Excerpt from Luminarium

Luminarium
By Alex Shakar
Soho Press

It’s the summer of 2006 in New York. Fred Brounian’s twin brother and former co-CEO, George, lies comatose and dying of cancer in a hospital. The virtual-reality company they founded together has been stolen out from under them by a military-contracting conglomerate, which has since laid Fred off. His fiancée has left him, he’s lost his swanky apartment, and he’s moved in with his parents. Broke and alone, he’s entered a scientific study in which “peak” experiences are administered by means of an electromagnetic helmet, with the aim of giving him a more spiritual outlook on life. Last week, thanks to the helmet, he felt himself becoming repeatedly, blissfully, and at times disastrously one with his surroundings—including his experimenter, Mira.

The red bulb.

The control room window, black shade drawn.

The black perforations in the white ceiling tiles, a night sky in reverse.

The glossy galaxy, masking-taped to the ceiling tiles, creased from former folds. Must have come in a magazine.

She’d leaned over him, his experimenter, Mira Egghart, same as last week, applying the gel, the electrodes, first to his head, then unbuttoning his shirt.

“How are you?” she’d asked, in a clipped sort of way, a button of her own pear blouse nearly within reach of his teeth.

“OK,” he’d said, not knowing whether the question was clinical or friendly or just the usual formality. “How are you?”

She hadn’t answered for a moment, maybe considering how such a question from a test subject such as he should be dealt with. It was a hot day for a long-sleeved blouse. He could smell the not unpleasant scent of her sweat, jasmined with deodorant.

“OK,” she’d finally hazarded, swirling gel over his heart.

She’d reached up to where the helmet hung from its jointed arm and pressed it onto his head. He’d idly watched the sway of her skirt as she left, then looked over to find the man behind the control room window giving him a stern look over his reading glasses.

Mind drifting now, drowsy from weeks of nights of half sleep. Still trying to will the walls of himself to open up like last week, to expand and contain the bulb, tiles, shelves, poster, to be all things, space itself.

On the galaxy poster taped to the ceiling directly above, he sees a pattern to the stars; not just one swirl but thousands, an intricate weave, swirls within swirls in all directions. So clear to him now he can barely believe no one’s spotted it before. He’ll publish his findings to the world, to personal acclaim, universal joy, the end of all wars. His dying twin was right, after all. Things aren’t what they seem. This can’t possibly be anything but proof of divine order.

Then Fred’s awake again, or so it seems. Only, the poster has grown, the stars so close he’s almost flush up against the paper.

He’s afraid: fear comes in ripples, emanating from his center. He can feel nothing but these ripples, he realizes, neither the chair beneath him nor the helmet on his head, nor his head itself.

He can turn, and despite his fear, he does so, slowly in space, to see the room below:

The steel cart.

The reclined black chair.

The reclined body in the chair. Checkered shoes splayed. Eyes shut.

For a second he thinks it’s George, somehow whisked here from that hospital bed, as he’s never seen himself from the outside. But there he is. That crazy, wired-up gold helmet on his head.

A change in the light draws his attention to the control room window. Mira raises the shade, painting herself and the oldish, sleek-haired man into existence with a single, upward stroke. They’re standing side by side, bathed in pale-blue monitor light, peering through the glass. For a confused interval, Fred’s still above them, but then, as though a stopper has been plucked from a drain, he’s plunged back down, stuffed into too many sensations at once. A dry tongue, a drier mouth. A pulsating scalp, too hot, too tight. Eyeballs sliding beneath a warmish gauze of some kind . . .

. . . eyelids.

He can’t seem to open them any more than the millimeter they already are, though this is enough for him to make out Mira and the man again, gazing down at him, their expressions slack, their eyes misted and lost in the sight of him, like a mother and father awed by the mystery of their sleeping infant. As they watch him, the man puts his arm around Mira, cups her narrow shoulder in his hand.

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