Green Eyes

  I have chosen this precise time to die because I knew Dr Ezawa would be in residence and would - being a good research man - wish to perform the autopsy at once. The laboratory next to this room is the only place suitable for such work. If you will turn on the wall switches beside the mirror, in due course you will see and hear all the proceedings…’

  Donnell hit the switches. A light bloomed within the mirror, and a wide room dominated by two long counters became visible; a lamp burned on the nearest counter, illuminating beakers, microscopes and a variety of glass tubing. No one was in sight. He turned back to the letter.

  … though it is likely your view will be impaired as the doctors crowd around, shoving each other aside in their desire for intimacy with my liver and lights. I doubt you will be disturbed; the basement will be off-limits to all but those involved in my dissection, and the room you occupy has no video camera. It was, I suspect, designed as an observation post from which to observe the initial recovery phase of creatures like ourselves, but apparently they chose to sequester that portion of the project at Tulane. In any case, it will take some hours at least to restore the video, and if you exercise caution you should be able to return upstairs unnoticed.

  Enough of preamble. Hereafter I will depend a list of those things I have learned which may be pertinent to your immediate situation.

  1) If you concentrate your gaze upon the cameras, you will sooner or later begin to see bright white flashes in the air around them: cometary incidences of light which will gradually manifest as networks or cages of light constantly shifting in structure. I am convinced these are a visual translation of the actions of electromagnetic fields. When they appear, extend your hand toward them and you will feel a gentle tugging in the various directions of their flow. The ledger will further explore this phenomenon, but for now it will suffice you to know that you can disrupt the system by waggling your fingers contrary to the flow, disrupting their patterns…

  The laboratory door swung open, a black arm reached in and switched on the overhead fluorescents; two orderlies entered wheeling Magnusson’s corpse on a dolly. Then a group of lab-coated doctors squeezed through the door, led by Dr Brauer and an elderly Japanese man whose diminished voice came over the wall speaker. ‘… matter who gave him the scalpel, but I want to know where it has vanished to.’ He stalked to the dolly and pinched a pallid fold of flesh from Magnusson’s ribs. ‘The extent of desanguination is remarkable! There can’t be more than two or three pints left in his body. The bacteria must have maintained the heart action far longer than would be normal.’

  ‘No wonder Petit’s so freaked,’ ventured a youngish doctor. ‘He must have gone off like a lawn sprinkler.’

  Ezawa cast a cold eye his way, and he quailed.

  Seeing his creator filled Donnell with grim anger, righteous anger, anger based upon the lies he’d been told and funded by the sort of natural anger one feels when one meets the wealthy or the powerful, and senses they are mortals who have escaped our fate. Ezawa had an elegant thatch of silky white hair and eyebrows to match; his eyes were heavy-lidded and his lips full, pursed in an expression of disapproval. Moles sprinkled his yellow cheek. He had a look of well-fed eminence, of corporate Shintoism, of tailor-made pomposity and meticulous habits and delicate sensibilities; but with a burst of insight Donnell knew him for a pampered soul, a sexual gour-mandizer of eccentric appetites, a man whose fulfilled ambitions had seeded an indulgent nature. The complexity of the impression confused Donnell and lessened his anger.

  ‘Actually,’ said Ezawa, ‘it’s quite an opportunity being able to get inside the brain before termination of the cycle.’

  ‘I don’t suppose,’ said the youngish doctor, obviously seeking to re-establish himself, ‘that there’s any chance he’s still alive?’

  ‘Anyone connected with this project should realize that the clinical boundary for death may never be established.’ Ezawa smiled. ‘But I doubt he will have any discomfort.’

  The two orderlies lifted Magnusson onto the counter and began cutting away his pyjamas and robe; one held his shoulders down while the other pulled the soaked cloth from beneath him laying bare his emaciated chest. Troubled by the sight, Donnell went back to the letter.

  … I must admit I had misgivings as to my sanity on first learning this was the case. I am, be it illusion or not, a scientist, and thus the parameters of my natural expectation were exceeded. But each time I have done as I described, the result has been the same. I cannot rationalize this as being the result of miraculous coincidence.