The Reincarnation

John found that the cage was deceptively simple. It was meant to hold someone incapable of touching the electrified bars. Without any feeling of pain whatsoever, John found that by ignoring the sparks that flew around his hands, he could easily unlatch the door.

Now to figure out where I am, he thought.

David was happy to find his unconscious mind preoccupied not with the graveyard hillside, but with a continuation of his dream in the car – what he knew now was passing before John’s eyes. He was in the cage he had been placed in. He saw his hands in front of him, sparks flying from where they touched the bars. They undid the latch, and the door swung open.

David struggled to put a conscious thought into his dream. He meditated, imagining Beethoven’s Ninth playing in his head. He was successful. He managed to get himself to look at a window in a door. It was dark on the other side, and the window showed him his reflection. It appeared as a living human skull, but he knew it was John.

John found himself looking at his reflection in a window in a door. His mind had blacked out for a moment, and he was unsure why he was staring at himself.

He walked down the hallway to a stairwell. Making sure no noise came from it, he assured himself no one was there. Opening the door, he realized he was on the lowest floor. Stairs ascended from the concrete, but none descended. He started up the stairs.

David found himself climbing the stairs. No, he thought, the computer room is in the basement. By concentrating, he found he could make his feet stop. He turned around and headed down the stairs. He opened the door, and was again in the hallway.

He ran down it, into another hall, and up to a large metal door. There was a sign on the door. It read, “MAIN COMPUTER.”

John was staring at a door. He was no longer on the stairs. He wondered what was happening to him. The cloudiness in his vision was completely gone – he could see clearly now. He saw his hand go out to a keypad by the door. John had no control over it as it punched in a code. It was different from the times at the bank machines because before it had felt like something habitual, on the surface of his brain, controlled his hand. Now it felt as if something much deeper inside him was commanding it. He was no longer living, but being lived.

The door hissed, then opened inward. John went inside and closed the door. The room was filled with a humming noise, which he realized were the metal boxes lined up on the floor. They looked like computers.

He walked over to an alcove which had boxes on either side of it that looked like they controlled the power in the room. He opened the small door on one of the boxes. Inside, there were toggle switches, at least a dozen of them. John’s hand reached out and started turning them off one by one. As he did this, the humming in the room grew quieter.

He was on the sixth one when he heard a noise. He turned his head to see a tiny red light silently flashing over the door. He figured it must be an alarm of some sort. He turned his head back to the toggle switches, and reached out for the seventh one. Turning it off, he heard another noise by the door.

He turned to face the door and saw Victor Grey.