by B K Brain
Eddie downed the pills and chugged the water. The whining began again, louder. More desperate. With an occasional bark, in case the crying wasn’t annoying enough.
“Aw,” Rachel said with a sad frown. “I feel so bad for him.”
“He’s probably chewing holes in your shoes.”
The look of sadness was replaced with irritation. “I’m going to the store for dog food. You going or staying?”
“Aren’t you getting ready for work?”
“It’s Saturday, Ed.”
“Oh.” Eddie held a watchful eye on the closed door. “I’m staying, I guess.”
“Kay. I’ll be back in thirty minutes.”
Eddie grinned big. “It’s getting an antifreeze soaked hot dog bun in twenty minutes.”
“Fine. I’ll be back in twenty.”
“Your time starts now.”
Rachel’s expression went serious. “You are kidding, right?”
“Fortunately for Cujo in there, the antifreeze is in the trunk of the car, which I assume you’ll be driving to the store. So yes. I’m kidding.”
“You scare me sometimes. You know that, don’t you?”
Eddie checked the clock above the sink. “Nineteen minutes,” she said.
6
David made the announcement to the crew at ten o’clock. It was met with all the expected questions. Disappointment was apparent in every face except Randal’s.
The host remained stoic under the harsh spotlights, as if he already knew about the cancellation. Maybe he was acting - he had won awards for his talents, after all. But maybe (more likely, actually) he’d already attended his own meeting with Lewis. Either way, he sat quiet and emotionless, slurping his coffee.
He must’ve known. Otherwise he’d be throwing a fit right now, in the Queen’s bloody English.
Maybe he’d known before anyone. The possibility would’ve pissed David off on any other day, but he simply didn’t have the time. He had a plane to catch.
His adventure would begin in less than two hours. David still couldn’t believe he was doing this. Better be worth it.
The assistant director, Tim, walked over and patted him on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, Dave. Really. I know what this show means to you.”
“Thanks. Look, I need you to run things today. And maybe tomorrow too.”
“What’s going on?”
“Well,” he said with a faint smile. “It looks like I’m going on a little trip.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I’ll explain on Monday. You got this?”
“Of course,” Tim said looking across the set, to the sound booth. He turned back to David. “So have a nice trip, I guess.”
“Thanks. If you get the re-shoots done everyone can have tomorrow off.”
“You got it, boss.” Tim walked away shouting at a boom operator.
David pulled a set of keys from his pocket. He’d left his car just outside the soundstage doorway, in a clearly marked no parking zone. No worries. It’d be gone before security could call a tow. He just needed to find Cathleen first. He hoped he could talk her into it.
It was her that found him. “Just where do you think you’re going?” she said from behind.
David turned to smile. “I’m playing hooky. Wanna come?”
“Are you kidding? Who’d be left to piss off the Brit?”
He laughed and then looked across the studio, to Randal. “There’s got to be an intern around here that’s capable of applying rouge. What do you say?”
Cathleen wrinkled her nose and pressed a stiff finger into his chest. “I’ll have you know that what I do is an art form. I don’t just smear on some rouge.”
David said, “You’re kinda hot when you’re mad.”
She slapped him on the arm, a playful swat, yet hard enough to sting. “I’m hot all the time. Where are we going?”
“Rural Pennsylvania.” He held up two tickets for American Airlines. “Our flight leaves at noon. We’ll be back tomorrow.”
“That sounds awful. Why?”
He leaned close to whisper in her ear. “It’s something that might just save the show.”
Cathleen took a step back, crossed arms, and looked her boss up and down. He figured she was trying to decide if he was full of shit. She said, “You’re actually serious. You want to take me out of state?” A pause, then, “I only fly first class.”
“We’re going coach. And there’s a forty-five-minute layover in D.C.”
“God I hate you.”
David grinned. “I would too. So, you coming?”
Cathleen rolled her eyes. “Give me a minute to tell Denise and grab my purse.”
“Thanks. I’ll owe you one.”
“We’ll discuss what you owe me on the plane. And just so we’re clear, this isn’t a date. I don’t put out for Pennsylvania. Los Angeles, maybe. But not Pennsylvania.”
David raised hands up in surrender. “Just friends, I swear.”
7
Rachel’s trip to the store left Eddie alone to worry about everything she’d experienced, consider options, and stress about the four-legged intruder.
Maurice. What a stupid name.
Why was he here? Where did he come from? (And the paper. And the clipboard. And the chair.) What did the producer of her favorite show have to do with it? And what in the holy hell fuck was her goddamn purpose?
If there was sense to be made from any of it, Eddie was either too dense or too crazy to see it. The whining and the scratching went on and on. And on.
“Shut the fuck up, dog. I’m trying to think.”
She’d seen David Sandoval’s driver’s license. New York City was easy to remember. The rest of the address? Not so much.
An apartment number, 14, felt right. She squeezed eyes shut, balled hands into fists, and tried to ignore the dog.
Thirteen hundred something? On Franklin? Maybe.
Franklin Avenue? Drive? Street?
Shit.
What would Eddie do even if she remembered? Take a Greyhound a thousand miles to tell a stranger that she accidentally possessed his body? He’d think she was crazy, and sadly, he’d be right.
It seemed there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t tell anyone about him, not even Sis. Rachel would listen, sure she would. She’d smile and try to reassure Eddie. Yup. And then she’d tell Thatcher to up the prescriptions. There’d be more tests. More doctors.
And numerous visits to the State Hospital in scenic downtown Madison, if not an extended stay. Eddie really loved how the bars on the windows accentuated the scratched stainless steel of the security doors. Just lovely.
Fuck that.
She checked the clock. Rachel had been gone fifteen minutes.
She looked to the window just as it snapped to black, as if someone had yanked the sun’s pull chain. The world went silent in a horrible whoosh of suction. The television, the dog, the sound of her own breath, gone, swallowed to black. Her eyes flooded with tears.
No more. Please.
She kneeled down, ducked below the table. Covered her face with trembling fingers. She couldn’t do this, not again. The linoleum was a sheet of ice.
A noise loud enough to break the world, an infinite, deep, nerve-crushing roar, rose up. Eddie winced at the wall of sound. The kitchen had become the bellowing horn of an ocean liner. It went on for three seconds. Four. Five.
Eddie’s scream added nothing to the blast. It was only a muted pain in her throat.
Then sunlight and silence. The chirp of a bird.
She opened her eyes. The house should’ve come down around her. Somehow it survived.
She heard the dog whining. The TV, yapping. And Big Sis, back from the store, screaming. Because it, apparently, was her turn.
Eddie looked up as she crawled out from her hiding place. A bag of dog food fell from Rachel’s arms and hit the floor, exploding into hundreds of little brown chunks. She pointed to the window with one hand and covered her mouth with the other. Eddi
e turned to see.
An office chair, identical to the one that appeared in Mom’s house, was in the window. The glass wasn’t broken, not even cracked. It held the chair perfectly though, the roller wheel leg half on the inside, the leather back and armrest half on the outside. It just hung there like the glass had chopped it in two, guillotine-style, but refused to fall apart.
Eddie stared, trying to make sense of the impossible sight. An office chair. On its side in glossy mid-air, in the middle of the kitchen window, declining all requests to decapitate.
She looked back. Rachel’s face had gone zombie white. Eyes bobbled in their sockets.
Knees buckled as Big Sis slumped to the floor.
8
Sam walked into the central control booth to find Leon shoving clothes into a duffel bag. An overstuffed crate of equipment sat on the counter to his left. Software discs, tools, personal items.
Sam gritted teeth. “What the hell are you doing?”
“It’s all wrong. I can’t do this anymore.”
“No. I’ve spoken with the producer. He’s coming. You can’t leave now.”
“I’m turning myself in. If you were smart, you’d come with me.”
“If you go, you’re dead. You know that.”
“Bullshit. The only conspiracy is the one in your head. They’re not trying to kill us, Sam. They’re trying to arrest us. Because, believe it or not, we’re criminals.” Leon turned away, paused, zipped up the bag. “I don’t know why I ever listened to you. This is madness. Madness, Sam. And I’m out.”
“Please don’t do this. We’re so close.”
“To what? The end of our careers? Prison?” He slid the duffel over a shoulder and grabbed the crate. “You’re not stopping me, so don’t even try.”
Sam looked to the quantum interface panel, the particle housing cabinet, the simulation module. And the cables connecting them, plastic-sheathed snakes of information stretched across the floor. They represented communication between the mundane and the divine. It was everything they’d been working toward for twenty years.
“I can’t let you, Leon.”
“Go straight to Hell, Sam.” With that, Leon walked out.
Sam looked to a bank of monitors on the east wall. Each displayed a live video feed from an individual security camera. There were six.
At the bottom of the staircase Leon entered the central corridor’s camera view. Sam watched him walk down the hall, shrinking toward the distant threshold. He was headed for the main entrance, north side of the complex.
Sam knew he had about two minutes. Could he do this? What choice did he have? He leaned over the keyboard, paused to take in a breath. Squeezed eyes shut, opened them. Began typing. He glanced back to the monitor. Leon kept walking.
“Please stop,” Sam said.
He powered up the detectors. Not the ones in the main lab, but the ones he’d installed last night at the main entrance. They would not be seeing a black hole. No, nothing so elegant. The lies they’d tell were of a chaotic scramble of gravitation, a kind of frenzied blast of microscopic densities. Just the idea of what it would do to a person was unimaginable. A million pinpoints of energy pulling a million different directions.
With quaking hands and a thundering heartbeat, Sam initiated the simulation.
A horrific algorithm waited with the patience of an executioner. The enter key, a little rectangle of plastic under his index finger, had become a kill switch, a murder button. Breath caught tight in Sam’s throat. He couldn’t breathe.
Camera four. Leon rounded a corner and headed down an intersecting hallway.
“Don’t make me do this, please.”
A single line of text appeared on the computer screen.
DO IT.
What the hell?
Sam’s computers, both the quantum and the simulation module, were isolated systems. They spoke to each other, yes – that was necessary for the experiment – but they had no connection to the outside world. No wireless, no satellite, no Internet. So the question was, who’d typed the message? Where was it coming from?
Nowhere. Because it wasn’t real. Couldn’t be. There wasn’t time to think about it now. There wasn’t time for anything.
Camera two. Leon walked around a desk in the lobby. He was almost out.
Stop. I can’t do it. Please.
ALMOST THERE.
“I can’t. Dear God, I can’t.”
IF YOU DON’T, YOU’RE DEAD TOO.
Leon stopped at the exit to adjust the crate in his arms. He then pushed open a glass door, his narrow shoulder leading the way. Almost. Not yet, but almost.
No no no no no
Down the sidewalk. He passed right below a detector. There were two others, left and right, ten feet above. All aimed at the concrete path ahead.
Five more steps. Four.
“I can’t.”
Two.
DO IT. NOW.
One.
Tears streamed down Sam’s cheeks. It was now or never.
DO IT.
Sam pressed ENTER. He stumbled back, gasping. He couldn’t look, couldn’t watch.
But he had to.
Leon’s body was an explosion of raw meat.
CHAPTER FOUR: OF BASEBALLS AND HÖCKEY STICKS
1
No matter how tight he squeezed, his hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
Sam slumped over a computer console, staring into the glowing screen yet oblivious to the scrolling readout. The simulation had done its job once again. The detectors too. The quantum bits had performed perfectly, as he knew they would.
He’d warned Leon, tried to talk him out of it. He had no other choice.
Stupid bastard.
Sam had proven he could do anything, even if it meant killing a man. A man he’d worked with almost twenty years. Leon’s only fault had been fear. Of a ruined life, a destroyed career. Of jail.
What else could Sam do? There was nothing. He had to stop him.
But I didn’t just stop him, did I? I killed him. It was the only way to keep the experiment safe. It was the only way to save himself. He pinched eyes shut, trying to force the memory out of his head.
The human body is about sixty percent liquid. It was like popping a balloon. Jesus. A balloon full of paint.
Everyone was dead. His colleagues at Norritech, Sharon, Leon. They were casualties of the new truth. The quest for knowledge. The world would be changed forever. There’d be no going back now.
“I’m sorry, Leon. I’m so sorry.”
Sam gazed into the darkness, alone, knowing full well the darkness was also gazing into him. Do it, the message had said. Where did it come from? Could I have imagined it? His damned hands still wouldn’t stop. It was okay, though. Everything was going to be all right.
The possibilities were endless. With the power of the Graviton he could now do anything.
Anything at all.
2
Happiness, like most things worth having, was elusive.
There wasn’t much to be had anymore, not in Rachel’s world. Not when having to care for Eddie, her neurotic, delusional little sister. And not when having to deal with Mom. It was hard to believe now, but there was a time when their mother had been a loving, non-judgmental person. A fun person. That version of her wasn’t around anymore, having packed bags when the voices moved into Eddie’s head.
Rachel remembered those early years from a strange, detached distance. It was like looking through an album filled with the faces of familiar strangers. She should’ve recognized those people. Should’ve, but didn’t.
The long, cool drinks of childhood were gone, lost within yellowing pages. Happiness now came in occasional, nearly painful gulps.
The span between was a framework of structure and daily routine. Med time, work time, doctor time, and most importantly, hang in there and keep it together time. Rachel did pretty well, mostly. Because in a world of crazy moms and sisters, she was the sane one. She was the rock.
&nb
sp; But not today. Not with a chair in the window.
Whether hereditary or contagious, the insanity had found her, and it was frightening. If she lost her shit who’d be left to pass the meds? Dad? Please. He had to be reminded to clean his glasses, for God’s sake.
How did this happen?
She just walked into the kitchen to see what the awful sound was, a horrible low droning loud enough to break eardrums. But it wasn’t out loud. It didn’t hurt her ears because it was in her head, right? That’s the way it felt anyway.
And then there was Ed, on her knees under the table and mumbling. Rachel looked up, right at a window of clear glass. Then came a dark blur. Then a quake.
Then the chair. The amazing, terrible chair.
Is this how it starts? Would the voices soon be whispering her name, telling her to put ketchup on her green beans? Would a man made of shadows start chasing her around the bookstore?
No. She needed her sanity. Eddie needed Rachel’s sanity. Everything depended on it. She’d shake it off and move on. It wasn’t real. Her brain had a slight hiccup, that’s all. People think they see things all the time. It was normal. She was normal. Had to be.
Flat on her back in front of the refrigerator, she opened her eyes.
All she saw was Ed’s face. Close enough to kiss her on the nose.
“Hey,” Eddie said. “You okay?”
“I don’t know. I think so.”
“You dropped the dog food.”
“Oh. Well let’s get it cleaned up.”
“Okay. And by the way, we might need to do something about the chair in the window. It’s kinda freaking me out.”
Rachel leaned around her sister to see. She hadn’t imagined it. It was real.
“Shit. You see it too?”
“Yup. Does this mean I’m not crazy anymore?”
“I don’t know, Ed.”
“Does this mean the nothingman is real?”
Holy crap. Does it?
3
David and Cathleen arrived at JFK International with no time to spare.
It was fortunate they didn’t need to check any bags. He brought only a single carry-on containing a change of clothes, a spiral notebook to jot down some notes, and his laptop. She had her usual oversized purse, which she’d crammed full at her apartment while he waited impatiently at the door.