The Edger Collection

by David Beem

  “I can afford—”

  “I know you can,” I say. “But this way, we keep saving. Okay?”

  “No. You’re twenty-four years old. You don’t owe me anything. These cradle-to-grave places are expensive, especially La Jolla. You need to be living your own life. Enjoying your life.”

  “You saying I’m not enjoying it with you?” I stuff in another bite of eggs, and add, “Best bed and breakfast this side of the San Andreas fault.”

  She waves her hand dismissively.

  “I can’t bake. You can bake the crap out of anything. And Golumpki. You make one mother of a Golumpki.”

  “Edger,” she says, her chin rising. “You know us old broads are finely tuned bullshit detectors. Young ladies may be charmed and fooled, but we’ve already been charmed and fooled.”

  “Is that right? Who’s charmed and fooled you?”

  “Me!” calls Shep from the living room.

  “Aren’t you going to be late for work?” asks Gran.

  “Who else? Besides Shep. Because everyone knows you’re not in your right mind now.”

  “I heard that,” calls Shep.

  Gran smiles. “You’re going to be late for work.”

  “Listen,” I say, giving my plate a quick rinse before setting it in the dishwasher. “We’re just about there. Another six months, we’ll have the money. Pine’s Place. Six months of my life. Not a big deal, ’kay?”

  She smiles and pulls me in for a hug. I clench my eyes and hug back. Her scent works like a drug. Tresor, baby powder, and the faintest trace of old books. I breathe her in, and the drug washes away the last remnants of Caleb’s knockout formula, and maybe even a little of last night’s insanity.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The elevator doors open. Mary is waiting, her features composed. She’s wearing a charcoal-gray business suit, white blouse, and flats. Seeing her in the flesh, I find myself immediately backpedaling on this idea she’s been spying on me. It’s too outlandish. She’s too intelligent, too gorgeous, too moneyed. It’s counterintuitive someone like me could be the focal point of someone like her. It’d be like a Hollywood starlet stalking a paparazzi.

  “Edger.”

  “Hey.”

  “You okay?”

  “Hm? Oh, yeah. Yeah.”

  “Okay, well. Mr. Dame is waiting.”

  I nod, and we set off down the same hall as yesterday. The conference room on our right is empty this morning, but I barely notice. My brain gears are turning like a Rubik’s Cube with three sides down and one to go. The nano-neuro medicine part of Mikey’s project is too weird to be a coincidence. Dad was a legend in the field before he vanished. And that means Mikey’s Collective Unconscious enterprise owes either directly or indirectly to Dad’s research, whether he knows it or not.

  “Hey.” Mary grabs my hand and reels me to a halt. For a second, I’m disoriented. Then I realize we’ve gone right past frumpy Henrietta’s office and arrived at the double doors leading to Mikey’s. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah. Yeah.”

  “Because you seem rattled,” she says.

  “No, no. I’m okay.”

  She peers into my eyes and caresses my arm, raising goose bumps. “Have you decided what you’re going to do?”

  Her icy blue eyes are taking me apart down to the molecular level. My face must be giving up every secret I’ve ever kept. Since there’s no point in hiding, I frown and shrug. The tension in her eyes relaxes. She rubs my arm again, but this time, her touch is different. Or maybe her touch is the same and it’s me that’s different. I can’t fool myself anymore. This fantasy is over.

  “You’re making the right choice,” she says. “I know it’s hard. But this could kill you. This isn’t your problem. And it’s not your job.”

  I can’t bring myself to look her in the eye, so I pretend like there’s a fascinating point of interest where the carpet meets the door. Her tone, meant to be reassuring, has opened a chasm between us. Her world is here. Mine is at the Über Dork.

  Mary makes a fist and gently nudges my shoulder. “Come on,” she says, pulling the door open and guiding me in with a hand on my back. “Let’s get this done and get you back to the mall.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Mikey’s standing next to the samurai armor, his fingers fidgeting with one of the shoulder pads. He’s wearing a black T-shirt and blue jeans, but he makes even this look like he’s wearing a small fortune. A few yards away are two security guards about as discreet as a pair of front-end loaders. I raise my hand, hello, but when their expressions don’t change, the knot in my stomach hardens. I glance at Mary for support, but she’s backing through the doors, closing them as she goes, and mouthing the words, Good luck.

  “You’re late,” says Mikey, not looking up from the samurai armor.

  “Did we set a time?” I reply.

  His hand drops to his side as he turns to glare at me.

  “Edge. This is serious. Do you have any idea how many hospitals there are on the Eastern Seaboard? Airports? Grocery stores, banks? Do you realize people can’t gas up their cars? ATMs are down. The stock market, Edger. Jesus.”

  “Wait-wait-wait,” I say, my scalp crawling like it does when I can’t wake up from a nightmare. “This isn’t my fault.” I jab a thumb into my chest, then point a finger at him. “This is your fault, Mikey.”

  “So that’s your play?” he asks. “Come in here and point fingers?”

  “Why don’t you do it? If it’s so important, risk your own damn life.”

  “Edge. Don’t be a total ass-hat. Think. I can’t do this. If I die, and this technology gets out, there’ll be no one to stop it."

  I laugh. “Convenient.”

  “No. You haven’t thought this through. This is going to change the world. It’s going to change our fundamental understanding of what it means to be human. It’s going to change our perception of reality, religion—secrets. Who can I trust with the secrets, Edge? Huh? The government? Spies? Mary? No, the fact is, the one person I know who’s truly selfless is standing in front of me right now. And I thought that person was better than this.” He turns and marches for the bar. He doesn’t go around this time, but instead grabs the seatback on a stool, flexes his fingers, and hunches his shoulders, waiting for me to crumble.

  Ha! So he thinks I’m going to cave? I’m not the one shirking responsibility here. He is. This isn’t my responsibility. It’s his. His, and the first responders. Firefighters. Ambulance drivers. Police. The…

  I expel a puff of air. I clap my hands on top of my head, which tips back to face the ceiling.

  Shit.

  My hands come down from my head and slap my sides. So, this is it. I’m just going to go home and catch the looting and rioting and crap on Twitter. Scroll through my feed like everybody else. By tomorrow, someone will have organized a thing downtown to pack emergency kits. I’ll tell myself I’m being virtuous by donating a blanket. And the next day, I’ll bring some canned food. But I’ll know I’m not as virtuous as everyone else there, because I could’ve done more. And then I’ll spend the rest of my life giving away the ongoing guilt one can of baked beans at a time.

  There’s only the one human race. Isn’t that what I said to Mary?

  I run my fingers through my hair and release a breath I didn’t know I was holding. Next thing I know, I’m twirling a barstool around and sidling up beside Mikey. He looks at me sideways. The corner of his mouth pulls back in a wry nonverbal expression of thanks.

  I roll my eyes. “You can thank me with a raise.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Twenty minutes later, I’m strapped to a chair in Mikey’s personal medical suite. It’s a dizzying array of lights and wood paneling and doctors and nurses and—jeez, I’m not processing any of it. The world around me may as well not be there. My focus has constricted to a single thought replaying on loop no matter how hard I try to smash the Bluetooth speaker in my head.

  I can’t do this
… I can’t do this… I can’t do this…

  “You can do this,” says Mikey. A nurse swabs my arm. The alcohol chills my skin to the bone. Blinding lights shine down—and this is how it must feel when the dentist tells you he’s fresh out of Novocain, but, don’t worry, he’s still going to pull all your teeth out. No charge.

  I clench my eyes and then swallow. Mikey grips my shoulder. I grip the armrests. Squeeze. Leather creaks. I focus on my breathing. The air is mortuary stale.

  “Think of it like a flu shot,” says Mikey.

  “Why am I feeling a strong kinship to the anti-vaxxer crowd all of a sudden?”

  “Focus on the positive. You’re going to help millions of people. And if you learn fast, maybe you won’t die.”

  My eyes pop open as I attempt to telepathically eye-shank Mikey.

  “You have seriously got to work on your bedside manner. Do you know that?”

  He gives me a lopsided smile and pats my shoulder. A doctor wheels his chair over and adjusts the overhead light.

  “Mr. Bonkovich, are you ready?”

  “Nope. Nope.”

  “Edge?” says Mikey. “This is important.”

  Again, I clench my eyes. Important, he says. Like I’m not important. Like my life isn’t important. Like breaking Gran’s heart isn’t important. But then… Star Trek. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Millions of people stranded without fuel.

  “Mr. Bonkovich.”

  The doctor’s voice hooks me back. He’s standing there, needle at the ready, in a surgical mask and cap, and that weird reflector thingy on his head that’s making Mikey’s face look like a fun-house mirror.

  “Okay,” I say, taking a deep breath and holding it. I tell myself we’re all dying. Just like Fabio said. Less gradual than natural causes. More gradual than shot in the head.

  The needle enters my arm.

  My back flexes; every muscle in my body locks.

  And then, darkness.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I’m floating in a sea of white light.

  This is weird.

  My feet touch down. For some reason, they’re in expensive-looking, tan leather dress shoes. The world is all white. I raise one arm, then the other; I’m in a white suit. Here’s a white park bench. I sit, feeling strangely content, and take in the only feature on the horizon—a tree. Its trunk is writhing. Wooden creatures. Carvings of every living thing imaginable. That one—a hippopotamus. It yawns, and the inside of its mouth momentarily becomes a knot in the tree. A scorpion scurries over its back and down its leg. Above them, a carving of an owl twists its head around. The scorpion freezes, sensing the predator’s beady eye.

  Incredible.

  My gaze pans up. Discarded slivers of autumn are slowly orbiting the naked timber like magic. The leaves twist and turn but won’t fall as a rising trumpet motif rings out from the white sky. My pulse quickens. I know this music! It’s Also sprach Zarathustra. I settle into the bench and listen appreciatively, the dream logic hitting me as weird and normal at the same time. It’s like a cross between 2001 and that God movie with Morgan Freeman.

  “Bruce Almighty,” a voice says next to me. I startle, then shift in my seat.

  It’s—it’s Bruce Lee!

  He’s in a white suit, tan shirt, white tie. Same shoes I’m wearing. He’s smiling at me. I think: Speaking of Bruce Almighty, and he smiles like he can hear what I’m thinking.

  “I can hear what you’re thinking,” says Bruce Lee, and his voice is not nearly as soothing as Morgan Freeman’s.

  Bruce Lee frowns.

  “Sorry,” I say, realizing again he’s listening to my thoughts. “But, I mean, nobody’s voice is as soothing as Morgan Freeman’s.”

  Bruce Lee shrugs.

  “What’s with all the white?” I ask.

  He takes in the sky, the landscape, and the bench as if seeing them for the first time, then shrugs again.

  “I’m dreaming, aren’t I?”

  “Yes, Edge. You’re dreaming.”

  “But you seem so real.”

  “I am real.”

  “But you just told me I’m dreaming.”

  “You are dreaming. Try to keep up.”

  The music swells to its climax, and, for a minute, we say nothing. Goose bumps race across my skin. I’ve always loved this piece. When it’s done, I shift on the park bench and face Bruce Lee.

  “What does it mean? The music.”

  His forehead creases, and he takes a seat next to me. “No idea.”

  “Because it sure seems impressive.”

  “Yes. I think that’s why Kubrick likes it.”

  “Kubrick? As in, Stanley Kubrick?”

  “He’s the one who sent the music,” says Bruce Lee. “Edge, you are in the Collective Unconscious. Observe.”

  Bruce Lee holds his empty palm up to his mouth and blows. Stardust lifts into the air and envelops us in a cyclone of sparkling lights. They shoot upward with a whip crack, and our surroundings change. We’re standing atop a grassy hill in the thick of night. The stardust is now a faraway galaxy, but instead of being fixed in the velvet sky, it moves like time-lapse photography, revealing pictures in the negative spaces. They’re clear as a comic book. There’s the Tree of Life—it’s the one I saw earlier! And there’s the Wise Old Man, the Trickster, the Earth Mother, the Dark Tower. There are thousands, and in my dream, I know them all by name.

  “You can see the archetypes?” asks Bruce Lee. I nod. “Good. This, essentially, is your instinct.”

  “My instinct.”

  “That’s right. What you think of as instinct is actually your ancestors, alive, inside of you.” His head tilts back, his eyes never leaving mine. I can’t be sure, but I think he’s waiting for me to process the word “ancestor” as not limited to my family tree. He means the entirety of the human race. Literally everyone who’s ever lived.

  “That’s right,” he says. “And the lights. Is it true you can really see them?”

  “They’re like stars,” I reply. “But they move around a lot more.”

  Bruce Lee smiles. “Edge, these are the lights we make in life. They never go out. That one…ah, there…that’s mine.”

  It’s one of the brighter ones. I peer into it, and Bruce Lee’s life fills me. There are no secrets. I see his birth. His first steps, him spitting up, the childhood tantrums—

  “You see,” he says hastily. “We’re not so different.”

  “We’re completely different,” I reply, stunned to feel the enormity of Bruce Lee’s spirit fill me. The enormity of what he did with his life. Mine feels so little in comparison.

  Bruce Lee nods. “And my life is nothing next to so many others. We all have that feeling, Edge, but it is in reaching for our potential that we honor those who’ve come before us. And you…you are the first person to see this and know it for what it is. You have been given a very special gift.”

  “But I’m going to die.”

  Bruce Lee’s eyebrows go up. “Everyone dies.” His gaze is earnest, and maybe it’s because he’s already dead, or maybe it’s because the sky is teeming with disembodied soul-stars, but the idea of dying is remote, like I’m just renting my body anyway; a profound calmness washes over me.

  The lights above are chattering. They’ve been chattering the whole time, I realize. I close my eyes, listen—and the serenity is obliterated.

  I gasp.

  “It’s too much!”

  “That’s what’s going to kill you. Sorry. But perhaps before then, you will contribute something good for humanity.”

  “Ha-ha,” I reply, striking a sarcastic tone.

  My gaze returns to the night sky. Now that I’m not focusing on the chatter, I can feel their intentions… All the lives shining down on us, the lives from yesterday, today, wanting to help the living. Wanting to do something good for the world.

  “This is the source of peace I was feeling earlier?” I ask.

  “Yes,” says Bruce Lee ur
gently. “Hold on to that.”

  I frown. “But then, what’s stopping you? What’s stopping any of you from helping?”

  “I can’t explain. But you being here is different. Because you’re alive and in the Collective Unconscious. That’s never happened before. Not like this. We’re hoping you’ll talk to the living for us. You can do it from here. You don’t have to be awake.”

  “Wait a minute,” I say. “We? ‘We’re hoping’ I’ll talk to the living? You mean the human race? Like, going back to Socrates and Plato and before? The total human race, like, ever and always?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  I expel a whistle. “No pressure.”

  Bruce Lee responds with a tight smile.

  “Oh, crap. You’re serious. Let me get this straight. So you guys, Plato and crew, are in this…psychic dimension…watching us. As in, empires rise and fall and nothing built can last and all that. And you just have to watch all that happen.”

  “Yes.”

  “No-no-no,” I say, convinced I’m not being clear. “I mean, you just have to be dead all the time and watch us screw everything up? All the time?”

  “Yes.”

  “No-no-no… I mean, dead forever…somebody invents reality TV…and you watch it through literal reality TV.”

  “Yes, Edge. Correct.”

  I nod slowly. “Okay. Huh.”

  I ponder this for a minute longer. All the war, poverty, famine, greed—all of it—and nothing they can do except watch.

  “Mr. Lee, sir, that straight up sucks.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  For a long moment, we just stare at each other as I process the implications of what he’s telling me. It doesn’t seem possible—until I remember I’m dreaming, and so whether or not it’s possible doesn’t matter. I just go with it.

  “So,” I begin, “you know, like, about the power grid problem?”