Along Torturous Paths

01

Freedom is a complicated word. People—English-speaking people, that is—use it to mean so many different things. Sometimes they mean that they have the ability to do something, or more specifically, that no one can stop them from doing it. Sometimes they mean instead that no one can force them to do something. Other times, it means that they can force others to do or not do things as they please. That they are free to exert their will over others. Or should be.

Words are tricky and I don’t like them. Thoughts are truth, emotions are truth. Words are just lies all dolled up for Sunday, and most people are bad at lying to me.

At this point in the very busy year of 1954, I had the freedom to sit in a comfortable chair in a well-stocked private library. Unlike most of the people roaming the building’s halls, no one was free to tell me where I had to be or when. While the seven people with whom I shared a dormitory had their hours rigorously scheduled, my day was open-ended. There were events I was politely requested to attend. Sometimes I did. Other times I spent my day in the library, morning and night. Well into the night, if I chose. No curfew for me, for the first time in my life. I often took advantage of that, for among its many treasures, this library had a complete collection of my favorite science-fiction magazine, Imaginary Tales.

On the other hand, between the hours of five and eight p.m. on select weekends, my roommates were free to leave the mansion’s grounds. The world outside the walls was denied to me again, both by the application of certain rules and the ingenious use of a half-magical, half-mathematical language. My current hosts hadn’t gone through all that trouble just for me, of course. It was more like the happy side-effect of certain admittedly sensible security measures. The Nova Anima Institute was pioneering novel fields of research, after all. Steps had to be taken to keep accidents contained.

You see how tricky words can be?

I had to admit that as far as dungeons went, the Institute was a step above my previous captor. Both the Institute and the Bureau of Extranormal Investigations had withheld information from me, in addition to outright lying to me. Both felt free to place seemingly arbitrary restrictions on my movements. Both openly treated me as a resource to be exploited. The Institute, however, at least made a show of working with me for mutual benefit, and I didn’t have to cook for myself.

Twenty-nine days had passed since I woke up in my dorm room in the Institute’s compound. Our investigation into a suspicious hospital had, as my closest friends might have said, gone completely sideways. My friends escaped without significant harm, at least so far as I was aware. So had Dorothy Weathersby, my girlfriend’s former associate who’d turned out to be less helpful than we’d hoped.

(My girlfriend, Lucille Sweeney, would likely have described the entire fiasco in more colorful terms. I loved her, but her fondness for vulgarity could be a little trying.)

I hadn’t been so lucky. I’d facilitated their escape, but that left me vulnerable to capture by the Institute, the organization sponsoring the hospital’s experiments and another branch of the conspiracy we’d been following. The Institute also knew far more about me than I did, apparently. The Director had used that as leverage to secure my cooperation. So far. It wasn’t a very fulfilling relationship, but the promise of answers kept me cooperative.

They were going to turn on me the moment it was convenient. I was going to tear the place apart the exact second I ran out of patience. In the meantime, I smiled politely at the Director and his associates, and they spoke of my abilities with the appropriate awe.

Speakers hidden in the corners of the room played a series of soft tones, announcing the hour of one p.m. Throughout the mansion, Institute personnel bustled to their next assigned station. All of them wore mono-color jumpsuits in varying shades of blue. Those in powder blue, the largest and least senior group, reported to various work details. Those in darker shades had all manner of options. Some reported to laboratories to participate or assist in experiments. Others went to classrooms to study the Institute’s unique education programs. For three residents of my dormitory, it was a free study period. They headed for the library together. Other than noting their location, I paid little attention to their progress through the building. That is, until the three of them converged around my otherwise empty table.

Hey, Amelia! Okay if we sit here?

I hesitated for three seconds, my eyes focused on my magazine. Then I realized I should turn my head in the direction of the person speaking; most people don’t have a 360-degree field of vision. The three of them stood on the other side of the round table. Lorraine Matthews, Irene Phillips, and Norman Rogers. Their matching mono-color jumpsuits were baby blue, with black shoulders connected to a V-shape running down the torso. I wore a similar outfit, although mine was a deep purple. As official members of the Institute, the three wore brass pins over the left breast—a stylized Vitruvian Man superimposed over a sunburst, surmounting an intertwined N and A. As a semi-willing guest, I had no such pin. Instead, a badge had been sewn where the pin would have gone, a white circle with a bright red V in the middle. Their suits labeled them as actives: Level 2 members of the Institute, actively involved in its research. Mine marked me as an outsider but somewhat affiliated with the Institute. Officially, I was a consultant, a hastily invented role with no real meaning or responsibility. I liked that.

Lorraine was short and stout, full of energy and laughter, with a mop of dirty blonde curls. Irene was tall and slender, with long, straight brown hair; a quiet but fierce young woman whose mouth easily curved into a sly smile. Norman was rail-thin and would have been taller than Irene if he ever stood up straight. His mop of red hair, scruffy chin, and habitual slouch were a direct affront to the standards of the day and of the Institute, yet he slid by without more than the occasional easily ignored reprimand.

All three were in their early twenties, like most of the Institute’s personnel. They claimed to want young, impressionable minds not burdened by the assumptions and prejudices of the day. I had no doubt they would have recruited even younger if they could have gotten away with it.

Lorraine and Irene were the best of friends, utterly inseparable. They weren’t very different from Luci and myself, and at first, I’d mistaken them for a couple. That had almost led to a very uncomfortable conversation. Fortunately, Lorraine hadn’t understood what I’d meant at all, while Irene quietly thought it was funny. As it turned out, Lorraine was like Gloria—deeply loving, but utterly uninterested in sex with any gender. Irene had a strong inclination toward men, though idle thoughts suggested that under the right circumstances, she might someday sweep a lucky woman off her feet.

Others typically dismissed Norman as a hanger-on, a perpetual third wheel, and probably with designs on getting into one of the girl’s pants. That just went to show they hadn’t bothered trying to understand him. The truth was, first, that he was passive and easy-going to a terrible fault. Norman was usually content to follow along with anyone he generally liked, or at least thought was interesting, in order to see what they got up to. It wasn’t laziness; he was motivated by a non-specific curiosity and easily amused by human drama. Second, Norman also preferred men—an open secret between the three of them—but was so content with being one of life’s observers that the girls despaired of him ever finding love, even if it were safe to do so.

We hadn’t talked about any of this, of course. Not in 1954. Much to my continual frustration. I’d picked up most of it from stray thoughts and feelings. We’d all be so much more comfortable if this could be out in the open. Instead, for all its pretenses of pushing the limits of human potential, the Institute was stuck in the mire of traditional gender roles. It was amazing they allowed women at all. I suspect they wouldn’t have, if their experiments hadn’t been so dependent on people with certain rare talents.

All three of my new friends, and the other members of our dorm, displayed varying degrees of psychic talent. So did the overwhelming majority of the Institute’s personnel. The Nova Anima Institute wasn’t a boarding school or a private college. The personnel may have been college-aged, but they weren’t here to study a mixture of sciences and liberal arts on the way to a degree. The Institute presented itself as a research facility, with one purpose: to explore the limits of human psychic potential. To what end? I hadn’t figured that out. Yet.

The Institute’s motto, proudly displayed above the lobby and the library, gave some hint: Ad Hominem Perfectionem. Toward human perfection.

That mystery, as much as the hints the Director had dropped about my past, was why I stayed here when every part of me ached to rejoin my first friends. Although my new friends couldn’t replace Luci and Gloria, they were welcome additions to my life in their own right. And they were my friends, I had realized. Up until sixteen days prior, I couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d been directed to insinuate themselves into my life in order to monitor me or keep me tractable. That fear had gradually receded, one act of kindness at a time, until now we four fitted together so smoothly that an outside observer might have assumed we’d all gone to primary school together. It was wonderful having more people to talk to. I didn’t have to be lonely when Luci and Gloria weren’t around.

I hadn’t realized until three months ago that I was lonely. It was a feeling I was in no hurry to experience ever again.

Irene coughed politely. It occurred to me that thirty-two seconds had passed since they’d asked to sit with me. I quickly applied my warmest smile and gestured to the empty seats.

Hello, everyone. Of course you can sit with me.

The trio quickly took their seats. To my relief, they thought nothing of the gap between greeting and response. They were accustomed to me getting lost, as Lorraine put it. I was hardly the only one at the Institute to perceive the world differently from the norm. One was expected to make accommodations.

"That must be a terrific story you’re reading if it kept you from seeing us coming," Lorraine said.

It took me a second to realize what she meant. I hadn’t forgotten about the magazine I was holding, but my mind had wandered away from it. I laughed, trying to cover my embarrassment.

Yes, actually. There’s a particularly good story by K.C. Hunter in this issue. An explorer on another world befriends one of the locals by comparing their respective harvest festivals. There are a lot of interesting details, despite how short the story is, and I like that the real conflict is their mutual fear of unknowingly violating a cultural taboo. Also, if you read between the lines, there’s nothing to suggest that either character is actually human. Also now I’m babbling.

That was an unpleasant feeling. I never babbled, not even with Luci. She made me feel flustered, certainly, but I was always in control of my mouth. It was happening more often, and always in my new friends’ company. I didn’t understand why. Fortunately, my new friends wouldn’t let me stay embarrassed.

I can see how that would be engrossing, Irene said.

I suppose. Norman leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. I’m surprised you still have a taste for rockets and ray guns. Geez, isn’t the Institute weird enough?

The story’s not that weird, I said. K.C. Hunter makes a lot of assumptions about compatibility between biomes that probably aren’t very accurate. But I like thinking about people from different worlds finding common ground. It’s optimistic. I think we can use a little optimism these days.

That sounds really cool, Irene said. Don’t tell me any more about it. I’ll read it when you’re done. We can compare notes.

I smiled shyly. I’d enjoy that.

At least you can get your magazine, Lorraine said with a faux-haughty sniff. "I can’t get the Institute to subscribe to Mad. We’re being robbed of culture, our imaginations stifled by bland authority."

You pick up a copy from the newsstand every month. Irene propped her chin on her hand and leaned in with a smirk. It’s a dime.

"It is the principle of the thing, Irene. Who is the Director to decide what is fit for our young minds and what is mere low-brow trash?"

Pretty sure that’s his entire job description. Norman fetched a toothpick from his breast pocket and tucked it in his cheek. Which is why it’s our job to flaunt his restrictions whenever possible, man.

A thick textbook sat in front of him. Titled Animating the Corpus Lucis, it was one of the key texts of their program. Irene and Lorraine had their own copies, but theirs didn’t have November’s copy of Tales From The Crypt hidden poorly between the pages.

I quirked a skeptical eyebrow. That’s not impacting your studies?

"Hey, this program is all about expanding our minds, yeah? We’re supposed to be charting the course of imagination and stuff. That means exposing the minds to the possibilities, man. We can’t restrict ourselves to what some grayface wants us to read. That’s the old way of thinking. We gotta look forward to the now!"

Irene rolled her eyes, but her smile was friendly. You criticize Amelia for reading about rocket ships when you’re spending valuable research time with ghosts and goblins.

Hey, I don’t expect to run into any long-legged beasties or things that go bump in the night, but if I spend enough time here, I might just see a flying saucer.

"How is Dr. Traynor’s experiment going?" I asked.

Doctor Matthew Traynor was one of the Western world’s leading researchers in clairvoyance. Specifically, in what would be known in fifteen years as remote viewing. Under the Institute’s guidance, he had pioneered a discipline he called psycho-astronomy. The science behind it seemed dodgy at best, but Traynor insisted he had produced results. He claimed to have surveys of Mars’ surface that put Antoniadi’s observations to shame. There were no Martian canals, he had once told me, but far stranger structures.

His team of young psychics were attempting to map the edges of this solar system. Specifically, the volume of space around a particular stellar object in trans-Neptunian orbit, which the defunct Apollonian Society for Illumination had discovered years before Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto. I was leery of any avenue of research that had its roots in the Apollonian Society’s meddling, but as the Institute was one of the society’s many offspring, I couldn’t be surprised.

It must be said, it didn’t take much to be a leading researcher in any field the Institute explored. The competition was hardly thick on the ground. On the other hand, I was living proof that it wasn’t all hokum and humbugs.

"Dr. Traynor is impressed with how quickly we’re progressing through his meditation program, Irene said. We’re some of the most promising candidates, if I say so myself."

"Well, I suppose somebody has to," said a snotty voice behind her.

My friends turned to see the source of the intrusion. As one, we scowled. Harold Bates and Richard Seyton stood a few meters away, sneering. Harold was tall, broad-shouldered and fair-haired, the sort of blandly handsome young man that newspaper sports sections called All-American. His accent was unmistakably Boston Brahmin. Richard was shorter and stood in a way that immediately brought to mind a snake about to strike. His thin black hair was perpetually slicked into something my friends referred to as a duck’s bottom haircut, which he somehow thought was cool. His voice placed him from anywhere in the Mid-Atlantic. Both men were as pleasant as stepping into a cold puddle in only socks.

The terrible twosome was in the same program as my friends, but in another dorm. To encourage a healthy sense of competition, the Institute had ensured the technicians in various programs were evenly distributed among the dorms. Supposedly a friendly rivalry would encourage them to work harder, in hopes of showing one another up. It worked, up to a point. Harold and Richard embodied that point. Competition brought out the absolute worst in them. It wasn’t so important to them that they succeed as it was that others be seen to fail.

I looked at them and immediately thought of Lucas Dowling. Lucas had been the architect of the disastrous experiment that set my involvement in these events in motion, or at least so he believed. He was an arrogant young man too convinced of his own genius to realize how he’d been manipulated. That in no way removed his culpability for the damage he’d caused.

More Lucas Dowlings. Would I ever be rid of them?

You really don’t think Dr. Traynor’s going to waste valuable time on the likes of you, do you? Harold said. He’s only going to get so many chances at this. Only the best will get to take point.

And that’s going to be Howard, said Richard, a born lackey.

You should request to sit in as an observer, Miss Temple, Howard continued, his tone suddenly cloyingly sweet. It should be quite an event. The first successful viewing beyond the asteroid belt.

I didn’t return his smile. We’ll see, Harold. I expect I’m going to be too busy consulting with the other senior staff. Unless one of my friends is selected, of course. Then I might be able to find some time available.

The smile dropped from his bland face. He turned up his patrician nose in affront. This wasn’t a man used to being told no, especially not by a woman.

Your loss, Miss Temple, he said, his voice frosty.

He started to go, but a childish impulse flared. His hand darted over Norman’s shoulder, too fast for him to object, and flipped open his textbook. Harold snatched up the comic book and let out an ugly laugh.

"Come on, Seyton. Let’s leave these amateurs to their studies."

He tossed the comic over his shoulder as he sauntered away, snickering, with Richard in tow. Something stirred in the back of my mind, something cold and wet and spiteful. My fingers twitched. I felt a powerful urge to reach into Harold’s mind and silence his laughter.

Only momentarily, I assure you.

My passenger didn’t make themselves visible in the outside world. They simply uncoiled, like a fungoid cat momentarily stretching before returning to sleep. Very briefly, they tickled the back of my mind.

You’re sure? There are all sorts of ways you could punish his insolence. Without doing much permanent damage.

No, I said aloud. He’s not worth it.

I agree, Norman said, chipper. He scooped his magazine off the floor, theatrically dusting it off while paying no heed to his retreating would-be rivals. He’ll be sorry when the Nephilim unfold from infraspace and make me king of the Fifth World.

Irene smirked. Were you supposed to say that part out loud?

Don’t worry. When the Shining Ones descend, you three will be my queens.

I wasn’t entirely certain how serious Norman was. He somehow managed to be deadpan even within his own mind. Irene and Lorraine burst into laughter. After a moment I joined them. Norman’s face creased into a wide grin.

Well, until that glorious day comes, we have lessons to master. Irene gently plucked the comic from Norman’s hand and slid it under her own open textbook. I don’t know about you, but I have no intention of letting Harold Bates claim any credit for the discovery of a lifetime.

The three shared a laugh and bent over their textbooks. I admired their dedication, even if I felt a measure of trepidation at their work. This wasn’t like Lucas Dowling’s disastrous experiment—they were meant to be looking out, not dragging something in. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going to go terribly wrong with Traynor’s big experiment. Possibly it was because I was consulting on a completely different program. I wouldn’t be there to help if anything went wrong.

I couldn’t see the future, not the way I can see the past. Now, long after the fact, I can’t shake the feeling that someone else could.

02

The Institute’s third floor was a maze of hallways, but it had a coherent layout. Ten labs clustered in the middle, forming a rough horseshoe around an opulent lounge on the building’s south face. A mix of offices and storage rooms sat on either side.

In my first two weeks consulting with the Institute, I spent most of my time in Lab 303. It was the personal workspace of Dr. Vincent Stewart, one of the Institute’s seven noetic savants, its highest level below the Director. Stewart claimed to be North America’s leading expert in telepathy. I was skeptical when the Director first introduced us, but he quickly demonstrated that he was indeed capable of communicating by thought alone. It wasn’t the same way I spoke into other minds, and certainly not how I read them, but it was genuinely impressive.

Stewart was a slight, pleasant man with a swiftly receding hairline; he joked that it was a consequence of his psychic powers. That caused no end of distress among his technicians. Stewart had painstakingly assembled a team of actives, all of whom had demonstrated a talent toward telepathy. So he hoped, at least. His testing methods weren’t the most comprehensive—he’d relied primarily on Zener cards and sealed envelope tests. It fit his outlook. He wasn’t one for precise measurements and line graphs. His desire was to nurture connections between others. He once referred to quantifying psychic power as akin to dissecting a frog—few were interested and the frog dies.

Yes, I eventually learned that he was mangling a quote about explaining jokes.

I liked Stewart. He was pleasant to deal with and grateful for my help. At this point, he was the only savant willing to accept my assistance. I had been very helpful. Over half of the Institute’s technicians were proto-noetics or prots. These folks were willing to believe in the paranormal phenomenon the Institute dealt in but hadn’t yet demonstrated any true psychic talent. Dressed in powder-blue jumpsuits, they spent their days performing most of the labor an organization this size required to function. Periodically, the savants would sift through them, trying to identify what sort of talents they possessed, if any.

That’s where I came in. When I began working with Stewart, I quickly discovered that my unusual perspective made me far better at detecting genuine psychic activity. I could see the activity in the deep structures of their brains, the unique nerve clusters that facilitated psychic communication. In the first week, I had helped him nearly double his team, from five telepaths to nine. I’d also identified another dozen who displayed little facility with telepathy but an inclination toward other skills. None of them had been advanced to the ranks of noetically active yet—the other savants didn’t appear to need more technicians—but I was sure it was just a matter of time.

Thus, six powder-blue proto-noetic technicians joined us in Lab 303 that morning. Stewart and nine actives sat on cushions in a triangle formation, with him in the center. He created a psychic link with one of his actives and passed along a phrase and the name of a teammate. They would then follow suit, transmitting the phrase down the formation one link at a time until someone dropped the signal. Currently three phrases were bouncing around the room, all lines from his favorite Walt Whitman poems.

Every so often, Stewart would link with one of the prots lined up against the wall, challenging them to join the relay. I monitored their brain activity, seeing how well they did at receiving and establishing links. Reception was one hundred percent, of course. Stewart was very skilled at his own program. Transmission was far less successful. For the first hour, the prots established a link twenty-five percent of the time, but never succeeded in passing a coherent message. For half of them, I thought it was inexperience; this was a new skill they were building. For two others, it seemed likely their talents didn’t lie in telepathy. As for the last, I wasn’t certain what had brought Vernon Calloway to these halls, but it certainly wasn’t his psychic potential.

Darn it, he said after dropping his third attempted link in a row. I can’t get this!

Focus. I knelt beside him, cocking my head to signal that I was examining his brain closely. The structures were present, but barely used. It’s a skill. It takes time to build.

I don’t know, Miss Temple. Vernon’s accent marked him, as Norman once said,