Proto

By Shane Drummy

What would you do if your greatest enemy was disguised... as your very own thoughts?

In a bid to transcend disease, aging, and death, humanity has abandoned the real world by uploading consciousness into a virtual replica called Avalon. Malcolm Alter stays behind, believing it's his duty to reconcile with the bittersweet transience of life—that it's the crucible in which the human spirit is forged.

But when Malcolm's conscious mind is imprisoned within a collapsing virtual matrix by an old adversary, he must find a way back to his real body before it's murdered—or remain trapped forever in The Void.

Will Malcolm proceed to oblivion or be reunited with his family? Pick up Proto today to find out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shane Drummy
• Release date: Jul 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781999617400

Book preview

1

The Italian, mahogany speedboat gently bobbed on pristine blue Mediterranean waters five miles west of Gozo. Its single occupant, Malcolm Alter, aged twenty-two, sat at the stern and practiced a reverse lung packing exercise to increase the flexibility of his ribcage and diaphragm in preparation for the extreme depth pressures which lay ahead. He spat onto his goggles and rubbed the saliva around the lens, then washed it out with sea water.

He sang softly:

Frère Jacques, frère Jacques,

Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?

Sonnez les matines! Sonnez les matines!

Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong

He had practiced with other nursery rhymes in other languages, but Frère Jacques worked best at lulling his mind into a state of quietude, with each successive repetition of the verse bringing him deeper into relaxation.

The sound of an approaching vessel pulled him out of state. A luzzu—a traditional fishing boat he recognized from Xlendi—sailed by, the Eye of Horus painted on its bow. The fisherman waved, and Malcolm waved back. He didn’t want to be spotted. It was foolish to attempt this alone. No safety divers along the line to help him should he succumb to barotrauma. No one to revive him in the event of a shallow water blackout while resurfacing. No one to witness.

Again, he sang the verse.

He kept well-hydrated, but had fasted over the previous days, giving his metabolism a chance to slow down. No caffeine, no dairy, no alcohol, no oranges, no meat, no breads or refined sugar. His stomach and intestines were largely clear of food now except for a small amount of porridge for breakfast that morning. The previous few days had been spent alone and largely devoid of any stress-inducing stimulus. But the closer the big moment came, the more stress returned.

It was manageable. He had mentally rehearsed this dive hundreds of times. But those visualizations were prone to skip forward at times. He consciously kept a tight rein on that tendency and allowed the mental rehearsal to unfold in real time, every moment given it’s due.

For the discipline of constant weight apnea freediving, he wore a custom-fit, open cell neoprene wetsuit, a low volume diving mask, and carbon fibre bi-fins. His mind began to drift and then fixate on the goal of reaching his target depth. He felt a corresponding tension creep back into his muscles. But he captured it in time, and it diffused naturally under the glare of awareness. He retrained his mind on the process, trying to enjoy it.

He nudged himself off the edge of the boat and swam a few feet to the weighted line which dropped all the way down to the sea floor. A few final breaths. Malcolm kept focus on the exhale from his belly and resisted the urge to hyperventilate. No more visualization, just conscious breathing. That’s all there was now; no breather, only breath. It was time.

He duck dived, performed a single strong breaststroke, and down he went, head first along the dropline at a meter per second—toward the seabed, with hands by his side and chin tucked in. Light blue turned to successively deeper shades. He reached the point of neutral buoyancy, where gravity took over, and freefell into darkness.

At just past ten meters, two atmospheres of pressure compressed his lungs to half their normal surface volume. Blood shunted to his chest cavity, occupying the empty space created as the air in his lungs compressed, so his chest and lungs wouldn’t crush inwards under the pressure. The alveoli became engulfed with blood plasma from the surrounding tissue. His spleen shrank and emptied its blood for circulation.

The skirt of his mask pressed in more firmly against his face. His eardrums and sinus walls were forced in. He continued to equalize them; pushed the bottom of his mask’s nose pocket against his nostrils and gently blew to force air through the open eustachian tube and into his middle ear.

At thirty meters, the pressure reached 4 bar. His lungs squeezed to a quarter of their surface volume. At the threshold of residual volume, he could no longer bring air up from his lungs to equalize and had to change to a different technique.

As the target depth approached, he reached out and grabbed the line with a single hand, which helped right himself with minimal effort. He’d done it: ninety meters. A personal best. His lungs were compressed to one-eleventh of the normal volume.

No time to savor it. Now the real work began—the ascent.

But something out there in the darkness caught his attention. Something that lurked. His eyes widened. Then it struck; a profound and existential fear unlike any he’d known. It forced him to exhale and depleted his precious oxygen stores.

He reached for the dropline, but his hands were frozen. So, too, were his legs. He willed them to move. They did not obey.

Every muscle in his body seized up. By force of will, or perhaps some other force unknown to him, he tightened his fingers together and gripped the line. He hoisted himself upward. His other hand was still dead, but one was all he needed.

Slowly, he began the ascent. As he climbed, his limbs came back to life. The farther he progressed, the freer they became. He kicked with his flippers and accelerated his rate of ascent. Decompression sickness was rare in freedivers. He may prove to be an exception, if he was lucky enough to reach the surface.

Sixty meters.

Thirty meters.

Malcolm entered the most dangerous phase of the dive. His decision to go it alone had been fatal. Things got simultaneously brighter and darker; the brightness which occupied the center of his vision grew brighter, and darkness seeped in around the periphery as cerebral hypoxia took hold.

This was it. Strength going, lungs emptying, consciousness fading. This was death.

Elena would not be pleased.

---

The AgustaWestland AW139 Search & Rescue helicopter took off from the AFM terminal at Malta International Airport. The advanced avionic system guided it to the rescue coordinates on autopilot. As the helicopter hovered at fifty feet and zero knots above the fishing vessel, the pilot passed control of the helicopter to the winchman, so he could make the minute adjustments necessary using a hand controller.

Within minutes, an unconscious Malcolm Alter was on board and they were flying low level at three-hundred kph en route to the hyperbaric unit at Mater Dei hospital in Msida.

Malcolm, eyes open, lay in the hyperbaric chamber as it hissed around him and worked to rid his blood of excess nitrogen. When it decompressed around him, he noticed the ambient temperature increase. Then, it began to cool, so he surmised they must be in the recompression phase.

He didn’t know for sure how many hours he’d been in here. He could’ve asked the nurse who had accompanied him into the chamber and made sure he didn’t go to sleep. But Malcolm didn’t speak. He wasn’t ready to communicate beyond a nod or shake of his head.

---

Malcolm’s cell phone was on the bedside locker in his private hospital room. He had turned it off a few days before the dive. It was becoming more difficult to keep life at bay. He switched it on. Twelve messages, all from Elena.

The doctor came in.

Good news is there’s no sign of any permanent neurological damage, he said. But freediving solo makes me think you may have had some to begin with.

Great, Malcolm thought. A funny doctor.

You blacked out not far from the surface, probably due to cerebral hypoxia. As a reflex response, you had a laryngospasm which closed your larynx and prevented water from entering your lungs. That kept you from drowning for a crucial minute or two until the fisherman dived in.

Can I leave? Malcolm asked.

You’ll need a few more sessions in the chamber. They can be done largely as an outpatient. But I’d like to keep you here for another few days under observation. Any questions?

Malcolm shook his head no.

The doctor made toward the exit, but stopped short when Malcolm said, I saw something.

On the dive? the doctor asked.

On the sea floor. Something that didn’t belong. Malcolm spoke the words like he was almost ashamed of them.

Can you describe it?

I’m not sure if I really saw it. I think it was outside. But may be just…. Malcolm pointed to his own head.

Nitrogen narcosis, most likely. It’s not uncommon among you lot.

Malcolm had experienced nitrogen narcosis—or rapture of the deep as it was nicknamed—in the past, and knew well enough that what he had experienced wasn’t it.

Yeah, he said. I guess you’re right.

Malcolm dreamt that night.

He was lost and wandering the narrow maze-like streets of Mdina. Elena! he called out.

Over here, she said.

But he continued searching to no avail.

Keep talking, he said.

She began to sing:

Frère Jacques, frère Jacques,

Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?

Malcolm rounded another corner. The volume of her voice waxed and waned, like she was alternately getting closer and farther away.

She continued:

Sonnez les matines! Sonnez les matines!

Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong.

Her voice was getting clearer now; he was close. He turned another corner.

Elena? he called out. But there was no response.

His search became more frantic as he ran down another narrow street lined with high walls on both sides. Eventually, he found her. Her body was contorted unnaturally. Knee and elbow joints bent against their natural direction, her head twisted around with her chin resting between her shoulder blades.

The macabre sight jolted him awake. He sat bolt upright in the hospital bed.

Within the dream state, he was more vulnerable. From now on, he must remain awake. Remain vigilant. But the inevitable exhaustion that resulted would also leave him weakened. It would be a delicate thing to calibrate the line between both. If he could just maintain awareness within the dream state, remember that he was the actual dreamer. There had been times in the past when he had attained this awareness; it usually resulted in the premature ending of the dream rather than his conscious controlling of the dream elements from within.

I must stay awake, he told himself again and again.

---

It was daytime, yet Malcolm sat in the complete darkness of his living room in a rented townhouse in Sliema. The first thing he had done upon arriving home was close the shutters and blinds. He’d duct-taped the seams of light around the edge. He had sat in the armchair all the previous night and all the present day. No distractions allowed: no television, no newspapers, no cell phone, no sleep, even keeping a tight rein on any extraneous movement.

A knock on the door. He ignored it. Another followed, more insistent. Then her voice:

At the hospital, they told me you checked yourself out. I guess you don’t want to speak, a woman’s voice said. Can you tell me why? Tell me why?

He said nothing.

I’ll leave you be. Call when you’re ready, she said. Please.

Then she was gone.