Epiworld Read Online Free PDF Page B

your behaviour through the probes, not your thoughts, but Chase has a pod. Luckily for you he can’t have been using it recently; otherwise you’d both be in trouble.’
    It hasn’t occurred to me that Chase can detect us with a pod of his own!
    ‘Well, now what?’ I ask.
    ‘Now we get you out of here,’ replies Alexander. ‘Chase is serious about this operation. I can’t let it go ahead. You’ll die.’
    ‘There is no way out!’
    ‘There is! Travis, your seizures can set you free!’
    My eyes widen.
    ‘Like Hudson, I could tell what was going on in your head when you had that fit earlier today.’ Alexander is different; he’s animated, edgy, excited, a different person to his usual, stuffy self. I wonder if he’s bladdered. ‘It was a revelation! You went back to another time, many years before now, where the world was a better place. I’m not saying it was perfect, but there was no institutional suppression like there is today. No police state. You were in the year two thousand and nine. I looked it up in the history books, it was a socially and medically better place. The institutions didn’t exist then, and mental hospitals were short-term affairs. When you had your last episode you were walking along the seashore, it was a hot sunny day, and there were people on the beach, enjoying themselves. You were free. No robots. No droids. There were bad times, wars and famine in some parts of the planet, but law and order was all human, and in many places people were content.’
    I’m too tired to argue. ‘You saw what I saw; so what? How will that set me free?’
    ‘Don’t you see, Travis?’ Alexander grips my hand. ‘You didn’t “dream” these things, you were actually there! You can’t see the past if you didn’t experience it! You did walk along the beach, and speak to these people. You went back to the year two thousand and nine. There’s something in your seizures which empowers your mind, to the extent that it can take you from one place to another!’
    That’s it; he’s got to be drunk, crazy, or both! ‘So why do I always come back?’
    ‘I don’t know. Maybe your mind isn’t powerful enough to let you stay there, but I’m pretty sure I could make it work so you might never come back.’
    I snort. ‘Say you’re right. My mind might go, but surely my body will stay behind. What about that? Won’t I need it?’
    ‘No, your body will go, too. You’ll be in two places at once. Oh, I know it’s hard to believe, but I have heard of this phenomenon before. In all cases epileptics lose a sense of time and place. In some isolated cases, however, and there have been reports of this in recent medical history, sufferers have stumbled into different worlds, witnessing lives they never would have witnessed, like they were drifting into some kind of parallel universe. I’ll put money on it the same thing is happening to you.’
    ‘But it never used to be like this!’ I interrupt. ‘It’s only since you started sedating me. I thought the drugs you were giving me were making me see things.’
    ‘No, it’s not the sedation. The seizures are getting more acute and powerful, and they’re the catalyst for your escape. I’m sure I can prove it!’
    He presses the call button. A nun appears within seconds.
    ‘Fetch a wheelchair. Bring Travis to my office,’ he commands.
    ‘Why are we going to your office?’ I nearly say it aloud. ‘Can’t you prove whatever it is you want to prove here?’
    ‘I don’t have the necessary equipment here, and anyway, we’ll be seen in the ward. My office isn’t under surveillance. No one will see us there.’
    ‘Why should I trust you?’ The nun returns, helps me into the wheelchair, and wraps me in a blanket. ‘You had me sedated to make me behave! Why should I believe anything you say?’
    ‘Because I don’t want to see an injustice done, and right now I’m the only chance you’ve got of getting out of here.’ Alexander tells the Sister to