and six hertz.

I just don’t have the power, Captain.

In a coma his brain was too slow to generate the waking state of mind he needed to control things. It wasn’t his will, just his willpower.

I’ve got to speed things up.

But how?

It wasn’t as if he could suddenly snap out of it — that was the whole point.

Jay let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and felt himself relax. It explained why he’d been so unfocused. The latest theories suggested that there were some levels of thought going on during Delta waves, and he could certainly attest to that now — if he got out of here. It wasn’t his fault, after all. Now he just had to figure out how to speed up the frequency of his thoughts.

Yeah, simple.

He pondered the problem, turning it over from one angle and then the other. How to increase his thought power? If his mind were like a computer’s CPU, he could just overclock it — increase the voltage, or alter the clock settings for the bus.

Was there anything he could do that would work like that for his brain?

Jay lay back on the sand and closed his eyes. Whatever low-level consciousness he had now, he didn’t want to squander it on the beach illusion anymore. He’d need every shred of thought power to try what he had in mind. The programmer pictured his memory as filled with hundreds of doors and began searching for anything he’d ever learned about brain function.

Biofeedback. He’d considered it before meeting Saji — using a machine to monitor his brain while he worked to try and reach one state or another. Over time, using creative visualization, people could use a biofeedback device to figure out what they were doing to get to a particular state of consciousness, and learn to do it without a machine. Biofeedback gave people the ability to focus better by teaching them to create more Beta waves.

Well I don’t have the machine, but I can visualize.

He wouldn’t be able to objectively monitor what state of being he was in precisely, but gauging the level at which he could control his environment would give him a clue.

Jay considered several other benchmarks he could use to test his consciousness level. If his memory got markedly better, he might be in a Theta-wave state. If he suddenly felt more at ease and relaxed, he’d be in an Alpha-wave state. And when things got the most active, and he felt more in control, he’d have moved to Beta.

Well, they aren’t exactly numbers on a monitor, but they’ll have to do.

Jay relaxed on the sand, picturing it warmer, heated by the sun, and then even hotter. Things moved faster in a hot environment, so he figured that might help. If his real body got warmer as well, it might physiologically help his brain with improved blood flow, too.

With his eyes closed, he thought of heat, a vein of lava running under the sand. He felt warmer and imagined sweat rolling off himself.

At the same time, he began to think of his brain as a spinning top. He pictured it, gray and twisted, uncoiling and spinning faster and faster until it was a huge ring, the neurons more and more excited.

He remembered what he’d been doing just before the accident. He’d been thinking of flowers for Saji, to congratulate her about the news. Pink was one of her favorite colors, and he’d been debating whether or not he should go with a bouquet or something more symbolic, like three flowers to represent himself, her, and the baby.

And the car had come rolling at him, fast.

Theta. Memory’s on-line.

His brain twirled, as if in a centrifuge, the gray matter pressed up against the side. He pictured the centrifuge itself set inside an amusement park ride, spinning ever faster, wheels within wheels. The lava under him had moved closer to the surface, and he was baking now, his body on fire as he sped up.

A wave of knowledge hit him, and he had ideas, all kinds of them.

The Alpha-Theta border?

People in this state of mind were supposed to suddenly gain great insight as their thoughts passed from the seven-to eight-hertz range. He had a flash of memory about the Schumann resonance, the resonant frequency of the ionosphere, 7.5 hertz and multiples. In a flash of inspiration he saw another direction to go.

He dropped the heat and spinning visualizations and imagined himself in a bed. The images were coming faster now, and more clearly. It was like stepping from a black and white world into color. Everything was more intense.

I’m in a hospital bed.

Jay pictured the bed, the room quiet, made up of the same nondescript decor and hardware found in hospitals all across the nation. He could almost hear a beeping sound, and he imagined it might be an EKG keeping track of his heart. He tried to imagine the feel of the cool sheets on his skin, the whisper of an air conditioner nearby, the click of heels on a floor.

“He’s coming around!”

“The monitor’s going crazy!”

Voices! He heard voices!

Beta, here we come!

But, in that moment, the voices faded, and he felt a heaviness wash over him. A moment later, he was back on the beach, sun shining mercilessly, sand under his butt.

He cried out in anger, then calmed himself. He had made progress, he was sure of it. He had a goal now, a direction, and he was going to beat this thing. It was only a matter of time.

He was Jay Gridley. He was not going to roll over and give up.

No way.