Davis, Jerry – Wall Of Delusion

John shook his head. “I’m just going to hang onto this for a while.”

“It was my idea,” Terri said.

Scott nodded. It didn’t matter. “You going with him?”

“Um

I don’t know.” She looked up at John.

Scott had to look away. The anger was welling up in him again. This really wasn’t helping

it didn’t relieve his guilt.

It was just some sort of computer-enhanced fantasy while he lay in a coma in his cell.

“You wouldn’t have shot us, would you?” his wife was saying.

“If we stay to talk this out, you’re not going to hurt me are you?”

“Hurt you?” Scott said. He could barely keep the hysteria out of his voice.

She nodded. “We can talk, can’t we? Or should I come back?”

“It doesn’t matter. I did shoot you. You’re dead.” He laughed at her expression. “You’re dead!”

“Maybe I’d better go,” she said.

“You’re already gone. You’re not even here.” He laughed, and it turned to a sob. “I’m not even here.”

Terri and John shared a glance. John’s expression was unreadable, but Terri’s was full of guilt. “You go,” she said to John. “I’d better stay.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Scott said to her. “This is too pathetic for me to stand. It was a big mistake. I shouldn’t have done it.” Then he looked at her. “Then again, I deserve it.

Nothing was worth your life. What I did to you was way out of proportion to the little betrayal of yours. I would have killed myself, too. I swear it. But what I really should have done was just walk away. I mean, I could have started over again. It would have seemed hard, but compared to what I’ve been through

He turned away, shaking his head. “I had no idea what ‘hard’

was.”

John didn’t leave, but he did walk over to his car and get in, the shotgun on the floor in the back. Scott was aware of him, but he was nothing but an annoying little presence far in a corner, like knowing there was a fly somewhere in the room. Terri had taken his hands in hers and was bent forward, staring hard into his eyes. Hers was an expression of worry. “You haven’t done anything.” He looked at her and she shook her head. “You didn’t do anything. It’s okay.”

“It’s okay?” He snorted. “Okay?” He looked around him, as if he could actually see the wall of delusion – as Dr. Kline had called it – like it was a pane of thick, marbled glass he was trapped behind, unable to see through to reality. “You know, I think you really should go with him,” Scott said to her. “Just go, be with your lover. You were meant to be with each other.” He pulled away from her. “Just go.”

“I don’t think I should,” she said. “I don’t think you should be alone right now.”

Scott thought this was funny. “I am alone right now!” He stood up suddenly, and she backed away, startled. “I’m in a cell with wires sticking out of my head! You’re dead. I’m stuck in my memories because the government is experimenting with my brain!”

He laughed at her uncomprehending wide eyes. “Go away!” he yelled at her.

John opened his car door and got out. “Come on,” he said to her. “You better come with me.”

Scott turned his back on the both of them and walked into the house, shutting the door behind him. Once inside he stopped and waited. Why am I doing this? he wondered. What does it matter if she follows me in or not? He realized he wanted her to follow him inside, he wanted her away from that jerk asshole bastard. But as he stood listening, he heard two car doors close and then the big rumbling engine erupted to life. As it drove away, Scott wandered into the living room and sat on their tattered couch, staring at the wall with a blank mind.

#

Scott had never seen the front of the medical authority building from the outside. He’d originally arrived from the back in a secure bus, which drove into a secure garage area where an iron door slammed. Here in the front was the large fountain with at least fifty jets of water making a beautiful interwoven pattern. The pool part of the fountain and the ground surrounding it was covered with thousands of cigarette butts. White smocked people stood smoking and staring at him as he walked past and up to the front of the place.

Inside the front reception area, his appearance made a small fuss as it seemed no one ever remembered someone wandering in off the street – there were piles of papers and files everywhere, Styrofoam cups, and Coke bottles. A gruff woman who was obviously not a receptionist said, “Can I help you?”

“I need to see Dr. Kline. I’m one of his test subjects.”

“Oh!” She looked around as if she’d lost something. “Go sit down over there,” she said, indicating a dingy set of gray plastic chairs, “I’ll give his office a call.”

Scott sat down and waited, wondering if he’d really thought his actions through. His mind was coming up with all this detail?

He looked at the dirty cups half-full of coffee, and the dead flies on the windowsill. If I was deluded, or dreaming, he thought, would everything seem so real to me? He pulled a piece of paper off of the table in front of him and read it over. Then he put it down for a moment, then picked it up and read it again.

It said the same thing, exactly. Scott remembered seeing a TV

program that said if you were dreaming and tried to read, the words would be changing constantly because the words were actually just thoughts in your head. Maybe this delusion is different than dreaming? he thought. I am probably reading this paper for real, but I’m actually somewhere other than where I think I am. I might be in Dr. Kline’s office right now.

Dr. Kline showed up, looking different than Scott remembered him. His beard wasn’t as long. “You’ve trimmed your beard,” Scott told him.

The doctor took a good long look at him. “Who are you?”

“I’m one of your test subjects.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I edited my memory – just like you told me not to do –

and I’m trapped behind a wall of delusion, just like you said I would be.”

Dr. Kline’s eyes narrowed. “You edited your memory? How exactly did you do that?”

“You know, the memory browser. The little spring in my head.”

Dr. Kline looked around the room, his expression flustered.

“You’d better come with me,” he said in a low voice.

Scott got up and followed Dr. Kline through a secure set of doors and into the restricted areas beyond. This was familiar –

it was just like he remembered it – but this time there were no armed guards trailing them.

“What is today’s date?” Dr. Kline asked casually.

“I’m not really sure,” Scott said. “I know it’s March-something.”

“What year?”

“Twenty-seventeen.”

They reached his office, and Dr. Kline opened the door and motioned him to enter. Once inside and the office door was closed, Dr. Kline said, “What memory did you edit to get yourself where you are now?”

“I went back and un-killed my wife.”

“How did you do that?”

“I threw the gun down instead of using it.”

“Your murder of your wife is how you ended up here in the first place?”

“Yes.”

“Have a seat,” Dr. Kline told him. He took his own place behind his cluttered desk. “If you go back and review your memories right now using the browser, can you get back here to the MA building?”

“No, I can’t. When I go back to the point where I edited my memory, it simply keeps going back earlier. And the index numbers jump by about four-thousand.”

“Jesus Christ,” Dr. Kline said. He was staring at Scott in what looked like awe. After several seconds of not saying anything, he suddenly smiled. “I want to thank you for coming here to tell me this. You’ve helped me tremendously.”

“Is there a way to get me back to reality?”

Dr. Kline leaned forward. “I’m going to tell you this just once. I’m not going to admit to anyone I’ve said it, if you repeat it I’ll call you a liar and a whacko. They’ll believe me, too, as I ought to know what insane is when I see it. You are not behind a wall of delusion. You are in the present right now. The year is twenty-fifteen and you have not committed the crime that originally got you here.”

“How can that be?”

“I’ll put it simply. The time/space continuum we exist in is not a flowing thing. It’s just a thing. Our perception of time is a feature of biology, not physics. By altering your time sense, we altered where you were in the space/time continuum.”

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