3

January 12, 2026
10:28 a.m.
Boston, MA

As she descended the metal laboratory stairs, she spotted Sam, already there waiting for her, pacing back and forth. Alison quickened her step.

“What happened?!” he hyperventilated, his eyes wide.

Alison shook her head, finding it difficult to speak. “He... he didn’t care,” she mumbled.

“What do you mean? He didn’t believe you?”

“No, he believed me. He just didn’t care. Our discovery did not seem to matter to him at all.”

Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “How could that be?”

Alison pursed her lips. “I do not know.”

“Well then, let’s go find someone else!” He threw his arms up in frustration. “There has to be someone out there who can stop this. Don’t you have friends who work in the press?”

“I do. I tried. None of them could do anything. Jorgensen’s influence is simply too powerful. I don’t know where else to turn. And another thing...”

Sam tilted his head like a dog, dreading what she would say next. “What...?”

“It’s your visdisk. Jorgensen... he broke it.”

Sam’s eyes fell. “I... I don’t... that was all we had!”

Alison wrapped her arm around his shoulder. “I know.”

“What do we do now?”

“I know it’s hard, but we need to build another visualization disk and run another test. We need to be able to show the evidence of our discovery.”

Sam floundered. “It took me hours to build the first one, and I barely remember how I did it. My notes are nowhere near complete, I... I don’t know if I can do this.”

“You don’t have to know. I know. You can do this.” She chuckled nervously. “You have to do this.”

He inhaled and exhaled. “Okay.”

“And take thorough notes this time.”

“Okay,” he laughed weakly.

“Let’s get to work.”

They set out into the lab to recreate the breakthrough they had already worked so hard to reach. It was quicker this time; they were able to avoid a few of the challenges they had initially faced. Still, to Alison, it felt like trying to recall the words of a poem for which no record existed. Whatever they built, it would not be the same as the original. She worried they would not be able to recapture the magic from their first discovery. Fueled by fear, the two of them hacked away at the hardware, completely immersed in their work. Minutes turned into hours as the prototype slowly came together. By the time evening had swallowed the afternoon, they had a new five-dimensional visdisk ready for testing.

“Should we...” Sam hesitated, looking down at his shoes.

“Yes!” Alison exclaimed. “Go grab another subject. We don’t have much time.”

He rushed over to the animal pen and pulled out a little brown mouse. It squirmed in his hand, attempting to free itself from his grip. Alison thought of the poor thing’s emotional state; frightened, completely unaware of its fast-approaching fate. It would be completely unaware of everything soon enough, she figured, brushing off her moral qualms and focusing on the matter at hand.

“Hurry, Sam,” she pushed. “Zip it up.”

He fumbled, haphazardly wrapping the plastic shroud around the mouse, a great deal of urgency in his movements. Suddenly, he stopped. “Dr. Emery... I...”

“What is it?!”

“I think the mouse is dead,” he whimpered, lifting up the corpse and showing it to her. He looked like he was about to cry.

“Well, get another one!” she shouted. “We don’t have time to grieve. Don’t worry, Sam. We were going to end its life anyway, one way or another.”

He hurried off to procure another mouse, throwing the first one’s carcass in the yellow plastic disposal bin.

“We were going to end its life one way or another,” she repeated under her breath, questioning her own words. She firmly believed that the digital transportation process ended the life of the subject, but actual death seemed... different. It was so final, so irreversible. Even if there was some part of a person irreparably changed by the process, it was nothing like real death. She drifted into philosophical ponderings, absorbed in her own cogitation when Sam interrupted her train of thought. “We’re ready to go.”

“Set,” she muttered. “Execute.”

She smashed the red button with her thumb and waited. The system had changed so much since they started; it was much quieter, much smaller. In a few seconds, it was over. The scared little mouse hyperventilated on the output platform, trying to escape from the transparent sack that held it captive. Alison looked away.

“Load in the pre-transport scan,” she demanded, eyes locked on the visualization disk.

“Sure,” Sam said nervously. He plugged the disk into the computer, and the two of them waited. After a moment, the round metal contraption began to vibrate, humming an eerie note as it skated across the white table.

“We were too reckless!” he agonized as the disk glitched. “I knew I couldn’t do it.”

“Give it a minute, Sam.”

She could feel his apprehension hanging in the air. She masked her own under a guise of steely confidence. The disk was inching closer and closer to the edge, dancing toward the three-foot drop when finally, it stopped vibrating. A second later, red and green embers began to rise from it, modeling the mouse in five beautiful dimensions.

Alison pulled her fingers into a fist, a miniscule celebration of their accomplishment. Sam exhaled an enormous sigh of relief. “Thank goodness.”

“What did I tell you?” she smiled, clutching the first morsel of genuine hope she had felt in days. With this evidence, they had a chance. She turned to Sam, eager to start planning their next steps. She had expected to see him smiling back at her, but instead saw him gaping at something near the lab entrance. Shifting her gaze to match his, a similar expression leapt to her face.

She saw Julia standing at the top of the stairs, her eyes swollen and wet with tears. She was holding something tight to her chest... a brown leather messenger bag. With confused shock, Alison realized that she recognized the bag; it belonged to William. She approached the staircase slowly, her mind spinning with speculation. “What is it, Julia?”

“It’s...” Julia sputtered. “It’s Dr. Silberman. He’s... they took him to the hospital... he’s...”

She fell to her knees, bawling, unable to continue. Alison scrambled up the stairs, trying to process the words she had just heard. As she reached the top, she sat next to Julia and wrapped an arm around her. “It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay. What happened, Julia?”

Between bursts of tears, Julia managed to respond. “I... I was going to see him, and... he was... he was there, next to the sidewalk, behind a hedge.”

“Behind a hedge?” Alison prodded softly.

Julia took a deep breath. “At first I thought he was lying down, I didn’t... I don’t know... then I saw... the blood...!” She erupted in another fit of sobs.

Alison’s lip trembled as she began to understand. She did not want to understand, but she did. This shocking new sorrow mingled with her pressing anxiety, the two feelings fighting for room in her emotional headspace. She wanted to burst into tears herself, but somehow, the act of comforting Julia helped her tuck that instinct away. She scooted closer and rubbed her back. “It’s okay, Julia. It’s okay.” She blinked. “I know this is hard, but I need to know... what else can you tell me about how you found him?”

Julia swallowed. “His window was open... and this was next to his... next to him,” she whimpered, handing the messenger bag to Alison. Alison clung to it, deeply missing the man who had owned it, aching to tear it open and see what mysteries it held. With her free hand, she unbuckled the flap and dug through the pockets. She pulled out a couple of pens, some protein bar wrappers, and a phone charger before finding a small spiral-bound notebook. With one hand still rubbing Julia’s back, she flipped through the pages until she reached the last one. The final entry, scrawled in the script of an inebriated man, marked the lined paper like a scar: “Emptiness consumes me.”

“You don’t think it could have been suicide, do you?” Sam inquired timidly, hovering at the bottom of the stairs.

Alison considered the notion. Why would he kill himself? Could he have changed his mind about her theory? Could the thought of life without consciousness have driven him mad? William was a stubborn man, but never an unreasonable man. Perhaps he had reconsidered her hypothesis and found it to be sound. She stared down at the notebook, the words popping out at her like a 3D movie. Suddenly, an awful idea jumped into her brain. Her eyes stretched open, the notebook quivering in her hand. The handwriting...

“We can’t know for sure, Sam,” she said, her mind racing.

“Why?” Julia wailed. “Why would he end his own life? What could...” she trailed off, weeping quietly.

“Well, we might know something,” Sam offered tenuously. “Dr. Emery just told him about something we dis-”

Alison glared at him and cut him off. “We can’t know for sure, Sam,” she insisted through clenched teeth. Sam looked puzzled, but stayed quiet. She turned to Julia, hugging her tightly. “Thank you so much for coming to us with this. I’m so sorry you had to find him like that, Julia... I can’t imagine.”

Julia nodded, still crying softly.

“Why don’t you get yourself home, hmm? I’m sure you can find some better company than Sam and I,” Alison laughed weakly.

Julia nodded again. “Yeah, okay.”

Alison stood up and helped her to her feet. The two women embraced, squeezing each other like security blankets. Sam ascended the stairs and gave Julia a big bear hug, tears trickling down both of their cheeks.

Julia composed herself as best she could. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Soon,” Sam nodded.

“Soon,” Alison agreed.

Julia took a breath and attempted a smile. Slowly spinning toward the exit, she set off and made her way out of the lab.

As the heavy door closed behind her, Sam turned to Alison, concerned and confused. “What was that? Why did you stop me from telling her what we found?”

Alison’s eyes wandered around the lab, searching for words. “I...”

“What?!”

“I... I was trying to protect her.” Her expression darkened. “I don’t think Dr. Silberman committed suicide.”

Sam leaned closer, his voice falling to a whisper. “What?! How could you know that?”

“I don’t know, I guess it’s just conjecture,” she sighed. “But I’ve seen him write things after a few drinks, and... I’m not sure.”

“You think someone else wrote that in his notebook?!” Sam was incredulous.

“It must have been someone else. If he was going to kill himself...” she faltered, taking a moment to shake off the grief. “I don’t think he would have written that.”

“It does seem a little melodramatic. ‘Emptiness consumes me.’”

She shook her head, growing more confident in her suspicion with every passing second. “Emptiness consumes me,” she repeated. “It certainly sounds like something you might write if you were trying to fake a suicide.”

Sam looked at her, mouth agape. He said nothing, waiting for her to continue.

“I think Dr. Silberman knew too much,” she said, her voice breaking. “I never should have told him about our discovery...”

Sam shook his head. “This isn’t your fault, Dr. Emery,” he said emphatically. “You can’t blame yourself. Besides, we can’t know what happened, right?”

She looked down at her feet, terrified of the words she was saying. “Jorgensen killed him.” She stared into Sam’s eyes. “And we might be next.”

“No,” he chuckled nervously. “No way. He couldn’t. Jorgensen? No way!”

“You didn’t see him in that meeting, Sam. It was like I was talking to an automaton. There was nothing behind his eyes.”

“No, no, no,” he spouted. “It’s impossible!”

Alison stood firm. “People have done far worse for a little money. And I’m sure he’s planning to make more than a little money on this.”

“So what are we going to do?” Sam probed, his head bobbing with aimless desperation.

She hesitated, again afraid of what she was about to say. She wanted to do nothing. She wanted to go home and watch TV and mourn the loss of her friend. She wanted to give up, but she knew they couldn’t. This was too important. They had to do something. She pushed the anguish out of her mind.

“We have to confront him,” she declared.

Sam scoffed. “I still don’t believe he really wants to kill us, but if he does... wouldn’t it be a bad idea for us to, I don’t know, stop by for a visit?”

“He can’t kill us in the middle of his office,” she assured him. “We need to stop him.”

“Why don’t we just make a video of what we found and post it online? We don’t need the press. We can get the word out on our own.”

“It won’t be enough. The launch is tomorrow. We’re running out of time. We have to make him call it off tonight.”

He remained unconvinced. “And how exactly are we going to do that? I’m not really the fighting type,” he chuckled, gesturing at his body.

“We won’t need to fight him. We just need to get him talking. He’s bound to say something incriminating. We just need to record it. He’ll have no choice but to listen to us then.”

“So we’re going to blackmail him?”

“I don’t know what else we can do.”

Sam tapped his foot, thinking it over. “How are we going to get him talking?”

“We’ll bring the new visdisk,” she suggested. “We need to show him that we’re not going to give up on this.”

“Won’t he just destroy it again?”

Alison shrugged. “Maybe he will. But if we record him destroying the evidence, it could end up helping us.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed. “And how are we going to record this revelatory interaction?”

She thought for a moment, looking off into the distance. “I’ll just hide my phone in my shirt pocket. Turn the camera on, start recording a video, and that’ll be that,” she smiled, a hint of hubris on her lips. “I’ll cover it up with my shawl; the camera can see through it, but the phone won’t be visible.”

Sam licked his teeth, considering the plan. “I guess it could work. I don’t have to be home for another couple of hours,” he reflected as he glanced at his watch. “I’m in.”

Alison nodded. “Good. Let’s get a move on.”

The two of them hastily gathered their things, donning their coats and gloves and hats and boots, readying themselves for the plunge into the cold urban landscape. They ascended the stairs in single file, Alison ahead of Sam. Their footsteps reverberated softly through the dimly lit hallways and atriums as they ventured toward the building’s exit. Neither of them spoke as they made their way out onto the campus. Looking at each other, they shared a moment of hopeless, desperate determination.

“We really have to do this,” Sam murmured, as much a question as it was a statement.

“Thousands of lives depend on us,” Alison responded solemnly, staring up at the smattering of tiny stars dotting the cloudy night sky.