Page 78 - Tales Apocalyptic and Dystopian

Cannon’s Last Case

at a consensus that he had been an undiagnosed borderline
schizophrenic and should never have gone to Infinitarium. The
lawsuit, however, needed proof that the defendants knowingly
exposed the plaintiff to potentially destabilizing stimuli. Given the
nature of the enterprise—its scientific underpinnings, the proprietary
technology, the extraordinary legal context—the only course was to
establish fraud and criminal negligence. That would force a civil
proceeding to follow a felony trial, but the attorney saw no other way.
They needed an undercover agent, and that was me.”
“How exciting!” Mary’s face lit up. “Wasn’t that dangerous?”
“Certainly—but that was part of the job description. I had to build
up a false identity—still feasible in those days—and adopt the
personality of an empty-headed member of the leisure class, an
immature heir to more money than he could handle. As you might
imagine, I had no trouble signing up for a trip to one of the alleged
infinity of co-existing possibilities eternally branching off one
another. Sure enough, I came to with a bizarre set of memories—
some of which still haunt me—and apparently no time had passed. I
went back to the lawyer and made a deposition that resulted in a
police raid and the end of Infinitarium.”
“But how did you do it?”
“Once I heard about the elaborate preparation for the trip I
realized it had to be part of the scam. The first step of the process
stripped you of your own timepiece. From then on you were
dependent on their clocks—which were present in every room. The
clock in the dressing room agreed with your watch and the outside
world. What came next? A lengthy and intentionally dry, tedious and
repetitive screening in a darkened room. The lights came back up and
nobody was surprised at how long the video had lasted: it was
announced as taking two hours and it certainly felt like it! The clock
in the laboratory agreed with the clock in the viewing room. I knew I
would be unconscious and unable to judge the flow of time, so I
prepared a miniature stopwatch that fit under the toes of my right
foot. It was not detected by my handlers at Infinitarium, and I was
able to start it when I went into the final chamber and stop it when I
awoke.”
“After I left the building I checked the elapsed time: almost forty-
five minutes. That confirmed my suspicions: the clock in the video

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