“Welcome to The Commons," a man in the video said. "Right about now, you have a lot of questions. That's normal. As a Journeyman, you're free to ask your Envoy as many as you like.”
Paul sighed again.
“Your Journey through The Commons is a big adjustment, so be patient. You have the full strength of the Envoy Corps on your side. We’re here for you, and we know what you're going through.”
Half-true, that. The boy did have the full strength of the Corps on his side: Porter. But as for knowing what they faced, his years of dusty desk duty meant The Commons was a black box. He would have felt guilty, but his time stuck in the office was unavoidable.
The administrative infrastructure of The Commons—what remained of it—operated under the disuse protocol, better known as the “use it or lose it” or “into thin air” rule. Someone had to be in the Envoy office every day even if there were no Journeys in progress. Otherwise, the office would cease to exist. Sustaining its presence required a great deal of Essence. Essence was everything, and The Commons would reassign the office to something more useful if ever the Envoys stopped using it.
When there had been thousands of Envoys and Journeys, there was no risk of that happening. When it was just Porter and no Journeys at all, disuse was his biggest worry. Thus, he had a spotless attendance record—one which, documented on blotter calendars, would have stacked up high enough to hide a tall man standing.
Bravo for him. Tough luck for Paul Reid.
Porter was rusty. He’d only just managed to change the bullet’s course, as his inner judge reminded him.
You nearly missed.
I did not miss.
But you nearly did.
Belief. The power of an Envoy ran on it. Belief in one’s strength, in the integrity of the calling, in The Commons itself. The power remained while one served, and it faded the longer one went without an assignment.
Every Envoy enjoyed a unique ability, and it was up to each one to make the most of what he or she had. Carl Levy could change attitudes at will. It seemed a silly talent early on, but Carl’s file was a perfect record of success. Porter never heard what had become of Carl. He, like many, failed to report for work one day and was never seen again.
The attitude around the office suffered.
Audra Farrelly warmed things, which also didn’t sound like much. Yet it made the difference on many a Journey. A woman who looked to be in her seventies—age was slippery in The Commons—Audra never revealed to anyone what temperatures she was capable of attaining. “Hot enough,” she’d say.
When they came for Audra, she burned two square miles and took dozens of them with her. Believe that.
“Fear is not your friend,” said the man in the video. “It’s understandable to be afraid. As a Journeyman, you’re here to determine your fate, and that can be frightening. But you have powerful friends in your corner.”
And more powerful foes in the other guy’s, Porter wanted to add. "Who is that?" he said instead, walking over to the boy.
"Mister Desmond—a life coach who volunteered at New Beginnings. But he didn't dress like this.”
Paul paused the video, freezing the black-and-white image of a chubby man who sported slicked-back hair and an argyle sweater vest. He sat stiffly on the edge of a blonde-wood table in a 1950s-era school classroom.
“These intros are a mish-mash of your memories,” Porter said. “Some real, some seen only in dreams, like The Commons itself. Memory and imaginings are its clay.”
The boy pressed play. The fifties Mr. Desmond went to great lengths to assure Paul that his Journey, tailored to his needs and his alone, would be a hard challenge but a fair one.
Porter longed for an intake counselor. Experience taught him you couldn’t get someone to believe their situation until they’d learned the particulars for themselves.
Beliefs. Knowledge.
After a string of pleasantries, the screen went blank. Paul hit the play button several times, to no effect.
Porter took the device from him but had no idea how to fix it beyond staring at its logo. It really had been a very long time. "What's a Newton?"
The boy shrugged.
Porter handed the gadget back, and Paul tossed it over his shoulder, disgusted. It landed in the rushes.
“I’m a Journeyman.”
“Yes.”
“I’m here to determine my fate.”
“Yes.”
Paul plucked a tall piece of curled grass from the roots of his tree and chewed the end of it. “I’m dead.”
“Not necessarily. Not yet.”
Hours later, Porter and Paul still had no ride. They couldn’t tell how many hours, as tracking time hadn’t worked since—well, Porter didn’t know. He was back in the center of the road, trying to will a car to appear.
The boy sat in his spot under the tree, twisting his ring and occasionally pulling up a piece of grass. “I don’t need your help,” he said.
At least, that’s what it sounded like. “I’m sorry?”
“I don’t know you. So I don’t need you.”
Porter’s old director referred to that as “Ar” in her periodic table of Journeyman reactions: angry rejection. It was common, especially in the younger ones. Recognizing their situation, they tried to gain control over it. Many rejected the only people who could help them, thinking that was a route to independence.
“Where are you from, Paul?”
“You know.”
“Humor me.”
He considered his answer with a dark look and executed another grass stalk. “Nowhere. All over.”
“Well, in your hometown of Allover, did you ever see a man get shot in the back with his own bullet?”
The boy hesitated, then shook his head.
“Ever blink and wind up somewhere else? Were you ever told that a fresh injury was gone—and just like that, it was?”
Paul prodded the area around his eye.
“Doubting me is a luxury you can’t afford.” Porter peered down the road again. “It’s already difficult enough to reach Journey’s End.”
“Where am I going?”
“That’s up to you.”
Paul sighed and pulled up another piece of grass.
“Jonas.”
A woman’s voice—one Porter knew well. He turned and saw only Paul, who was dozing. “Audra?”
The boy opened his eyes and blinked his sleep away. Before he remembered to don his street veil of toughness, he was but a child waking in a strange place. “Anything coming?” he said.
Porter shook his head and resisted the urge to shush him. Was it really her? If so, had Paul heard? He hadn’t woken up until Porter spoke.
“Audra?” Porter said in a stage whisper, facing the road again.
“Return me from the wilderness, Jonas. Unless you don’t want my help.” If it was Audra, she was having a jolly time at his expense—which had been a favorite hobby of hers. “You always were the loner. And you were never careful with Corps property.”
The Newton.
Porter checked Paul again. He was oblivious. He couldn’t hear her.
“Don’t let the boy see,” she said. “I mean it. That’s as important as anything else you do.”
Porter concentrated on the device, picturing it in his mind where it lay in the rushes. He gave his walking staff a twitch, and the Newton appeared in his free hand. He curled it under his sleeve, blocking the device from Paul’s view, and dropped it into his coat pocket.
Is it really you, Audra?
“If you’re trying to ask me something, I can’t hear you think.”
“Is it you?”
“Is it you?” She giggled—the only person he’d ever known who could laugh like that and still maintain the dignity of a head of state. “There’s only one Jonas, and I’m assigned to him. In truth, I volunteered. The Envoy’s Envoy, if you will. How are you? I’ve missed you. I’ve missed working with you.”
Porter was dumbstruck.
“This is some trip you’re on,” she said. “Some Journey.”
“The boy, you mean. I’m on no Journey.”
“No?” Audra Farrelly’s laugh was a blend of distortion and mirth. “Oh, Jonas.” More static in the mix. “Aren’t we all?”
“We can say goodbye now,” the boy said.
Porter thought he saw something approaching in the distance, a gnat drawn in on a double-yellow tether, but wasn’t sure of it. He no longer trusted his eyes. “Where were you going on that bus?”
“Did you hear me? I said we can say goodbye.”
Porter said nothing.
Paul sighed. He had a talent for that. “Why do you keep asking me stuff you already know?”
Porter waited for his answer.
“Gaia,” Paul said, finally.
“Say again?”
“Out in the desert. Gaia. The earth mother. It’s a festival. A place to—never mind.” He stirred the grass with his foot. “You wouldn’t get it.”
Now Porter was certain he saw something coming. “I know who Gaia is. Greek myth. A friend of mine met her once—and you’d be surprised by what I get.” Yes, definitely something. “This is a place? The place you want to go?”
The boy nodded.
“Then that’s where we’re headed.”
“I’m going by myself. You’re not getting us anywhere.”
The sound of an engine now.
Paul got up and joined him. “You don’t know anything about me.”
A seventies-era custom van came over the rise, bearing down on them with an eight-cylinder growl.
Paul stepped back to the side of the road. Porter remained in its center.
The van closed in without slowing, its driver unseen behind the tint of the windshield.
Porter raised his staff.
The purple hood grew larger with alarming speed. On it, a painted werewolf tore its way through a bleeding full moon.
“You think I haven’t traveled on my own?” Paul strained to make himself heard over the engine. “I know the world.”
Porter adjusted his grip but didn’t budge.
At the point where the driver had to choose between stopping or running Porter down, the van squealed to a halt. Its front end pitched forward, nearly kissing him on the chin, then rocked back. The transmission shifted into park.
The Envoy walked around to the passenger side, which twinkled with violet-glitter lacquer and bubble letters identifying the vehicle as the “Van-Tasta.” Its motto hung below its name: “No prisoners. No mercy.”
“Your world, perhaps,” he told Paul as the window lowered with a hum, revealing a bulky man whose face was divided down the middle. The right side was a sea of scarred flesh with a milky eye floating in it, the left pocked steel, circuit boards, and a glowing red lens where the left eye should have been. “Not this one.”
Part Two: The Journey
7
Pinkies
The knee was a whisper, not a scream, thanks to the pinkies. The Minute Clinic doctor who prescribed the painkiller at the company’s Wednesday Wellness Wing told Annie that the pink capsules were formulated for subtle benefit. She’d be sharp, her pain dull.
They did make the throb tolerable, but Annie was most definitely not sharp. She focused well enough to be competent. Excellence was out of range.
It didn’t help that the Metrics team was burst-tasking again, launching fusillades of data requests into the project-management queue. Numbers. Now.
If Annie had to write queries in the bathroom in order to turn them around faster, that was just ginchy with Chez Metrics. In fact, if she was dumb enough to mention the idea to them, they’d make it a stretch goal.
Comfort was not a priority, the woman assigning the requests noted in the comments field, because it didn’t matter to Mr. Truitt or Mr. Brill. The two men required twice-a-day updates on resource throughput as an assurance that system integrity was bulletproof. If those updates were late, productivity inquiries were launched, and the subjects of said inquiries might find themselves on the firing line.
Yes, the woman used the phrase “firing line.”
Annie wondered how much the lady who typed these things meant them. And what, if a damn thing, did she know about being shot at?
The job was as good as others Annie had worked, and better than some, but that made her concern over losing it even worse. She was good with data—very good—which should have granted her some modicum of employment security.
It didn’t.
Annie’s cubicle was housed in Distributed Common Ground System Unit Thirteen. Monitors and resource graphs claimed eighty percent of its surface area. She felt most engaged with the world when lit by the glow of realtime data. Her gift for analysis had been burnished by years of wrestling mammoth volumes of information.
She had Operation Iraqi Freedom and two in-country stints to thank for that. She also had it to thank for the steel-packed bomb, hidden in a rotting dog in the middle of a Mosul road, that gave her the gift of career transition just in time for Operation New Dawn. It robbed her of enjoyable walks, but moved her to a new line of work: processing surveillance-drone video at a desk instead of watching friends die in the field.
Her skills landed her in Brill’s organization, which paid her enough for a two-bedroom apartment, food, and a life. And if she were ever able to live it free from the pinky-blown mists, she might even enjoy it.
But she didn’t feel at home. At all.
There was too much unease. Her team monitored the stability of Brill’s colossal data infrastructure, and she was one of the key point people for the data about that data. It made for sleepless nights worrying about the tiers of backup systems and whether or not they could be relied on in a sprinkler malfunction or sector failure.
Even when she did sleep for a few hours, it meant dreaming. And all of the dreams were bad. She suspected the pinkies on that front, too. Dreams about things that had happened, like the bomb and the screws. Dreams about things that hadn’t but seemed real at three in the morning, like the snow and the bus.
Still, on balance, the pinkies and their fog were partners of a sort. They allowed her to get her work done—just not as well as she would have when clear-headed.
The other data jocks had their crutches and saviors, too. Tara was a texter. At lunch every day, her thumbs worked the glass of her smartphone like a massage therapist. Her colleagues had to remind her to eat. For Melissa and Sinead, it was the cafeteria TV. They sat at the break-room table closest to the hanging screen, the twenty-four–hour newscast their lover for the hour. But if you asked them what was happening out in the world, they couldn’t say. They didn’t much want to know, either. Watching was the thing, not the thing they watched.
The chief concern for all was the data and the warehouses each of them tended. Annie worked the flow like it was her child, or, in drier terms, a reactor core always on the verge of overheating. Those were the visuals the pills delivered while she toiled: a tangle of sweating pipes about to blow, a beehive unable to contain its colony, a school of fish tacking in unison, invariably threatening to break ranks and scatter.
The data was an entity unto itself. The jocks and analysts didn’t know what it represented, ultimately. They weren’t meant to. But it was needy, and they were needed. That was the job.
“Are last night’s performance numbers ready?”
The voice would have been startling, but the pinkies slowed its trip from ear to brain. The meds were on guard, subjecting all auditory input to a full-body scan before allowing it through the gates.
A short, solid woman with a man’s jawline stood at the entrance to Annie’s cubicle.
“I’m working on them now,” Annie said. “You can add yourself as a watcher to the request if you like. Then you’ll know when I upload.”
The woman stepped over the threshold. She didn’t require permission to be in Annie’s space. There was something familiar about that.
“N
o need to watch,” she told Annie. “It’s my request. They all are.” She waited for that to sink in. “But I asked the wrong question. I know the numbers aren’t ready, so I’ll rephrase. When?”
“An hour. I’m sorry I’m not as quick as some people would like, but I prefer to check and make sure they’re right rather than right on time.”
The woman sucked her teeth, registering the push-back. “I’ll expect them in an hour. As will Mister Truitt.”
“I understand. And please, if you have any other concerns, don’t trouble yourself with coming over. You can continue to tell me about the firing line by email.”
The woman tilted her head, as if seeing Annie in a new light. There definitely was something familiar about her. “I prefer correspondence to be tracked in the system. That way, there’s no after-the-fact editing.”
“I understand. But what’s your address, in case I need to avoid system lag?”
“If there’s system lag, you need to report it.” She stepped back out of the cubicle. “And my address is on every request I log. June-dot-Medill.”
8
She Shifted Her Gun in Her Lap
The Van-Tasta roared down the highway, hidden speakers assailing its occupants with shredded-guitar salvos from all directions. The wine-grape shag carpet covering every surface but the leather of the twin captain’s chairs up front quivered along like cilia. On the built-in refrigerator, the fibers danced. Even the wings of a jellybean-sized housefly trapped in the vehicle bounced with the noise when it landed on the front of the mini-bar.
Paul had hitched many rides with those eager to show off their audio. Usually, they were generous with transportation but not conversation. This driver, Vizzie, was happy to be an exception.
The Journeyman Page 4