The Elders (Mind Dimensions #4)(73)
First the red one, then the blue one. Our heart is pounding painfully fast. This is what those guys who disarm bombs must feel like.
We finish with a couple of cables that only instinct tells us might be loose.
It has to work, we half hope and half pray.
We’re about to turn on the machine when we notice something terribly wrong: the helmet fell off Darren’s head, and what’s worse, Thomas is choking the life out of him.
We reach for the helmet.
Darren’s face is purple. He has seconds, if that.
We grab the helmet and push it on his head.
Thomas is so focused on his murderous task that he ignores us as we adjust the helmet’s strap under Darren’s chin.
Glad the machine is close by, we press the on button.
*
Okay, that was Eugene’s mind, not Thomas’s, which means trusting my intuition was as good as choosing at random. And that means I just took a one-in-three chance on Mira’s life. Damn. It also means my next choice has a fifty-fifty chance of being right (or wrong), unless I can think of a way to distinguish the patterns. What makes it worse is that I need to choose quickly, since my Depth is running out at an unknown rate; not choosing will also result in Mira’s death.
I waver between choosing at random and strategizing. I spend what feels like an hour flip-flopping, with only a headache as my reward, proving that even a head can suffer from phantom limb syndrome.
Fine, I’ll chose one at random then, I think into the ether and choose the rightmost pattern as my next target.
“Please, Darren, not that one,” a familiar-sounding ‘voice’ states from inside my head. “That one is your slowed-down self.”
“Mimir,” I reply, relieved. “Nice of you to show up. You’re getting a knack for doing so when I least expect it.”
“You seemed on the cusp of learning how to identify the patterns on your own”—Mimir’s thought arrives with a hint of caring and innocence that I suspect he’s faking—“until you almost exited Nirvana.”
Mimir’s thought manages to convey a sense of relish for the new term for Level 2. He clearly likes it.
“So you let me agonize over this choice for my own education, is that it?” I send my thought angrily. “Is watching me squirm something you enjoy?”
“I did not have any evil intentions. You should be able to recognize patterns you’ve Read before,” Mimir replies. “And since you Read Thomas the last time, I thought you’d know him.”
“In that case, how do you know which one Thomas is?” I send. “You’ve never Read him, have you? Can you even do that? Read anyone, I mean?”
“I didn’t need to know which pattern was his, not when there were two choices left and I knew which one was yours,” Mimir thinks. “Yours I know as well as I know myself, you see.”
“Is that why you didn’t stop me when I Read Eugene by mistake?” I notice he never answered my question about him being able to Read. I don’t bother pointing it out since I know he knows (by reading my mind right now) that I know he dodged the question.
“Exactly,” Mimir replies. “Until you Read Eugene, I didn’t know which pattern was his. Unlike the last time we met, the location of the patterns couldn’t help me, due to the three of you being very near each other in the Quiet.”
I ignore him continuing to pretend as if we’re just talking about Eugene’s pattern and reply, “Fine, whatever. We can chat about this and the cryptic message you gave me on the Island later. Now that I know which one of these patterns is Thomas, I need to focus on preventing Mira’s death.”
“I wholeheartedly agree.” Mimir’s response feels pleased. “You’ve learned a lot about patience, time management, and priorities since we last communicated.”
Allowing him to have the last word, I focus on Thomas’s pattern and teleport to him in two jumps, as I did with the others.
When I’m there, right before I enter into the Coherence state, I decide to spare a fraction of a second to see whether I can tell this is Thomas.
I focus. Though my pattern is not enveloping his yet, it’s on the verge of doing so.
Sometimes knowing something can be done goes a long way toward actually accomplishing it. That’s the only way I can explain it, because now that I try it, I can tell that this is Thomas, although explaining how I can tell is tricky. If ‘seeing’ is the approximation for the sense that lets me experience the starry neural networks, then ‘smelling’ is the best way to explain this new sense that tells me, unequivocally, that this is Thomas. Of course, I’m stretching the definition of the word ‘smell’ here, even more so than the word ‘see.’
Thomas smells of honor, integrity, and patriotism. How can those abstractions have a smell? I don’t know, but those are the ideas that spring to mind when I register it all. The closest mundane approximations would probably be the musky scent of sweat from hard work, with a hint of mountain air, and a whiff of that new-paint smell from a newly unpacked flag.
Without any further hesitation, I evoke the state of Coherence. I must say, I’m extra glad I was able to confirm that this is Thomas before I took the plunge. Not that I didn’t trust Mimir, but my new motto is quickly becoming ‘trust but verify.’