ARE YOU THE COMMANDER!? I blinked hard as the memory of my dream flushed through me instantly.

      “Doogie!” I exhaled. Suddenly, Ivana’s desk phone rang. She moved around the desk and touched the speaker button.

      “Dr. Livancic?”

      “Hello, Ivana. This is Ellen. I think you and Dr. Flores should come down here to the puzzle room.”

      “Is there an emergency?”

      “No, no emergency. Just come.”

      We all walked at a brisk pace down to Pentecostes’ therapy area. We met her at the reception counter which seemed abandoned by the nurses and attendants that were previously there. Even the security guards were gone.

      “Where is everybody?” Ivana asked as we arrived. Ellen was smiling and pointed down the hall where we had taken Doogie. As we made our way down that hallway, passing all the various therapy activity rooms, we noticed a throng of people outside the puzzle room.

      “Is Doogie still in there?”

      “Yes, he is!” Ellen giggled. “Okay, you guys! Back to your stations!” she ordered with a big cheerfully. The people looking into the room turned around smiling and shaking their heads. We looked into the windows. Doogie was sitting in one of the chairs inspecting his work.

      “Oh my!” Ivana gasped. We entered the large room and put our backs to the window glass to take in the scene. We could not step too far into the room as the floor was almost completely carpeted with completed puzzles. Doogie had completed every puzzle, all that were available, and laid them out on the floor like a massive tapestry. On another table, all the Rubik’s cubes had been completed, each side a solid color. In the center of the room, the thousands of random pieces of LEGOs were assembled into a perfect replica of all three great pyramids of Giza; the tallest pyramid–Khufu-standing almost four feet tall! And finally laying on other tables were two poster-zed art pages upon which were sketches. One page had a forest scene at night, depicting the stars viewed from the ground; the other page was of a large disc with rays of light emanating from within; some kind of activated inner circuitry.

      My eyes and focus fell upon the second drawing immediately. I knew the disc well. It came straight out of my dream. But I had no clue about the forest scene.

      “How long have we been gone?” breathed Zelda.

      “About an hour and a half,” answered Ivana numbly.

      “I need another drink!” I heard myself say.

      “Who is this little man?” Ellen mused. “He’s amazing!” I couldn’t fault Ellen for her amusement. She thought it was awesomely wonderful; but to the rest of us, somehow we couldn’t help thinking that this all might be dangerous.

      “I’m going to leave you guys to analyze this now,” Ellen said. “I’ve got to take care of some patient appointments.” We thanked her and she left us.

      “Zelda, after lunch I want you to conduct the test on Doogie that we discussed,” said Ivana.

      “Test?” I asked.

      “Based on what you’ve told me about Doogie and how he performed in the park, plus what we’ve seen here, I want to see how connected our two patients are. Obviously, the disc seems to be a common denominator.” I nodded in agreement. “We already seem to know what Patricia has within herself; it’s time to find out what Doogie knows, besides his puzzle-solving and LEGO-building abilities.”

      “We also need to know if there are others,” Zelda added. This silenced both Ivana and myself. So engrossed with our patients, we neglected to ask ourselves if there could be a larger pattern. “Perhaps you should contact some of your colleagues to ask if their patients have had similar awakenings.” Ivana nodded her head.

      “I will, but before that I’d like to have a common frame of case reference. Test Doogie and then I’ll call them.”

      “What are you going to test him on?” I asked Zelda. She turned to me.

      “You said Doogie knows stars and planets? I worked at NASA for six years, upgrading the Hubble telescope. I was required to chart stars, pulsars and black holes, as well as monitor the Sun’s solar flare activity. We’ll see exactly what Doogie knows.”

      Chapter 8

      Rude Awakenings

      LeMarcus Henderson stood outside the perimeter fence of Pittsburg’s Mirant Power Plant with his new laptop. From Willow Pass Road, he surveyed the massive facility that sits on the southern shore of Suisan Bay. Some four miles east along the same shore of the San Joaquin River in Antioch, sits the Gateway Generating Station. The massive natural gas and electric plant would be the next place Henderson planned on visiting. The Mirant plant’s gigantic cooling towers, its farm of oil tanks and gigantic iron-scaffolding architecture of the main plant was Pittsburg’s most recognizable landmark. Seen by millions of commuters on Highway 4 each day and night, it stood tall and proud in the flat delta valley like a steam-vomiting castle fortress. Over 2,000 megawatts of power were pumping in that fortress, and Henderson had to find a way to get to them.

      He looked at the main entrance where employees drove into the site. It was about 100 yards from the main road. There was a gated guardhouse where guards checked IDs before raising the entrance gate. He turned away from the plant and walked on towards the town and in the direction of Antioch. He was in the right place; it was just a matter of time before he found a way in. He looked up into the sky and smiled. He had time.

      * * *

      It was a very quiet lunch. Doogie had lunch with other patients at the institution under the supervision of Ellen and the lunch attendants. I, Zelda and Ivana left the facility and went to a local Chinese restaurant. Yet, despite the delicious items we were eating, we barely spoke, each of us contemplating what we had witnessed hours earlier. For me, I was thinking of Doogie and how he would perform on Zelda’s upcoming test.

      “What if he fails your test?” I asked finally. Zelda shook her head dismissively.

      “It doesn’t matter. It just eliminates one possible, but highly improbable idea that I’ve considered.” She shrugged and pulled a large shrimp out of her chow fan with her chop sticks and slid it into her mouth.

      “What highly improbable idea?” asked Ivana.

      “That he’s been fed these facts from an exterior source.”

      “What exterior source?” I asked, but she shook her head again and waved it off.

      “Look, it doesn’t matter. Doogie is still an extraordinary subject of research for someone who is deeply mentally disabled. Plus, he’s still connected to Patricia because of three unexplained phenomena: the disc drawings, this “commander” guy, and your dreams. These three things tie all of you together. It’s still a breakthrough case study for Ivana’s aggregate intelligence and memory reflex theory.”

      “You’re forgetting a fourth connection,” reminded Ivana. “The story of the two Russian generals. The second general had drawn the disc perfectly as well.” Zelda nodded firmly in recognition as she picked