07/07/01: Blasphemies Observed (Part two)
by Jennier Wylie and Pieter van Hiel

Plith watched her, her small frame dwarfed by the size of the mechanical instrumentation of his own design. He exuded some visible pride at her question as to the nature of his equipment. "It measures biological electric energy. It maps it and displays it. That screen," he said, indicating the brass square that held the smoked glass screen, "...is the most important piece. It provides a dynamic image of your... of a patient's bio-electric field as I manipulate it."

She rubbed her temples, a bit confused. The terms he used were new to her. Despite growing up as an orphan, she was still afforded some semblance of an education. Reading, writing, science...and from that knowledge she knew sticking around the orphanage the rest of her life wasn’t going to be the most prudent of ideas. "What exactly are you using it for to study?" she asked, then rephrased the question. "What are you trying to find?" She peered at the contraption, looking at the various corners of it, curious.

"Have you ever seen a corpse? I would assume that a girl of your social status is no stranger to death...but assumptions are dangerous after all. Perhaps some relative, at a funeral? Or in the street, even? A traffic accident?" he asked, watching her movements over the frames of his glasses. Analytical.

She nodded once, and slowly. "A few times. Street girls too sick to make it back indoors in the snow." She paused a moment, the despair in her eyes blotted out by the harshness of the lights. "They would litter the street... like garbage in heels and makeup... and by morning the only thing left would be imprints in the snow as the police, or whoever else, would take them away," she explained in a quiet, flat voice, as if reciting the numbers of a mathematics equation.

He shuddered fastidiously. "I see I was not mistaken in my assumptions about your background and lifestyle. No matter." Hmm. She's rather more eloquent than her upbringing would suggest, nonetheless. He walked over to the screen. "Tell me...what is the difference between a corpse and a vital body?"

"Let's see..." She thought aloud. "A vital body has a beating heart, flowing blood, signals from the brain..." She began, thinking back to the days of sitting in the splintered chairs in a cold, white room…the only colour that of the green blackboard. "A corpse, well, doesn't. The flesh, organs and such decay." She wrapped bony, shoe-shine stained fingers around her arms in order to stay even the slightest bit warmer, the thin clothes she was given no match for the chill.

He raised a brow but said nothing, half-expecting a stammered reply, or more likely, a completely wrong answer. This was another unexpected, but slightly pleasant, surprise. "Correct from a purely physical perspective. But consider a man who dies of poisoning, or one of those girls you mentioned, frozen. Their internal organs suffered some temporal damage, but are by and large still intact. Can we bring them back to life simply by infusing them with new blood, by encouraging their hearts to beat anew with powerful drugs or electricity? Sometimes, yes. But not after a few minutes have passed where the body is in the state of death. And yet, their body has not yet begun to decay. Something else has occurred. Some vital spark has departed. A religious person would refer to this force as their soul. I use that term for convenience. Please do not burden it with any extraneous Sunday School baggage." There was something to his voice, an edge, that kept her from replying to his words. He pointed to a knife switch on the wall. "Turn off the lights."

She nodded and padded over to the wall, bare feet silent on the stained stone floor. "That makes sense," she said when she could finally answer. She reached up to the switch and killed the lights.

He was involuntarily stricken by a sense of poignancy at the sight of her bare feet, an brief pang of long past marital memories. He suppressed the feeling and turned on the screen. He held it vertical as the room was doused in darkness. Kathy could see a faint, bluish glow on the surface of the screen, like the last vestige of twilight as the sun finally set each night. He placed his hand behind the screen. Suddenly, the image of his hand appeared on the screen – glowing an eerie and faint shade of green with tinges of orange. "The screen shows us the biological energy that infuses all life."

She walked over to the screen, using the dim light to navigate around the various trays and equipment over to where he stood. She moved gracefully and without falter. She peered at it cautiously, then curiously. "What do the colors mean?" she wondered aloud.

"That is what I am in the process of learning. They differ from person to person, and from species to species. When a body dies, they fade, slowly. They spring to life again if the subject is resuscitated." He regarded his own hand, opening and shutting his palm. "Let me assure you that all those subject who died under this screen to date have been animal subjects, with the exception of a very elderly patient... but that doesn't concern us at this point."

She nodded again, reflecting on his previous words. "If the colors return if someone is resuscitated, does that mean that their 'soul' is still there?"

He considered the question. "I have yet to determine if it goes at all. The screen's ability is rather limited." The room was dead silent for a moment, save for the deep hum of the screen. "Lie down on the table."

Her toes easily found a crevice as a step and she hauled herself up remarkably well. It was a useful skill when having to climb fences to avoid loose, rabid dogs. She ducked her head to avoid hitting it against anything as she lay down. The icy cold of the steel was so cold that she shivered for a moment as the chill reached her bones before she stopped shivering. Having lived in the northern states most of her life, she was used to cold, but this kind of cold would take a few days to acclimate to.

"Thank you. Lie still." Plith wondered what effect, if any, his earlier cranial surgery had on Kathy's...aura. He adjusted the screen so that it lay flat and he slid it in place over her prone form. The screen was inches from her nose and the heat it generated enveloped her like a pale blue cocoon, while the lab itself was filled with a bright orange and red light. He inhaled sharply, catching her attention.

The colors seemed strange to her eyes, seeping into the corners of her vision rather than if she was directly staring at something and she kept perfectly, almost eerily, still. "What is it?" she asked, upon hearing his breath.

He saw the same flowing portrait of Kathy as before, the same glowing humanoid embers...only this time, a thin red line of light trailed from her head, off to the side of screen. He ignored the question. "Does your head feel odd at all? Any headache? Dizziness?"

"Not for a few days, no," She answered. "Is...something wrong?"

He grew excited. Finally, a definite result...an evident "soul" change after physical surgery. He hid the excitement carefully. "Wrong? No...not at all. It's quite..." He stopped himself from using the word 'beautiful.' "It's quite interesting. Stay there." He rolled a rack of mirrors over, arranged to that someone lying under the screen would be able to see their own image up above. "There. What do you think?"

She squinted at the images, bringing them into focus. The colors seemed to burn into the blue of her eyes, masking both the blue and the orange-red into a different and shadow-like color completely. "Where else would I go?" she asked, in a half-hearted attempt at humor. The table was a hairsbreadth away. She couldn't shimmy out from under it even if she tried. Not without the risk of electrocution, anyway. Her fingers involuntarily strayed to her head, lightly touching the wound that, a moment ago, felt fine and painless. It now felt as if someone had stabbed her with an ice picker and she visibly winced. "Yes...interesting," she answered, very unsure as to what to make out of it. He's the doctor, not me. She moved her fingers, and for a fleeting second, saw a red glow upon them that disappeared from them almost immediately.

He lay three giant sheets of photosensitive paper over the top of the screen, each a primary colour. "Hold still just a few moments. Don't move at all. I'm making a colour record."

Again, she held perfectly still...so still she didn't even dare breathe. She closed her eyes, waiting as she heard the paper rustling. After about three minutes he switched off the screen. In the darkness, Kathy heard him walking across the room before the sudden flash of bright light from the knife-switch assailed her senses and she flung an arm over her eyes protectively.

His smiled very slightly and turned away to stow the rolled up photo sheets in a drawer. "There. Painless."

She sat up, still rubbing her head absently. She swung her legs over the side so that she was sitting up. "Thankfully," she nodxed. "Is this something you've seen before?"

He considers his answer for a moment. "Every subject is entirely singular. So no, I haven't seen anything like you; like your biological aura readings; before." He removes his glasses, polishing them on the lapel of his lab coat; a coat that seems too white to have been used before. "You need shoes," he said, changing the subject.
 
Before...She didn't know why that word itched at the deep recesses of her brain...but it did. She paused a moment. She hadn’t had a new pair of shoes in almost four years. "I wear a size six."

"I shall procure you some from the sanitarium stores." He checked his watch. "It's almost dawn. Come with me." He led you out the lab, turning to lock the door. He pocketed the key and motioned down the hallway. "This level has a library, water closet, and your room. Many of the doors are locked. They are so for your own protection. I'm retiring for a few hours. I have a breakfast appointment and must rest for a bit. If you wish, I can bring you food around noon, though I imagine you must be very tired yourself."

"I slept well all night, thanks," she offered. "If you could point out the library?"

He nodded at the second door on the left before continuing down the hallway, his steps sure and confident as he strode away.

She turned on the small lamp beside a comfortable deep maroon oversized chair situated near a large, well-used fireplace, judging by the look of half-burned logs and ashes. She found a book of matches in the drawer of the end table and after a few moments of arranging the logs and such, built a fire small enough to keep warm by.

Her toes curled up involuntarily at the cold wood floor beneath her feet as she searched though the book titles. One wall was devoted to medical texts, the second to religious writings both new and old, and the third wall was a conglomeration of literature and art books. She selected a title at random and curled up in the chair, tucking her feet beneath her to keep them warm as she opened up the old leather binding and started to read.

Plith entered his office, and hung up his lab coat behind his door and set his glasses on the bureau, rubbing his tired eyes. He couldn’t believe it…after all this time, his efforts and proven fruitful and not futile. He undid his tie, draping it over a chair before winding up his alarm clock to ring in five hours. He lay down atop the covers, threading his fingers behind his head, green eyes affixed to the ceiling. Unwavering.
 

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Next month... part two!