THREE

It was on the fifth day that we managed to get the footlockers open.  We actually had to go to a hardware store; we bought a prybar, mallet, chisel, and a few other things, though the mallet and chisel were the only ones we actually needed.   Gina had saved six lockers in all, out of something like twenty.  I don't know how she fit them, and all the other stuff, in that jeep of hers.  I mean, they were fairly small lockers, as such things go - but still.

We'd already checked the names on the fronts: Four coma patients, a woman who'd died in a car crash, and Virgil Ward, currently wanted by INTERPOL.  Who names their kid Virgil, with a last name like Ward?  Ah, well.  Naturally, we opened Virgil's first.  A rack of disposable toiletries sat in the tray, over a stack of black slacks, a stack of shirts, and a folded wad of underwear.  Though they were in differing colours, the shirt were all button-downs of the same cut; the slacks were identical.

"Civilian uniforms, something like?"

"Could be, sure.  Or maybe they just bought everyone clothes, and ordered them in a big lot."

We dumped the whole pile out on the floor, shaking out the articles before tossing them back in, and scored a box of matches and cheap pipe tucked in one sock, and one of those old film canister containers, which had something in it.  I was grinning, waiting for the marijuana, but when Gina dumped the canister out, it was little shavings instead.  Like from sharpening a pencil, but a creamy brown, like coffee with a hit of milk in it.

Gina grinned, and I had a moment of Oh Crap, She's Going To Smoke It.  But she just used a piece of paper to scoop it all up, and pour it back into the canister.

"Know anyone who works in a lab?"

"Lots of...  Oh, you mean, like, to figure out what's in that, kind of lab?"

"Right.  Like that."

Well, there was Ray.  But I didn't really want to call him up; I could imagine his first reaction being to smoke the stuff, right there.

"Uh.  Maybe?  But let's see what else we've got, first."

We cracked the box for Emma Thorpe, the car crash victim.  Same basic deal, though the shirts were a different cut, toiletries a bit more extensive, and it looked like she'd taken the underwear and some of the pants when she'd left.  No pipe this time.  A couple of pictures, jammed in the corner of the mirror inside the lid of the footlocker.  Kids, posing with a bearded man, making faces.

We sped up, then; it seemed pretty likely that the pipe was going to be our lucky find here.  But in the next-to-last locker, belonging to one Daniel Westing, there was a "Subject Journal" - a little notebook that he'd been assigned, with instructions to discuss any altered stats or effects of the drugs.  It looked general-issue, like everyone had been given one, but only the one had been left in with the personal stuff.

I flipped it open.  Blank days, up until:

...

DAY SIX.

Dreamed about my Nan's house last night.  Vivid, and there were doors in it that went to other places from when I was a kid.  Realized that I was dreaming while I was dreaming, and remembered that I was doing the tests.  When I thought of that, I thought of Marshall and Emma, at lunch, and a door opened from Nan's sitting room to the cafeteria, and Marshall and Emma were standing in there, confused.  They'd been having their own dreams, they said.

I'm not sure what happened, after that.  But when I woke up, Emma remembered the same scene - remembered a door opening in her dream, and walking in to the cafeteria.

Marshall was sure he'd dreamed about both of us, but couldn't remember what the dream had been.

...

DAY SEVEN.

Had the dreams again last night, with Marshall and Emma.  Also today: Something while we were awake.

Fithering was doing the card test with Marshall when I caught it.  For a moment, in the corner, there was another Fithering slapping another Marshall, and calling him a shithead, just kind of hanging there in mid-air.  And then it was gone, except that Marshall was suddenly really twitchy, like he'd seen it, too.  But Fithering wasn't; he was just testy.

We're supposed to be learning how to read minds.  And I think we did.  Just, that's not anything like the way we wanted to.

...

And then, blank days again.  Checking the days against the files, Daniel had gone comatose on the night after his ninth day as part of the project.  His course of drugs had just started to ramp up - he'd had B-3 on day five, D-2 on day six, and D-8 on day nine.

"B-3 on day five, and a report of lucid, shared dreams on day six.  See, coz?"

"That could just mean that B-3 gave them dreams of a sort where you thought other people were there, and aware, and he justified it after the fact.  Same with the notes on the patient files.  It doesn't mean the drug did that - just that they believed it did."

"Why would they believe the same thing, though?  It's not like the doctors were pushing them to say that they shared dreams.  The doctors thought it was a weird side effect."

"Because the doctors were looking for telepathy, right?  Even if they were only looking for the one kind, the patents still knew what they were looking for, and it got into their dreams."

"Even if you're right, that's still a hell of drug, innit?  Looks like you better find your chemist." And she shook the little canister at me.