Virtuality

by H. L. Wegley

  Upstream, a flashlight beam probed the river along the line. Hopefully, the gunman believed he and Jess would never let go of the rope and risk the falls. Otherwise, the shooting would start again.

  Vince put his mouth against Jess's ear as they glided downstream. “Swim hard. Give it everything you've got. I'll stay below you.”

  She pulled loose from his grip. Her legs kicked, and her hands pawed at the water. Jess had some strength left. The deep roar, increasing in volume, should give her a shot of adrenaline.

  The current surged, propelling them at an alarming rate. The rumble of hundreds of tons of water, exploding at the end of a three-hundred-foot fall, drowned all other sounds.

  Above them, shadowy forms of trees blocked much of the night sky. They were almost to the far side of the river—almost safe or almost dead?

  Over the last four or five strokes, Vince’s arms had turned to lead. His kick had lost its power.

  Jess’s arms still moved, but there was no strength in her strokes.

  Something had to change, or they weren't going to make it.

  Her body bumped into his.

  “Jess, you found the strength to break six boards. I need you to find it again, now.”

  The thought of water shooting them out into a mist-filled void, then dropping them the length of a football field to be pounded to death by an entire river hitting them at hundred miles-per-hour, sent a strong dose of adrenaline through Vince.

  Jess was nearly spent. He grabbed a handful of her tank top with one hand. He kicked furiously and pulled on the water with his other hand.

  Jess kicked too. Not strong kicks, but she hadn’t given up.

  Correction. Jess had gone limp now. Her slender, fat-free body had succumbed.

  What if it all came down to going over the falls? He would wrap his body around Jess, and pray that his body would, somehow, protect hers when they landed three-hundred feet below.

  Vince kicked and pawed at the water, while his mind analyzed their chances of surviving the falls. As a kid he’d jumped into water fifty feet up on an old railroad bridge. He’d found that a person could enter one or two degrees off from vertical, arms extended upward, with no serious repercussions. But leaving an elbow slightly bent, instead of holding his arm straight up, had almost dislocated Vince’s shoulder. Forgetting to point his toes had split the bottom of his foot open when it slapped the water. But falling three-hundred feet in a deluge, while flailing for balance, would be much worse. It would split—he couldn’t let his thoughts go there.

  Vince’s legs weakened further and sank deeper into the water. He kicked, trying to raise them to a horizontal plane.

  Pain shot through his right foot.

  He had kicked bottom. But the line of dark, shadowy rocks marking the top of the falls lay less than ten yards away.

  Vince needed to anchor to the bottom, now.

  The undulating current sent him under into a nearly silent world. Vince bounced off the bottom and bobbed back up, managing to keep his hold on Jess.

  When he surfaced, the sound of the falls pounded his eardrums like a thunderclap.

  He jammed his shoes onto the rocky river bottom to stop his movement toward the falls. Vince tried to stand while gripping Jess.

  Though the water was only three-feet deep, the current’s relentless pull on his body overpowered him. It ripped at his legs and hips.

  Vince’s feet slid along the river bottom as the torrent shoved him downstream. He pushed his shoes deeper into the rocks and gravel. If he lifted a foot to try stepping toward shore, in an instant, the current would sweep him away.

  He buried his fingers more deeply into the fabric of Jess’s tank top and burrowed his feet more deeply into the river bottom.

  Jess’s body in the water was the biggest problem, the greatest drag pulling him downstream. But his cold, spent arms couldn’t lift her out of the water.

  Vince slid several more inches downstream.

  The dim light from the lodge across the river revealed their location. Ten feet in front of him, the entire Snoqualmie River plunged into a black void that roared its fury at them.

  And the ferocious current continued to push him inexorably toward the blackness.

  Vince squeezed on Jess’s tank top with all the strength he had left and pulled. But what he had left was like Vince van Gordon, the man … simply not enough.

  He had failed Jess. He had failed to fulfill his promise to his brother, Paul, to protect Virtuality and its dangerous technology. Vince’s only consolation … it would be his last unhappy ending, either written in his second-rate novels or lived out in Vince’s second-rate life.

  I’m so sorry, Paul … I love you, Jess.

  Chapter 2

  Three and a half days earlier

  Murdering her is my best solution.

  And Vince van Gordon knew exactly how he would kill her. He put his pen to the page of his spiral notebook and—

  “Blast it!”

  The opening drum roll of the Washington State University Fight Song blared from Vince’s cell and echoed through his Denver townhouse.

  Maybe the Cougars were going to go, fight, win, but his alma mater’s song had blown away all his carefully crafted words. It had done so precisely when he’d formulated his plan to kill off the fiendish antagonist. Murdering her wouldn’t guarantee a happy ending to the story. Vince hadn’t decided how to pull that off yet. But at least justice would be served. Wouldn’t that satisfy his readers?

  Bright sunshine streaming in through his study window on this late June morning lit the large retro clock on the wall. 7:30 a.m. This was his most productive writing time. Who would be calling at this hour?

  Maybe he wouldn’t answer.

  As the fight song started the second verse, Vince sighed, pulled his cell from the pocket of his cargo shorts, and swiped a finger across the touchpad, praying this was not his agent, Jamie. If it was, he could forget this scene for at least an hour.

  On second thought, maybe he should forget the scene anyway. It was a lame ending to a mediocre story. One more in a long line of lame endings. Such was life. But readers didn’t want real life, they wanted incredible adventures.

  He sighed again, in resignation, and answered the call.

  “Vince, this is Jess.” Her voice came soft and low, as it had since she was just a girl.

  Vince nearly choked on the breath he sucked in.

  Jess had been Vince’s best friend for the first seventeen years of his life. But he hadn’t talked to her for nearly seven years. Why was she calling now? To finish the discussion he had left hanging years ago?

  “Vince, are you still there?”

  “Yeah. Sorry. You just, uh, surprised me. But it’s good to hear from you.”

  Her heavy sigh blew across the receiver, creating static in Vince’s ear. “I wish it wasn’t—I mean … I’ve got some bad news. It’s Paul.”

  Had his cancer returned? Vince’s brother had fought cancer twice and won. Surely, he could do it again, especially with all the new advances since Paul went into remission two and a half years ago.

  “What happened, Jess? Is it his cancer?” If so, why wasn’t Paul calling him instead of their next-door-neighbor, Jess?

  “Yes. His cancer’s back. I’m at the hospital. Paul asked me to call you, because he’s too weak to make calls. It doesn’t look good this time.”

  Paul couldn’t be dying. He conquered all obstacles, without exception. Besides, Paul was the best man Vince knew—a model big brother, a model Christian. People like Paul didn’t die at thirty-one … or did they?

  “Jess, is my brother dying?”

  “It came back with a vengeance this time. Paul didn’t tell anyone until he realized he couldn’t fight it off. I think he was still holding out hope for another miracle. But he called me day before yesterday and told me his condition. He asked me to do some things for him and to call you. But listen, Paul needs you, Vince. He needs to talk with you. He said it w
as important. Please, will you come home?” Her voice broke on the last word.

  Jess never cried. Well, almost never. But if she were losing Paul … “I’ll catch a plane first thing in the morning.”

  “Okay …” Jess paused. “But while you’re out here, we need to talk. Promise me you’ll do that, Vince. This is important too.”

  What could Jess want from him? She’d made her choice. She wanted Paul. The only surprising thing was that Vince had never received an engagement or wedding announcement. Maybe Paul hadn’t wanted to saddle her with the uncertainty of his cancer.

  Jess’s end had gone silent.

  “Jess, are you still there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “I promise … and tell Paul I’m coming and that I’m praying for …” What does a person say they’re praying for to a brother who is dying?

  “I’ll tell Paul. Got to go. The doctor’s making his rounds and he just came in. I need to hear what he has to say. See you tomorrow. Goodbye, Vince.”

  Three minutes ago, the only thing Vince had worried about was the ending of his novel. Now, he was going to lose the brother he loved, a great man who had left a large shadow and a big set of shoes. Vince could never fill them.

  He had always lived in Paul’s shadow—at school, at church, in the community, everywhere but on the football field. None of that had ever bothered Vince until he lost Jess. When that happened, the shadow had turned to total darkness.

  When Jess’s heart turned to romance for the first time, it had turned to Paul, not Vince. He had never understood that. Vince and Jess had been closer than any two friends he’d ever known. Despite Jess’s introversion, they had shared everything. And yet, Vince had been surprised. Devastated.

  Jess had still wanted her best friend, but playing that role grew increasingly painful. Vince had begun pulling away from Jess sometime in their junior year of high school and, eventually, left Seattle to attend college across the state at WSU. He had walked away from a full-ride, football scholarship at UW to become a walk-on at Washington State.

  Since he left for college, he’d never returned to Seattle to live. He’d never had a talk with Jess, and he had never brought any kind of closure to their relationship. He’d wanted to tell her how he felt about her and about living life in Paul’s shadow, but that would’ve hurt her too much. And, after he shared those most intimate feelings, hearing her rejection would’ve killed Vince. It had been easier simply to go.

  She’d never given him that dear John speech to let him down easy. Is that what Jess wanted to talk about? With Paul dying, it was a little late for speeches. And what did Paul want to tell Vince? That raised worries of a different sort.

  Hopefully, Paul wouldn’t give Vince the reins of Virtuality Incorporated. Paul had made the business a success. But Vince knew nothing about the IT industry. Maybe that’s what Jess wanted to talk about. She was beyond brilliant and had an MS in Computer Science. Did Paul want the two of them to run Virtuality, together? It wouldn’t work.

  No obstacle had ever stopped his big brother. Cancer hadn’t. Lack of money to start his business hadn’t. He’d found a Christian partner, Patrick Michaels. They pooled their resources and launched the fastest growing high-tech company in the Puget Sound area. Why did Paul have to die now?

  It seemed that God had big plans for Paul, until this unhappy ending interfered. It sounded like a Vince van Gordon novel, full of excitement and intrigue until the end, then emptiness.

  No. Not a novel. It sounded like Vince van Gordon’s life.

  His vision blurred. Vince swiped at his eyes.

  The drum roll for the WSU fight song came from the vibrating cell he still held in his hand. He answered, praying it wasn’t Jess with more bad news.

  “This is Jamie, Vince.”

  Great! This time it was his agent. “Jamie, I’m getting ready for a trip to Seattle. I just learned that my brother is dying.”

  The other end of the call went silent.

  After several seconds, Jamie’s sigh blew into her phone producing a static-like sound. “Sorry to hear about your brother. I’ll be praying for you and your family.”

  “Paul and I are all that’s left of our family. This is going to put my writing on hold until I see what I need to do in Seattle.”

  “I know this isn’t the best time to bring this up, but it’s important.”

  He started to interrupt her, but Jamie continued. “I read your draft and … you have to make some changes to the story.”

  He’d just told her his brother was dying. Didn’t she get it? “What do you mean?”

  “Alright. Straight to the chase. Have you ever been in love, Vince?”

  What kind of question was that?

  “Yes.” Why had he said that? He still was, but he wasn’t going to tell Jamie that.

  “It didn't end well, did it?”

  “Jamie, will you just get to the point?”

  “You’re from Seattle and you’re going back to see your brother. Will you see her there too?”

  “I appreciate your concern, but you are my agent, not my counselor.”

  “That’s not quite correct. According to our contract, I'm your professional counselor. And, as such, I'm advising you to make a happy ending of some sort for yourself, if you want to be able to write one. A wise person once said an author can’t tell a better story than they’ve lived. And it seems that Vincent van Gordon has some things he needs to live.”

  He didn’t reply to her remark. What could he say? Happy ever after wasn’t in the cards for Vince van Gordon. Not this side of heaven.

  “Vince, you write with so much passion, until you reach the end of your story. Then poof, it's all gone. I can't sell it. Nobody will buy a story with an ending like that.”

  Maybe real life did seep into a writer’s stories. But what could Vince do with his? He would make sure the readers saw that justice was served. But how many readers would that satisfy? Not enough.

  Jamie was right. He’d written a lame ending.

  “Is she married?”

  “No.” He blew out his exasperation.

  “Well, that’s a positive development. Listen, you have enormous potential as a writer. Change the ending.”

  “I'll rewrite it as soon as I get a chance.”

  “Not the story, Vince. The real-life ending. That’s what you need to change. Make it happy. If you don’t, I’m not sure you can make it as an author.” Jamie sighed into the phone again. “So sorry about your brother. I’ll be praying for both of you. We'll talk again after this is all over. Goodbye, Vince.”

  She ended the call.

  A real-life happily ever after? Only in fairy tales and Hallmark movies. And those weren’t the kinds of stories Vince wrote.

  Vince’s cell vibrated in his hand, playing the WSU fight song.

  Not again.

  He looked at the incoming call displayed on the screen. It was the same 206 number Jess had used. He answered, praying he wasn’t already too late.

  “It’s Jess again. The doctor just finished his rounds. Paul is weakening rapidly. His doctor says we don’t have much time.” Jess paused. “You’ve got to come now, Vince.”

  She had known how to give Vince commands since they were five, and she had just delivered the most forceful one he could ever recall.

  “Which hospital?”

  “Virginia Mason. Please hurry.”

  “Be there in about six hours. I need to talk to him too. Tell him I’m coming. Ask him to wait for me, Jess.”

  “I will. Bye, Vince.”

  In a few hours, he would be looking into her face. What would he see in those pale blue eyes? How could he ever—he didn’t have time for that now.

  Vince hit the speed dial number for Alaska Airlines.

  “This is Vincent van Gordon. I need to make an emergency travel reservation on your next available flight from Denver to Seattle. Whatever you’ve got. I can be at the gate in forty-five minutes.”


  “We have a single seat in first class on flight 747, departing at 10:45 a.m. arriving at 12:30 p.m.”

  “Nothing earlier than that?”

  “Uh … no, sir. Not until late afternoon.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  Vince gave the agent his frequent flyer and credit card information and got his confirmation number. He called a cab to take him to the airport, then he opened his call log and added Jess’s number to his contact list, where it should have already been, and returned Jess’s call.

  “Hello, Vince.”

  She had recognized his number. How long had Jess had him in her contacts? “Jess, I’ll be arriving on Alaska flight 747. It should arrive at the gate at 12:30 p.m. I won’t check any bags, so—”

  “Don’t rent a car at Sea-Tac. We’re running out of time. I’ll be at Alaska’s passenger pick-up at 12:35. See you then.”

  “Yeah. See you then, Jess.”

  Vince would soon have to face Jess, the woman he loved, but who, at most, only wanted her close friend back. Then he would talk with his dying brother. Which would be harder? Truthfully, he didn’t know.

  He’d barely gotten his max-sized, carry-on bag packed and his laptop placed in its case when the taxi pulled up in front of his townhouse.

  A minute later, Vince shoved his laptop and carry-on into the cab and slid in behind them. “Airport, please. Alaska Airlines.”

  In a few minutes, the departure area came into view.

  The cab stopped at the curb.

  Mentally dizzy from the mix of thoughts swirling through his mind, Vince paid the driver, then carried his bags through the double-wide, glass doors leading to Denver Airport’s Alaska ticket counter, doors leading him back to the genesis of unhappy endings.

  Vince checked himself in and slipped into his airport autopilot mode. When he reached his gate, he hardly remembered clearing security.

  He took a seat and waited for his flight’s boarding call.

  After he sat, the happy beginning that had held so much promise for a young boy came rushing at him, exhilarating to recall, but unrecoverable. A time more than sixteen years ago, when a young girl’s eyes danced only for Vince van Gordon.