A Very Bad Idea

Stan Barrow could think of thousands of places that he’d rather be than this little back office behind the Marshal’s office on Jupiter Station. Not that it was a bad office, it had all your basic amenities, especially for offworld. The chair was comfortable, the terminal was new and the coffee was pretty good.

But the data he was sifting through was something else. It was nightmarish in ways that he couldn’t even get his head around. Things that nobody could possibly have imagined.

Even if they were dealing with some kind of parallel reality (something his research considered extremely unlikely), even then, to imagine this sort of casual menace, this kind of uncaring cruelty, as if it were mere afterthought. It was beyond his comprehension.

The reports on the terminal in front of him, transcripts sent up from the computers on the surface, he couldn’t look straight at them for more than an instant. When he tried, he could feel his sanity slipping through the cracks of his mind.

Information wasn’t supposed to do that. It was supposed to be precise, orderly, easy to classify and correlate. He had spent his whole life being the person who could make sense out of the seemingly random patterns of data, who could see the shapes that hid within. That’s why Temple had come to him. He was the best, he could cut through anything and find that shape.

But this had no shape. It was fluid and amorphous, unlike anything in his experience. How could he send the team in to deal with this if he had no idea what the hell they were dealing with? How could he prepare them for this level of madness?

Unless…

It only took him two hours in the bazaar to find everything he needed. He returned to the office, frightened, but confident. He unpacked his kit and started his preparation. Two audio crystals were placed into receptacles and turned to full volume. One featured the sounds of passionate love making, the other, brutal screams of torture. He lowered the lights in most of the room, leaving only a spot on the terminal.

Then, the drugs. Digitason, to kill his sense of touch. Inheradol to shut off his sense of smell. Then, taking his seat at the terminal, the master stroke. Two old fashioned tabs of lysergic acid diethylamide. Now, let the work begin.