The ELI Event B007R5LTNS

or two of clear data, he knew the Net was on the right path.
    Now elated, he pushed his thoughts toward the historical thread as he was sure the dissenters must do, considering and discarding event after event as history literally flashed before his eyes. He thought he saw the face of Pan-Li, Borok’s mathematician, as he laboriously scanned the same chronicles of time that sped through his own mind even now.
    He concentrated again on the scientists themselves, hoping to catch specific thoughts and feelings from their biofeedback chips, perhaps even learn their location, but found no direct links to them. They had almost certainly disabled or removed the chips long ago. Angered and dismayed, it required great effort to refocus on the historical thread.
    There was more, much more than he could have dreamed possible. Directly into his mind poured the joy of first love, the ineffable sorrow of a child’s death, the terror of a soldier in battle, the helplessness of the infirm, the purity of the saint, the hatred of the wicked, the confusion of the insane—and all at once. Grief, happiness, remorse, sympathy, pride, anguish, fear, guilt, and a thousand nameless emotions flooded into him and out again as he riffled through time’s pages, guided, he was sure, by the same logical process that drove the scientists whose plans he sought.
    Closer, ever closer he came until at last there was a single point of light, a brilliant epiphany that led him, no, pulled him down to it and made itself known to him. A place, a date, an event. So close, so close, so very close…
    Then it started.
    The point of white light turned yellow, then red, and became so bright it burned itself into his senses. In an instant, the pain turned into blinding agony. The event he had fought to focus on was now focusing on him with ferocious intensity.
    Lokus’s body bucked and writhed on the gurney. The meters on Rasel’s machine were climbing rapidly and steadily into the red zone.
    In his mind Lokus saw, no, heard, no, experienced the simultaneous suffering of millions of souls, crying for release from the torment that was consuming them. Their myriad screams, prayers, cries for help turned into pitiful wails, pathetic and plaintive pleas for death, anything, anything for sweet release from the searing pain.
    His body flailed, taxing the restraints, threatening to overturn the gurney. Lokus felt something welling up inside him, as though some physical, horrible thing were tunneling its way through his being, desperately clawing its way to the surface. In one terrible instant, he realized it was the very suffering of those dying millions. It made its hideous way through his gut, into his chest, up his throat, and into his head.
    He opened his mouth as if to let it out, and screamed the awful scream of deepest despair, of abject horror, of unimaginable agony—the agony of the masses, which was now his own.
    Dimly, he heard the scream, but did not realize that it came from him. He felt the passing of millions of lives, felt his own life force join with them in their exodus. Through the din he vaguely recognized Rasel’s voice, and marveled at its unnatural volume and pitch.
    “You bastard!” Rasel shouted over Lokus’s wails. “You’re dying! I told you not to do this! I warned you! I warned you!”
    Lokus’s body convulsed and pitched about like a rag doll. Incredibly, his screams intensified.
    “I should let you die, you son of a bitch!” Rasel screamed back, but even as the words left his lips, he desperately grasped the helmet’s cables in both hands and jerked the entire assembly free of Lokus’s head, the tiny probes flinging droplets of blood across the lab like a swarm of angry red bees.
    In that final instant, in the last split second before he was disconnected from the Net, something somewhere deep inside Lokus’s mind shifted, changed focus, recentered itself a bit in time and in space, and told Lokus his search was over.
    Rasel grasped Lokus by the shoulders, shook him, called his name. Slowly, Lokus regained his senses; his breathing slowed, his motor control returned, his mind once more knew who and where he was.
    At last he lifted his head, opened his eyes, and spoke, emotionlessly but with absolute and total conviction, never more sure of anything in his life.
    “I know where they’re going.”

Seven
    Robin’s nightmare allowed him one grace, that of not remembering it. He awoke, disoriented as usual, not knowing