Project Home

Project Blackwater is a mysterious experiment with incredible danger. For Samantha, it's a chance to take control of her life.

Samantha read the holographic sign outside the little clinic, tucked into the surface floor of 144 Sixth Avenue and Ninety-Fourth street. Then she pulled her LENses down her nose and read the fresh paint of the physical sign, welded to the steel above the door and showing several previous coats of paint around the edges.

Elysium Clinic. She checked the address in her LENses’ navigation app to double-check against the growing cries of her nerves. Elysium was the Greek heaven, where the heroic, righteous, and chosen by the gods went. Achilles, Odysseus, Aeneas.

Which was ironic, because she was an accountant, and she’d come here out of desperation.

Sam froze on the spot, staring at the mirrored glass. Her financial Firm’s executives all used mirrored glass to watch the company floor while having total privacy. Mirrored glass meant she was invading someone’s privacy.

A nurse walked paster her and opened the door revealing a sterile white lobby within.

That burst Sam’s bubble of fear. She followed the nurse through and slipped past. She marched right up to the receptionist desk, high heels clicking on the tiles.

“Hello, my name is Samantha Rittel, and I am a volunteer for the Blackwater project.”

The nurse stared at Sam with a hint of frustration. Sam realized how brash she’d sounded as she’d leaned over the desk and belted that into her face. She’d forgotten to say hello, too.

“Your ID please,” the nurse said. Sam presented driver’s license and insurance card. She was given paperwork. She finished it and returned it without a word, for she was still simmering over failing the introduction again.

“Go through the door behind me, your attendant is waiting,” the nurse said and went back to her computer.

Sam pushed through the door. A pair of hands seized her under her arms and yanked her through. She came face to face with an identical copy of herself, wearing rumpled blue scrubs.

“Sammy!” her twin sister said and threw her arms around her. Sam sat and enjoyed the warm and fuzzies running from her sister’s body into hers, until she remembered she was supposed to hug her back and did so.

“Hey Talia,” she said. “I guess I did come to visit your job after all.”

“Welcome to my new gig. It pays well, and I get to go home before midnight,” Talia said. She kissed Sam’s cheeks.

Sam kissed the bridge of her nose. Like she’d done since they were toddlers. “You’re just not allowed to talk about anything,” she said.

“Oh it’s so extra. I had to sign about twenty NDAs. You signed a few too, right?”

“Right,” Sam said and gave her a thumbs-up.

Talia took that hand in hers. “Come on, I get to do your pre-lab examination!” She towed Sam down the corridor before turning right into a standard-looking doctor’s room. She closed the door and locked it behind.

“Alright, Sammy. I love your office chic, but you need to lose it and put on that hospital gown on the bed.”

Sam peeled off her business clothes.

“You could have worn sweats,” Talia said.

“I don’t like sweats,” Sam said.

“Do you ever not dress for the office?”

“No, unless I’m going running,” Sam said. She didn’t know why Talia asked that question every time they met. “Can I keep my tights?”

“Sorry but you can’t keep anything. The neuro suit you’ll put on before going under is basically a full bodysuit, so you’ll be comfy,” Talia said. She yanked out a blood pressure cuff. Sam sleepwalked through the basic physical and blood tests. Another nurse arrived for some psychiatric tests. They asked her questions off her Firm profile, then moved on to advanced mathematics. Once she proved she could do advanced financial equations they stopped. Then she drank a cup of something tasteless, but with a thick texture that nearly choked her.

“Sam, I’ve got one more question,” Talia said. “Before we go to the lab. Do you want to do this?”

“Yes,” Sam said.

“You will be sedated for twelve hours. We’re going to essentially lay out your mind on an artificial neural network and let you explore it. This has only been done by the Elysium clinic before. No one else,” Talia said.

“I need to do this. I’ve got to untangle some knots in my mind,” Sam said. “You want data on the subconsciousness, I want to fix mine.”

“Why? You’re thirty-two, beautiful, and have a job that pulls in half a million a year plus whatever’s in your stock portfolio. You work and live in the top of the financial district, high above the rest of us mortals. Why would you want to fuck with that?” Talia said.

Sam found her hands balled into fists. She tried to unclench them and started breathing hard. It was anger, sadness, regret, and a lot of swirling around she couldn’t put into words. “I’m alone!” she burst out. “I do advanced financial calculations and analysis, and people pay me for it. That’s my existence. When I leave my office, you are my only friend. You’ve got your fiancé and all your friends that let me tag along. I don’t understand people, I don’t understand life, and none of the therapists or self-help or medication can fix that. So, I’m trying this.”

“I’ll always be there,” Talia said.

“And I appreciate that.” She’d rehearsed the next line with her therapist. “I am so glad that after being by my side my whole life, you’re here with me to do this. Let’s go. I want to go under.”

Talia squeezed her hand and opened the door. They went down the hallway to the door at the end. Inside, a single transparent tub sat on a pedestal in the middle of the room. Wires flowed out of it on all sides, some rising to the sockets in the ceiling while others sank into the floor. Around, it looked more like an office. Half a dozen technicians sat on consoles around the room. As many nurses were readying their display.

“Hello, Ms. Rittel and Ms. Rittel,” a man’s voice said slowly. It made her skin crawl in the way any non-standard audio input did. Another thing she’d have to get rid of.

The man wore a white lab coat over a fine black suit and pink tie. The suit was custom made. She could tell by how close it fit his sturdy body.

“This is Dr. Karasavedas, the head of Elysium,” Talia said.

“I was told you work in finance,” he said. “Think of me as the company founder. I do everything,” he said.

“Our founder retired a year ago and they needed four executives to replace him,” Sam blurted out. Idiot. Think, please, why can’t you think? She scolded herself.

“Exactly,” the Doctor said. “Now, before we begin, I can tell you a little more than what the paperwork reveals. The purpose of the Blackwater project is immortality. Physical immortality is solvable. For the past two decades, the limit to human lifespan has not, in fact, been our bodies, but our minds. Your mind is an incredibly complex thing. Neuroscience has not found the answers, it has only deepened the well of questions. Such as why even a healthy brain starts breaking down after a certain age.”

Sam knew people like him, at least. The Firm’s Founder had also been a talk-and-just-listen to me person. So was the current CEO. So at least she knew how to keep her mouth shut.

“So, we’re going to explore your mind and match that to the sensor data coming from your mind and body. This neural framework I’ve invented will create a virtual world of your subconsciousness. It will fix your dreams in place, so you can explore them, and we can watch.”

“What am I looking for?” Sam said.

Karasavedas chortled. “Nothing. Just be yourself and do whatever you think for these twelve hours. Please try to use it intelligently. Our previous volunteers have been either druggies, or desperate and spent their time doing similar, simple pursuits. Hopefully you will not let such a…condition.” He smiled at the word and made her body scream for her clothes back, “affect your own exploration.”

He stared at her with that same smile. Sam had been told different smiles meant different things. This was so uncomfortable to look at, she knew he wasn’t only happy.

He clapped his hands, staggering her with suddenness. “Now, time to get you suited up.”

All the males left the room. Sam was stripped of her gown and given a white jumpsuit with a hood for her hair. She insisted she could get it on herself, but it turned out to have dozens of sensor nodes on it. She needed the help of three nurses to get it up and get all the nodes set up in the right places. Then the Doctor returned and made a quick inspection. As creepy as his face was, his touch was gentle and avoided all her personal area. He hooked a cable in at the base of her skull.

“That’s your neural connector. Now, let’s get you in.” He pointed at the table, and the stepstool two technicians had put beside it.

Sam climbed them and tapped the gel with her toe. It parted slowly like Jello.

“Wait, you need your respirator. Close your eyes and we’ll guide you in,” Talia said, returning comfortably to her side.

Sam saw the big, transparent bowl of an oxygen mask coming and shut her eyes. She kept them shut after cold air rushed through her face, blessing her with a stale taste in her breath. A couple nurses took her shoulders and urged her over to the side. Her feet and shins sank slowly through. Then they pushed her down as she sat.

“What will it be like once I’m knocked out?” Sam said, grabbing the lip of the tub to stop herself.

Talia smiled. “You’ll wake up inside immediately. You probably won’t even notice falling asleep. Now, down.”

The gel sucked in over her head and she heard her breathing in her ears. Those hands guided her down to lying prone on the ground. Only then did she open her eyes. Talia’s face was muddled by the light filtering through the gel. She held up three fingers. “Three,” she said.

“Two, one, zero.”

She screamed in Sam’s ears, going louder until she howled all around Sam.

Wind buffeted her, and she stumbled. Her toe caught the edge of something. She was on a ledge, surrounded by skyscrapers and staring straight down into the grid of Manhattan’s city streets. She took a step back, her stomach dropping away to leave her forever.

Wind screeched in her ears, and she had to grab her ears and dig her heels in. The entire building shook beneath her, like it was trying to throw her off.

The memory flooded back. Gift in her apartment for Talia. Apology note in her desk. Frustration and helplessness. Walking through the office and seeing a wall of terrifying chatter from people who simply knew how to be with each other.

Failed conversations, failed dates, blatant silence whenever she entered a room. The same frustrations went back to high school and college where she’d spent all those years alone. And she’d felt like she was wearing lead clothes as she climbed to the roof because she felt so helpless to do anything.

Then she’d stood at the edge and felt the entire world staring at her, waiting for her to open her mouth and reveal how empty she was because of the condition she’d been born with. She’d apologized in her head to everyone staring at the idiot and annoyed by her presence.

The wind caught her dress from behind and it billowed out like a sail, dragging her forwards. She threw herself backwards, but her heels scraped forwards with the force of the screaming wind and for a moment she thought she’d go over anyways.

Then the wind died and she fell backwards. She screamed, until she landed on the roof of the Firm’s headquarters skyscrapers. Sam scrabbled to her knees and closed her eyes, closed her ears and any other senses she could so she could only hear her heart pounding in her chest and her own wheezing breaths whistling in her ears.

She was in her mind, right here at the exact moment she’d do anything to fix herself. The same feeling of utter helplessness collided with the confusion of how she’d ended up here and she descended into tears.

“Talia!” she screamed. Her voice bounced off the city’s metal canyons and blew back at her. The whole of Manhattan laughed at her.

Sam remained kneeling there until the emotions had slowed down enough for her to wrest control. She wiped her eyes and sniffled. Then, out of curiosity checked her outfit. Yes, same beige formal dress and brown tights she’d worn that day. She even had her sweater buttoned up. She was in that moment.

She looked around the rooftop. Two managers had come up for a quick data feed break and seen her sobbing. They’d been very sweet, and she’d apologized for wasting their time before leaving. In this world based on her own subconsciousness, no one came. She looked to neighboring roofs for living souls. The restaurant across the street was empty. The rooftop bar on the building on her left didn’t have a single cocktail waitress or leery-eyed executive sipping drinks.

Sam wiped her nose with a sleeve. She’d been kneeling like she was praying long enough. She stood and stumbled on shivering legs before catching herself. She smoothed out her clothes, then headed for the stairway.

When she’d gone down the first flight of stairs without hearing a soul, she started creeping. She pressed her ear to the door and heard nothing. So, she kept going. By the time she reached the Firm’s office space ten levels down she was crushed by this tomb of silence.

She took a breath and threw the front door open. The lobby was empty, all the secretaries with their jackets draped across their chairs like they’d just gone on coffee break.

The main floor was a skeleton devoid of people. Sam walked past rows of personal work pods that were still glowing. Jackets were draped over chairs and a couple Happi drones orbited the room, searching for the facial recognitions of bad emotions to zoom in and cheer workers up. She saw the coffee machines still steaming with half-empty pots in the break room and went for a mug. Her first sip soothed her nerves enough to go back out. At least she could dream up decent coffee.

Sam stopped at one of the risk assessment calculators, Priya’s work pod to read her display. It showed a normal sales loadout, but the actual statistics were all blurred. It took her several seconds of squinting at the confusion to figure it out. She was in her own subconsciousness. She’d clearly not read Priya’s stuff, focusing too much on the sleek curve of her dark neck down to the ruffle collar of her pink blouse. Sam looked at a couple more pods and they were just as blurry.

She caught one pod in the last row with actual numbers on it and read eagerly. Matt had noticed a downward trend in the value of a certain market for savings bonds. He’d flagged it and sent her a month of data to prove it.

Shit. She had to get back to that. Matt had worried over her it was a sign of a larger trend. She needed to get on that. Maybe try to talk to Matt too…then her mind started racing as she bounced off the wall of what to talk to him about.

Her nails dug into her palms. She imagined Matt just trying to keep up with her as she rambled blankly. Then she’d apologize for wasting his time and leave. A thought jumped into her mind, from her attempted final walk up to the roof. This is too confusing. This is too confusing, and I can’t understand, I give up.

A computer chimed as it powered on, and she spun with a start. “Well Ms. Samantha, how do you like your first office?”

Sam followed the sound to her own corner office. She didn’t have a pod; she had all two-hundred square feet of her own space with a proper aluminum desk with two bookcases and room to spread out with her own computer mat and four holographics. Her heart slowed into its normal rhythm as she settled into her space. Until she saw where the noise was coming from. All four of her holographics were playing an interview with a much younger version of herself. “It’s good. It’s full of numbers and I can see everyone working so I like it,” younger Sam said with raw giddy glee on her face.

“So, you like it here.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a good job and I’m going to make lots of money.” She burst into giggles. Current Sam frowned.

“Don’t say that too loud,” the interviewer chided her with a smile. Younger Sam kept giggling like a child and launched into talking about the contract she signed.

After that, the CFO had sat her down and gently reminded her of a list of things she wasn’t allowed to talk about. She was reminded of that list every meeting with the CFO for her first year.

Sam yanked out the plug. The computer kept playing in her space. She folded the displays into their recesses in the desk, but the audio seemed to grow louder. It poisoned her little personal corner of the Firm as it kept going.

“This is my mind. Shut off. I want you off,” she said. It grew even louder. She stormed out of her office, angry at the computer, which meant she was angry at herself.

Then the wind picked up, drowning out the computer. Winter rattled the windows. The entire building shook under her heels, bringing her to a stop in between the desks. That had never happened before. She looked all around her, looking for cracks, signs the building was about to keel over and take her with it.

Sam took a tentative step forward. When the floor didn’t collapse, more steps followed.

She let routine take her to the very end of the floor, where the CEO sat. She couldn’t see inside his office, for it was guarded by his secretary’s desk and those mirrored glass windows. Sam went past the desk and tried the door.

“Access denied. Report to security on the sixth floor.” She was sure digital security chose the most irritating nasal voice possible for audio warnings.

She went to the secretary’s desk. Under her surface, beside her sweet-smelling spray on perfume bottle, was the switch.

“Access denied. You are in violation. Security has been notified.”

Of course, she thought.

“Access granted.” Sam froze and watched the door swing open.

Something stared at her over the CEO’s many computers displays and towering liquor rack. Sam withdrew three steps. When she looked back, those eyes were gone like a reflection in a window of people passing.

“Hey!” She shoved a hand into her left sweater pocket, shifting her sweater around until the collar was jabbing under her chin. It snapped back as she yanked up her stun coil. “I saw you in there.”

No answer. She saw something move in the shadows, where the open door blocked the light. Sam had four charges. Four people she cut put on the ground twitching for five minutes. She’d done it once, while taking the five-train home from the office at midnight. Nicely dressed man had dropped his knife and had a seizure, bashing his head on the standing pole over and over.

Sam circled around the wall and peered past the door. The space behind it was empty except for a rack of virtual golf clubs and an umbrella leaning on each other.

Two brown eyes filled the gap. She stumbled backwards.

Then they were gone. The wind picked up again.

Work wasn’t safe. They only left home. She had to go home.

Sam tried the elevator just to be sure. It opened, but she didn’t like cramming herself in a suspended box anymore, so she walked eighty-six stories of stairs, in three-inch heels.

The ground floor lobby was empty, save for two security drones buzzing in place overhead. The windows outside showed the arcology upper level just as empty. Electric cars sat in spots. A firetruck was in the middle of the street. She remembered looking down from up high and seeing the red dot of a firetruck.

Sam opened the door. The silence was so deep she felt like she was not in a city anymore, but at the bottom of the entire world. She looked up across the windows of the art deco early 20s skyscraper before her, to the glass and steel around. Lights were on behind plenty. Sam stepped into the street and walked to the middle. A drone buzzed over her head to flash a yellow warning that she was jaywalking.

Jaywalking was a term invented by the car companies a century ago to force pedestrians off the street and seize it for the cars, she recalled Talia saying. Thought it over, and she looked up her own building. She found the Firm’s twelve floors near the top.

The lights all flickered off. Except for one single window.

“I want to go home,” Sam said and turned down fifth avenue.

¹

1. Cover image by https://substack.com/@swoonjet