Welcome back to The Listening Room for chapter two of Hypnotic. You can go back to listen (or read) chapter one to catch up.
We encountered a scary descent into a dreamworld for David and a suggestion by tech Toby about how to improve mission results. In this episode, we see what comes from the stillness.
2.
The hinges of the pass through creaked open at the bottom third of the door. A silver food tray lay in the opening.
“Meal,” a voice said dully.
David got off his bed and walked over to get the tray. He brought it to his fold out table against the wall and pulled up a stool. He could tell it was morning in the windowless room since the lights brightened and dimmed on a timer. Even bathed in golden yellow photons of supposed mid morning, it was dreary and dull against the cement walls.
The food met caloric and nutrient needs but nothing else. Protein, carbohydrates, vegetables, and fruit were partitioned neatly on the tray. At least there was salt and some pepper but not much else. Vincent had assured him that keeping his environment bland meant he was more suggestible in dreams.
He plunged a fork into the square piece of meat product and took a bite. Not bad, but not that great. Just the routine. There was no television or radio permitted, only selected literature that did not include horror. He wondered if this is really what it took to get results, to be starved of flavor and color just to meet the project goals, but also his own.
His own goals. He pressed his eyes shut for a moment to remember why he even let someone lock him in a room day and night, asking questions, taking readings, taking blood and piss. At the end of this, he would not only achieve what he’d set out to do, but maybe helped someone else. Maybe thousands of people. That made him crack a smile.
He could call his parents with good news for once instead of being the last in the litter. He bristled at the thought, of still clawing toward who he was supposed to be. It felt juvenile. A hundred talents and not one to make a solid living. But he could never latch on to a world he thought was fake. Debt was numbers on a screen and interest, arbitrary. Career climbs meant the same contortion scripted from similar playbooks. Find someone to open a door for you, then walk through. Nonsense.
David rebelled with every cell against what he was supposed to do and so he lived in dreams. In dreams, people were pushed by the wind down a path or could finally say what they meant with conviction. They could be strong and capable, driven by some imperceptible energy. He levitated once because he wanted to and walked across the air down the halls of his high school.
He shoveled the food into his mouth and was still deflating a bloated cheek full of peas when he opened the pass through door and set the tray on it. He snatched up a book of poetry and sat back on the stool to read. He flipped to the bookmarked page and read a piece about rediscovering the places you already know.
“A Day of Never by Gale Kearney. Hmm,” he muttered.
David stopped a moment to contemplate the unnatural, penetrating quiet. There was a low electric buzz in the stillness that put him in a trance. He became acutely aware of his limbs in a way could hardly explain, only that it was detachment. His conciseness drifted outside his body and he would stare at his hands, watching his finger curl and uncurl like foreign things.
It was month three of the same circular journeys inside himself, of a gray and sterile routine. He tried to be grateful instead of bored, but it was hard when the hours crawled. In two hours, the door would be unlocked and he was free to use the gym. His room was large enough to be comfortable but not for any serious exercise. Opposite his table was a extra long twin bed with a beige metal frame and standard issue gray sheets. Behind the headboard was a dividing wall concealing a toilet, small sink and mirror. At the foot of the bed was a inset cabinet where he kept an extra set of clothes.
The only way to consume time during these hours was in his mind. He had done that a lot before he entered the facility. At his first job as a security guard at a toy store, he wandered into a world behind his eyes until a manger noticed people stealing on his shift. That was the first of quite a few times he was let go for the same inattentiveness.
David lay his head back against the cool wall and his room faded away into a bus stop by the Greenwood Mall in Edison. To his left was an elderly woman in a navy blue custodian uniform and tote bag pressed against her side. The faded logo of Bamberger’s was stamped across it in styled text. Defiant tufts of grass poked out along the curb in front of him.
There was a moment of confusion amixed with a realization slipping away. He looked around and the air was filled with fine dust scattering afternoon sun. He didn’t know how he knew it, but it was 1997. He rocked back and forth on the bench as if to confirm it would squeak and it did. He stifled a guffaw. What a strange proof.
Then a faded brown, boxy sedan rumbled by and there was no doubt. He heard the boom of an expensive trunk stereo rattling the car’s panels. The driver was blasting a song David knew well and he bobbed his head instinctively, recited the lines that trailed out the driver’s open window.
When the car passed, David noticed a man dressed in a dark suit and wide-brimmed hat across the street with a high shrub behind him. The man wasn’t moving, just staring at the ground. David squinted and saw he was clean-shaven. Other cars passed and blocked his view before he was able to focus on the man again. Brown hair?
Suddenly another man scooted beside him to his right and excused himself for squeezing into too small a space on the bench.
“Hey pal,” the man said.
David turned to him questioningly, “How’s it going?”
The man stared straight ahead and his smooth round cheek barely moved as he talked.
“I have information, but we can’t talk here.”
“Oh yeah, then where?” David kept his eyes on the man across the street.
“There’s a bagel place on the main drag in Fords.”
“Liberty?”
“Yeah. Meet me there in an hour.”
The man rose with his bookbag and slung it over his shoulder. He plucked a phone from his pocket and answered.
“Nah, I’m by the bus stop. I’ll meet you by the hibachi place. No, no, not tonight, I’m watchin’ my cholesterol.” He let out a halting snicker into the phone and walked away.
It was that detail that broke the veneer. No one on the street had a mobile phone in 1997, much less one without buttons that didn’t need a dial up tone to access the internet. The phone use was for misdirection and in that moment, his brain defaulted to the easiest way for anyone to exit quickly: an important call. Only he was still in elementary school in 1997, when someone could not be reached if they weren’t near a landline. He had not been old enough for a pager either. A beeping pager and a nearby payphone would have filled the gap better.
David didn’t want to dwell on it. That preoccupation threw him out of a dream more quickly. He was still working on that. Each time a trial. Each task a skill. Had he heard that somewhere?
On the bench where his new companion had sat was a white envelope. David tucked it into his pocket, then looked across the street to see the suit clad stranger was gone.
The bagel shop menu was standard fare. David ordered a bacon, egg, and cheese on an everything with a side of home fries and a coffee. It was a proper New Jersey meal if there was one. He looked at his watch. 45 minutes. His companion would show up shortly, but didn’t have to starve waiting.
He heard the dunk of a wire basket into hot oil and the sizzle of eggs and bacon on the griddle. Besides the teenage waitress and a young man who wasn’t much older, the place was deserted. Weekday morning, probably.
David sat facing the door and looked out on the sleepy street outside. The waitress slid a cup of coffee in front of him and set down a bowl of creamer packages. He flipped through the sugar packets on the table until he found brown sugar. A very small detail. It was sugar substitutes and regular in the 90s. He selected a French vanilla creamer from the bunch and slid the bowl toward the sugars and condiments.
Inconsistencies, he thought. They were the parts filled in for the purpose of continuity but sometimes got wrong. He found one in each sequence. Maybe there was always one. Maybe he didn’t need to rely on an external object like a chess piece or a spinning top, just those inconsistencies. He would have to make sure he found one.
The man from the bus stop pushed open the door and waddled in with his bookbag. He tossed it onto the bench seat across from David before sliding in. He tried to push the table for more room and was frustrated to find the table was anchored from underneath.
“Hey buddy,” he said shifting to find a comfortable position. “Damn, everywhere you go these things are too small. Lucky you.”
David gave a spiritless smile.
The waitress brought out David’s meal and pulled a notebook from her pocket.
“Hi, can I get you something?”
She swept her hair behind her ear and pulled the sleeves of her gray sweatshirt over her hands.
“Just a black coffee.”
After the order was delivered and the waitress returned to her perch behind the register, his companion spoke.
“I’m glad I caught you. Been trying to link up for a few days. I have some information on your target.”
“Oh yeah?” David asked.
“Looks like she’s been having a nice leisurely summer. Couple trips down the shore. Little shopping in the city. Even went out to a farm in Milford for raw cheeses. I got a cousin in Jersey City sells the same shit. Whatever. Suit yourself, I say.”
He shrugged, then reached into his bookbag and froze. David studied the scene that had paused like a VHS tape without the need for adjusting the tracking control. He sipped his coffee and scanned the corkboard advertisements near the door for little league fundraising, music lessons, and landscaping services, among many others tacked on business cards of varying ages.
Behind him, the cook stood with his hand open and a spatula suspended above it while the waitress looked on in amusement. She was just leaning off her stool to stand. David turned around toward the door again to see the suited man in the shop window. He gasped.
The lock slid open and a voice announced, “Gym!”
David tipped his head forward. He ran his hands through his thick hair and scratched his scalp. He went farther this time, but was in no rush. Pausing the dream had become easier but the suited man moved outside his control. He shuddered.
Yawning and stretching, he lumbered through the open door to the gym where his footfalls were the only sound.
High in the upper corner of David’s room, a red unblinking eye captured something extraordinary.
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