by Dayton Ward
Well, he reminded himself, at least a reasonable illusion, anyway.
As had become his habit several times a week since discovering the place, he was treating himself to dinner at Tubby’s Drive-In, a Las Vegas–style re-creation of a 1950s diner complete with smiling waitresses wearing the requisite aprons, skirts, and roller skates. Fatty and fried comfort foods littered the menu, the kind that sent modern calorie counters running for their cardiologists, and classic rock-’n’-roll music blared from a vintage Rock-Ola jukebox system that allowed patrons to choose their favorite tunes from chrome and neon consoles installed at each booth.
The joint was not wholly authentic, Alfred knew, starting with the fact that it had swapped the usual rows of outdoor parking slots used by actual drive-in diners for conventional indoor seating that catered more easily to families and guests of advancing years. He chalked that up to knowing and adapting to one’s customer base. Judging by most of the people at Tubby’s this night, Alfred guessed that a good portion of them had been patronizing such restaurants for decades. With no small amount of isolation, he reminded himself yet again that with their balding heads and wrinkled skin, slow gaits, out-of-date fashions, and orthopedic shoes, they might well be his contemporaries—had he not been afforded the opportunity to skip the previous fifty years.
Even Buck Rogers never had to deal with this.
Finding comfort in routine, Alfred rarely strayed from what the staff at Tubby’s now knew as his “usual.” It was therefore no surprise when, only a few minutes after sliding into his favorite booth—one close to the kitchen with seats that boasted alternating rolls of turquoise and white Naugahyde that always seemed to catch a day’s worth of crumbs within their stitched valleys—that Roxanne, one of his favorite waitresses, skated toward his table while balancing a tray of food on her shoulder.
“Cookie saw you come in,” she said in a tinny Bronx accent Alfred was sure she mimicked for the gig. The gum in her mouth crackled as she set before him a club sandwich, a heaping plate of thickly cut steak fries slathered in brown gravy, and two cups for his chocolate malted: one a glass filled to its brim with the drink and topped with whipped cream and a bright red maraschino cherry, and the other a cold, metal mixing cup holding the remaining mixture. He watched her eye the metal cup, seeing the small drip of malted snaking its way down its side toward the tabletop and deftly swiping at it with one finger. Raising the finger to her mouth, she made a show of tasting the chocolaty drink, following it with a bratty but good-natured smile for his benefit.
“Enjoy,” she offered before turning and skating back toward the kitchen, leaving him alone in his booth. Reaching for one of the gravy-soaked fries, Alfred took a bite, relishing the flavor. It might be bad for his cholesterol levels—whatever those really were—but that did not stop it from tasting damned good.
He was on his third fry when an unexpected chill swept over him. It was a familiar impression, one he had been anticipating, though perhaps not this soon.
“Oh my God,” he started, realizing only when the words passed his lips that he had said them aloud.
She didn’t lie to me, Alfred thought. She found me just like she said she would.
Craning his neck to see over the booth’s high seatback, he looked toward the front of the diner, all the while savoring the adrenaline-like jolt washing over his mind and body. There could be no mistaking the sensation; it could be coming only from one person.
And then, she simply was there.
Abigail moved past the other booths with a subtle, sensual grace that seemed only to fuel the feelings that gripped him. For whatever reason and despite his all-too-brief connection with her during that first encounter at the bank, Alfred apparently was tapping into the same high level of residual energy he previously had experienced only with the handful of lovers he had met since his return.
It was intoxicating.
She caught sight of him and he raised his hand to wave her over, smiling as she cut a path between tables and past other patrons on her way toward him.
“Hello, Alfred,” she said, sliding without invitation into the booth on the opposite side of the table. “It’s good to see you again.” She cast an amused glance down at his plate. “And it looks like I got here just in time.”
Feeling himself beaming at her, Alfred replied, “Indeed you did. It’s nice to see you as well.” He tried to keep himself in check, not wanting to appear too enthusiastic about encountering her again. “Would you like anything to eat?” he asked, glancing awkwardly about the restaurant. “I can call back the waitress.”
By way of reply, Abigail reached across and plucked one of the steak fries from his plate, swiping it through some of the brown gravy before popping it into her mouth. “What, you’re not in a mood to share?”
Alfred slid the plate of fries to the center of the table. “I’m quite willing to share anything with you, Abigail.” He almost winced, knowing his words sounded full of innuendo but not caring a whit.
“Good.” As if to emphasize her point, she grabbed the stainless steel tumbler containing the rest of Alfred’s chocolate malted. “You know how to pick ’em,” she said, looking about the restaurant. “I love places like this. They always give you the extra malt in the mixing cup. Just like the old days, huh?”
Alfred chuckled at that. “Just like the old days. They’re not so old to me, though. Remember?”
“You know I remember,” Abigail replied, her expression falling a bit. “It’s just…different for me is all.” She frowned, an expression Alfred found adorable. “I guess it’s hard to explain.”
“We seem to have plenty of time,” Alfred offered, picking up a neatly cut quarter of his sandwich. “Try to explain it for me.”
Abigail said nothing for a moment, instead chewing on another gravy-coated fry. Just before the silence began to seem awkward, she said, “I’m not trying to sound mean or anything, but it’s like when we chat online and you tell me what things were like and how people used to be in your time.” She shrugged. “Sometimes it feels a little, I don’t know, corny, I guess.”
“Corny? Wow,” Alfred said, the comment stinging a bit deeper than she obviously had intended. “Nice of you not to mince words.”
“No, seriously,” she countered, holding up her hand. “Hear me out. When we’re talking, I sometimes feel sorry for you, even though I don’t miss where I’m from in the same way. I guess it’s because for me, things here don’t feel all that different, not like they are for you. When you describe how you’re feeling, all I can think about are those old fifties black-and-white TV shows or documentaries or those bad, old instructional films they showed us in school. Remember those? They were supposed to teach kids how to treat each other nicely and how it’s polite to go places with your hands washed and hair combed and stuff. It doesn’t feel real to me is all.”
Alfred could sympathize with her, at least to an extent. The wonders of modern home entertainment—cable television and DVDs—had allowed him to revisit TV shows that were current when he left but now were viewed as items of curiosity, if not nostalgia. “My time did exist, you know,” he said after a moment. He dropped his sandwich onto the plate, his hunger having fled.
“Sure,” Abigail said, “but not like that. From what I’ve seen, it just feels like all you guys talked about was the right way to act.”
Alfred offered a small, sardonic smile. “And that’s strange to you? That people cared about how they treated each other?”
“Yeah, I guess it is,” she replied. “People now just don’t seem to have the time to be overly polite like you say things used to be.”
“You mean they don’t take the time, Shorty,” Alfred said, hoping the use of her online nickname would soften his remarks. “It’s as though being nice is the exception, rather than the rule. Just last night on the television news, I saw a report about how someone paid for the next person’s coffee at a drive-up window. So, that person, instead of just taking the free coffee,
keeps it up and pays for the guy behind her, and so on and so on, until people did it for something like seven hundred cars.” He shook his head, laughing as he recalled the story.
Frowning, Abigail asked, “Why is that funny?”
“It’s funny that it’s news!” he said, realizing as he did so that his voice level had risen. He paused, looking about the restaurant to see whether anyone had taken notice, but by all appearances no one seemed to care. “I’m used to when people would toss out enough change to cover coffee for the guy next to them and not think twice about it.”
“Well, yeah, back when coffee was a dime or something instead of three bucks,” she said, releasing her own laugh. It was the kind of laugh Alfred could listen to all day.
“You know what I mean,” he said, reaching for his malt.
Abigail nodded. “I do. I was just teasing you.”
“I know,” Alfred said, feeling her sincerity course through the tenuous mental link they still shared, “but I have to tell you. This…future is nothing like I always dreamed it would be.”
Her brow creased and her nose wrinkled as she regarded him. “What do you mean?”
Alfred shrugged as he watched Roxanne skate by, wielding another tray as she tended to another booth. “I mean, I’m in a world filled with technological wonders. I’ve got stuff in my apartment that was in the science-fiction stories I was reading up until the day I left. An oven that cooks with microwaves? A television without knobs or antennae that works with a wireless control box? My own personal computer that’s no bigger than a notebook and connects me to all the great databases of the world? Incredible.
“But, in my time, what they told us to expect when all these gizmos became reality was that we would live carefree lives. We’d be in a world without crime, without hunger or sickness or poverty.” Shaking his head, Alfred removed his glasses and set them down on the table, then reached up to rub his eyes. “I know how all of that must sound so foolish or naïve to you.” The truth was that with all of the reading and daydreaming he once had done, he had bought into the grand utopian vision of the future espoused in those magazines. “Here I am, in the future I always wanted to visit, but the future didn’t happen. Not like I wanted it to, anyway.”
Abigail said, “Maybe it’s not what any one of us expected to find, but maybe some of us cope better by looking forward instead of backward.”
“Maybe so,” Alfred replied as he put on his glasses before releasing a humorless chuckle. “Just how you wanted to spend your evening, right? Hanging out with a sad sack who’s nothing like he seems on the Internet.”
“Stop that,” Abigail said, and Alfred heard the hint of disapproval in her tone. “I don’t think that at all.” Waving her hand to indicate Tubby’s glitzy interior, she asked, “Is that why you come to places like this? To remind yourself of what it was like to be around people who cared about what life was like for everyone else and not just themselves?”
Thinking about that for a moment, Alfred nodded. “Maybe that’s one reason, yeah.”
Offering a wan smile, Abigail reached for his glass of chocolate malt. “And that’s why I wanted to meet you in person, and why I had a feeling you might want to meet me, and others like me.” Taking a sip from the glass, she returned it to its place on the table before glancing about, just as she had during their initial encounter at the bank, as though making sure no one might overhear their conversation. Alfred did not see how that was possible, especially considering the Elvis Presley tune blaring through Tubby’s sound system. “There’s a group of us. A few 4400s, but we also have many supporters, people who want to help us develop our abilities so that we can use them to make this a better world for everyone.”
There was something in her words that intrigued him, Alfred decided, even called to him. Might he simply be responding to his ongoing sense of isolation and his longing for the companionship of someone—anyone—who could identify with what he was feeling?
“Who are these friends of yours?” he asked, leaning forward until his elbows rested atop the table.
Abigail shook her head. “Not here. I just…” She paused, as though considering what to say next, before finally reaching out with her right hand and resting it in Alfred’s palm. “Here.”
As her soft skin brushed his, Alfred’s mind flooded with a wash of warm colors. He closed his eyes, allowing the rush of visions to coalesce. Unlike the first time he shared this connection with Abigail, he did not see distinct images, such as those of her youth and family. Instead, he was confronted with visions of himself, at the bank, but those were fleeting, pushed aside as Abigail seemed to offer insight into the more remote corners of her own mind. Tenuous wisps reached for him from those recesses, bathing him in the glow of trust and confidence, followed by anticipation and—finally—hope.
He gasped for breath as Abigail withdrew her hand, and released a sigh as the intensity of their contact diminished for lack of their physical touch. Still gripping the lingering thread of their empathic connection, Alfred opened his eyes and saw her looking at him, her face aglow with an expression of wonder.
“Watching you,” she said, her voice so soft that he almost could not hear her, “watching your face, I can only imagine what it must feel like to do what you do. When I know about one of us and what he or she can do, I just know it like I read it in a book. What was it like for you—with me—just now?”
Clearing his throat and wishing for the first time that he had asked Roxanne for a glass of water, Alfred replied, “It’s actually a little different each time, depending on what people show me and how much I’m able to draw out of them. Sometimes, it’s the sort of thing you recognize right away, like images from television or conversations you overhear. Every once in a while, it’s not so easy to sort it all out right away, but I’ll have realizations about things later.” He shifted in his seat. “Regardless of what happens, it can seem very…intimate.” Even though he felt comfortable with Abigail, it was still difficult to offer these revelations, which he never had shared with anyone before.
Abigail regarded him with a small, mischievous smile. “Alfred, you’re blushing a little.”
Laughing at that, Alfred nodded, holding out his hands in a gesture of mock surrender. “Guilty, I suppose.” He leaned closer to her. “One other thing I saw, was your reassuring me that I could trust you, and your friends.”
“You can, Alfred,” Abigail replied, “just as I hope you know we…I…trust you, too. We trust you and we need you, and your gift.”
And now we come to it.
“I saw that, too,” Alfred said, adjusting his glasses. “The fact that I work at a bank seems important to you, and your friends.” Now he was looking around, making sure no one was eavesdropping. “You’re thinking I might be able to provide some sort of financial support.”
Abigail waited until one of the other waitresses—servers, as Alfred knew they preferred to be called these days—skated past on her way to the kitchen. She leaned even farther over the table. “I won’t lie to you, Alfred. We’re going to need resources—people and materiel—to help us reach our goals, and that takes money. It’s a means to an end, that’s all.”
Unsure that he liked where this conversation was going, Alfred was beginning to wonder if his judgment might not be clouded from the contact they shared. In the time that had passed since his “return” and subsequent release from quarantine, he never had given serious consideration to using his newfound telepathic gift for personal gain. The very notion unsettled him.
At least, until now.
“I’d need to know more,” he said after a moment, “and getting my hands on a lot of money isn’t going to be like they do it on television. I don’t know anything about skimming accounts or diverting money from one place to another. It would be easier to start by tapping into something closer to my area of expertise.”
“The safety-deposit boxes?” Abigail asked.
Alfred nodded. “I know what’s in most
of them. It’s all people think about when they go into the vault and when they come out, and I shake their hands every time.” Before she could respond to that, he held up a hand. “I don’t want to hurt anyone, or take anything from people who don’t deserve to be robbed, no matter how worthy your cause might be.” That said, Alfred was already thinking of that subset of the bank’s customer base who were too rich for their own good. Most were rude jackasses with misplaced notions of entitlement, and who took great pains to alert everyone to that fact whenever they deigned to grace the bank with their presence.
Yeah, he decided, some of those people could stand to make some charitable donations. The thought made him smile.
“I’ll come up with something,” he said, wiping his forehead at the sweat that seemed to have appeared from nowhere.
Abigail said, “I’m not asking you to commit to anything. We’ll talk about it later, and you’ll get a chance to meet my friends before you make any decisions.” Reaching for the plate at the center of the table, she offered a sheepish grin as she retrieved the last remaining fry. “Sorry, I guess I was hungrier than I thought.”
“It doesn’t take a telepath to figure that out,” Alfred replied, chuckling.
Using the french fry to trace an outline of her red lips before putting it in her mouth, she regarded him with narrowed eyes. “If you’re that good, maybe you can tell me what I’m thinking now.”
TWENTY-TWO
THE 4400 CENTER
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
“HEY, UNCLE TOMMY,” said Shawn Farrell by way of greeting, holding out his hand as Baldwin and Skouris crossed the lobby toward him. Dressed in dark slacks and matching blazer over a blue silk shirt, the younger man seemed to have aged—perhaps matured was a better word—just in the couple of weeks that had passed since their last meeting, at Jordan Collier’s funeral. Shawn looked almost at home as the new head of The 4400 Center, having inherited the post in keeping with instructions Collier had left in the event of his death.