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Marlowe sipped his coffee. “Oh, it’s real, all right. I’ve glimpsed it. I made contact with it once. It spoke to me. But the power coming through was too much for my poor little machine to take. Ever since, I’ve been working to make improvements in the hope of reestablishing contact. We’re awfully close. I can feel it.”
Jericho had no idea what Marlowe was talking about. It really did sound like something from a fantasy novel.
“Can you imagine what that would mean, to control such a vast amount of energy? What new creations and wonders might be wrought from it? ‘Oh brave new world!’ I’d be the new Columbus!” Marlowe pounded the table with his fist. Jericho had never seen him so excited. “Of course, to reach into that dimension requires quite a lot of energy, too. But I did it before and, by golly, I can do it again. That’s the American spirit!”
“Could I see this machine?” Jericho asked.
“Not yet. When it’s ready. For now, it’s our little secret,” Jake said, grinning, and even though Jericho knew not to trust him, not completely, he couldn’t help feeling that he’d been chosen by Jake. And being chosen felt good. Special.
Jericho cleared his throat. “I’ve, uh, been meaning to ask you, who is that woman I saw here, Anna Provenza?”
A shadow passed over Jake’s sunny face. He stirred his coffee even though he’d already stirred it. “Oh. Just someone I’m trying to help. Poor girl.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Mental patient. Hears voices. Thinks she sees the future.”
“A Diviner, then.”
Marlowe trained his gaze on Jericho. “Do you know what Diviners are? They are a plague upon the nation.”
“My friends are Diviners.”
“So were some of mine,” Jake said, and Jericho could hear the hurt in it. “They’re not to be trusted, though. That sort of strangeness, well, it’s unnatural. It leads to clannishness—that sort sticks to their own kind. They think they’re better than the rest of us. They’ll turn on you eventually. Be careful.” And then, like the sun parting clouds, Marlowe smiled. “But enough of this. We have work to do.”
In the basement laboratory, Marlowe showed Jericho to a long, hinged-top tank with a ladder on the outside. The tank had been filled with water, like a bathtub.
“What is this?” Jericho asked.
“It’s called sensory deprivation,” Marlowe explained. “You’ll be floating inside, completely relaxed, while the vitamin tonic enters your bloodstream. There’s a microphone inside. We want to know what you see and hear while you’re in that meditative state.”
A panicky feeling came over Jericho. Ever since the time he’d spent trapped in Jake’s iron lung contraption, Jericho had developed a fear of confined spaces. Just looking at the thing made his heart race. “You want me to climb inside that?”
Marlowe frowned. “Come now. You’re not afraid, are you? It’s just water.”
Yes, Jericho wanted to say. I am, in fact, afraid of being sealed up in that thing like a watery coffin. But he didn’t want to look like a coward. And besides, he didn’t really have a choice.
Marlowe administered the vitamin serum, and Jericho could feel it warming his veins as Marlowe guided him to the tank. He climbed inside. Pure panic overtook him as Marlowe shut the lid, sealing Jericho in darkness.
“It’s all right,” Marlowe’s voice assured him. “Just relax.”
Jericho tried, but he hated the isolation. It was like a practice death. To calm himself, he conjured the memory of that Ferris wheel ride with Evie again. He pictured her laughing face, and beyond it the whole of the sky. Soon, he began to lose sense of his borders. It was as if he had no body at all. Time was meaningless. Jericho wasn’t sure how long he’d been floating there when he began to hear murmurs, like eavesdropping at a summer picnic from a distance.
“I hear… voices,” he said.
“Good! Good.” Marlowe. “Can you hear what they’re saying?”
“Open… the… door again as before… but this time, you must keep it open.”
The murmurs turned into an insect-like hiss that made Jericho’s skin crawl.
“Talk to the voices, Jericho. Ask them how I do that.”
“Hello,” Jericho said. “How do we keep it open?”
The insect drone grew louder. It was as if he were at a summer picnic and a fierce thunderstorm were bearing down. “The souls must be refreshed,” Jericho repeated. “He will give further instructions soon. But you must not fail this time.…”
That terrible sound made Jericho’s heartbeat go wild. Underneath, it sounded as if all the demons of hell were loose. And in his current state, he felt joined to it. Like he was back in his dream watching the sky tear open, exposing the horrors hidden inside.
