The God Wave by Patrick Hemstreet

someone as mellow as Chuck Brenton.
    â€œAll right, Doc. Why don’t you go get a cup of tea or something? Euge and I will upload the material for the meeting.”
    Chuck nodded and stepped back from the BPM, looking like a kid who was leaving his pet at an animal shelter.
    â€œDoc,” said Dice. “Tea.”
    â€œNo tea.” Chuck turned to Sara. “I’d like to take you over to gamma lab for an MRI.”
    â€œIf it will make you feel better, sure.”
    â€œMaking me feel better is not the point. I have to be sure we’re not damaging your brain, Sara. I have to be sure.”
    She shrugged. “Okay. I’ll tell you what. I’ll go for the MRI right now if you’ll let Tim and me sit in on the meeting tonight.”
    â€œThat’s highly irregular,” said Eugene.
    One corner of Sara’s mouth tilted upward. “So are my brain waves.”
    Chuck and Eugene exchanged glances, and then Chuck acquiesced. He led Sara from the room.
    As she slipped through the door, she turned and gave Tim a double thumbs-up.
    THERE WAS NOTHING DANGEROUS-LOOKING IN Sara’s MRI, though there was an overall marked increase in activity in the frontal lobe on both sides. Even as she lay in the resonance tube, working out a series of problems in her head, her brain showedactivity across a larger area than it had during her last MRI two weeks earlier.
    What does that mean? Is it an artifact of the way her brain worked? Or is it something we caused by subjecting her to the rigors of the program?
    Or is it both?
    Chuck went into the meeting not knowing how to interpret the results of either the experiment or Sara’s MRI. He’d studied neurology for nearly a decade and could say without hubris that he was one of the ten most knowledgeable people on the planet about the subject. And yet this was something so new, it made him feel like a rank undergrad reading his first MRI plot.
    â€œSo what you’re saying,” Matt said when Chuck and his team had finished their purely factual description of the situation, “is that Sara has started producing a new brain pattern—one we’ve never seen before. I’m impressed.”
    â€œI’m not sure that’s what we’re saying,” argued Chuck. “What we may be saying is that the machinery is creating a sort of feedback loop and exciting Sara’s brain to unusual activity.”
    â€œThere’s nothing wrong with the machinery,” said Dice quietly.
    â€œWe don’t know—”
    â€œYes, we do know,” Dice said. “Whatever is happening, it’s not happening because of the hardware or the software. The hardware is fine, and the software is only reading what Sara’s brain is outputting—a wave in the seven-megahertz range. The wave is a legitimate neurological event that’s originating in Sara’s brain. Hell, Chuck, you’re a neurologist. Why can’t you accept this?”
    Sara, who was seated next to Chuck at the table, leaned in and tried to capture his gaze. “What he said. It’s me, Doc. I’m doing it. I can even feel it when I get into the state that’s producing the pattern.”
    â€œYou can feel it?” Chuck asked, locking eyes with her. “Youdidn’t mention that before. In what sense can you feel it? A headache—”
    â€œNothing like that. It’s . . . look, have you ever ridden a horse?”
    He laughed. “No.” It was about as emphatic as he’d ever said anything.
    â€œFine. But you know about riding horses, right? That some people do it?”
    Chuck nodded, slightly amused.
    â€œWell, there’s a moment when a horse is at a full gallop and hits its stride, and suddenly you can’t feel the individual hoofbeats anymore or the movement of the animal under you. It’s as if you’re riding on the air—smooth, flowing. That’s what this felt like. It was that kind of