A Story by Gayle Highpine
Copyright 1994 Reprinted from STARCROSSED, edited by Bruce Jividen
As soon as Sam's eyes recovered their ability to focus, he began to take in his surroundings. Gray, unadorned walls. Doors with electronic locks. Videocameras on both ends of the hall. Sam had never felt comfortable in government security installations before, but now the familiarity of it seemed a bit comforting. He had experience with government security personnel; perhaps this time it wouldn't be too difficult to bluff his way through the situations he would find himself in.
Of course, rightnowhis situation was uncomfortable. The restroom door was at his back -- but into which room was he supposed to be headed? And how to get in, past the doors with their coded electronic locks? If he didn't know a code sequence or a password he was supposed to know well, government security people could get quite paranoid, as Sam knew from experience. There were always stories circulating around security circles about these cloning factories in Russia that could turn out exact duplicates of your own grandmother, boss, partner, even your most trusted dog. If someone turned up not knowing what they were supposed to know --
"Al," Sam whispered under his breath, but too softly for Al to hear -- there were surely microphones as well as videocameras recording everything that went on in this building. "Oh, boy," he said aloud, despairingly.
To his mixed relief and shock, Al materialized at that moment. "Hiya, Sam," he said cheerily. "Wow, this place looks like home away from home! How many hours have I spent at places like this, security agencies... military, civilian. They always give me the creeps, though. There are some real paranoid wackos involved in intelligence work. Some okay guys, too. But, I'll tell ya, some of 'em make ya wonder why they call it `intelligence.'" Al tapped his temple with his forefinger.
"Al," Sam hissed. Without moving his head, he jerked his eyes sideways toward the security cameras.
"Okay, okay," Al said. "Ummm... Ziggy says your name is Ben Wylie. You are an assistant to Special Agent George Fox of the Federal Security Agency. That's here. Hey, the FSA's a real secret bunch, Sam. This Wylie has to be a really sharp guy to be working here. Ziggy says the reason you're here is... they're holding a civilian captive here, for secret interrogation. You helped to capture him, you and your boss. Now you have to help him get away."
Get away? Sam thought, looking at the windowless walls, the electronic locks, the security doors. Out of here?
At that moment, one of the doors in the hall Sam was facing swung open, and a short man rushed out impatiently. "Wylie, for heaven's sake, what are you standing out here for? Get back in here. I need you to monitor the subject while we get the galvanic skin response monitors set up." He smiled at Sam and slapped him on the back. "Don't worry, Wylie. Everything is great."
"Yes, sir, Mr..."
"Fox," supplied Al.
"... Fox," said Sam as he followed the short man back into the room from which he'd come.
Inside the room, several technicians in white coats were standing over a hospital-gowned, prone figure strapped to a gurney, his shaved head and bared chest covered with electrode wires. "I'm not sure whether the normal doses of Pentothal would be enough for this subject, or too much," one of the technicians was saying to Fox. "Dr. Rios says he seems oversensitive to some chemical stimuli, and unaffected by others."
"The important thing is, don't damage it. Don't risk any damage," Fox said tensely.
Don't damage what? Sam thought, looking at the electronic monitors.
"Don't worry," the technician said. "Dr. Rios isn't taking any chances. She was saying this morning that she would rather take her time and have the subject around as long as possible."
The figure on the gurney turned his large, gentle eyes toward Sam. They were such gentle eyes that something in Sam seemed to shout, No! This isn't right! Those eyes looked at Sam with much sadness and pain, but not a hint of fear, nor of anger. Not even anger toward Sam, who -- as Agent Wylie -- had, according to Al, helped to capture him.
"Sam!" breathed Al, at Sam's side. "Sam! He sees me!"
"That's impossible!" Sam responded.
"What's impossible, Wylie?" demanded Fox.
"I... It's.. it's impossible that the patient should have EEG readings like that..." Fox was giving him a strange look, "... I mean, with Pentothal Sodium in him he couldn't..."
"Wylie, what are you talking about? Since when have you known anything about EEGs?"
"When have you everaskedme about EEGs?" Sam responded, hoping that Fox neverhadasked his assistant about them.
"Well, Wylie, I think that Dr. Rios ought to know her business, don't you? She's one of the most respected neurophysiologists in North America. And, anyway, it hasn't been given any Pentothal. We're still testing its tolerance levels. We have to be very careful since we're dealing with a lot of unknowns here. Don't worry," Fox said expansively, "everything's great. You did a fine job."
"Sam, I tell you, he does see me!" Al insisted.
Sam looked at the man on the table. The man nodded.
"You see, Sam!? And he hears me, too!"
"I hear you," the man on the table said with gentle sadness.
"Mr. Fox, sir, could I be excused to go to the restroom?"
"Again?" Fox waved his hand. "Go, Wylie. Go."
Gratefully, Sam ran out the door and down the hall. He ran into the restroom and hopped impatiently from one foot to the other until Al appeared a few seconds later.
"Okay, Al, tell me. Who is this guy? What's he done? And how can he see you, if he really can?"
"Look around, Sam," Al said, gesturing. Sam looked up and saw a videocamera . He rushed into a stall. Surely they wouldn't have video surveillance in the stalls! They didn't. What a relief. He lifted his feet up onto the toilet seat to make standing room for Al as Al walked through the door -- as onlyhecould walk through a door.
"Okay, Al, what's the story here?"
"First of all, there may not be cameras in here, but there are probably microphones." Sam acknowledged Al's statement with a silent shrug. "So, don't talk. I'll tell you what I've got. Subject's name is Paul Forrester. A photojournalist. Won a Pulitzer for photographs he took in Cambodia... I think I've heard of this guy, Sam. He covered the war in Nam -- those photos really caught what things were like. There was this photo spread in LIFE of the returning soldiers -- I still have that magazine, even though it is more'n twenty years old. When I look at those soldiers, I can see the faces of my buddies. He's being held for... hmmm, Ziggy can't get that information. It seems to be highly classified. Must have something to do with -- well, this guy probably goes everywhere in the world that there's a hot spot. You know people like him -- they'll go anywhere or do anything for a picture. Remember that lady photojournalist who got herself killed in Nam going after her Pulitzer? He mighta cozied up to someone in order to get in somewhere to get pictures no one else could get. Maybe buddied-up with some terrorist in order to get some exclusive photos of a homemade bomb factory. That's my guess -- he linked up with somebody Uncle Sam doesn't like, and now Uncle Sam figures he's got information he'd better spit out. Of course, holding a citizen this way is completely illegal, so that's why things like this are done at secret facilities like this."
Sam nodded. He pondered the information as he opened the stall door -- then he ran back in and flushed the toilet for the microphones' benefit. Surely Forrester would be let go if he told the agents what they wanted to know. On the other hand, Sam knew that those federal security agents had, in the past, targeted groups and movements that Sam would consider to be good guys. The trade union movement, the civil rights movement, the black militant groups of the sixties, the antiwar activists, the Native American struggle for self-determination -- they had all at one time or another been persecuted -- not just spied on, but actively persecuted -- by federal agencies in the name of "national security." If Forrester was holding back information that the Feds wanted so badly, it might be a matter of principle to him. He might be sacrificing himself to avoid betraying an important cause, or at least something that he saw as an important cause.
But Sam had to admit that the interrogation methods were strange -- at least, what he had seen of them. In Sam's experience, interrogations were something like psychological duels -- thrust and parry and dodge. But the FSA agents here were treating Forrester more as though he were an experimental subject than a suspect being interrogated. They barely seemed to acknowledge him as a person as they did their tests. In fact, Fox often referred to Forrester as "it" -- a usage that Sam found strange, distasteful, offensive. Perhaps that was a psychological pressure tactic being put on Forrester; perhaps they felt that by dehumanizing him they could break down his resistance.
Sam walked down to the door to the room where Forrester was being held. Or was this the right door? They all looked alike. They weren't numbered, just plain gray doors. It was the third door on the left, wasn't it, that Fox had come out of, the first time that Sam had found himself in this hall?
Sam pressed his ear against that door. He thought he could hear something inside, but... The doors must have been soundproofed.
Suddenly he noticed the glass eye of the videocamera staring at him from the corner of the hall, and jerked away from the door with a start. Oh, God, how suspicious must that look? What was the door combination Al had given him? The date. What was the date? May something. Hesitantly, Sam pressed button 5. Now... what was today again? May what?
Then the door swung open and an exiting Fox collided with Sam. "Oh, Wylie, there you are," he said. "I was just going to look for you. We're going to lunch. Watch the subject from now until one o'clock. It's heavily sedated, and it's under restraints, so it shouldn't give you any trouble. See you at one on the dot."
With a smile of exhausted satisfaction, like that of a man who has survived some impossible ordeal by sheer determination, Fox walked down the hall accompanied by three technicians.
"Yes, sir, Mr. Fox," Sam said to Fox's back. He was going to be alone with the prisoner! That was a start... Maybe he could figure out a way to figure him out.
The steel door closed with a muffled boom as Sam stepped into the room. Sam saw a silent, motionless figure in a white gown, lying face up on a gurney with his eyes closed. The figure's wrists were secured to the gurney by leather straps. An IV was in each arm. Electrodes were attached to his chest, his arms, his forehead, and his shaved skull. Blood pressure monitors were attached to one of his upper arms, giving a constant reading on both a digital monitor and graph paper. Beneath the snow-white sheet that covered his lower body, Sam could recognize the outlines of a catheter. It was a situation that no human being should be in, Sam thought with a sick feeling. Compared to this, it would be paradise to be a prisoner in a cell, where one could at least walk around.
The man opened his eyes. He looked at Sam from head to toe, and then looked into Sam's eyes. Sam saw sadness and despair, but, beyond that, he saw a love that was deeper and much more enduring than sadness. There was pain there, and despair, and a wrenching sense of separation, but there was something else, too. There was peace.
The man on the gurney opened his mouth. For a few seconds his lips moved without making a sound. Then, in a weak whisper, as though he were making an effort to remember how his speaking apparatus worked, the man asked, "Who are you?"
"I'm Agent Wylie, of course," Sam said. "You know me."
"No," the man whispered with an effort at shaking his head.
Was the man delusional? Or was it possible that the drugs he had been given enabled him to see through the "aura" that caused most people to see the characters they expected to see when they looked at Sam? I wonder if he thinks that I am impersonating Wylie in order to fool him or disorient him somehow, Sam thought.
"You're not one of them," whispered Forrester. "They think you're Wylie. You've taken Wylie's place. You aren't one of them... have you come to rescue me?"
"You're hallucinating! You're hallucinating!" Sam said loudly, looking about in panic at the four videocameras around them.
Forrester closed his eyes. His head sank deeply into his thin pillow and he seemed to surrender to the effects of the sedatives.
He lay quiet and unmoving. The only sounds in the room were the muted beeps of the electrocardiograph and the steady hum of an electric wall clock. Sam watched the rhythmic dance of the electrocardiograph until he was unaware of the passage of time or of the gray walls around him.
The clock read exactly one o'clock, minus ten seconds, when the door clicked open and Agent Fox stepped through it. He looked at the prone figure on the gurney and a soft, babylike smile came upon his face. "Go to lunch, Wylie," Fox said, but it didn't sound like an order -- it sounded, Sam thought, as though Fox were so much in the habit of giving orders that he didn't know how to sound any other way.
"Mr. Fox, sir," Sam said.
"Yes, Wylie, what?"
"Sir, the subject began exhibiting unusual behavior at approximately 12:06 p.m. It lasted until approximately 12:09 p.m."
Fox gave Sam an odd look. "Yes, go on. Tell me."
"He started to speak, sir. He attempted to articulate something..." Fox was looking at him sharply. "It was largely unintelligible, sir. He did ask me if I had come to rescue him. I believe that he was hallucinating..."
"Don't worry about it. The mikes probably picked it all up." Fox moved over toward the still figure on the gurney. "Dr. Rios is going to try a new experimental psychogenic drug on him that may give better results than Pentothal. It's supposed to encourage him to talk in his sleep, and to let us talk to him when he's asleep, so we can find out what he's dreaming. Dr. Rios has pioneered the technique of dream interrogation. Supposed to be based on some Tibetan thing she studied. Doesn't make any sense to me, but she says that it's the best way to get past the `humanized' layer of his mind into the real stuff."
The white-sheeted figure on the gurney looked so still and helpless. Sam remembered what he had felt when those large, peaceful eyes met his, and he wondered just what kind of dreams this man did have, what kind of secrets gave those eyes their mysterious, compelling depths. Part of Sam did leap with curiosity to know, but it was wrong to rip a person's psyche apart with drugs to expose those secrets to this harsh light. A image came into Sam's mind of a beautiful mountain blown to rubble to make the minerals accessible, and another image came into his mind of deep-sea creatures who explode and die when brought up to the water's surface. Whatever was happening here, whoever this Forrester was, something special was being torn apart and violated.
And Sam felt helpless to stop it. "Isn't... isn't that dangerous, Mr. Fox?" he said desperately. "He... he's already on sedatives."
"Well, of course we're not going to administer this drugnow, while it's on sedatives too. We're going to be very careful. We know this drug is experimental and we know that its reactions are different from human reactions. Dr. Rios is being very careful. She's gathering data at every step. Every brainwave, every heartbeat, every change in blood pressure or galvanic skin response is being recorded and fed instantly into the computer. We are going to know a lot by the time we catch the boy."
"The... boy?"
"The boy is Forrester's son. Name is Scott Hayden," boomed Al's voice behind them. "Hayden was his mother's name, she and Forrester weren't married. Mother's whereabouts presently unknown. He was born in 1972, in Wisconsin... Hmmm, this doesn't quite make sense. During most of 1971 and 1972, Forrester was in Indochina -- that's when he took the Cambodian refugee photos that won him the Pulitzer Prize. Oh, well, love will find a way. Anyway, this boy apparently must have gotten mixed up in the same thing as his father. The FSA wants him, too... And, get this, Sam -- the boy is here in D.C. right now! Forrester was captured in Vancouver, Washington, but the boy got away. But he musta figured they'd bring his father here. So he came to D.C.!"
"Alone?" Sam felt his heart wrench at what the boy must have been feeling to make him fly right into the heart of danger, right into the lion's den, with the futile hope of setting his father free.
"Alone what?" said Fox.
"I... was asking if you were going to try to capture the boy alone?"
"Of course not, Wylie, you're going to help me! Just like when we caught Forrester. You're a great assistant. I've recommended you for a raise."
"Ummm... thank you, sir."
"We're not alone anymore, Wylie. They're not calling it `Fox's Folly' anymore. The agency's going to make the boy's capture a priority. It's just a matter of time."
"I have to say this Wylie's pretty lucky," said Al, "to have such a cheerful and friendly boss. Some security agents I've known... well, they wouldn't be too pleasant to work under, believe me. Anyway, Ziggy says the boy's not here alone. Says he's here with a woman -- her name's Liz Baines. Resident of Chicago, Illinois, born February 6, 1949, in Council Bluffs, Iowa, married twice, no children, longtime associate of Forrester. She flew in from Chicago the same day the boy arrived from the Northwest. My guess is that she paid for the boy's plane ticket, and that she's picking up the tab in the hotel where they are staying. They're in a motel called The Senator's Hideaway. Just kidding. They're at a place called The Bald Eagle, staying under the names Ishtar Warren and Roger Esposito. Guess they thought `Smith' would attract too much attention. You get off work at five, Sam, so you can go see them then."
Sam found the address of The Bald Eagle in the phone book. He had no idea which car in the huge FSA parking garage was Wylie's, so he took a cab over to The Bald Eagle. It was a modest, rather rundown hotel, but it was easy to spot, its name superimposed on a huge, monochrome painting that seemed to have been copied from the back of a quarter.
The desk clerk confirmed that a Roger Esposito and an Ishtar Warren were registered, staying in a two-room suite.
"Would you like me to call their room for you, sir?"
Sam suddenly wished that he had phoned them before coming to the hotel. They very likely knew what Agent Wylie looked like, and they probably knew that he had participated in Forrester's capture. One look at his face, and Sam would have a very hard time convincing them that "Wylie" was on their side.
"Shall I call up to them, sir?" the desk clerk asked again.
"Um, just dial the room number and let me talk to them," said Sam, as his mind raced. What can I say? I don't even know anything about why Forrester is being held, or what can be done, or what Baines's role in this is... although he could guess the nature of her relationship with Forrester.
The desk clerk placed the receiver in Sam's hand, and Sam stared helplessly as tiny ringing tinkled from it. Don't be there, please don't be there, Sam's mind pleaded. After three rings, Sam was about to hand the receiver back to the desk clerk in relief, and then a woman's voice said, "Hello?"
Sam slowly lifted the receiver to his ear. "Ah... hello?" There was a moment of silence as Sam tried to think of what else to say.
"Who is this?"
"Um..." He couldn't introduce himself as Agent Wylie of the FSA! But he couldn't introduce himself as Sam Beckett, either. And he couldn't think of any other introduction that would get him anywhere. "I'm... a friend."
"A friend."
"Yes, ma'am. I'm... a friend of..." Should he say he was a friend of Paul Forrester's? But he could hardly pull that off. He knew next to nothing about Forrester, save what was in the public record. "I have information about... about something that might concern you." "Like what?" The suspicion in the woman's voice seemed to increase, and just at that moment Sam noticed the funny look from the desk clerk.
"Um... I'm sorry, ma'am, sorry I bothered you." Sam handed the phone back to the desk clerk, who gave him a suspicious glance as he put the phone back into its cradle.
What could he do? What could he say to them? Sam decided that he should just go home and think. He hoped that he lived alone.
He hailed a cab and instructed the driver to take him to the address on Wylie's driver's license.
Wylie's home proved to be a small, neat studio apartment in the heart of Washington. On the coffee table was a small stack of comic books -- SUPERMAN and other titles. There was also a copy of the latest WEEKLY WORLD NEWS. The cover headline read, "Titanic Survivor Found on Iceberg." Just what he needed to get his mind off his problems -- nothing could be further removed from federal security operations in Washington, D.C.
Sam opened the paper and read the first few pages -- a story about a goose who saved a woman from drowning and another about a man who was kept chained in the attic for twenty years by his wife. The latter story was an uncomfortable reminder of Forrester, strapped down maybe forever in a windowless room. Sam turned another page. An article had been clipped neatly from the facing page. Sam wondered what the article was, what it contained that had interested Agent Wylie enough to save it. Then it occurred to Sam that the apartment could contain clues, if not to the mystery of Forrester, then at least to what Agent Wylie was like and how better to impersonate him.
There were a few books on the shelves: some murder mysteries and a hardcover book entitled HOW TO HANDLE A DIFFICULT BOSS. Next to the bookshelf, Sam noticed a two-drawer filing cabinet. He opened the top drawer. There were only a few files in it.
Sam pulled one file out and examined it. All of the contents were clippings, taken mostly from tabloids, all about UFO sightings.
Sam picked up another file. This one contained clippings about crashed spacecraft and captured aliens, all of which seemed to be in either Siberia or Brazil. He flipped through another file. All of these clippings were about women who had had children fathered by space aliens. The fourth and last file had a variety of articles, all related to UFOs and/or aliens in some way: cattle mutilations alleged to be the work of aliens, UFO bases discovered on the moon, messages sent through space from dying planets and just now picked up by alert scientists on Earth.
Sam opened the lower file drawer. It was empty.
He looked again through the clippings. Some had phrases underlined in red ink. The phrase "blue light" or "blue beam" was underlined in several different articles. Another place, the phrase "spherical craft" was underlined.
Sam wondered if Agent Wylie had -- or thought he had -- encountered UFOs or space beings himself, to give him such an interest in the subject. Would it, Sam wondered, hurt Wylie's career if his superiors at the FSA learned about his interest in such "weird" subject matter?
Agent Wylie's kitchenette looked as bare and spotless as a motel kitchenette, but Sam found some frozen entrees in the freezer and put one in the microwave to cook.
While it rotated, he sat down in front of the television and picked up the TV schedule. Wylie had underlined the shows he was interested in -- LOST IN SPACE, VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA, BULLWINKLE, THE ADDAMS FAMILY. Sam smiled. He liked Wylie's taste in television; obviously, Wylie used television to escape from the pressures of his job, and, in spite of the seriousness and highly developed intelligence which, as an FSA agent, Wylie had to have, he wasn't afraid to let the child in him come out at home.
Sam, however, thought that a NOVA episode about subatomic particle accelerators sounded more interesting. Nothing like quarks and positrons to liven up an evening.
Sam removed Wylie's three-piece suit and put on a pair of his striped pajamas, extracted his now-steaming dinner from the microwave, and settled down to an evening of exploring his favorite alien world, the subatomic realm.
Sam spent a fitful night dreaming that he was a neutron being pursued by alien neutrons from other atoms. Ever since he had begun leaping, it seemed that he never had peaceful dreams about ordinary things anymore. As he shaved the unfamiliar face he saw in the mirror, he noticed dark circles under Wylie's eyes.
"Sam," Al's voice boomed from behind him, "I have bad news."
"Al! Don't sneak up on me like that when I'm shaving! It's hard enough to shave when the face in the mirror doesn't match the face I'm wearing. Look, I've cut myself. Can't you even wait till after I've had coffee to give me bad news?"
"Sam, Ziggy says that Forrester died eight days after his capture. This is the third day since he's been captured. Counting today, you have only six days to help him get out of there."
"Okay, Al, just what am I supposed to do? Ask Ziggy. What the blazes can I do?"
"Watch the profanity, Sam. You know Ziggy can't tell you that." Al looked at Sam reproachfully. "All I'm doing is giving you the information. According to Ziggy's information, time is short. Would you rather I withheld the information from you?"
"No, no, Al, of course not. Well, what did Forrester die of? Was it from those experimental drugs?"
"It doesn't seem so. Seems like the autopsy could find nothing at all. According to what's in the computer records, there was no sign of any problem. His heart was beating fine, his breathing, everything fine. And then suddenly" -- Al snapped his fingers -- "gone." He sighed. "The cause remains a mystery. In fact, it seems they did an incredibly detailed, minute autopsy on Forrester's body, examining tissues from all his organs with electron microscopes, doing every chemical test anyone could think of. But nothing. They never figured out why he dies, just like that."
"It is getting to be quite a mystery, Al," Sam said. "They seem unusually interested in his physiology. I thought at first that all those electrodes and monitors were to keep track of his reactions to the experimental drugs, while they interrogated him. But... I don't know, it sure doesn't seem like that's all there is to it."
"You're telling me, Sam. It wasn't just after he was dead that they started this minute examination of his tissues. Do you know that when they shaved his head, they didn't throw the hair away, but sent it to a special lab to be analyzed?"
"What were they expecting to find? Exposure to heavy metals, chemicals and stuff?"
"They were examining the cellular structure," Al said.
"Thecellularstructure? Of hishair??" Sam echoed incredulously. "Whatever on Earth were they looking for?"
Al studied Ziggy's screen more intently. "Seems like that they thought he could control his own rate of hair growth, and they'd see that in the shape of the cells or something. Yeah, I know, that sounds weird, I could be interpreting this wrong. Anyway, they did find some unusual things."
"Like what?"
"Dunno, Sam, you'd have to ask a biologist what all this technical stuff means. Maybe with your medical background you could understand it, but..."
Sam was silent for a long moment. Then he asked, "Did they ever capture the boy?"
"No -- according to Ziggy, the boy just disappeared from sight. Can't say as I blame him. Probably changed his name, living incognito somewhere, maybe left the country."
"And the woman, Liz Baines?"
"Still living in Chicago."
Again, Sam pondered for a while. "Al," he said, "why can't I ever get an easy one?"
"Probably because you're good, and Somebody knows it. See ya, Sam." Al stepped through the imaging chamber "door" and disappeared.
Sam counted out the cash in his wallet. There was enough to take a cab to work, and maybe enough to get along on for a few days if he could figure out which car was Wylie's and quit spending money on cabs. He could ask Al to have Ziggy access the DMV records. At least that was an easy one.
The guards at the entrance to FSA headquarters waved Sam through. At the door to Forrester's room, Sam pressed 5-18-19-8-7 as though he had done it hundreds of times. The door code hadn't been changed, and the door immediately opened.
Sam walked in and found Forrester in a hospital bed. At least they had given him something more comfortable than a gurney to sleep on. A young uniformed guard drowsed in a chair next to the bed.
Forrester's eyes lit up when he caught sight of Sam. "Good morning!" he said cheerfully, with a weak but genuine smile.
"Good morning, Forrester," Sam said.
"It's so good to see you, Agent Wylie," said Forrester, his eyes twinkling as though sharing a secret.
"Forrester," Sam said, and then stopped. Nothing he wanted to ask made any sense. Not to mention how weird it would sound to those listening...
Ah, the heck with it, time was running out; Sam threw caution to the winds. "Forrester... I have information that you, um, die six days from, now, and nobody is ever able to determine the cause. Forrester, are you dying of something now? Or are you planning to commit suicide rather than tell them what they want to know? Are your secrets really worth dying for?"
"I don't know any secrets," Forrester said, not even seeming surprised at Sam's statements about his dying. "I just don't know how to explain things in ways they would understand. I don't think they even really want to understand."
Our troubles aren't so different, thought Sam. "But are you dying? Please," he said, meaning it, "please don't die." Sam didn't know how or why, but somehow he felt that the world would be losing something very important, something very special, something genuinely unique, if it lost this man.
"I don't want to die," said Forrester. "I like it here. I feel more and more like I'm a part of life here. I have come to love the sensation of taking breath into my lungs. I love to feel the blood pulsing through my body. I love the sensation of light falling on my eyes, and the way my brain can turn sounds falling upon my ears into meaning. But -- there is no reason for me to continue life like this. The only reason that I am here is to be with my son. If I can't be with him -- if this body is going to be kept here -- there is no reason for me to stay with it. If I leave this body, I will still be able to be with my son again, even if it is in a different way."
He smiled at Sam, a smile that seemed to touch Sam at a very deep level with its simplicity and peace. "But, thank you, my friend. Thank you so much for coming to be with me."
Sam was silent. Suddenly, Fox burst into the room. "The subject needs to be exercised," he commanded the security guard. "Take him down to the gym for thirty minutes. Make sure his pulse rate reaches at least 120 for at least ten minutes, and then have him drink a liter of distilled water afterward. When he comes back, he'll have breakfast. He'll have at least 30 grams of protein in the morning, and another 30 grams during his evening meal, plus complex carbohydrates and enhanced levels of vitamin C and B vitamins and potassium and magnesium, a total of 3200 calories daily. Dr. Rios has designed a regimen to keep the subject in perfect health," Fox told Sam proudly. "We'll have him for years and years."