A Room Of Dreams (Kosmos Book 0) Read online

  A ROOM OF DREAMS

  By Simon Horrocks

  Text Copyright © 2017 Simon Horrocks

  Cover Design © 2017 Simon Horrocks

  All Rights Reserved

  TRAPPED

  This is the story of how Philip Huyt became trapped in his wife’s mind.

  She fell into a coma and nobody knew why. That was the first strange thing.

  The second strange thing: everyone who knew her was expecting this.

  Doctors find no signs of brain activity and the machinery maintaining her life will soon be switched off.

  However, Philip refuses to let her go – he still has hope.

  Maverick health insurance rep, Louis Lewis, suggests they use a new technology – one that can look deeper into the human mind than any other; that can detect what he calls ‘psi-complexes’ – a dream, or a simple desire, or the flicker of a memory, or the memory of a desire.

  But what will Philip find in A Room of Dreams?

  1.0

  “Mr. Huyt, why is your wife in a coma?”

  Philip Huyt searched his mind for the quick answer to what should have been a straight-forward question. But there was a big black hole in its place. So he instinctively bluffed for time.

  “Why? What do you mean ‘why’?”

  Louis Lewis, the grey-suited and boyish-looking UPC Insurance rep was sitting opposite, in a private corner of the Rhamnous Hotel, London.

  “We’ve spoken to the family, the medical staff, her employer, her colleagues at BBLC... no one seems to know why she’s in a coma. Just that she is.”

  For the last few months, Philip’s life had been consumed by Amy’s illness. He was at her bedside day and night. Watching and praying for some sign that she was still alive in there, somewhere. And now this kid was asking stupid questions.

  “It’s been awhile coming. But we knew it would have to happen eventually.”

  He’d got used to repeating that. Over and over. And everyone had been happy with that answer. Up until now.

  Louis Lewis leaned forward onto his elbows, rested his chin on his hands and looked curiously into Philip’s eyes.

  “That’s what everyone says. Everyone knew it would happen, but nobody knows why.”

  On this detail, Philip’s mind drew a blank. Which was somewhat perplexing.

  1.1

  Things had been tough since the doctors confirmed Amy had no vital signs.

  “The neurological tests have been pretty conclusive,” Dr Esra Dills insisted, as she led him into her office. He didn’t want to hear it. She’s still living, she’s still breathing, she’s positively glowing – damn it. And nature can do amazing things. Nature is more resilient than people realise.

  “You know about the Antarctic nematode worms? When conditions get too dry they pump all the water out of their bodies and drop into suspended animation. They can last like that for decades. When water comes back – boom – they re-animate themselves.”

  “Take a seat, Philip.” Dr Dills was already at her desk, flipping through the results. She ticked off the long list, one by one. “No behavioural or reflex responses. Verbal response – no sounds. Eye opening, none.”

  “The PET and the MRI?”

  He saw the blow coming but still it landed right in his stomach.

  “There’s almost no chance of recovery.”

  They’d been together almost 10 years. Wasn’t it just yesterday they stood nervously and awkwardly together, promising to stay that way “until death do us part”? Until death, they had promised, and they weren’t there yet.

  “Mr. Huyt, you’ve had plenty of time to prepare for this,” said Dills, trying to snap him back to reality.

  But he still wasn’t prepared – not for this final, terrible step. He needed Amy. She was the mother of his child. He’d planned their lives together and never imagined an alternative future; a future in which she wouldn’t be part of him.

  “I can’t. I can’t let her go.”

  “That’s for you to decide. You and the rest of the family, of course.”

  1.2

  In her private room on the other side of the building, Diana and Michael Lord were sombre. Their daughter, lying on the hospital bed before them, motionless. Two wall monitors displayed her vital signs: currently stable. Her breaths, automated by the attached ventilator, hissed robotically through the tracheotomy tube inserted through a hole in her windpipe.

  “She looks like she’s... died,” said Michael.

  “She has. It’s such a pain… to see her… so still. She was so full of...”

  “Life,” said Michael, finishing his wife’s sentence. “She was irrepressible.”

  Michael placed both hands on his brass tipped cane and looked down at his daughter. She still looked in the prime of good health. Rosy-cheeked face. Golden hair curling with vitality across the pillow.

  Diana reached out instinctively and held Amy’s hand.

  “Is she there?” said Michael, sadly.

  “No.”

  “In our hearts.”

  Diana looked up at her husband. “He’s torturing us.”

  “He knew this was going to happen. Like we all knew. He should have been ready,” said Michael, his face set grimly.

  1.3

  Philip struggled and hustled his way down the street, through the crush. The city was getting packed, these days. He used to think road traffic was bad. Now even walking from the station to the hotel you could find yourself in a jam of people just waiting for their turn on the pavemove.

  By the time he got to the front doors, he was hot, stressed and sweaty. The security guy ID-ed him and finally he was allowed through into the oasis of the Rhamnous Hotel lobby. This was a city where you must pay just to have your own body space and it wasn’t cheap.

  Allowing his body to relax, he straightened his clothes and approached the girl at the wide reception desk. She wanted him to use the automated check-in but he was here now and too tired to work that thing out.

  He checked her name tag: Dylan Thanos. She was making marks in a notebook and gazing at a bunch of Greek statues on her computer monitor. Whatever she was doing, he was sure it wasn’t hotel business.

  “If you’re not too busy,” he insisted, wryly.

  Eventually, she gave in and gave him his swipe-key. “Room one to six”.

  “I only booked one room.” Maybe I should have used the machine, he mused.

  When she wrote “126” on the swipe-key pocket, he felt stupid. But it just showed how much this whole ordeal was effecting his mind. He needed a beer.

  “Enjoy your stay,” said the receptionist, with an extra twist of satisfaction.

  He crossed the lobby to take the elevator and hardly noticed the man watching him from the sofa: wearing a black suit, pointed grey beard, ponytail – eyes hidden behind hexagonal-shaped sunglasses.

  1.4

  In room 126, Philip began unpacking. He’d booked himself into the hotel to be near Amy. It was only right he should take time off work, considering her condition. Plus, he wanted to be around to keep the medical staff on their toes. Which they would be, if they knew he’d be there every day. And of course, he was a doctor himself. A different kind, sure, but… He just wanted them to know he was watching their every move. And that he was no shit-for-brains, just crawled out of the crush.

  He knew, almost certainly, his wife had no awareness of what was going on around her. But even with his science-based background, he still found it very hard to rationalise. That she was now just a lump of artificially-breathing organic material. If the doctors were right, there was no Amy any more. What he could see lying in the bed, still as beautiful as the day they met, was just an i
llusion.

  But he wasn’t going to accept that. No way.

  “Hi Philip. I hope this message finds you well, my friend! Listen, would you help me raise awareness about an issue I feel very strongly about? I just found out there’s a rare species of monkey who are being hunted for their use in making biochips...”

  Philip tapped closed the video message on his phone and continued unpacking. Just more spam to deal with. Just another desperate soul trying to get a piece of you. He once led a project on biochip development. Hence, it must now be part of his algorithm profile and, from time to time, he’d get these stupid messages.

  This profiling made him feel a little claustrophobic, sometimes. He appreciated the economic benefits for businesses. Of course, they used it too when hiring new researchers. But it starts to get a bit invasive when your profile has an accurate understanding of how you’re feeling at any given moment. When he got off the plane today, for example, his profile knew he’d be tired and sold that information to a minicabter operator who was already waiting to collect him.

  He sometimes missed the feeling of having a choice. Like, you just spontaneously decided to take a minicabter instead of the train. Like in the old days. Most people didn’t know this, but in almost every restaurant now, although they still hand you a menu, they already know what you’ll order. The meal is being prepared for you before you’ve even asked for a table.

  Why do they bother taking your order? Because they know customers are happier with the illusion of choice. The ritual of having a menu, discussing the options. All part of the theatre of restaurant dining. He tried to catch them out, once in a while, ordering the weirdest dish on the menu. Something he’d never normally eat in a million years. Camel brain soup, or whatever.

  But always your profile knew. Your rebellion had been scheduled. Delivered by a waiter with a professional smile which said: “Don’t even try.”

  He dropped into bed, exhausted. But the stress of the situation kept him awake. And of course, just as his eyes finally closed, wouldn’t you know it – a baby started crying from somewhere in the hotel.

  1.5

  “I don’t want to make an official complaint or anything. I’m sure they just had a bad night. I mean, maybe the kid’s sick or something but... I’m a paying customer, here, and I need my 8 hours.”

  The receptionist frowned at him, confused.

  “There are currently no parents with infants staying here, Sir.”

  “I heard a baby crying. All night. Literally, as soon as I got into bed, until... sunrise.”

  “Mr Huyt... there is no baby here.”

  “Mr Huyt?” A voice came from a man they hadn’t noticed, standing behind Philip. It was Louis Lewis, the young rep from UPC Insurance.

  They went into a back room for some privacy. UPC were paying for Amy’s expensive care, they had been for the last 3 months, and they understandably had some questions. Louis ticked off a few standard ones – underlying conditions, heart problems, diabetes? He asked about their son, Tom. But that was just the build up to the punchline. And what a punchline.

  Philip was expecting there to be a problem with the policy. Something in the small print to take away Amy’s cover. Or the rep wanted to sell some extras. Instead, he ended the meeting with his head spinning – why was his wife in a coma?

  But this guy was right. He asked a basic question and seemingly nobody had the answer. No wonder the docs were in such a hurry to get things over with.

  1.6

  Philip sat at Amy’s bedside, thinking back through the sequence of events.

  Just prior to Amy’s illness, he’d been very focused on work. Thing is, if you’re running your own project, you really must be present at every step. Most decisions need our attention. You can’t pass this stuff to others.

  For a good while, the knowledge of Amy’s condition had been present in his mind – that she would soon fall into a coma. He remembered the stage of acceptance of this inevitability, but not the actual moment it was announced. Because surely, there must have been a diagnosis of some kind; a moment when the tragedy struck their lives, followed by a process of coming to terms with it – dealing with it.

  But he couldn’t remember that, at all.

  He remembered their lives before the knowledge of Amy’s condition. Tom had been born. That was 3 years ago. They’d got through the stress of the new baby stuff. Sleepless nights, never able to eat together, smelling of baby puke, and all the rest of it. Then at some point, they’d all become aware Amy would be hospitalized.

  They’d lived with this for months. He wondered why he hadn’t been more upset. But he remembered work took up most of his time. Indeed, he’d been grateful for the distraction. Something to focus on, to help ease the pain. And he never once questioned it.

  Amy’s parents burst in, followed by Dr Dills. Diana dropped the consent form in front of him.

  “Diana, what’s this?” asked Philip.

  “This is the piece of paper which lets us start grieving...”

  “Not again. I’ve said I don’t want to talk about this, any more.”

  “…and then, maybe we can get back to Living.”

  “No.” Philip remained sitting with his back to them.

  “We’ve all signed it,” Diana reminded him.

  “Amy’s not dead.”

  “That’s the problem,” Michael growled from the end of the bed.

  Finally, Philip stood and confronted them.

  “What the hell?”

  “Shall we take this into another room?” suggested Dills. But Philip wasn’t going anywhere.

  “I still have hope. Look at her. Look.”

  “We need to look at the evidence,” said Dills.

  “Yes. Let’s look at the evidence. Tell me – how did Amy end up in a coma?”

  Dr Dills was moved to see a man so in love with his wife, so desperate not to let her go. A scientific mind, reduced to asking silly questions.

  “Philip – we all knew this was coming. Please!” growled Michael, thrusting the consent form at him.

  “Yes – but why?” Philip turned to Dills, who was now looking puzzled. “Why?”

  She stared at him, uncomfortable. How had this happened? She’d never forgotten a patient’s case history before.

  “You don’t know,” said Philip. A statement of fact, rather than a suggestion.

  “I have a lot of patients, My Huyt. I’ll need to clarify exactly why,” said Dills, desperate to dig herself out of this awkward situation. “You mean, you don’t know either?”

  Dr Dills stood awkwardly in the glare of Amy’s family, trying to think of something sensible to say.

  “OK, I’ll look into it and then I’ll get back to you. If it helps,” she managed, struggling to hide her embarrassment, and quickly left the room.

  “If it helps?!” Philip called after her, almost laughing.

  This would be hilarious, he thought, if it wasn’t so desperately tragic.

  1.7

  In room 126, Philip pulled on a nightshirt and collapsed into bed, determined to get his full quota of biphasic sleep. A colleague once did some studies on sleep deprivation using neuroimaging and told him it really messes with your prefrontal cortex – the part of the brain associated with complex cognitive behaviour, personality expression, decision making...

  There was that baby again. Just as he was drifting off, too.

  So I wasn’t going crazy, after all.

  He waited, but it kept on. Surely the parents weren’t just going to let cry all night. Again.

  Does this thing ever give up? Don’t they feed it?

  After 30 minutes, he sat up and plucked the foam from his ears, slipped into a hotel bathrobe and paced up and down the corridor outside, listening at the doors – if he could find which room it was coming from he could do something about it tomorrow.

  He moved onto the landing of the spiralling stairway and paused, listening. Suddenly, there was a big crash, like a whole ton of
crockery tipping over.

  At the same moment, the baby stopped crying.

  But now he really wanted to know what was going on. Must be from the kitchen or the dining room, right? He took the stairs down to the darkened elevator lobby. Funny, you’d think they’d keep the lights on through the night. Isn’t there some kind of health and safety thing?

  But his thoughts were interrupted by a huge, deep thud. The long echo suggested it was coming from inside the elevator shaft. He approached the doors and listened. There was another sound. Like something moving around inside. He called the elevator and the bright red indicator went from 4 to 3.

  More rapid thuds from within. Like something thrashing around in there. Sounded too big to be a rat. The elevator was now one floor away and whatever was in there was getting closer.

  The motor hum stopped, punctuated by a bright ping as the elevator reached his floor. He stood and waited, full of curiosity, as the doors slid open.

  2.0

  Philip was blinded by a harsh bright light stabbing painfully into his eyes, left then right.

  “Mr Huyt?” The man’s voice was soft and reassuringly calm.

  “Mm hmm.”

  “What is your age?”

  “42.”

  Philip’s eyes adjusted and the round, olive-skinned face of a man in his forties appeared, peering curiously down at him, whilst shining a pen-shaped light into his eyes.

  “Where do you live?”

  “London.”

  “Where is London?”

  “In England. Britain.”

  Philip realised he was lying on a medical couch in a doctor’s blue-walled consultation room.

  “What do you do for a living?”

  “Research scientist.”

  The doctor’s ID badge hanging from his neck said “Dr JAVALAMA”

  “Ah ha. What field?”

  “Molecular genetic, functional genomic.”