[Corentine] Page 4

  Then, as if he knew that we were contemplating leaving, a man wearing a dark suit and a black fedora came out of the parking deck at the far entrance, looked directly at us, tipped his hat, and went back into the shadows of the building.

  "Wait here, Janine," I ordered, and started across the street.

  I walked into the dark entrance of the parking deck, hoping that wherever I met the research agent at inside would be better illuminated than the front gates, which were closed and locked. The admittance lights for both lanes of the entrance were a steady, menacing red, as if telling me to stop my search, as if they were warning me not to advance. I straddled and climbed over the lowered traffic arms, heading deeper into the building.

  "Down here," a man beckoned to me from the recesses of a stairwell about 10 meters away. "On the lower level, away from the street." It was hard to make out any details of his demeanor. The brim of his hat obscured most of his face in darkness.

  I trusted that his intentions were not malevolent and followed his lead down the stairs. If he wanted to hurt me, he'd probably had more than enough opportunity to do so. After all, he seemed to be working for someone who'd tracked me down and offered me a lead into the research trials Synchro had conducted earlier in the year.

  He waited near the wall on the next floor down, a few meters away from the foot of the stairs.

  "I don't have long," he began. "What do you want to know?"

  "What can you tell me?" I questioned. The man stayed in the shadows, and had I not been meeting him for such a serious reason, I would have made a crack at him for copying every secret informant in every espionage movie I'd ever seen. But all jokes aside, there was no doubt in my mind, even then, that I would do anything within my power to find her, to save her, whether that meant I had to go down into the depths of a parking deck in the middle of the night for a secret meeting with a Synchro informant or travel from one end of the world and back.

  "Please, sir, be more specific."

  "About Synchro Systems, then, that's a good place to start. What are they hiding from everybody?"

  "The files that my friends and I recovered after the investigative sweeps with pertinent information on Synchro were minimal, at best, but it appears that they were operating as an umbrella for a handful of research projects that the public never would have gone for," he began, looking nervously around the parking deck. "Something about psychology and computer analysis of the processes of memory, that's what the cover story was that they fed researchers like me. But it went a lot deeper than that. Most of the employees, of course, had no idea, and any investigating agencies were turned away or paid off, none the wiser about Synchro's construction of actual devices that could be used to alter the way that people were thinking. We're still not sure how it worked or how far along they made it into the project, but you should start by looking for former employees and other research agents with higher clearance levels that I've got." He handed me a slip of paper with a name and a number scribbled on it.

  "I've been keeping tabs on this guy for about five months. He's local, so you should be able to track him down. He can probably send you higher up the company roster if you can figure out a way to coerce him. I doubt you'll need any inspiration in order to do that. It seems that Synchro's plans for your girlfriend involved the extraction of information from her memory for use in one of their research models."

  "So you don't work for Synchro Systems, then?" I asked, seeking clarification.

  "No, of course not. My company was contracted by Synchro to do specialized research in fields that are not relevant to what you're searching for and as a result had access to their data. However, when the federal investigations began and everything started falling apart, Synchro broke the contract that they'd arranged with us, and we all lost a lot of money in the fallout. The same thing happened to other private companies, so some of us have gotten together and are doing what we can do reveal what's really going on with Synchro Systems. We'll never get our investment back, thought I personally believe that there are secondary research fields that came out of Synchro that will prove to be quite lucrative in the future. Your case came to our attention, though, and most of us want to do what's right. Like I said, it's not about the money."

  "You said that they were using Coren's memories for their research, that they were pulling them out of her brain. Could that be the reason that she had amnesia when we met? Did they erase her past, somehow?" I asked.

  "I've apparently misinterpreted the function of their devices, since you're telling me that she had amnesia when you met her. That's new information to me, and I'll pass it along to the appropriate people. The files that I've got describe a woman with her attributes receiving treatment in one of their local offices about six months ago. The subject's name has been removed from the documentation, but I'd be willing to bet that the subject and your girlfriend are the same person."

  I looked at the slip of paper that he'd handed me. The name on it, Dr. Evan Partain, seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place where I'd heard it before.

  "Do I know this man?" I asked the researcher, folding the paper and slipping it into my pocket.

  "It's possible that you've heard his name on the news, or read about him in the papers," he said. "He is the head of the department of research for Synchro Systems, and I suspect he's complicit in many of their umbrella operations. He's been interviewed several times; he always has the same company line about Synchro and what they've been researching and how the company is helping people build better lives. You know, the whole bit about taking control of your future that's on all of the ads. He was recently implicated in the involvement of several cases of inappropriately prescribed medications and questionable treatment methods resulting in psychological disorders that were intense, but apparently short-lived, in a number of patient's cases." He looked at me, waiting for me to ask another question.

  "What you're telling me is interesting, but ultimately it's not useful to me because it's not helping me get any closer to her," I said, frustrated by his calm, detailed answer. "I want to know what they did to her, and why. I want to know if they abducted her from my house, if they drugged me so I'd sleep through it, and where she is now. I have to find her. This Partain guy, how can I know that he's not just going to give me the runaround, or that he'll even be available to meet me?"

  He paused for a moment, adjusting his coat.

  "I shouldn't have to remind you that you should look into your own medical history. I have information that you were seeing a therapist up until you met your girlfriend. Suddenly, you stopped. You were dealing with depression, feelings of abandonment, and an almost overwhelming sense of rejection in your life. This was the result of the loss of your child, as well as your divorce, I presume." He almost grinned at me, but seemed to catch himself.

  "You were suicidal, weren't you?" He asked. "Synchro Systems also dealt with cases of severe depression – suggesting that your girlfriend might have also had those tendencies when she began her treatments."

  I was becoming very angry. As far as I was concerned, he had no right to throw my past into my face like that mentioning the marriage. How had he discovered that? Who was I really dealing with?

  I pushed him against the wall. I noticed that the paint, a dirty green the color of toothpaste residue, was peeling away, revealing the coarse surface of the concrete beneath it.

  "Does Synchro have something to do with me?" I demanded, my nose almost touching his. "Are our cases somehow related?'

  I could see the conflict of interest in his eyes. I hoped that he could see the desire to break something in mine. He blinked. I didn't.

  "Talk to Dr. Partain," he answered, no longer self-assured. "Please, that's all I can tell you."

  "What if he doesn't cooperate?" I asked him. I didn't relax my grip.

  "He will cooperate with you, I'm sure of it," he replied, confidence returning to his voice. "Look, this building's not secure enough for me to stay here any longer
. Someone will contact you later with more information. Will you please release me now?"

  I let go of him, and he brushed his coat, flattening out the creases in it where I had been gripping the fabric.

  "Your friend, Janine, is it? She's probably getting worried about you," he smiled at me with the same look of knowledge that had bothered me before. Just how much about my life and the lives of my friends did these people know? Why were they slipping me information in fragments, when it seemed that they would be able to locate and connect me with her just as easily?

  "You're much more than just a research agent, aren't you?" I asked him.

  "Research agent and other things. My employers allow me to handle all sorts of… situations," he responded.

  "Your employers? You're referring to Synchro Systems, aren't you?"

  "Don't make too many assumptions, friend."

  "I don't appreciate your games," I said to him, turning to leave.

  "Real life isn't a game. There are consequences for all of us."

  That didn't explain much, either.

  "What about fate?" I asked, flipping the headlights over to bright.

  "You mean in relation to the existence of God?" She asked. "Of course you do," she added, answering her own question.

  We were somewhere in Texas. At night, when there was nothing but the road and it went on for miles and miles and miles, where times and distances were measured in conversations and bathroom breaks.

  "Well, I've thought about it, too, and I guess it does kind of present a dilemma," she continued.

  "A major one," I agreed. "I mean, what's to say that my entire life's not fated and set out, even if I don't know what's going to happen next, you can theoretically tell me all of it, everything that happens, by traveling into the future, right?"

  "Theoretically, I could do that."

  "So what decisions, actions, and events in my life are really under my control? What if something bad happened and you came back and told me about it? Shouldn't I be able to stop it?"

  "I guess that really boils down to an ethical question on the part of the person with the knowledge of the future, doesn't it?" She said. "Sure, I could know in advance of some certain events in your life, but even if I told you about them, would you really be able to change them? Would you believe me? Just keep in mind that your future is someone else's past, and from their standpoint, it's set in stone."

  "Let's consider it on a level beyond that of just one individual, then. What if you could stop a war? Where is the ethical line drawn? Causing a change in the timeline like that would affect countless lives. Wouldn't it be worth trying? If we can't change the future, then why are we here?" I asked her.

  "I don't really know. But Here is where we are, now," she said, sighing. She traced her fingers on the glass edge of the window as if she was playing the piano or typing. "I wouldn't want someone to come from the future and stop this from happening, even if it was in the name of stopping a war. I don't care about everyone else; I only want this."

  But what if I was the one who was going to die? Could I stop a future from happening by removing us from the equation?

  Considering it on a level that was more local, one that concerned me, that's where I had the real issues. I should have been able to drive the car into a telephone pole and kill us both. That decision should have been in my hands, a decision that I'd always be able to make. I wanted to believe that I was a master of my own fate, and according to her, it was my own decision, though I'd already made it given someone else's perspective farther down the time line. Nothing about my potential impact with a solid object on the side of the road conflicted with the future history of the world. If she were a time traveler from my future, I could have killed her then, and she'd still be born on the same schedule, still fatefully decide to visit the past that I existed in, still meet me, and so on.

  It just didn't seem right. I looked at her as she stared out of the window contentedly, arm waving up and down in the wind, and I smiled, but she didn't see me.

  Another idea came to mind. If there somehow was a time machine at my disposal, I could travel back into time and warn myself about ever getting married in the first place, saving myself a lot of personal anguish and psychological issues. Or I could have saved the baby, if for some reason I had decided to get married anyway. I thought about it and then realized that all of those events would have to occur in order for me to end up where I was that night, driving along that empty road through Texas. Then I realized why I was having an issue with it: changes could be made, I was sure of it, since we only had the perspective from whatever decisions that we'd made and events in our lives, it merely seemed that there was only one path. It seemed like I couldn't do anything about all of the bad things in my past from my current standpoint since I existed in that particular present.

  If I changed things, my other self wouldn't know any better, but would go on believing that things were unchangeable and that life had followed only one path. Perhaps someone else had met a strange girl with some memory problems in the bathtub or at the front door of a different apartment, and the self that I had saved from all of the bad things would never be the wiser. Would it be morally wrong to deny a past version of myself the richness and joy of my present love in order to prevent them from experiencing, to spare them, even, the agony of love lost? Who would I be changing? Would my own memories change, or would I become a like a specter, a wandering star, haunting a present that I no longer belonged to with the dark light of what never was to be weighing down upon me?

  I drove on for a little while longer, considering the possibility that I had already made every decision that I would ever make, and I just had to wait for time to play out so that I could live through them, or even die because of them, living in the illusion of free will, deluding myself into thinking that anything was a real choice. I think that there was some religion that appropriately addressed that very issue. Generally speaking, though, religion never really was for me and I couldn't swallow and digest such a massively vague concept, anyway. On the other hand, it just didn't make sense that we'd exist solely to move along the timeline. There had to be something more!

  If only I could completely, unquestioningly accept that everything was random, that the universe was chaotic, that there was no real point in anything, and that everything was the result of an evolving dynamic towards entropy, manifested through constantly tipping balances of order and chaos! If I could know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that a final balance would be achieved in the end, somehow, that the universe would exist as nothing more than heat energy, and perhaps after that, a true zero state. But there was always the possibility that something unknown would happen, even after that. Nothing is possible, because Everything is.

  All of those concepts took place on a scale so vast that it didn't matter where humanity fit into the picture, much less one individual human life: my own. That was all fine with me, since it was too big of an issue to really tackle at all, too vast to wrap my head around and think about where words would even make sense, since there was absolutely no way that I'd ever be able to grasp the concept of the life span of an entire universe, from beginning to end. Where did I fit into this? Could my actions, however small, change my own future, and therefore alter the future of the universe? How far would the ripples extend?

  Chapter 05

  Janine's boyfriend, David, sipped at his pint of beer, keeping an eye on the back door for us.

  "Do you think that this guy will show up?" He asked.

  "I'm starting to notice a theme here," Janine quipped.

  "We've had pretty good luck, so far," I said. I hoped that our good luck would continue. It seemed like we had a lot of leads that only led us to other leads, and everyone that we spoke to was passing us on towards someone else. With each pass, we gained a little bit more information that was useful to us, though, so I wasn't about to start complaining.

  David seemed nervous, and understandably so. She'd told h
im that I had to meet a potential investor in a shadowy business venture and that I just needed someone to play lookout, in case the potential investor decided to bring along some less than friendly additional guests. He told her not to tell me his name, for some reason, though I already knew it. I even knew what his address was, what kind of car he drove, how old he was, and a handful of other information that I'd picked up listening to Janine talk over the weeks, but I played along and pretended I didn't know anything about him, even telling him that I thought it was the best for both of us that he remained anonymous. I guess that he didn't really know how well Janine and I knew each other and how we'd planned all this out hours ago. At least one part, about the meeting being important, was the truth.

  Partain wasn't due to arrive for another 10 or 15 minutes, so I lit another cigarette.

  "Just make sure that you turn the camera on," I reminded Janine, nodding towards her mp3 player. I was glad that they had decided to put cameras in those things.

  "Got it," she said. "Up the sleeve, arm over the back of the booth."

  She wore a baggy jacket with loose sleeves into the bar that day. To a casual observer, it would only appear that she had her arm around her boyfriend while they shared a drink.

  I hoped that no one would notice them at all, though.

  "Have you checked the battery charge? Do you have enough available memory?" I asked her, worried that something would go wrong. I wanted to get as much reviewable information as possible from the meeting with the doctor, especially if he had relevant information that would help me find Coren.

  "Stop worrying. It's ready to go," Janine reassured me. David smirked. I considered pouring my drink onto his lap.

  "Okay, then," I sighed, putting my cigarette out and wiping my sweaty palms on my pants. "I'll go ahead and go up to the bar. He should be here any minute, so make sure you're ready. But don't be too obvious, guys."