The Assumption Code

by Melodee Elliott

  “You did this!” He lunged at Rolo.

  Margi took aim and shot him.

  The man collapsed to the ground and brought his elbows under him as he tried to rise to his feet.

  Another woman stepped around him, her hand rising with a gun in her grip.

  The young man by Margi shot her at the same moment Margi shot the man again.

  The shots echoed down the darkened hallway.

  Another man stood before them not charging and not fleeing. He looked at his comrades sprawled on the floor and then to Margi and her group.

  “You did this.” He pointed at his comrades as blood oozed from their remains.

  “We did not,” the young man said and fired at him.

  The other man stumbled back. The surprised look on his face gave way to confusion. Margi rushed to him and held him in her arms as he collapsed. If ever she could give a new life to someone, she would give it now. All menace left his face. He gazed at her, taking her in. He had someone to share his last moment with. Anyone would want that, she thought to herself. To not be alone in one’s most lonely awareness. To see a future, not for oneself, but in another, who would carry him forth as a memory. And she would, for anyone who had ever fought for something he believed in, she understood. Rivner understood. Zarnel understood.

  She watched him slip from his body with his last breath and rested him on the floor.

  “I had to,” the young man said. “What do you think he was going to do?” His eyes darted between his elders, his mannerisms becoming increasingly rigid without a response from them.

  She stood up and tried to find words. The dead man was a mere boy for all practical purposes. He’d fulfilled his part in this war and the betrayal of Margi and the others had come to bear. She’d done no better.

  “It’s alright, son,” Rolo said.

  A hand lay gently upon Margi’s shoulder. “We must go,” Tolman said. The urgency was palpable.

  They left the dead behind and ran to Rolo’s lab.

  Once safely inside, they barricaded every entrance.

  Margi choked from the smoke that now hazed around her.

  She could hear the distant commotion.

  “There.” Rolo pointed to a slab at the end of the room.

  The label overhead read Client. She approached it warily. The word now threatened her resolve. She now had a label for what she was, even had been as her days on Earth, trying to be everyone but herself.

  Rolo busied himself preparing the equipment. Various lights flickered on.

  He looked relieved. She was anything but.

  Her thoughts raced through her mind. She imagined that she and the others could make their way to the roof where The Ward was undoubtedly waiting with their hover cars. She had the wild thoughts that she and Tolman could run into the forest and even take the castle as their new home on the rocky cliffs by the ocean. She heard the waves crashing in her head and smelled the briny water. They, together with The Ward, could create a new civilization if the mob would allow. She would be with Tolman.

  Margi knew that these notions were to take place for some, but not for her. There was no coming back from this, to her Tolman and the civilization that was on the brink of such greatness. She needed to help those back home in some way that had not revealed itself to her thoughts.

  Rolo was now in charge of the technology, and he would do right and atone for having to devote his skills to DanuVitro for a time. Tolman would be at his side as a visionary, as would Byn, being Danu’s rightful leader, not a CEO with a slave population who brought about a consumption-based economy where nothing was left to consume but each other.

  Freedom needn’t come with a cost. Not really. The Great Lie was that they had in their control something never-ending, beyond the Path’s energy to the spirit himself, and to that built an empire upon the ruin of every resource they could avail themselves of. Stavon and Ferli prided themselves on their ideas. Yet an idea not fulfilling its potential would pull in the efforts of the unknown, having failures with a built-in barrier. In that, they had been consumed by their own reach, into that which they did not understand. They were limitless in their chaos and lost in their own presence.

  Margi’s war hadn’t done much better but had at least done enough in the blip of time she had been there so that others could do better. Now they could seek a future where freedom came without a cost, but if and only if they implemented their potential in magnitudes of eternity. That was the rightful capacity of Danu’s destiny. She had given them that opportunity. It would be her legacy.

  Rolo held a small device in his hand. That small object contained a code that identified her through time and space and yet didn’t contain her, didn’t define her and who she was innately, or who she would become. That field was hers upon which to create that adventure.

  Margi lay upon the slab.

  Tolman held her hand. She saw a tear form in his eye.

  They had said all they could say to each other. She would always know him as if he were near. He was now as he would always be. She looked into his eyes and saw Tolman at his purest. He was truth.

  “I understand now,” she said and felt that if there ever were a last thought one could ever have, that would satisfy. She had no words, no labels, no name by which to call herself, no desires or dreams, no regrets; simply awareness.

  He looked upon her with an acceptance, as if he would join her in her passing.

  “The time is right, Tolman,” Rolo said.

  Tolman released her hand and stepped back.

  Rolo suspended a netting of wires over her head. Their colors ramped through the rainbow and transcended to invisible waves that at times she felt. Other times she did not, for which she was grateful.

  He placed the device under a screen of light where a code of characters displayed. He touched his finger upon one of them.

  The body energized such that she felt herself release from its limbs first and eventually peeled away from the body. A moment later, she looked at him and yet could see the room from every angle.

  At last they could lay Rivner to rest. Rivner deserved it as she had kept faith with her age and through all her missteps, had managed to give her body back to Tolman, in spite of betrayal. She had achieved a tomorrow for her people.

  Margi sensed the whirl of space around her, the flight of her spirit, without the ashes of energy around her.

  The boom of an explosion made her go blank. In the moment of her passing, she sensed the flurry of dust and debris envelope the room. The mob had their prize.

  * * *

  She awoke with bright light shining into her eyes and flinched.

  “Looks good,” someone said.

  “Welcome back,” another said.

  At first, she thought that Holan had somehow brought her to his lair back on Earth, then realized that he no longer existed.

  Her eyes managed to focus. People around her chattered and bustled about.

  She heard cheering in the next room.

  “Tolman,” she said.

  “Who, dear?” the nurse asked.

  “Tolman,” Margi repeated.

  “We’ll find him,” the nurse said and scurried off.

  Margi looked through the window to the hall and heard the woman asking the others for anyone on their list by the name of Tolman. They flipped through their pages. The woman threw her hands up and went elsewhere.

  “Glad you’re back,” the doctor said.

  Her sight blurred as she drifted to sleep.

  * * *

  Margi awoke in a smaller room. Nearly every horizontal surface had a bouquet sitting atop it. A balloon swayed in the air. A soft light filtered through the draperies.

  “I told you she’s not taking interviews,” a woman’s voice came from outside the room.

  She turned her attention to her immediate environment and knew what the room was not. It was not DanuVitro. She was lying on a cushioned bed and not a padded slab. This bed had metal side rails. S
he had a tube coming from her vein. The effort of looking had already exhausted her. She took a deep breath and livened.

  She was on Earth, in a hospital bed, without Tolman. She felt her forehead where Ferli’s laser shot had grazed her head. No blemish. She wondered if Danu was in fact so far away that such time had passed between the two planets, and she was merely a record in the history of their civilization.

  A doctor entered the room.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Hi” was all she could manage.

  He checked her vitals. “You’ve come quite a ways. You were in a coma for a month.”

  “Oh. Where am I?”

  “Mount Sinai Hospital,” he said.

  “New York City,” she said as if it were the biggest cognition she’d ever had.

  “Yes.” He looked over the chart held in his hand. “We ran across something we’ve been seeing lately.”

  He went to the wall and held an X-ray of her skull to a light box. “This is your scan.”

  The image showed dots like BBs scattered across her face.

  “We found these dispersed under your skin.” He looked at her as if seeking an answer.

  Margi touched her face and felt a gauze patch.

  “We think these caused your coma. We don’t know how, but we’d like to.”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “The nanobot implants emitted energy when you were first admitted, but their wavelengths died.” He added, “We think that allowed you to recover.”

  The way he said it made her think her time on Danu was a dream, but it wasn’t.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  She startled at the notion that she would need to tell her story. The exposé that could never be told of how a hologram technology so overwhelming to a culture began in innocence and gave way to a virtual reality spiritual slavery brought on by one man who became leader and CEO of the only surviving monopoly on one planet. Nope. That story could not be told.

  He approached her bed. “We need to know who implanted those under your skin.”

  “I can’t remember,” she said and looked away.

  “Do you know a Dr. Howard?”

  She didn’t reply.

  He paced the length of floor to her. “We found documentation in your apartment with that name.”

  “Barely,” she said.

  “What were the nanobots for?” he asked.

  “They were meant to stimulate collagen under my skin during sleep.” Simple enough, she thought.

  “That makes sense. Dr. Howard had collected orbs at his home. These orbs send a sonar energy. They could interact with the implants given the right frequency. An interesting concept, really.” His words drifted. “We won’t know about them for some time. The good doctor cannot tell us. He died in his sleep days before you woke from your coma.”

  He said it in the form of a question as if she were to answer for his death.

  “Really? You know more than me,” she quipped.

  He paused for a moment. “I have one more question since we need to know if there are any more effects of these nanobots.”

  Margi gave her best neutral composure. Her insides were cringing.

  “Margi, you were very lucky.” His words came as a rebuke. “Dr. Howard was not licensed to practice medicine, nor did he even have a medical degree. From what investigators could find, he was a computer programmer. A very dangerous transferable skill, I’d say.” He waited for her response.

  She lay still, knowing that the man was a mere pawn in Holan’s madness but one with such similarity of personal and body energy that he unwittingly availed himself to him. Mr. Howard was not so dissimilar to Holan who was a scientist specializing in the body as Mr. Howard would a machine. Yet Holan actually worked in the realm of the spiritual being. She considered that he had missed the obvious point of his works, hidden within the facade of a body. He was buried in the details and failed to look beyond what he saw.

  The doctor continued. “We found four other patients. All of them have died with these implants in them. And their one doctor shows up dead.” He paused again.

  Margi was too stunned to respond.

  “When you went to work on your last day, you appeared to be fine. What made you think you would die?” he asked.

  “Die?”

  “You left a message to the world.”

  She vaguely remembered the letter at her bedside. “They made me dizzy,” she lied, remembering those first days on Danu and seeing the bodies.

  “The nanobots,” he clarified.

  “Yes. Something was wrong. I didn’t know what, and I couldn’t find him.”

  “That sounds right. He had a pop-up office.”

  The memory of it threatened to bring her back to those treacherous days. She feigned a yawn.

  “Okay. That’s enough for now,” he said. On his way out, he stopped by a side table and thumbed through some papers.

  “Here’s a copy of the article written about you while you were asleep.” He offered it to her. “If it should jog your memory, we need you to tell us anything you can remember.”

  She took hold of the sheet.

  He paused in the doorway and looked back at her. “Margi, a great many people have heard your call and care very deeply about your cause”—“and your welfare.” He winked and left her to her privacy.

  She scanned over the article, then read from the beginning. It told the story of Margi Hall, the anchorwoman from Rising in New York City, found in a coma under suspect circumstances since she had been on the air just a day before.

  They had printed her benediction. At first thought, she felt violated. Yet such artifacts were often leaked in the media. The notion wasn’t new to her. She’d participated in it too many times to merit objection to the turn of event.

  She read,

  Final thoughts to those who knew me over the years are that I have learned much from you as I told your stories to the camera. News gives us a narrative of life that is out of the ordinary. It is extraordinary. An audience lies beyond what we may see. Someone, somewhere, has heard, has seen what you have to say. I hope that I may have given you the voice you so richly deserve. Your life is extraordinary.

  Margi read the benediction again and allowed the message to resonate within her. Her life was extraordinary.

  She listened to the hum of traffic and heard an occasional angry honk by a driver mere floors below her, giving her solace that life was okay. That her life’s events had been directed by the invisible hand that was her desire for expression, the expression of who she wanted to be at any given moment.

  Her thoughts drifted to Danu and how Tolman, the light bender, had toiled, creating to the delight of his audiences while Rivner had made a moment’s decision to take her identity in another direction and lost ownership. To gain altitude from the masses, so they could gaze upon her. She had become a symbol of Stavon’s greed for self. Margi understood.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The day was bright and the afternoon air crisp with the coming fall season. Margi’s film crew was nestled at a sidewalk table, eating their sweets. The lilt of instrumental French music flowed from the pastry shop. One crewmember rummaged through her bag of macaroons, counting them.

  “Brian,” Margi said.

  “Yup,” he said and scratched his scalp through his beanie.

  “Get a shot of the crew, will you?” She paused. “Oh, and I want her shop’s sign in the frame.”

  “Got it,” he said.

  “Can you get me a good still frame for the blog while you’re at it?” the counting crewmember asked with her mouth full.

  Brian grabbed his camera and strolled down the sidewalk, spying different angles.

  Another crewmember fed a morsel of muffin to a terrier that was straining against its leash tethered to a nearby couple’s table. The couple and Margi’s crew exchanged pleasantries.

  Brian framed the storefront sign that read Claudia’s P
astries. He panned out to include the pedestrians strolling along the sidewalk fronting the nearby row houses and the elm trees releasing their withered leaves.

  Minutes later, Brian rejoined them and resumed eating his cake.

  “We had a good day,” Margi said. “Three interviews total for The Great Life series.”

  “We also had a good turnout for the survey,” one member said. She retrieved her clipboard and read, “It says here: to be my own boss; this one says, travel full-time.” She giggled. “I like this one: for someone to do my homework. And this one says: to marry a chef. Good stuff. But we also got some inventive ways they are going about it.”

  Margi sipped the last of her coffee. “It’s been a good year, and I’m thankful to have you all as members of my team.”

  “Cheers to that,” another said and held up her cup of tea.

  “To The Great Life,” Brian said. They toasted.

  “Brian,” she said. “Do the honors of a group photo?”

  Brian hopped from his seat and gathered around Margi with the others jostling for the best positions. She tried not to giggle too hard for one single snapshot. She wasn’t very successful, and he had to take several.

  She eventually said her farewells to the group. They went their separate ways.

  She strolled to a neighborhood grocery store and left with enough goods for dinner and continued on to her brownstone townhouse around the corner. She went inside and laid her purse on the entry table.

  “Polly!” she called. The American Eskimo greeted her at the door, giving her a muffled bark as a welcome home. The dog stretched and yawned and pranced as she followed her to the kitchen.

  Margi put her bag on the marble countertop and retrieved its contents. She could smell the tanginess of the cheese as she held it in her hands. “I have plans for you,” she told the cheese.

  She turned her attention to Polly, whose nails clicked on the floor. “You ready for a walk?”

  Polly hopped on her back legs and ran to the utility closet area, where a leash awaited her. Margi fit the leash on her and walked outside.

  They bound down the steps and strolled to a nearby park.