Sami stifled a laugh as the woman handed her a receipt.
“One-hundred fifty-three—”
Sami’s voice trailed off in disbelief. She handed the card back to the woman.
“Add two big gulps of Dr. Pepper, please?”
The woman shooed her and said, “Honey, grab the drinks on the house. And take a t-shirt if you want it, too.”
“Aight,” Sami sighed, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, dear. Now, you and your cat get on back home before the snow hits.”
Sami thanked her again, filled the two giant Styrofoam fountain cups with Dr. Pepper and walked back out to her car. The sky had that gloomy grey color drifting in from the west. Something in the air felt crisp and cool and brittle. It did look like snow. Might be best to head back to Knoxville, Sami thought. I’ll give RayRay a call and have him get his bag packed. She clicked her phone and dialed.
“Yes, ma’am,” Carter Cross whispered into the ancient rotary dial phone in the office trailer of the Rutherford County landfill.
His partner stood outside the trailer poking at the sole of his shoe, digging some black muck out of the tread. Carter could hear muffled swearing as he dug at the gunk. He turned away from the window.
“Ma’am, there’s a problem.”
“Problem?” Elke Anderson’s voice was icy.
“Yes, ma’am,” Carter swallowed, “we haven’t recovered the—”
She interrupted him and snapped, “I know that. Do you not think I am monitoring your every move?”
Her accent clipped every “th” sound into a “z.”
“Uh, I uh—”
“You have a job to do, Agent Cross,” she softened ever so slightly, “and I expect that you will stay on the trail until you have found what you are seeking.”
He took a deep breath.
“Yes, ma’am, but there’s something else.”
“Vat is it?”
“Agent…um—” He realized he had no idea what the man’s name was. “It’s my…partner. He’s gone a bit…crazy.”
The line went silent. He could hear the sound of her fingernails clicking on her keyboard. After a few seconds, he heard her click a final, single key.
“You have permission.”
“Permission, ma’am?”
“To…alleviate the situation. He has already been removed from the mission dossier.”
“Oh, um…yes, ma’am.”
“You would like my advice, Agent Cross?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Return to the farm and look for the man with the beard. He will help you.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank y—”
The line clicked and she was gone.
Carter put the phone receiver down. Man with the beard? At a hippy commune? Every man over the age of ten at The Farm had a beard. The door to the trailer opened with a jerk.
“You get through?” his partner asked, “I finally got the freaking filth off my shoes.”
Carter nodded.
“Good,” the man in the sunglasses sniffed and tugged at his belt.
He turned to the landfill worker and asked, “you got a crapper in this trailer? I gotta take a dump.”
The man pointed with an uneasy finger toward the back of the trailer.
“Sweet,” he walked in the direction the man indicated and disappeared.
Carter shook his head and noticed a pickup truck sitting outside the window. He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. He didn’t like to do this often, but this seemed like the right time. He flopped the wallet open and displayed the silver badge and official looking identification card.
“I’m going to need to commandeer your truck.”
The man shrugged and tossed Carter his keys. Carter grabbed them out of the air and jogged out of the trailer.
“What about your partner?” he heard the man’s voice from inside the office.
Carter revved the engine and gunned it out of the parking lot long before his colleague in the dark sunglasses ever poked his head out.
12
Virtual Immortality
Artemis Baen was a human, born on Earth, with no talent for magic at all. However, what he did have was a significant amount of expertise in biomedical engineering. In another lifetime before coming to The Farm, he served as a professor and researcher in the University of Tennessee’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering. While many of his colleagues focused on operating room optimization, patient information, diagnosis and treatment protocols, blah, blah, blah, he found the most incredible discoveries were being made in the somewhat shadowy and secretive department that worked in regenerative medicine and cellular engineering.
He was particularly interested in the newest findings on cellular reprogramming. In some of their experiments they were able to convert any cell into a stem cell to slow the aging process in lab mice. They were literally working on the fountain of youth…and nobody seemed to care. No news stories, no publications, no journal articles…nothing.
Artemis gave up his heart and soul, and then his marriage, to the program and they got good at extending the lives of mice. Whoopee, long-living mice. He began to push hard for human trials. It had worked over and over in the lab mice with no ill effects. Hospice patients volunteered for the treatment and got denied. Artemis went behind the director’s back and treated a small pot-bellied pig that he borrowed from the vet school. The pig became the longest living Vietnamese pot-bellied pig in the recorded history of the breed. Wilbur, as Artemis took to calling him, lived to be forty-two years old…far in excess of the typical lifespan of the breed. Even in the face of such compelling evidence, the director denied Baen’s request for a human trial.
Word came through that the Roslin Institute in Scotland, famous for cloning Dolly, the sheep, was gearing up for a similar trial on a seventy-year-old woman. Artemis decided to act. He made a call to the Oakwood Senior Living Center and found his subject.
The octogenarian Bernard Forrest died two weeks after Artemis Baen made a secret visit to his private room at the center. Though no charges were ever filed, rumor had it that the family had received a massive sum of money to keep quiet. Artemis got fired and was required to leave the University of Tennessee immediately. That was in the winter of 1970. In the summer of 1971, he pulled a bus carrying fifty people into Summertown, Tennessee to start the place known today as The Farm.
Through the years he often wrote in his personal journal about the things he thought would lead to immortality, but he never again had the access to the kind of research they had been doing at the institute. Until last year. He got a strange call from the new director of the biomedical engineering institute at U.T. Elke Anderson stunned him by commending him on his forward thinking move to advance the study of cellular programming to a human. No one was supposed to know anything about that, but she had every detail down to the exact procedure he’d used on Bernard. He remembered the phone call like it was yesterday.
“Do you want to live forever, Dr. Baen?”
“Dr. Anderson, you and I both know that’s not feasible. The body wears down, cells are not replenished, and organs begin to—”
“What if I told you I had something to counteract all of that?” she interrupted him, “Some would even say it’s magical.”
He wasn’t sure if he was intrigued by what she’d said, or her sexy accent. She was European and he knew that they were light years ahead of the regulation-bound scientists in the United States.
“Go on.”
“Do you have an open mind, Dr. Baen?”
He looked around at the solar-powered classroom made of logs and stucco with tie-dyed wall hangings with painted sayings like: “You’re either on the bus or off the bus,” and “No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky.” Open mind, indeed.
“I’d say it’s very open.”
“Then, let me invite you to a meeting to discuss the future of immortality.”
The next day, he met Dr. E
lke Anderson at The Crown & Goose gastro pub in Knoxville’s old city. That was the day his universe turned upside down.
“Do you believe in alternate realities, doctor?”
Baen sipped his oily, black stout.
“I believe most theoretical scientific minds do.”
“Do you believe in alternate realities that follow different paths than our own?”
“I suppose so.”
“Do you believe in magic, Dr. Baen?”
He would have laughed if she hadn’t been serious...deadly serious when she asked the question.
“No. I mean, that is to say, I believe in the unexplainable, maybe even the miraculous. But to say I believe in magic is a step too far.”
She snapped her fingers and a small red flame lit at the end of her thumb and forefinger, as if she were holding it there like a feather. Before he could protest, she grabbed his hand and placed it in his palm. It did not burn him. In fact, it tingled in a way that was so pleasurable, he was sad when she clasped his hand and snuffed it out.
“You’ve heard of Narnia, Middle Earth, Neverland, Earthsea?”
Baen was studying his palm. “Sure. Anyone with any experience reading fantasy novels has. But those places don’t exist.”
She smiled and arched an eyebrow. “Are you certain?”
“Yes,” he said. “They were created by writers, people with visions in their heads that they put down on paper. They don’t really exist in the real world.”
She leaned in closer to him and lowered her voice. “Have you ever heard of Azuria?”
“Azuri-what?”
Many more stouts and many more years later, Artemis Baen was as much an expert on Azuria as a human being could be. He was also an expert on the outer limits of the age of a human being. He knew that the average life expectancy of people was rising without much obvious influence from outside sources. By 2080, scientists conjectured that the average lifespan of a healthy human being would be one hundred, barring any scientific discovery that would reverse the aging process. Slowing it down, that was easy. Making it run backwards, now that was what had fueled legends and myths like old Juan Ponce de Leon traipsing around South Florida.
“Let us imagine, Dr. Baen,” Elke’s voice had been seductive like a biblical serpent’s, “that we have an artifact capable of reversing the aging process in the person who is playing it. And let us also imagine that we have a creature who is capable of slowing the world around us. Put the two together and you might have a combination that would produce extremely long life.”
“Virtual immortality.”
“Precisely. But we do not know how this artifact nor the creature achieve the effects they have on us. We need to get these two items into the lab. I have entire teams of scientists and…let us call them specialists in magic…ready to dissect and examine both of them when they arrive. I have only to deliver them.”
She did not mention that they had captured the creature, but somehow it had escaped. Truth be told, they had underestimated the intelligence of the creature. She had hired Carter Cross to track the artifact and had given him a partner that would eliminate any trail of people who had come into contact with the violin. There would be no way to trace the path of the artifact back to her. And once she had her team nail down the exact nature of the youthful effects it bestowed upon the user, she would play the song that would grant her immortality. And once she was immortal, she would exact her revenge on her home world of Azuria.
He couldn’t believe how long ago all that had been. He traced a finger along the gorgeous wooden body of the violin sitting in the passenger’s seat of his green, rusted out Jeep Cherokee. Taking it from RayRay hadn’t been difficult in all the pandemonium caused by his ridiculous parents duking it out in the pit. The kid had almost literally dropped it in his lap. Luck had finally come his way.
It was a beautiful instrument, but beyond that, it was magic. He would play it, if he could, but not only was he cursed to be human and without magic, he was also completely inept at any form of musical ability. Sure, he had pulled the bow across the strings, but the hiss was demonic and he immediately dropped the instrument and hadn’t attempted to play it anymore.
He clicked open the burner cell that Elke had given to him. He punched the number one and waited. When the line clicked on, he waited a second.
“Well?”
“I have it.”
“Good. Stay where you are. Keep it safe. Show no one. Tell no one. I will send an agent to pick you up.”
“Don’t bother. I’m on my way to you.”
There was a long pause on the line. Artemis wondered if he had crossed a line. He knew that Elke had assumed he didn’t know where she was, but he’d studied up the last decade on her homeland of Azuria and the portals that could connect it to Earth. He deduced that there was only one place in Tennessee that she could keep a lab of scientists studying the path to immortality a secret and have access to a Caulla too. The Farm, with its Caulla, was far too rural for such a lab, but Oak Ridge, Tennessee known as the Atomic City, the City Behind the Fence, the Ridge, and – most ominously – the Secret City was the perfect location.
Oak Ridge was established in 1942 as a production site for the Manhattan Project—the massive American, British, and Canadian operation that developed the atomic bomb. Today it is still the site of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a leader in the science of atomic level discoveries across the country. The tools at Elke’s disposal here would be…mind-boggling.
“How did you know where to find us?”
He grinned. His mild bluff had paid off. He wondered if he should tell her that the best clue he had was the synchronous fireflies that were becoming more and more prevalent throughout the Oak Ridge Wildlife Management Area. In a magical display that scientists struggled to explain, these amazing lightning bugs blink in exact synchrony with the entire group. A phenomenon that most humans believed was some sort of biological tick. Baen guessed differently. He postulated that magic pulsed out from Azurian Caullas in waves, much like light waves. His theory was that these tiny creatures were sensitive to the magic around the Caulla in Oak Ridge and when the wave crests, the fireflies light up. He was wrong, but it didn’t matter. It had led him to Elke and that was all he’d wanted.
“I will call in a badge for you. It will be waiting for you at the gate.”
“What gate?”
His cell phone pinged in his ear. He held it out to look at the screen and saw that she’d dropped a G.P.S. pin on his map. The word “calculating” appeared at the top and soon, the directions to Elke’s lab displayed on his screen.
“I’ll be there in,” he paused and checked the display, “three hours and forty-nine minutes.”
“Do not stop for any reason, Mr. Baen. Bring me the item and you shall have your reward.”
Baen clicked his phone off, tossed it into the seat beside him.
“It’s about time,” he said, grinning at his inadvertent pun.
13
Walls Come Down
Samantha Dawn Proctor cursed RayRay as the line went to voicemail for the third time.
“Dangit, RayRay, call me back,” she spoke into the phone. “When I get to The Farm, we’re heading back to Knox-Vegas. Some lady told me the news is reporting a pretty big snow storm and as much as I like seeing the folks, I don’t want to get stuck there with no TV or internet.”
She hung up and handed the phone to Mikki.
“You can play Candy Crush,” she held up a finger and wagged it back and forth at the creature. “But don’t go buying extra lives or anything like that.”
Mikki stuck her bottom lip out and pouted.
“I mean it.”
The creature nodded and put out her tiny hand to take the phone. Sami couldn’t help but smile as the background music began and Mikki set about making candy matches as the game’s weird voiceover said “Delicious” over and over.
She put the car in reverse, pulled out of the space, and turned h
er signal on to get back on the road to The Farm. It was all clear except for one white pickup truck coming down the road at breakneck speed.
“Dang, man,” she shouted to the driver. “You got a train to catch?”
As she said it, the truck got closer and she got a good look at the driver. He was wearing sunglasses and a black overcoat. She ducked and peered through the steering wheel. Crap, it’s the men from The Farm. But that wasn’t quite right, it was only one of the strange men in black. It was the one who hadn’t seemed quite so…crazy. She didn’t know for sure, but her intuition told her he was headed back to Summertown for another go at stealing her family’s violin.
She wondered where the guy’s partner was as the truck raced past her, but then thought it was a good thing that he was alone. He’d be easier to subdue this time. Her fingers gripped the wheel tight as she squealed out of the parking lot after him. Like a smoldering campfire getting a new log, her arms began to glow. Symbols traced up her fingertips and onto her forearms. She would end this today and didn’t care what the White Cloaks had to say about it.
“Mikki?”
She looked up from her Candy Crush game, eyes open wide.
“Sameee?”
Sami smiled. “You know my name now?”
Mikki nodded and grinned, showing every sharp tooth in her mouth.
“Good. I want to see if that thing you do with the speeding up thing will work with me and you in a car.”
Mikki shrugged and blinked.
“Yeah. I don’t know either, but it’s worth a shot. I need to get to The Farm before Mister Wannabe Neo does.”
Mikki sighed and clicked the phone to save her game. She climbed up on the headrest of Sami’s seat and waited.
“Okay,” Sami pulled in a deep breath “On three. One. Two. Three.”
At three, Mikki wrapped her delicate fingers around the tops of Sami’s ears. She squeezed them softly and closed her eyes. Outside the windows of the red Volkswagen Bug, the world seemed to freeze. The effect was jarring as the car shot forward on a road that looked frozen in time. Silent snowflakes hung in mid-air falling so slow they looked like they had stopped. Sami and Mikki blasted ahead of other frozen cars and trucks. It was odd to think that they hadn’t stopped at all, but Sami had sped up. She wondered if they even saw a blur as she passed. She thought not. She caught up with the man and as she rushed up behind his nearly frozen vehicle, she let the spell go that had been forming in her mind and burning in her fingers.
Spell Song: An Enchanting Urban Fantasy Page 9