“Quite all right. Buddy’s good with it. But it gets better. As I stated… I came into being. Not that it’s a real concern of this instant, but do you all realize — right this moment — that you’re not actually… physical? Each and every one of you… is dreaming.”
The Man With No Name smiled, looking to each person in turn.
“Realize… that right this moment… each of you are dreaming. In fact… some of you… are downright — in your terms — dead.”
“No way—” Travis said.
“Good Gawd,” Kennedy said.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Lizzie said.
“The dream world is every bit as real as the awake one and in more ways than your race can begin to imagine — we’re just not used to being as conscious of it. There are events that we feel are real… but, in reality, have never occurred in a physical world, yet the physical world swears they did.
“It’s like I said… the dream framework is from where the physical world springs, so it’s not that far of a reach to understand that channels overlap — like analog TV or radio reception. Sometimes one channel will bleed over into another. Most might find that annoying or confusing, but I’m saying pay attention to those annoying or obtrusive thoughts… try to figure out what they are… where they’re coming from, and what they’re trying to say, crazed ax-murderer cravings notwithstanding, of course!”
“Okay, so, does that mean—” Lizzie began.
“My dear lady — all of you — I am nothing more… than a figment of your imagination.”
The Man With No Name disappeared.
Where are you? all three mentally asked.
I am not and am right here! the Man With No Name said, not yet materializing.
I am everywhere.
The Man With No Name rematerialized, standing behind them. “This is nothing each of you has not already done in your earlier field trip, as it were — it’s just that where you are, in one reality, I have never been, nor will ever be, physical — yet I am based upon the concept and even give it new meaning, new paradigms, with my existence.
“With all the psychic frustration building around the misguided circumstances our Mr. President and Victor Black created, the rest of you — including you, Lizzie — created a workaround to help correct things. That workaround was me. Each of you created me… in the dream world.”
“That’s why he could never find you!” Travis blurted. “Friggin sneaky!”
“But — you were so real,” Kennedy said.
“Oh, I am, Mr. President — just not in the sense you’re requiring of me. Events and individuals that exist in the human experience can either be physical or nonphysical. A human personality… or an earthquake. An earthquake is a symptom of underlying phenomenon. It can choose to take effect either as a psychic upheaval or a physical one — or both. It depends upon many factors. For me, it was unconsciously decided among Travis and the others that it would better serve events if I remained disembodied, and I must say I agreed wholeheartedly with the decision,” the Man With No Name said, smiling. “After all, to be physical, I would have to have been born into the world, and I much prefer the latitude I currently enjoy to that of being physically constrained!
“And, in order to pull this off, I had to be the most real dream image ever. So I popped in and out of all of your lives as I did and could to better facilitate things. Confuse things—”
“Well, you certainly did that,” Lizzie said.
“However, in creating me,” the Man With No Name continued, “you also spun up parental images — not a huge leap, given your physical existence and concepts — which also played along in further spoofing our Mr. Black. It added yet another level of confusion to Black and our operations.”
“But the killing of that family,” Lizzie said.
“Yes. Unfortunately, however, they did exist in your physical terms and were murdered. I did my best to interrupt things, but Black kept an extremely close guard on that scenario. He was extremely proud of that operation. They originally began in the nonphysical realms, but accepted the ‘expansion’ of their roles into physical existence for their own reasons, and the rest, as they say, is history. Again, it further complicated issues for our Mr. Black. However — since all time is now, and there are a myriad of probabilities, the family does currently exist elsewhere — in other probabilities they were not murdered.”
“What about Joe?” Lizzie asked.
“As I’m sure you will now experience, Joe was a part of this operation. Like the family about which I just spoke, he also willingly accepted his role.”
Lizzie searched out the construction-accident thread.
“What the—”
“It’s true,” Joe said, standing beside her.
Lizzie threw her arms around him.
“It was all for you,” he said, smiling. “It was needed on many levels, and I thought, ‘what the hell’ exactly. There’ll be other lives…”
“Damn you!”
Joe smirked guiltily.
“What about Mel?” Travis asked.
“Yeah, what about him? How is he? And who is he?” Lizzie asked.
“Mel… was a multilayered, nonphysical plant of mine — of me. Mel was my attempt, through my own direct creation, to additionally throw Black off the trail. As I came into being, I threw out different versions of me, so that at least one of us could take root and grow, if others were discovered and ‘neutralized,’ to borrow the industry-standard term. One who was to become who I was supposed to be, were I outed. Mel was a partially materialized me, purposely incomplete and confused to further perpetuate the scenario and obfuscate Black should he — Mel — be found, which he was. In one very probable reality, ‘Mel’ was found and hired by The Center — Black — as part of the remote viewer team… part of another covert project known as ‘Delphi,’ but all in a different probable dream world that Black never suspected. That version of me was later hunted down and ‘neutralized,’ as it were. There are and were others like him elsewhere. Black, like everyone else, also has his nonphysical versions, and it was one of those who ‘killed’ Mel. This younger version of Mel, however, in being tortured and killed like he was, gave further credence to everything else we’d put into place, including Black’s murder of that family a generation earlier. Incidentally, Lizzie, it was through Mel’s eye’s you were looking when you initially had the dream about that family’s murder, and Black ‘shot’ you in the face. It was through that dream that keyed Black into your and Mel’s existences. How you became ‘important’ to him.”
“Huh,” she said, still looking to Joe.
“Good Gawd, this is all so damned complicated,” Kennedy said.
“Perhaps, but it’s not quite finished. As I said, Black still has to live out the rest of his life, his energy — which, it turns out, won’t be all that long, by your standards. As he correctly surmised, he did piss of the intel community, and the community does hunt him down. We all die as we live.
“And, there is one… more… thing.”
“Yes?” Lizzie said, smiling as she remained within her husband’s embrace. She and the others heard a suddenly childish chorus of playful laughter.
“My children!” Lizzie exclaimed.
“You may not realize this,” the Man With No Name continued, “but in your physical reality, you all died when that Learjet crashed. All of you, that is… except one. But since you have all learned from your experiences, you can now focus on other realities. Things have, indeed, changed from all this… new realities have been created. New worlds. It’s time, whenever you’re ready, for you to continue on with what each of you has started — to see it to the fruition you all deserve after your last escapade.
“Are we ready?”
Kennedy, Travis, Lizzie, and Joe looked to each other.
“And you’ll all be much closer to each other in all of your existences than you could ever have imagined — because of this.”
“What about
you?” Travis asked the Man With No Name.
Thanks for asking, but I’ll continue to exist like everything else — as long as there is enough sustainable energy — a need — for me to exist, I will. Believe me, I have plenty I want and need to do! There’s so much out there, and I’m looking forward to experiencing as much of it as possible — along with whatever happens when I choose… to alter my state. All time is now, remember that; remember what you’ve all just experienced. In a very real sense I’ll always exist — just as each of you will!”
But what about the—
(children?) Lizzie mentally finished.
Bless the children, the Man With No Name psychically whispered…
And they all disappeared.
3
Ring around the rosie,
A pocketful of posies,
Ashes! Ashes!
We all…
Grow up.
Chapter Thirty-Two
1
Black paced the Spartan, low-lit hotel room.
It was only a matter of time.
After thirty years of government service, he’d finally screwed up — big time.
Or had he?
The problem was he didn’t know whether this was his doing, or that other’s. It seemed no matter what he did, he just couldn’t shake that guy. That Man With No Name, that burr in his side for nearly as many years.
Nightmare Man.
Black hammered a wall with a clenched fist.
Damn him!
Now, what the hell was he supposed to do? He couldn’t go back to The Center nor his apartment. Yet, as pissed and apprehensive as he was, he was also exploding with euphoria!
Exhilaration!
What power he’d just wielded!
To do what he’d just done… what no other person in the world could do, or had ever done before… killed all those important, gifted people. People who would, could, and have changed the world.
He’d just taken them all out.
Him.
And by doing this, he’d just changed the world himself… and his name would forever go down in the classified annals of history and he’d be remembered and feared for that.
Who was the powerful one, now, J-Fucking-K? Mess with me, will you?
You may have the official power, but I pull all the puppet strings — I wield all real power — in the dark, in the background — where the real work is performed. In all the dirty little places you’re too good for, too afraid to tread. I live there. I’m the one who actually dirties his hands and actually gets things done and doesn’t just make the ivory tower decisions to get things done. I am the wielder of the
(bayonet)
sword.
He paced the room. Were he a drinking man, he’d already have broken open a bottle, but he wasn’t. He had other ways to celebrate. Other needs —
There was a light knock at the door.
Black checked the peephole, unlocked, then opened the door.
The attractive, unsmiling woman in her forties, who looked as if she’d been around a block or two, slipped inside without eye contact. Black closed and locked the door behind her.
The woman removed her coat, revealing a tight thigh-high skirt, loose chemise top, and platform, come-fuck-me shoes. Black eyed her like a hungry bear emerging from hibernation. He went to her, grabbed her by her narrow waist, and pulled her into him. Viscously kissing her, drew blood from her lips. The woman didn’t resist.
Black reached for her shoulders and began pulling at her chemise blouse.
“Just a minute,” the woman said, in a hushed tone, “let me…”
Black backed away, eying her like a predator.
The woman intently held Black’s gaze and removed her top, revealing a black brassiere.
Black — maintaining eye contact — began undoing his tie and shirt.
Her face blank, the woman crossed her arms, tilted her head, and shifted her weight. She kicked off one platform shoe, then the other. Black finished removing his shirt and lunged for her. The woman forcefully thrust out an arm, a hand to the center of his bare chest. Black stopped, grinning. The woman backed him up against the wall, holding Black’s increasingly evil gaze. The woman then backed up a half step and brought both her hands up behind her to undo her brassiere.
Leaning back against the wall, Black closed his eyes and grunted deep, animal growls, while he loosened his belt…
Swift as lightening and out from behind her back, the woman pulled two four-inch razor-sharp blades, which she quickly and professionally spun around in her hands… and drove deep into Black’s chest.
Black expelled a surprised puff of air.
In the blink of an eye, she removed the blades, and in another swift and passionate stroke, slit his throat.
Not once, but twice.
Wide-eyed and gagging up blood, Black staggered against the wall.
Before he could further react, the woman fell upon him in a flurry of rage and blades, her face now contorted into a mask of unadulterated, seething hatred.
No more rape!
No more humiliation!
No more on-call fuck receptacle!
In a hazed frenzy and bathed in his blood, the woman hacked and slashed his face then leaned into him and shouldered him up against the wall, as she repeatedly (and repeatedly) used his groin as a pin cushion.
Bayonet and twist…
Bayonet and twist…
Twice got her knives stuck in his pelvis bone, which required an extra hip check to remove…
When she was done, she pulled away like a cork from a champagne bottle, and what was left of Black dumped to the floor. The woman continued several more impassioned, angry slices through the air, spraying blood across the furniture and far walls before, she, too, collapsed to the floor. On her knees, she supported herself upright, knives still clenched in her fists, gasping for air and still emitting periodic barks of animalistic grunts and growls.
The woman hung her head and wept…
Then abruptly stopped.
Went into a thousand-yard stare.
Slowly came to her feet.
Defiant, bloodied knives hanging to her sides in white-knuckled and clenched fists, she came to her full height and looked to the blood-splattered wall, the mangled body.
Inhaled several gulps of air.
“It’s over,” she said, inhaling deeply. “Over…”
“You all right?” a voice asked through the microphone implant in her ear.
“Fine. I’m… fine.”
Her body now trembling, she went to the door, unlocked it, and turned away. Still clutching her bloodied blades, she retreated back away from the door. Again stood before Black, his body slumped at a weird angle at the intersection of the wall and floor.
Stared at him.
Her mouth continued to work for air. Her face remained contorted with disgust and rage.
She spit on him.
Men-in-black stormed the room and immediately set to work.
One came up to the woman and carefully pried the knives from her clenched and bloodied fists. Looked deeply into her eyes. The woman turned slowly to him and gradually came to focus on his eyes.
“Are you okay?” the man again asked.
The woman turned back to her handiwork, watching as what was left of Black was unceremoniously crammed into a black body bag. She again spit on him, as he was removed past her. Handing off the knives to another waiting behind him, the man then took the blanket handed him by another and began to wrap the woman within it — when she raised a hand in protest. Holding her head high, she left with another, who’d been motioned over toward her. She was escorted out the door and into an awaiting black van. The van immediately departed before its door was closed.
Black’s apartment was sanitized.
It was as if he’d never existed.
2
Lizzie awoke dazed. Every inch of her body throbbed from some kind of full-body pummeling. Fluttering open her eyelids (wh
ich even seemed to hurt), she found herself hanging at a weird, canted angle. Something brushed across her face, while something else acrid burned up into her nostrils.
Plane.
Escape.
Crash!
A crash — they’d been going down — Travis and the President and the pilots and the President’s bodyguard and her — they’d had an engine failure of some kind, the pilots had said, lost altitude. Lizzie took a quick psychic peek and found several bullets — from Black — had severed fuel lines and punctured electronics — as well as the port engine. The pilots tried, but what could they do? They did the only thing they could and steered clear of populated areas… tried to keep as low an angle of attack with the ground as possible…
The next series of events had happened fast… they’d lost altitude and had come in hot, a term she’d heard the President use, over the tree tops. Actually heard and felt trees scrape across the bottom of the aircraft — the weirdest sound she’d ever heard, given their situation — past windows, then there was…
Confusion. Explosions. Unconsciousness.
Some very weird dreams.
Now, she hung from an angle that hurt, in a seat that clearly wasn’t as secured to the floor as it had been when she’d been strapped into it, with — she saw — deployed oxygen masks dangling before her. And that smell that burned her nostrils was the caustic odor of electrical fires and jet fuel.
Human flesh.
Blinking to clear her vision, she saw the plane listed to its port side, its nose slightly elevated. Smoke was still filling the cabin, but for some reason, hadn’t engulfed it. She heard popping and sizzling sounds, but also something else:
Birds.
Looking up, she saw the gaping hole.
To her left, a large section of Learjet had been torn free. She could see birds and trees and sky—
An awakening morning sky.
Lizzie tried to move, but her side hurt — whether from having been banged around or from just having been hanging at this rather uncomfortable angle for who knew how long.
Fumbling with her belt release, fighting bruised and clumsied and cramped hands, and her bodyweight pressed against the buckle, she finally undid it and tumbled out to the sloped floor. She yelped out in pain as she slid down into the slanted bulkhead. She felt like she was in some crazy, burned-out, Fun House. On her way down toward the angled bulkhead, Lizzie passed something “interesting” that briefly registered with her, but she couldn’t think clear or fast enough to identify it. After a grunt or two of pain, she took stock in her situation. Yes, she was indeed bruised and battered in a few places, even
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