I believe there is something beyond this life. Something we, as human beings, are only capable of imagining when our minds cease to function. That’s a statement that many can see the contradiction in. How can we imagine it if our minds cease to function?
That question, along with my belief, just sounds right. It’s like a fact you know to be true, even though you don’t have any proof. I think of the stories of people being “dead” and coming back. Many stories often contradict each other. Some say they saw nothing, that the didn’t even notice they died.
You would call this oblivion.
Others say they saw heaven, or hell, or heard a voice they took to be God. Yet, the only problem I have with these stories is that they are only a portion of the truth. Our minds are limited, so what these people hear and see, if their stories are true, is severely edited by the limited comprehension of their minds.
Which brought me back to square one for a long time. At least until the 18th of March, 1989.
I was a substitute professor, often taking the place of other professors in mathematics, theology, or biology. When I wasn’t substituting for professors at the university, I was spending my time in my office, studying my weakest specialization - biology. Believe me when I say that most of the information in biology today still comes from before the 1960s.
Anyway, I received a call, derailing my train of thought. I had forgotten to take the phone off the hook, so I was annoyed when I picked up.
“What is it?” I growled.
“Professor Lee, it’s Harold, I’m calling about the theory you put forward to Professor Jameson,” a young man spoke on the phone.
It took me a while to recall the name. When I did, my anger slipped away, dissolving like cotton candy in water. Professor Jameson was a neurologist and his knowledge certainly out-paced mine on the subject. Still, that kind of knowledge can be limiting in some fields, as you can already assume the answer. It is only from ignorant imagination you can think up new and interesting ways to explore a field.
“Yes? What does he have to say?” I told him. “It’s been almost a year, so it better be good.”
“That’s just the thing, professor,” Harold said nervously. “He would like to discuss your theory in person.”
“I’m not driving down, nor flying, to San Francisco. Put him on the phone.”
“Professor, we’re in Louisiana. We can meet you at the university in ten minutes if need be, but Professor Jameson recommends that you go home first and change. He has something to show you in the swamps.”
“I…tell him to meet me at this address in thirty minutes,” I said, immediately putting my briefcase on the desk to pack some essentials.
After leaving LSU, I went straight home as instructed and changed. Jameson and Harold were already waiting inside the car by the time I finished. I took my briefcase of notes and marched out the front door. The humidity in Baton Rouge that day wasn’t the worst, but in all the excitement, I was already sweating.
I climbed into the back of the car and Jameson gave Harold the signal to drive.
Harold was a student, no doubt an intern assistant for Professor Jameson. He had all the signature signs of youth, along with well-kept ginger hair and freckles on his face. The picture of eager innocence only made Jameson seem more fearsome in contrast.
Jameson was a few years older than me, but he looked almost a decade older. With a grey beard, bushy eyebrows, and a stern expression, I couldn’t help but feel like I was the student in his presence. It didn’t help that he was a tall, brawny man which only made his booming words that much more intimidating.
“You are not what I expected, Professor Lee,” Jameson said. I wondered if it had something to do with my ethnicity that threw him off, but I know now it was the way I carried myself. My clothes were colorful, my hair long and no doubt I looked as excited as I felt. “Yet, your letter shows remarkable intelligence, so that’s enough for me. Many times over these past few months I wanted to throw it away and save myself the pain it put me through.”
“Excuse me? I’m…sorry.”
“Don’t be. This is the most fun I’ve had in this field for a long time.”
“Oh…wait, does that mean-”
“No, I have not tested your theory. That’s something you and I are going to do right now. I’ve set up the experiment in the swamps because I found that the bog here in Baton Rouge, especially near the Mississippi, contains the right pH to conduct it.”
The excitement had taken over and forced me into silence. Jameson and I ended up discussing the meaning behind the possible results, but I noticed that he didn’t care much for the theological implications if the experiment was successful. Instead, he was far more interested in the biological implications.
I believe he was one of the many academics who believed that the next step in human evolution would be an artificial one. How that would come about is widely discussed today, from the biologists to the engineers to the bioengineers.
Professor Jameson fell silent when we entered the swamps. It was almost dusk, the warm orange of the sky complimenting the cooling greens of the trees. While the temperature dropped, the humidity was growing more intense and I could understand why. We weren’t so close to the Mississippi that a cool current of air helped ease the heat.
Harold pulled the car over on the side of the road. I climbed out after the two and followed them down a trail. Harold eventually pulled out a flashlight and led us between trees and pools of festering water. The sounds of insects and frogs were almost deafening.
“What exactly is this experiment?” I asked. “Surely a lab would be a better place than this?”
“I would, but those experiments were failures before they even began,” Jameson muttered. “Your theory that a typical human mind cannot conceive of what happens after death simply because we don’t have enough gray matter nor the ability to take full advantage of it is a fascinating one. It requires precise results, large tanks, and…other things. While I can certainly create such an experiment in a lab, I simply don’t have the funding or space. It would be better to conduct it in an open environment to at least get a promising result.”
“Do you intend to submerge the minds in the…swamp?” I asked.
“A small portion of the swamp, one that is maintained not only by the lively environment but also by our equipment.”
I heard the generator before I saw it. There, beside a pool of swamp water, was a research station built on a platform. I don’t want to say it was a professional platform either. No more than a few wooden poles and planks. What was perched on top of it were a few machines protected by a blue tarp.
Harold led us up the stairs and started lighting the lanterns and electric bug zappers. A lot of bug zappers.
“A lot of bugs like the lights, so we used these to take care of them,” Harold explained. “My brother owns a store full of them in San Francisco.”
“Enough, start getting everything in order,” Jameson said. “Lee, follow me to the subjects.”
“Subjects?” I asked. Jameson stopped at the end of the platform overlooking the pool. “More than one?”
Jameson reached up and grabbed a switch hanging from a wire. Two large lights beside us activated when he flicked the switch, lighting up the pool in front of us. There, even through the murky green waters and pond scum, I could see several pale forms in the water.
“Seven subjects, each with a different amount of gray matter,” Jameson explained. “I cannot simply connect several minds, otherwise there would be a conflict for control. Luckily, I am the Professor John Jameson. As I’m sure you are aware, I have found a way to artificially grow brain matter, but it didn’t have any use before. Unless it grew with a living organism, it was just a bunch of complex cells. A pointless breakthrough that finally has a purpose.”
Jameson pointed to the left-most figure.
“Starting from there, that one has a fully intact mind,” Jameson said. “Nothing has been changed for him. But, as you can see, their heads are larger with each iteration. That one has twice as much brain matter, then that one has three times as much, and so on.”
If a nosy reporter were around, they would have the story of a lifetime. Even if their bodies were donated to science, the Ethics Committee would go ballistic to see what they were used for. While the water was murky, I could see that the right-most subject, the one with seven times the brain matter, was braced to hold the incredible mass that was its head. His cranium was wrapped in specialized plastic - it was an abomination.
“They are preserved, but given enough time, even this treated water will damage their bodies,” Jameson explained. “That’s why the experiment will be conducted now. Harold, is everything in place?”
I looked over at the intern. I could tell that he was becoming less and less eager during the drive to the swamps. Once he was standing there, setting everything in place, he seemed shell-shocked. Eyes wide with fear, but mouth closed and body still.
“Yes, sir,” Harold said. “Everything is connected. Ready whenever.”
Harold turned to a small screen and studied it, but I could see him glancing at the water now and then.
“Well, Lee, should we find out what lies beyond this mortal plain?” Jameson said.
He wasn’t asking for my permission, he just wanted to know if I was ready. I certainly didn’t know if I could stop him if I felt so inclined to prevent such an experiment. Instead, and I say this with shame, I was excited. I recognized that it was wrong, but I didn’t care. It was a dark fantasy come true for me. An unspoken, intellectual fetish - a taste of madness.
I think I even smiled when I nodded.
Jameson approached a set of wires near an array of old batteries and what looked like several coils of copper wire with a glass tube. I noticed that he was looking at the water when he reached for what looked like a handle with red tape around it. When he turned it, there was a snapping noise that periodically clicked every few seconds.
It was a sound that should have been smothered by the sounds of life all around us, but as we stared at the water, the sounds of nature seemed to grow softer. The sun had fallen beyond the horizon, and the sky was a dark blue, becoming black. Looking back, there were so many signs that what we had done was wrong. A crime against nature…and perhaps against something greater.
A board of lights near Harold had lit up. He studied the bulbs and then pointed to the topmost line of lights.
“The subjects are alive,” Harold said. “Wait…”
The green light labeled S1 turned off. As did S2, S3 and S4.
“…first four subjects are deceased,” Harold said.
“To be expected,” Jameson said quickly when we looked at him. “Even with all the electricity and chemicals in the world, we couldn’t keep such a body stable and alive for long. I imagine that removing the physical hindrance they had over their brain is what made them last that long in the first place.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, the illusion of life is-”
Jameson fell silent and turned back to the water. We looked at it as well. The subjects remained suspended in the water, but according to whatever machine they were hooked up to, subjects 5, 6, and 7 were alive. Clearly in an unconscious state, but their hearts were beating as long as the current was running through them.
“…but…they should be…” Jameson murmured.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Their advanced minds have stabilized the current…used it to maintain their life, but why are they still unconscious?” Jameson said.
Jameson clapped his hands together but received no reaction. He yelled at them, but still nothing. He then turned to Harold.
“Destabilize the current with a high-intensity pulse…should shock them awake,” Jameson said.
“If they have been deceased for some time, perhaps it takes time for them to fully awaken,” I suggested. “They might be comatose.”
“Half-dead is still dead,” Jameson said. “Do it, Harold!”
“Yes, s-sir,” Harold stuttered, his fear and disgust showing.
When I looked back at the lake, I saw the bodies twitch, even the first four subjects. The “high-intensity” pulse was an unresisted current that made the water steam in a second, yet the bodies remained.
“That’s the one other reason they need to remain submerged,” Jameson said.
We watched the bodies. My eyes were fixed on the seventh. It will sound unusual when I say this, but even though he was as still as a statue, he seemed alive. Maybe it was the slightest movements that I didn’t notice that made him seem that way, but I just felt like he was awake.
Yet, nothing happened. I then became concerned by the idea that the masks connected to their faces weren’t supplying them oxygen, that maybe they were drowning. When I turned to Professor Jamerson, he was staring straight at me.
“Professor, do you think..?” I began.
Jameson’s head cocked to the side and from behind him, I could see a dark figure. The stern professor fell to the side and into the water. Harold stood there, eyes closed, mouth hanging open and in his hand was a bloodied screwdriver.
“What…what have…” I stuttered to reply, but without realizing it, I backed into one of the machines and found myself cornered. “What have you done? Harold…why did..?”
I was mentally screaming at my body to ready itself for a fight, but in my panic, there was this high-pitched tone that seemed to pierce my brain. Like a screaming beetle had crawled inside my head. Even in that high-pitched tone, I could hear it - a voice. A voice that I could barely hear, let alone understand.
Harold lunged for me as the buzzing faded. It was sheer luck that my hand found something to swing at him, a small fire extinguisher. It knocked his hand aside, but it was my kick that sent him back into the water with the subjects and the deceased professor.
When I looked down at them all. I saw the last three subjects, 5, 6, and 7, staring at me with their milky white eyes. The buzzing returned with greater intensity and it took all I had to push it aside. I looked away from the subjects and trudged away, as if in pain. The further away I got from the water, the easier it became to think.
I grabbed a flashlight off the table, probably the same one that Harold had used to guide us to the experiment. I would use it to help me find my way out.
Soon enough, all I heard was the sound of the large generator rumbling away. I knew that I had to do something and at that moment, I thought turning it off would work. All I did was deactivate the lights and silence the rumbling. The quiet of the night became a lot more startling, making it easy to hear the sound of water splashing as something climbed out of the swamp. Looking back, I saw something just beyond the beam of the flashlight. A figure I couldn’t recognize without getting closer.
Yet my ears told me that it was more than one.
This is not a story of my bravery. I heard that sound and thought I was being pursued, so I ran. I turned my back and fled into the swamp. Even with the flashlight, I sometimes dropped knee-deep into bog water or stumbled over a rock. Yet, cowardice is a powerful force.
And yes, I was a coward. Even now, I regret fleeing as I did.
After ten minutes of mud and slapping away insects that felt larger than they were, I made it to the car - not that I could use it. Without the keys, I couldn’t drive, but I could follow the road back into Baton Rouge. Even though it took far longer to reach civilization by foot than it did to leave the swamps, I felt much safer.
No amount of darkness or mundane nightmares could compare to what I had felt when I saw the terrifying results of that experiment take their toll.
It’s been over thirty years, and I still find a distant, high-pitched tone blaring at the back of my mind. A reminder whenever I am close to forgetting, or a deterrent whenever I try to decipher it all. Even with all that I have learned, I cannot understand what happened.
I didn’t report the incident. Not for reasons like protecting those who would dare go there, or for fear of being thrown in prison as if I had anything to do with what happened. I was afraid that the experiment would jeopardize my reputation and destroy my career. That’s what I cared about at the time.
The bodies of those involved were not found, at least not to my knowledge. My question of what lies beyond has been half-answered, but like most answers in theology, it was an answer that raised more questions.
I don’t write this for my peace after all these years, or to excuse my involvement. I know that I will be punished, one way or another. In this life or the next. I write this to confirm a fear that we’ve all had since we were children.
Although the dead may look that way, they’re not asleep.