Exodus 2022 by Kenneth G. Bennett Read Free Book Online Page B

it.”
    Phelps turned to the monitors displaying the brain scans and tapped on the anomaly he’d identified earlier, the mass wedged between the caudate nucleus and the occipital lobe. “And then there’s this little mystery.”
    Edelstein said, “Why would this tumor—or whatever it is—cause these guys to imagine a dead child?”
     “We suspect,” Beck replied, “that the grief hallucination is a sort of…icebreaker.”
    “A what?” said Kate.
    Beck said, “Because here’s the thing. The part I haven’t shared with you yet. All of this stuff with the kids, all of the anguish and suffering…it’s just what’s on the surface. The thought captures uncovered a mother lode of material below that.”
    He gestured at the bank of monitors. “It’s like these guys ran into a high-tension power line, only instead of filling up with electricity, their heads filled up with thoughts. Filled to bursting. The dead kid is on the surface, but there’s an ocean of other stuff under that.”
    “What kind of stuff?” asked Phelps.
    “Ah,” said Beck. “This is where it gets really interesting.” He nodded at Brandon, and fresh images filled the massive center screen.
     

CHAPTER 17
    “WHAT IN THE WORLD?” said Kate.
    On the screen hovered a phosphorescent tube, or chamber. Veil-thin. Delicate. Emerald green. The structure had a wide, gaping mouth and a long, tapering body, like a horn of plenty.
    The broad open mouth of the object undulated gently. Rhythmically. Like a jellyfish drifting in the current. The walls of the structure glowed softly, but the area surrounding the strange object was dark, as if the tube, or chamber, or whatever it was, were floating in deep space, illuminated only by its own faint inner light. The image had a grainy, raw appearance, like a video transmission from one of the early Mars rovers.
    The group stared in silence. 
    “This thought,” Beck said finally, “this…memory, was identical in all of the victims.”
    “Well, what is it?” asked Kate. She stepped closer to the screen. “What are we looking at?”
    “We don’t know yet. But the data files are immense. And we haven’t even cataloged everything yet. Whittaker’s thoughts are the most complete. The downloads include an abundance of views. And the detail is good.”
    “But I don’t understand,” said Kate. “They were all screaming about a kid.”
    “Like I said,” Beck replied, “the kid, the grief, was on the surface. Raw and painful. The first thing to hit them when they touched the metaphorical power line.” He turned to the chamber images hovering before them. “This landed one level down—in their subconsciouses. The men may not even have been aware of this. None of them said anything about it.”
    Brandon toggled between different views and angles, close-ups and wide shots.
    The close-ups of the gently arcing “bell” or mouth of the structure revealed a lithe, opalescent wall that appeared to move and flow, and a dense latticework of glowing lines, thin as spider silk. The lines—there were thousands of them—ran like phosphorescent tracks from the outermost fringe of the bell into the heart of the tunnel.
    The structure was unlike anything any of them had ever seen. It floated silently before them, looking like a cross between a living thing—an amorphous, liquid organism—and a fantastically exotic piece of architecture, a building designed and constructed without concern for the laws of gravity.
     “Dead kids. Unbearable grief. And…this,” said Kate, nodding at the giant screen. “That’s one hell of an hallucination.”
    “I’d like to see all of the thought captures,” said Phelps, “or at least what’s been cataloged to date.”
    “Of course,” said Beck.
    “And,” said Phelps, “I have to say, I agree with your sister that you need to open this up. Bring in other experts. Share this with the authorities.”
    Beck said nothing.
    “The captures are elaborate,” Phelps