My patient, John Smith, sat in my office at the hospital looking alert and healthy. He’d come a long way from the unwashed, raving, homeless lunatic that the police had brought in two months ago. We still didn’t know his real name.
‘Things are much better now, I don’t hear the voices or see the rolling colours while I’m awake, but it’s the dreams, they seem so real, so meaningful,’ he said.
I wasn’t too concerned about the dreams, one has to expect side-effects from any drug treatment, and John’s quality of life was so much improved.
‘It’s a matter of striking a balance, John, we’re trying to pick a path between Heaven and Hell, between the devil and the angels.’
‘I still remember nothing before I came here, Dr Oakwood, just odd flashes of people and places, but it’s all so disconnected. It’s all to do with my brain tumour I expect.’
He didn’t have a brain tumour. He had something else inside his skull, something denser than a tumour but less dense than bone. I’d seen nothing like it, and neither had anybody else if the medical databases were to be believed. It sat on the surface of his brain, at the back of his head, close to the visual cortex. It was circular, about ten centimetres in diameter, thicker in the middle than at the edges. A series of filaments radiated from it, branching and re-branching into John’s brain until they disappeared beyond the display resolution of our equipment. One of the main filaments was broken, and even though I didn’t know what it was, I felt that was where the trouble lay.
‘Tell me about your dreams again,’ I said.
‘It’s always the same, first the music, then the rolling colours, then I’m in an office, sitting across the desk from this woman.’
‘What does she look like?’
‘It’s difficult to guess her age, between thirty and forty. She has blond, bobbed hair and blue eyes, and tells me that her name’s “Farina.” She’s attractive, dressed conservatively and seems business-like.’
‘And what does she say to you?’
‘She says my implant isn’t functioning properly, that she can’t contact me while I’m awake. She says I’ve been sent here from the future, that I have a very important job to do.’
‘Do you know what it is?’
‘She explains it in great detail but when I wake up I can’t remember.’
‘John, the growth is putting pressure on the sensory parts of your brain. It’s not surprising you’re having hallucinations and lucid dreams. Try not to worry, if all goes well tomorrow we’ll remove the problem and everything will return to normal.’
‘And will my memory come back, Doctor?’
‘I have every reason to hope so, John.’ It was one of my stock phrases.
*
The procedure was textbook. We’d shaved his head, I looked for scars from a previous operation, there were none. The object must have grown in place. I’d been wondering if it was part of some secret military project gone wrong. I incised the scalp, peeled back the skin and, being careful not to penetrate the dura, used the circular saw to cut loose a square section of skull. As I was preparing to remove it, the power failed. There was a pause of a few seconds as we stood frozen, in total darkness, before the lights came on again. That isn’t supposed to happen, we have uninterruptible power supplies that can carry us for the few seconds it takes for the emergency generators to kick in.
‘He’s flat-lined,’ muttered Abrahams the anaesthetist. We waited, while he did his frantic best to bring John back, but it was no good, he was gone. I lifted out the section of skull and all I found underneath was a circular indentation where the “implant” had been sited.
It’s always depressing when you lose a patient, I’ve never gotten used to it. I changed out of my greens and went back to the office to write up my notes. There was no sign of John Smith’s computer records, no copies of the x-rays or scans, nothing. Probably something to do with the power cut. I’d had enough, it could wait until tomorrow. I made my way home to a large whisky and an empty bed.
*
Next morning, there was an email from one of the forensic databases. They’d finally identified John from his fingerprints. They matched a government scientist called Martin Riley, who’d been killed in a road traffic accident, two years before. His car had fallen from the Woodrow Wilson Bridge into the Potomac River, his body had never been recovered. I decided to take another look at my patient and made my way down to the morgue. The gum chewing attendant checked his screen and announced that the body had gone for cremation the previous night. Unusual, but not unheard of, with an unclaimed corpse. So, nothing left, no evidence of our time traveller or his implant.
After I left the morgue, I stood outside the entrance for a moment thinking about John and his dreams, but I had another patient to see in ten minutes. I hurried back to my office to read the case notes.
#
author bio:
Roger Ley was born and educated in London. He worked as an engineer in the oilfields of North Africa and the North Sea, before joining the nuclear industry and later pursuing a career in higher education. His stories and articles have appeared in about a dozen ezines this year.
His book Chronoscape is a well-received science fiction novel about time and alternate realities. It was favourably reviewed by writer Jessica Lucci who added it to her recommended reading list for the Summer of 2018.
Find him online at rogerley.co.uk, on Twitter @RogerLey1, or on Facebook at Roger Ley.