Wonderland - Jags

and configuration standing like silent chessmen.
Dr. Shatter waits in the chair behind the desk wearing a brown uniform
and tie. He seems perfectly alert at 2:00 AM and he watches you and
Mooney enter.
MOONEY: “Doctor.”
Dr. SHATTER: “Kevin—and your guest.” His voice is affable. He nods.
This is a serious conversation.
MOONEY: “I’d like you to explain about the suction. About the vortex.”
Dr. SHATTER: “Certainly. Please sit down. I am one of a very, very
few members of my profession who has both examined and been
willing to face the realities of so-called CPD. I say so-called because
while it is a real phenomena, it is not a mental illness in the sense the
term Psychoaffective or even ‘disorder’ implies. I’m convinced this is
something else. Something … new.”
He locks his hands and fingers together and leans back, assessing you.
“You are presently infected? Experiencing, waking nightmares—
disturbing, frightening dream-like states during which you, without
any memory of it, behave in disoriented manner? That is what we call
Infection. What we call an Episode. But Kevin brought you here to
discuss some of the more unusual elements of the phenomena. As I have
studied it, I can do that.”
He looks at Kevin. His look says And I trust you have brought me
someone whom I am right to share this with?
Kevin nods, even though nothing’s been said. ‘Go on.’
DR. SHATTER: “Put two infecteds in a room: One with multiple triggers
and a deeper depth and another with relatively few triggers and a
shallow depth and induce trigger in the first. What happens?
“What happens is that when the first person begins his Episode he will
pull down the other. He will bring the other or others down to his depth.
I’ve seen it, even if the two are separated by a partition—even if they are
not aware of each other.”
MOONEY: (quietly) “Like the suction that a ship makes when it’s
sinking.”
DR. SHATTER: “A somewhat visceral analogy. I was able to study the
phenomena for a time, believing it to be a mechanism that would relate
somehow to mass hysteria—a specialty of mine. But that was before I too
was infected. I have retired from those lines of study now to concentrate
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Introduction