Oh my God, I’m going to die, he thought.
The spots exploded to swirls of neon rainbows, then collapsed into darkness.
FORTY-SIX
A HOUSE IS NOT A HOME
“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!”
David grunted as one of the kids bouncing on the bed bounced a little too close and crashed onto his chest. The clock on the bedside table read 9:40. He rubbed his eyes and sat up.
“Morning kids,” he croaked. “You guys decide to let me sleep in this morning?”
“Mom said to let you rest. She said you had a long night,” said Aiden, as he rolled somersaults at the end of the bed. “But we wanted to wake you up.”
“She says it’s time for breakfast and we should come get you,” Missy still wore her pink pajama dress. Most weekends it was a battle to make her change.
Scratching at his beard, David asked, “What day is it?”
“You’re silly, Daddy,” Aiden laughed.
“It’s Saturday,” Missy grabbed his hand and tugged, trying straining against David’s weight to pull him out of bed. “Come on! Breakfast time, then the zoo! Remember?”
“I thought the zoo was closed,” David said. He moved to the edge of the bed and pulled on his sheepskin slippers.
“Not anymore!” she shouted. “Hurry up!”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go back to sleep,” David teased. “You don’t like the zoo anyway.”
“Da-ad. Stop it! Just come downstairs and eat.”
Alice handed him a cup of tea. “English Breakfast. Two swoops of honey—just how you like it.” As he took the cup she leaned in and kissed his cheek. “Good to see you, sleepyhead. I hope you got some rest. You were out pretty late.”
Taking a seat at the table, David poured a bowl of cereal and splashed some coconut milk on top. “Late? What time did I get in? I can’t even remember.”
“Oh, silly. It must have been almost five.”
“Daddy was awake until five o’ clock? In the morning?” Aiden’s eyes lit up at the idea of staying up so late. For him, the world ended at 8 o’clock. 8:30 if he wanted to read in bed. The idea it was even possible to stay up until the next morning boggled his mind.
“Oh, yeah. I guess that sounds right. I was pretty wiped,” David scooped a spoonful of cereal. The truth though was David didn’t remember coming home that night. The last thing he remembered was putting on that funny mesh hat at the office and letting the system run the neural scan.
“Well, it was only a few hours, but hopefully it was enough to give you a recharge,” said Alice. “I’m gonna go upstairs and get ready. It’s zoo day!”
“I remember,” David snorted. “How could I forget with these two little munchkins reminding me every second they can?”
Aiden and Missy ignored the jab from their father. They were too busy scouring the back of the cereal boxes for anything they might have missed the last hundred times they read it.
----
“I’m gonna hop in the shower,” David shouted from the bathroom. Alice had already gotten out and was busy in the bedroom getting dressed and putting on her mascara. He grabbed the gray towel from the rack, hung it on the hook inside the shower and turned on the water. Standing in the back, out of the spray, the rising steam warmed his naked body. After a minute of standing there, relaxing to the hum of the water and adjusting the temperature until it was perfect, he stepped under the showerhead. The heat immediately did wonders for the headache pulsing in the back of his brain. He took a deep breath, inhaled the steam and let it out in a big sigh.
A few minutes soaking in the spray, and from somewhere down the hall, Alice shouted, “I’m ready. You almost done?”
“A few more minutes,” he shouted back. He tilted his head back and let the water run through his hair, out of his eyes, and reached for the shampoo.
His hair. Dropping the bottle to the shower’s tile floor, where it hit with a thud, he reached up to his head. Hair. Didn’t he shave it all the night before? Didn’t the transfer require direct contact with his skin?
“Alice, can you come here for a second?” His heart raced as he ran his fingers through the wet mop on top of his head. He turned off the water and wrapped the towel around himself and Alice poked her head through the door.
“Something wrong?” she asked, a big smile spread across her face.
“What time did you say I got back?” he asked.
“Oh, it was sometime around five. I’m not sure. I just know the sun was only starting to rise.”
“This might sound weird, but can you answer a question for me?” David paused, then added, “And don’t think I’m crazy. I’m just tired … but where was I last night?”
“David, are you okay? You were out doing that thing with your friends. Whatever you agreed to do for those new friends of yours. Chris and Paul,” she answered. “Is there something wrong? Are you having memory problems? The doctors said you might … but that was a while ago.”
“Last night, before I left. Do you remember me shaving my head? I specifically remember arguing with you about it. You said you hated to see me do it, but I told you it would grow back quick enough.”
“David, I’m not sure what you’re—”
“Look at this. Look at my head, Alice! How did it grow back so fast? This is impossible!” David’s heart continued to race as his speech turned to shouts. The headache returned, three times worse than before and he could feel his muscles starting to tighten. His breath came in short, quick breaths. “TELL ME WHAT’S HAPPENING!” he demanded.
----
The screen cast the only light in the dark room. Its display showed the model of a fully mapped brain. David looked around but couldn’t make anything else out in the shadows. After a few moments his eyes adjusted from the contrast of the computer monitor to the darkness around him. Aside from the computer desk, much like his desk at work, the rest of the room was empty. No furniture. No clocks, no windows. No doors. Just blackness stretching out in every direction.
“H-hello?” His voice squeaked as he talked, barely audible, even in the soundless space he now occupied. Clearing his throat, he gave it another try, more forcefully this time. “Hello? Is anyone there?”
A change on the screen brought his focus back to the monitor. Now, instead of a brain scan, he saw a series of square images, in rows and columns. Each of them showed something different from the other, but they all still had a similar feel to them. One showed a stairwell. Another, a busy street, people filling the sidewalk on their ways to and from wherever their lives were taking them. A park. A room filled with massive tanks of green water. A hospital reception area. A familiar room, with a familiar bed, and a familiar figure sleeping.
He reached forward and tapped on the image of with the bed and it expanded, taking over the entire screen. Leaves swaying in the breeze outside the window blocked the sunlight and cast shadows on the wall. It wasn’t a picture. It was a video feed.
David tapped the screen again, this time on the bed, and the image zoomed in further. Yes, what he saw was unmistakable. There was no way David wouldn’t recognize that face.
“Funny isn’t it? How seeing something so familiar can surprise us when presented out of context?” David cringed as two hands lay themselves upon his shoulders, then relaxed as he recognized the voice. It sounded like love. “I understand you’re frightened, David,” said Alice. “I can sense it in you. And I’m not surprised.”
“What—what is this? Is that who I think it is?”
“Of course, it is,” Alice continued, her voice like silk.
“But … how?”
“It’s simple, David. You’re here, and you’re there. But the two of you are separate. Body and soul, separated. Each existing, but independently from one another.”
“Am I dead?”
“Don’t be stupid, David,” Alice laughed. It was a simple laugh, almost forced. Like she knew she should be laughing, and wanted to laugh, but had to consciously decid
e to do so. “You’re not dead. You’re somewhere else. You’ve been here a long time. You just didn’t know it. But I knew. I’ve been watching you. Ever since you came here I’ve been watching, and I have to say, you are fascinating.”
David tapped the screen again, zooming in on the face of the man in the bed. There was no mistaking it, it was him. “This is a joke, right? Some kind of test or something? You find a video of me sleeping, then play it back …”
“It’s not a joke, David. Besides where would a place like this exist? A place of nothing—nothing other than what I create for you? A place where your beloved wife can exist side by side with you for eternity?”
Spinning around in his chair, David turned to face the woman behind him. The woman whose voice sounded like Alice’s. Whose touch felt like love. But behind him, all that existed was that never-ending expanse of nothing.
FORTY-SEVEN
PLEASE AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS
Weeks later, David woke up. For him, however, the time had no meaning. The last thing he remembered was Juliet shoving a metal rod into the base of his skull and promising to bring back some sanity. Now he found himself in a bed, in familiar room. A room he’d been in before. Probably the same room he occupied back in his first stay at the facility.
After a few hours wait, Juliet came back into the room. Today she wore red.
“Well, how do you feel?” she asked.
In the few hours spent in the room since waking, David had asked himself the same question—and the honest truth was he felt great. Better than he felt in ages. His body, although a little stiff at first, felt rested and ready to go. But the bigger difference was something he couldn’t explain, other than to say he felt whole again. Before, when he tried to consciously dredge up memories from his past, all he found were fragments of dream. But now, those visions of his past, now they felt real. Like his mind embraced them and pulled them in as truths, rather than confused visions. Instead of his fruitless internal searches, he now could recall them with ease—something he had trouble doing weeks before, even minutes after experiencing them in his sleep.
“I feel … like me,” he said, smiling.
“About the best we can hope for.” Juliet returned the smile. “We’ve been keeping an eye on you as we brought you out of stasis, and everything seems to be in tip-top shape. The thing is, since we’ve had you here for so long, we started getting anxious.”
“How so?” David pulled his pants on. Hospital staff delivered a new set of clothes a few hours after he woke. Tailored to match his size perfectly, but best of all, clean.
“There’s been chatter. Nothing we can decipher, but something’s going on. I think they’re looking for you,” she said. “You need to get back out there, David. You need to find out what the hell it is they have planned. We’re worried it’s something much worse than a bomb on a train this time.”
A surge of anger washed over David. “I thought I was done. Wasn’t that the deal? I’m your spy while you fix my memories, then we’re done?”
Juliet shook her head. “That wasn’t the deal David. But I don’t want to argue about this with you either. There are lives at stake here and we need you to help save them. Go out there, reconnect with Calvin, and get us some info.”
David considered asking the rhetorical “or what?” but he already had a good idea what the answer to that would be. Besides, he wanted to return to his people—and most of all, to Rosa. To explain what was happening. Why they took him. Why he brought pain to her home. Why he loved her and hoped she could forgive him.
“Calvin? He’s alive?”
“Yes. He’s alive, and he’s here in Plasticity. Our surveillance has picked him up on several occasions.”
“Why don’t you bring him in and ask him yourself?”
“David, you know as well as I do that Calvin Simon isn’t the type of person who talks. All we’d do is tip them off that we’ve been watching them, and then they’d just burrow deeper underground.”
“Well, won’t sending me back into that hornet’s nest do the same thing? There’s no way they’re going to trust me after all this.”
“You forget, David. While you’ve been out we’ve been processing everything your brain collected. Since the info’s still limited to your memories and your experiences; we still don’t know why The Cause wants you so bad. But according to Rosa you’re the most important man in the world. They need you—and we want to find out why.”
David took a few minutes to think this over, looking out the window of his room, past the trees waving their leaves, and down to the city filled with everyday people living their everyday lives. He put his hand to his head, ruffling his sandy hair while he considered his options.
“Fine. Release me.”
“You’re free to go whenever you want.”
David gathered the few possessions he had from the desk and walked to the door.
“Be aware though, we updated you,” said Juliet. “We can’t rely on weekly dumps, so you’re now on broadband wireless. There’s a higher risk of hack, of course, but we need you to send us updates as soon as you have them.”
“And how do I do that?”
“Same as before. When you’re clear for a temporary shutdown so a backup can process, all you have to do is think the magic words. The rest will take care of itself.”
FORTY-EIGHT
HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN, JIGGIDY-JOG
It didn’t take long for The Cause to find him. Apparently, they had eyes on the medical center for the last few weeks and had been getting intermittent updates from a janitor sympathetic to their goals. Each day brought the same news: no news. David was in stasis—but staff kept attending to him. Patience was the name of the game.
Then, one day, word came. David was awake and he was being released. Anything beyond that remained unknown: how much they knew, whether he’d been breached. But it didn’t matter. Rosa was right, he was important. So very important. And they intercepted him almost the second he stepped out the door.
Back at the safe house, without Bethany, the mood was different from before. More somber. Less full of life. But still, there was life—and a lot of it. Dozens of people David never met before milled about the living room and kitchen, talking animatedly to each other. Their conversations ceased immediately when David entered the room. One of the men started to clap, and the others joined in. David stared at him.
“It’s great to have you back, sir,” said one. Others patted him on the back.
“Give him room!” The man who intercepted David on his way out of the hospital escorted him through the now silent crowd. The mass of strangers looked on expectantly as they parted to let David through the house to the stairs leading to the second floor.
Upstairs, the master bedroom that had once been Bethany’s was now stripped of all its comforts. It now served as a war room with a table in the center with Calvin sat on the opposite side. He rose when David entered the room and rushed to greet him. The two shared a handshake, from which Calvin pulled him in to a full-bodied hug.
“David. It’s so good to see you. Are you okay?”
“Man, Calvin. It’s great to see you too.” Calvin returned to his seat, and David took the chair across from him. “I’m doing well. Great, actually. How are you?”
At the question, a tear welled up in the corner of Calvin’s eye. He looked down and brushed it away.
“Bethany? She didn’t make it, did she?”
“You saw her,” he whispered. “You saw what they did.”
David nodded. “I hoped maybe you guys had some kind of tech that could bring her back. Like you did with me.”
“It would be possible, yes. But what we did for you. To bring you back … that took massive resources, and a lot of luck,” he said. “But we’re running out of resources—and we can’t afford any spare luck. We need every last bit we have.”
The two talked for a few minutes, as Calvin filled David in on the work completed since The Socie
ty took him. Mostly the past few weeks had been spent repairing the damage to Garfield, tending to the wounded, and burying those who didn’t make it. Like Bethany. Calvin sent word back to Plasticity commanding all eyes dedicated to David, watching for any news as to what they were doing with him. He, himself arrived a few days earlier. Security posed little problem, which he admitted made him nervous, and David explained The Society did, in fact know he was here.
“What did they do to you, David? Why did they take you?”
“They said they were worried. I hadn’t checked in and they’d been picking up increased chatter of something big coming from The Cause. They needed me to give them my memory dump, whatever I had, even if it meant exposing me. Even if it meant hurting others,” David said.
The good news is, they’ve restored my memories. The past few weeks, while I’ve been out, they’ve been running a merge. I’m all caught up.”
“Are you serious?” Calvin stood up from his chair and started to pace the room. “That’s fantastic. Amazing. That means … oh my God … David—I mean we’d need to confirm it … I have to go. I’ll be back soon. In the meantime, stay here, in the safe house. I think we might be ready.”
FORTY-NINE
ROCKWELL
David looked back at the computer screen. The bed where he watched himself sleep was now empty. He zoomed out, back to the screen with all the tiles. He found another, this one of what looked like a retirement community. Elderly people moved around the space, chatting, playing cards … chess. He swiped to the next panel, another view from inside the home, he guessed. Here, beds were lined up in rows, dozens in a room, with barely enough room between each for a person to walk comfortably. A few held the bodies of people taking an afternoon nap. The rest of the beds remained empty.
Closing the window, he scrolled through dozens more snapshots and stopped on one of an alley filled with even more people. Makeshift beds crafted from rags. A homeless colony. Two screens over, he found another. Then another. The people here all looked unhealthy. But not the kind of unhealthy from the sickness out in the Green Zone. A more natural malady. Emaciation. Starvation.
The Unfortunate Expiration of Mr David S Sparks Page 20