Chapter 39: Chapter 39: Julia: The blue screen of not death?

I honestly thought I was handling myself really well considering that late last week I'd been diagnosed with an extremely aggressive form of brain cancer. At first, it was just headaches now and again. I didn't start to worry until I started getting dizzy, and, even then, I was just too busy with my first college experiences to go to the doctor with it. After my first seizure was when I really got scared, and my parents insisted that I be examined.

The calmness was all on the outside, though. Internally, emotionally I was a wreck. Case in point, when I was told that they were going to have to shave off a small spot of my hair in order to make an incision for the biopsy, I found myself in the bathroom at my parents' house with a pair of scissors. I ended up cutting my hair short before shaving my head completely.

My mom found me staring at the mirror bawling my eyes out. Then she'd gone right out and bought the best, most expensive wig that she could find. I couldn't get over how much it looked like my natural hair. Only people who really were around me a lot could tell a difference.

When I'd accepted Nat's invitation to dinner, I'd, quite honestly, dreaded going. Dealing with the pity directed at me by everyone in my life right now sucked. Now, though, I had no idea what was going on, and I had to say that, at the very least, the two of them were providing me a good distraction.

Nat and I doing the pinky swear brought me right back to elementary school, some really good memories. She and I didn't talk often enough these days, and it was sad that, soon, we wouldn't ever be able to again. I hoped my passing wouldn't hit her too hard and that she would be able to focus on the happy times.

Right after I had that thought, the boyfriend, Hugh, asked me my last name. I didn't know why he needed it but saw no reason not to tell him. It wasn't like it was a secret.

Then, the weirdest thing happened. A panel popped up in front of my eyes. Its blue background filled most of my vision, appearing to be a couple of feet high by a few feet wide but literally right in front of my face. White letters several inches high each spelled out a message. The whole thing was translucent.

My first thought was that I was hallucinating. I did, after all, have brain cancer.

Nat said, "You see it right? You look like Hugh does when he's staring at screens."

Uh...

I looked at the panel again, this time actually paying attention to the words.

My first thought was that I had no idea what the acronym stood for, but the pleasure portion was somehow ominous. The second was that this had to be a trick, pinky swear or no.

"How are you doing this?" I asked Hugh.

"How do you think I'm doing it?"

I had no idea. VR headsets were common, but I wasn't wearing one. I wasn't wearing any kind of lenses at all. Did he have access to some kind of new holographic projection technology or something? Yeah. That made sense. Nat had told me he was studying programming. This was probably some kind of new project.

I studied the panel, trying to determine where the light was coming from. Then I glanced around the room. The panel stayed in front of my eyes no matter how I moved my head.

Okay, that meant that the image source had to be connected to my head. I wasn't sure how they could have done that, but it was the only thing that made sense. I started moving my hands slowly between my face and torso and the box, trying to disrupt the projection. No luck.

"I don't understand," I said. "Where are the projectors?"

He shrugged. "There are no projectors."

Ugh. This guy!

"Yeah," I said. "There is no spoon."

He grinned. "Good reference, but, if there are projectors, they either have to be stationary in this room or somehow attached to you, right? Can you think of any way possible that we could have attached them to you?"

"Not that I know of."

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"So would a good test be for you to leave the room and see if the box goes with you?" he asked. "Heck, go outside. Walk around the block. Go home and take a shower. The box will absolutely stay with you until you either dismiss it or accept it."

I made to stand so I could do just that. Well, not the shower part. It would be awkward having my parents pick me up, take me home for a shower, and then bring me back.

"Wait," he said. "Do not accept it. Once you do, I know of no way to get rid of it. If you dismiss it, I can just send it again. Understand?"

"How do I get rid of it, anyway?"

"Oh, that's another good test," he said. "You obviously believe that I somehow have access to a holographic projector so small that it can't be seen, that this impossible technology emits a beam of light that is so invisible that it's impossible to spot, and that this amazing product can somehow project an image to any random spot in the room even to the extent that it appears to hover in the air instead of, you know, needing a screen, but do you believe that the projector can literally read your mind?"

He was laying it on a bit thick, but he did have a valid point, especially the part about the image not being projected onto a screen. How was he doing that? I think people somewhere were working on projects like that, but it required projectors to literally surround the point where the image was projected. That would make tying it to the motion of my head pretty much impossible.

"Explain the mind reading," I said.

"While you're on your walk, start humming or singing a song or whatever to completely distract yourself from paying attention to the box. Then, suddenly, as quick as you can, concentrate on answering no to the invite. Don't say the word, mumble the word, gesture, or give any physical indication at all that you intend to refuse the invite. Do it quick and at random. The box will read your mind and immediately disappear."

I had to admit that did sound impossible. "Alright. Those seem like fair tests. Give me a few minutes."

As Hugh had told me it would, that panels stayed right in front of my face as I walked through the restaurant and when I got outside. I even went to the sidewalk and passed by a couple of other businesses. I couldn't get rid of the thing. When I returned to the restaurant parking lot, I saw a dumpster in the back loaded with empty cardboard boxes. I grabbed one, the cleanest I could find, and placed it over my head. Even that didn't get rid of the box.

The only explanation was that the projectors were on or in my skin, so I rubbed my face and head, the only portions of my body that had been in the box. Nothing had any impact. I even, crouching behind the dumpster out of sight and making sure that no one was looking, took off my wig and performed the box test again.

Nothing worked.

I fixed my wig, and, as I walked back toward the restaurant entrance, suddenly mid-step concentrated on sending the panel a no answer. It promptly just disappeared.

What. The. Fuck.

Obviously, the blue screen in front of my eyes was not simple. If it was new tech, it was a lot more advanced than I had any knowledge of, and, though it wasn't like I kept abreast of all the newest things, I was generally aware of advances in most areas. I really thought that I'd have some clue if things like I was experiencing today were possible.

Still, I found myself reluctant to admit that the screen was impossible.

Part of the reason was that people tended to equate having blonde hair with being naïve or stupid, two descriptions I wanted nothing to do with. I think my real objection, though, was more emotionally deep seated. Nat had told me that she believed they could help me, and, though they both went out of their way to not say what form that help would take, the inference that they believed they could prolong my life or even cure me altogether wasn't hard to make.

The death sentence that hovered over my head sucked beyond the telling of it. For days, I’d denied that it was possible. I insisted that the doctors were wrong. There was a lot of yelling and tears involved, both by me and by my parents. Eventually, though, the three of us had had no choice but to accept it.

Well, I had, anyway. My parents still obviously felt that treatment would do something useful. I couldn’t bring myself to tell them not to think that, but I couldn’t share their optimism, either.

Believing in the blue screen, on a very real level, meant believing that there was hope I might live. I could not afford to let hope like that take hold of me, though. If I did and then had it yanked away from me... I wasn’t strong enough for that. Having no hope whatsoever was infinitely better than false hope.

I refused, under any circumstances, to allow for even the possibility that this weird blue screen could help me in any way.

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