The Theta Patient Read Online Free

Agent Cooper, nice to see you
again.”
    Cooper snorted, knowing no one
looked forward to seeing him appear in their doorway while he was
wearing the black suit of the Tyranny.
    “ How’d it go?” Cooper
said.
    “ Fine. It went fine. I did
everything the way your instructions asked.”
    Cooper waved away the remark, seemingly more
interested in Bradburn than in watching the taped
interviews.
    “ Anything you want to say?” the
agent asked.
    “ Uh,” Bradburn said, not sure what
Cooper was looking for. “They all seemed normal enough. For mental
patients, that is.” And then he gave a soft laugh but quickly
stopped when he saw the agent wasn’t entertained in the
least.
    “ Anything else you want to
mention?”
    Cooper asked the question from
behind sunglasses he still hadn’t taken off and that covered any
sense of emotion the man might otherwise have had.
    “ Uh, well, none of them seemed
dangerous.”
    “ Dangerous?”
    “ Yes,” Bradburn said, thinking he
had stumbled upon something the agent might approve of. “Not a
danger to themselves, nor to others.”
    “ To others?”
    “ Well, yes,” Bradburn said, no
longer feeling the urge to yawn, feeling as if he couldn’t possibly
be more alert and awake. “I mean, I wouldn’t feel uneasy about one
of my nurses being in the same room with them, unattended.” He
didn’t want to say anything else, but when Agent Cooper only stared
at him, he added, “It’s hard to imagine one of them may be a
Thinker.”
    The Tyranny’s man leaned forward.
With the thumb and index finger of one hand, he took off his
sunglasses.
    “ Is it hard to imagine?” Cooper
asked.
    “ Yes?” Bradburn said, but it came
out as more of a question that an answer.
    “ Thinkers would destroy this
country if they could. They would do away with the Tyranny. Change
our entire way of life.”
    “ Yes.”
    “ They hide in the shadows because
they’re radicals.”
    “ Yes,” Bradburn said again, even
though everyone had heard the horror stories of what the Tyranny
did with people it didn’t like, knew it was more sensible to hide
than be tortured.
    “ But then again,” Cooper said,
“I’m speaking to someone who also likes to hide things. Am I
right?”
    At that exact moment, another
AeroCam hovered past the window of Dr. Bradburn’s
office.
    “ I don’t know what you
mean.”
    Bradburn tried to smile—a way of
showing the agent that this must all be some sort of mistake. His
face betrayed him, though, and instead of looking happy, he could
hear the fear in his voice. The fear that must also be displayed in
his eyes and on his mouth.
    “ You don’t like to hide things? I
guess you just didn’t feel like telling me you did some extra
curricular research into your new patients, right?” The agent shook
his head in disappointment. “I gave you a chance. I asked if you
had anything you wanted to tell me.”
    “ I don’t... I—”
    Cooper shook his head again and
Bradburn understood that he was supposed to stop
talking.
    “ Did you read anything interesting
last night?”
    “ Last night?”
    “ Don’t make me ask you again,”
Agent Cooper said.
    “ I... read about a flash of
light... in Burnley Park.”
    “ Is that all?”
    “ And a man falling out of the
light.”
    “ And?”
    “ And he climbed down from a tree
and disappeared.”
    For a few seconds, Agent Cooper
did nothing but stare at the doctor. Just when Bradburn thought the
man from the Tyranny was going to reach across the desk, grab him
by the neck, and strangle him to death, he was surprised by a
completely different reaction. Cooper burst out laughing. He didn’t
just smile or give a polite grin. He laughed as if he were
listening to a comedian’s best material.
    “ Do you hear yourself?” the agent
said. “You sound absolutely crazy. A flash of light? A man falling
out of the sky? That’s hilarious!” Then, just as quickly, Cooper
stopped laughing, rested his chin on a closed fist, and in