Page 37 of Atlas of Unknowable Things

MASS HYSTERIA AND CONSPIRACY THEORIES

Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature such as self-preservation?

I sat stunned, disbelieving, and in such shock that I could barely feel my limbs.

What the hell was happening to me? I was Robin Quain.

I was a historian. Wasn’t I? No, I was someone else.

Whatever had been done to my memory, it hadn’t worked all the way.

Things had crept through in my dreams, and it was those dreams more than anything that made me sure I really was Isabelle.

And there were other clues. I thought back to Finn, to his telling me how someday I’d regret asking for the truth about Isabelle.

Even my favorite Twilight Zone episode was a clue, as if I was trying to shout the truth at myself, though it consistently fell on deaf ears.

“Charles?” I whispered, and memories flashed before my eyes—the two of us laughing in his office at NYU, only it wasn’t NYU.

It was here, in some kind of lab. Drinking vodka in the Russian bar, only it wasn’t a bar, was it?

It was my cabana, and we were elated about the progress we were making.

We were geniuses, weren’t we? Going to go down in history.

Then staring into his eyes near the sundial in Washington Square Park, only it wasn’t a sundial, and it wasn’t Washington Square Park.

Still, the snow fell in thick, mournful waves.

“I’m Isabelle?” For some inscrutable reason, I looked over at Lexi for confirmation.

“Whip-smart, this one,” she said with her characteristic snarkiness. “Took you long enough.”

“Who is Charles?”

“Your best friend.”

“Well, other than me,” said Lexi.

“She’s joking,” said Aspen. “Lexi hates you.”

“Honestly,” said Lexi, examining her nails, “most people hate you. I was one of the few who didn’t until, you know, I did.”

Blinking slowly, as if trying to see through a thick haze, I asked, “If I’m Isabelle, why do I think I’m Robin?”

“Hell if we know. Something happened to your brain. You and Charles disappeared the night of the breach, which is unfortunate because you’re the only ones who know the code.”

I tried to make myself understand what Lexi was saying, but my eyes were gritty, and I had no clue what was happening to me.

“But Charles is in New York. He was my best friend in grad school.”

“No,” said Lexi. “He was your best friend here, but there is something you’re hiding from yourself about him. We think that’s why he carried over into your screen memories.”

“Screen memories?” I tried to sit up, but my head was spinning, so I lay back down. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I am completely freaking out right now. I don’t understand what’s happening to me.”

Aspen looked over at Lexi. “I don’t know how much we can tell her.”

Lexi shook her head, a warning.

“Please.” Desperately, I looked over at Aspen, hoping she could throw me some kind of lifeline before I completely lost touch with reality.

“Okay,” said Aspen, calmly sitting down and making eye contact with me.

“Listen to me carefully. I know this is hard to understand, but you aren’t Robin Quain.

You’re Isabelle Casimir. You’re a neuroscientist and you used to work here with your best friend, Charles.

There was a security breach. I can’t tell you more about that until you remember it yourself.

The night of the breach, you and Charles disappeared, and we need one of you to tell us the code so we can seal the breach. ”

“What are you talking about? A breach of what?”

She looked over at Lexi, hesitant. “There are some things I can’t tell you yet, but there is a barrier we need to maintain. In some ways, it is our one and only job. It’s why Hildegard is here.”

“What kind of barrier?”

“A fortification,” said Aspen, and I could tell she was searching, choosing her words very carefully. “It’s expansive, meticulously constructed—a Hadrian’s Wall, if you will.”

“Where?” I asked, but she just shook her head.

“I can’t tell you that yet.”

“All you need to know,” said Lexi, “is that there was an accident and part of that barrier was damaged. We need to repair it, but we can’t without the code.”

“Does any of this ring a bell?” asked Aspen.

I looked around the medical suite at the sterile equipment, the sharps container on the wall, the harsh fluorescent lights.

“No. It all sounds completely fucking crazy.”

Lexi let out a peal of laughter, and I nearly joined her.

The entire thing felt unbelievable, like an uncanny dream where the world is almost as you know it, but something indefinable had suddenly changed.

And yet what Aspen said about the code sounded right to me on some deep level.

I didn’t know any code off the top of my head, but I did have—had always had—a sense of hidden knowledge somewhere inside me.

And I could almost feel that night. The sirens.

The howls. The screams. I looked at Aspen, something cold and commanding coming to the fore.

“Clarity,” I snapped. “I need clarity. This fortification, what’s its purpose? We’re in the middle of nowhere. What are you trying to keep out?”

“There she is,” said Lexi. “The bitch is back.”

Aspen smiled. “You are starting to seem more like yourself, but we need to be careful. If we tell you too much, it could jeopardize the reacclimating process, possibly even irreparably damage your cognitive function. We aren’t even supposed to have told you this much. You’ll have to remember on your own.”

“Where is Charles?” I had seen him in the woods that night, but I thought it was a hallucination.

Nothing about it felt real, and yet it could have been, couldn’t it?

For now, though, I would keep it to myself.

I didn’t trust these two, not completely.

Not yet. But if Charles was here, it meant he wasn’t the Charles who had betrayed me.

He was still my best friend, and the only person I was going to trust. I just needed to find him.

“We have no idea where he is. We haven’t seen him since that night.”

“Exactly how long have I been gone?”

“Since February.”

A sudden paroxysm shook me, and I started laughing. It wasn’t exactly that I thought this was funny. It was more like someone was poking some receptor in my brain that induced uncontrollable laughter.

“You need to get yourself together,” commanded Aspen. “You are partially responsible for getting us into this, and you have to understand that there are stakes involved.”

“I’m not responsible for anything. I just met you people.”

“She still thinks she’s Robin,” said Lexi, sounding defeated.

It was only half true, though. I knew that they weren’t lying to me. I was Isabelle Casimir, and yet in my bones, I still felt like Robin.

“You need to cut it out,” said Aspen, her voice suddenly firm. “You need to start getting your memory back because we are all in deep shit if you don’t.”

I breathed deeply, trying to contain my bizarre urge to laugh. “But why exactly? I don’t understand why this is happening to me.”

She looked over at Lexi, uncertain, but Lexi shook her head. “Not yet. Too risky.”

“Look, all I will say is that there is an evil here, and it is imperative that it stay controlled. Right now, there is a chance that we are about to lose control, and we need you to help us have that not happen.”

“Could you please be clearer?”

“We can’t, unfortunately,” she said. “We all have different security access here, and our disciplines are siloed, but no one knew as much as you. All we know is that you need to remember the code. We aren’t supposed to be involved in that aspect of the memory retrieval.

We are only supposed to provide familiarity and direction with your research. ”

“Okay, but who did this to me and why?”

“We have no idea who did it, but our best guess is they wanted your research.”

“Wait, my research,” I said, rubbing my temples. “Is my research even real?”

“Not your Salem witch trials bullshit. Your real research.”

My heart sank as I understood what she meant. Whatever I did here, that’s what made me me. The person I thought I was never existed.

“We might be wrong,” said Lexi, and standing, she walked over and looked down at me like a slightly disgusted bird of prey. “It’s possible she gravitated toward her subject naturally because it was familiar, but it’s also possible that there is something real hidden away in there.”

Lexi and Aspen exchanged an intense look I couldn’t quite understand, and then Aspen stared at me as if still trying to assess if I really was as clueless as I maintained.

“Okay, look,” she said. “There’s more going on than just you skipping town.

There were undercurrents of something disturbing in the months leading up to your disappearance.

Hildegard as a whole is experiencing something of a splintering.

There are those of us who want things to go on as they always have.

We are a research institution that prioritizes knowledge above all else.

We don’t play politics. We don’t work with governments, especially not ones that commit human rights violations. ”

I tried to follow what she was saying, but I felt like my brain was filled with spiderwebs, a thousand vicious arachnids scurrying around in there, envenomating my synaptic connections.

“But that’s changing?” I asked.

“There are some who think the way to continue to exist, to expand even, is to change these basic tenets.”

“Who are these people?”

“Key members on our board and of our upper administration, but they are by no means a majority. And for the most part they are off-site. But we know that you had begun to be suspicious of someone here. We know it isn’t either of us.”

I began to understand. “But you’re not sure about Finn and Dorian.”

Aspen bit her lip, looking uncertain.

“We should tell her,” said Lexi. “She needs to know.”