Doctor Who_ Psi-Ence Fiction - Chris Boucher [43]
"Josh is going to send a series of images just like we said. You remember?'
'Yes.' She tried to speak more clearly so that he would hear her. The blood throbbing in her ears sounded louder. Was it suddenly louder or had she simply not noticed before? Yes,' she said again.
'I want you to say what you see as soon as you see it.'
'Yes.' Could he hear that? Was the blood muffling the words?
'No matter what it is.' The voice was brisk.
Chloe tried to match the briskness. 'Yes.' But the word coincided with a surge of blood and somehow the two sounds were the same.
'I'm going to turn off the earpiece now,' the voice said.
There will be no sounds coming from the outside and no light. Do you understand?'
Yes,' the blood soughed. 'Yes. I hear you. I understand.' 'Remember you can open the tank and stop the experiment any time you want to.'
Yes the blood, yes the blood, Chloe could hear the rhythm in her ears, yes the blood, yes the blood, yes the blood. And there was the beginnings of light shining through the goggles. She closed her eyes but it made no difference: the light shone through her eyelids. It was blood-red and pulsing.
Barry was tempted to stop the whole thing right there. The girl seemed to be pretty much out of it already and they hadn't even started on what was nothing more than a preliminary test run anyway.
She was OK when she got into the tank. Despite a lot of nervous joking around, the nakedness thing hadn't bothered her. In fact he got the distinct impression that she rather enjoyed showing off her body. Actually it was a very attractive body - something he had allowed himself to acknowledge briefly before suppressing the reaction completely: trouble like that was something he badly didn't need.
He had always considered Chloe Pennick as borderline flaky. She had demonstrated some natural aptitude, her PQ was above average and she was nice enough. She was slightly shallow and vain but most girls of her age were in his experience. There was something a bit naive about the way she approached things though. His initial assessment was that she wanted to believe in the existence of her own psi powers without quite being able to do it. In experimental terms that could be more of a problem than the unwavering belief of the Cox girl or the outright scepticism of Meg Lansing.
At least you could treat those as baseline variables and compensate for them. With Pennick the responses were all over the place.
Not only that, but wanting to believe made for vulnerability and a readiness to open up to all sorts of irrational impulses and malign influences. At best it made the subject eager to misinterpret what they were seeing and feeling.
At worst it made them stupid and dangerously gullible. And stupid and dangerously gullible were charges routinely levelled at him and his whole research programme, so he was not keen to have one of his test subjects demonstrating such traits for anyone to see.
Watching her on the monitors Barry could not decide whether Chloe Pennick was playing silly buggers in an attempt to convince herself that she was having a genuine experience or whether she was having a genuine experience. According to the literature, sensory deprivation could produce some interestingly bizarre psychological effects but they took time to manifest.
He was fairly sure the girl was responding too quickly. She wasn't even fully cut off yet. Darkness and warm water were not enough in themselves to produce what she was showing and saying. It was weird enough, for example, that she seemed to have forgotten about the earpiece, but when he reminded her of it she hadn't even tried to feel for it. Reaching for it would have been the instinctive reaction. He would have to examine the recording more closely later, but as far as he could tell she hadn't moved a muscle. Of course, the output from the night-sight lenses of the tank cameras was not ideal: green and fuzzy was a bit of a disappointment.
He switched off the mic, isolating