The REM Precept

by J. M. Lanham

She replied, “IN GEORGIA?”

  He motioned for his men to make for the exits as dust from the shuddering ceiling began to drift down to the lobby floor.

  Now was her chance. Her eyes met the Consultants’ from across the room, then darted up to give the unspoken order. They made for the stairwell and soon disappeared amongst the chaos.

  Lancaster stood motionless and watched the spectacle as federal agents climbed over one another to escape through the revolving door at the front entrance. She’d never witnessed an event like this, but she’d heard about it after debriefing Kovic and Cline and Ramírez the week before. The quaking walls. The intolerable noise. The unseen wavelengths that seemed to tune in to some primal radio station in everyone’s mind, sending them into mass hysteria and running for the doors.

  Or, maybe that was just what people did when a building started to shake.

  No, thought Lancaster. That was too easy. Regardless of the current state of Asteria HQ, no event sanctioned by Mother Nature had a hand in this. This was something else; something more sinister; something bearing an uncanny resemblance to the way her subordinates had described the event at Skyline.

  Lancaster looked up and around, mesmerized by the trembling structure from within, and that’s when she came to the gut-wrenching revelation that Cline wasn’t just in Atlanta.

  He was at Asteria.

  ***

  “WHAT IN THE HELL IS GOING ON OUT THERE?” Fenton yelled through the open door to the isolated server room.

  “Never mind that,” Paul answered. “How close are we?”

  Fenton checked the computer screen and replied, “Eighty-seven percent.”

  Paul nodded from across the room as he sat next to Claire, their backs against a barricade of server towers blocking the outer door. He turned to her and asked, “We’re not going to make it, are we?”

  She didn’t have to answer. The look alone was enough.

  Inside the room, the trembling skyscraper wrought havoc on the server towers as circuits blew and showers of sparks scattered across the floor. Lights flickered and ceiling panels shook loose as white particles drifted down like snowflakes all around them.

  “Funny,” Claire said. “I always thought I’d die in the snow.”

  Paul’s brow furrowed as Claire explained. “When I was a kid living in Kansas I used to fall asleep in the snow. Something about it was just peaceful, especially on those still winter days when the weather had passed and the skies were cold and clear. Really calmed me down. Anyway, my dad would warn me against it every time I left the house, but I never listened. That was until he found me passed out in a snowdrift, dangerously close to going to sleep for good.”

  “And that was the last time you fell asleep in the snow?”

  “Uh-huh. I’d never seen my dad so scared before. Really got my attention. But still, the feeling I got just lying there has always stayed with me, like it was the closest I’ve ever gotten to God or something. And I always had a feeling that’s how I’d check out.” She looked around and said, “But I don’t know. Maybe I was right all along. Just couldn’t see it until now.”

  “I never had a clue how I’d go out,” Paul said, looking around, “but I was hoping it’d be better than this.”

  “We don’t get to choose our destiny, Paul. Just have to work with what we’ve got right here, right now.”

  The comment reminded him of Michelle. He chuckled nervously and said, “You know what the worst part is, Claire? It’s that I had this wonderful life, this wonderful wife and kid who would’ve given me all the attention, all the love in the world I would’ve ever needed, and I squandered it. Every single day I squandered it, always worrying about the future and bitching about the past and inventing new things to get upset about when right there, right then and there in the present, everything was fine, just absolutely one hundred percent fine.

  “That’s something Michelle used to always say when I’d start in on a new problem, that I needed to live in the moment, in the here and now.” He smiled and said, “Whenever I’d go off on one of my rants she would do this thing where she’d put her hand on my cheek, look me dead in the eyes, and say, ‘That was then. This is now. And I’m right here, and everything’s all right.’ She’d do that, and sometimes I’d completely forget what in the hell I was even talking about.”

  A metallic creak interrupted Paul and roared through the air, like an enormous steel beam buckling under intense pressure. On the far side of the room, close to Fenton’s position, a server popped and burst into flames, blocking his escape from the isolated server room. He yelled from inside, “NINETY-THREE PERCENT! WE’RE NOT GONNA MAKE IT!”

  Paul peered into the flames across the room as they flickered and twisted toward the ceiling. In the center of the hypnotizing yellow-and-red glow a face emerged. It wasn’t just any face; no, this one looked familiar, like an old friend coming to their aid …

  “Dawa?”

  Puzzled, Claire asked, “What’d you say?”

  “Nothing,” he answered, unable to take his eyes off the flames. What was he seeing? A mirage? A hallucination? Some sort of gas leak in the room? Then, a voice:

  “Mr. Freeman? Mr. Freeman? Can you hear me, Mr. Freeman?”

  He turned to Claire. “Tell me you heard that.”

  “Heard what?”

  Across the room, the face in the flames was gone. Paul rubbed the illusion from his eyes and searched for Fenton through the flames. He yelled, “Get out of there, Fenton. NOW!”

  “Ninety-seven percent!”

  “Good enough. Now move it!”

  He thought he could see Fenton waving the okay from behind the flames as he grabbed his backpack to shield himself from the fire right outside the door. Then, another enormous jolt; this one sounding (and feeling) like the walls were caving in; like after all of the building’s resolve to stand up to the immeasurable force emanating from the parking garage beneath the building, it had finally cried mercy.

  Paul watched in horror as a crack emerged in the floor about twenty feet in front of him, separating him from Fenton as it quickly spread across the floor to the walls, and finally, the ceiling. The far ceiling caved in and he lost sight of Fenton, his screams carried down with the entire north side of the building like a chunk of land peeling off the side of a mountain in a mudslide.

  Just like that, Fenton was gone.

  Claire reached over and held Paul’s cheek as the building began to tilt toward the jagged opening that had taken Fenton away. “Listen to me,” she said through tears. “Everything’s going to be all right. No matter what happens here, no matter how scared we are right in this very moment, everything’s going to be all right. Okay?”

  He laid his hand on hers and said, “Okay, Claire. I believe you.”

  The building tilted further now as pieces of ceiling and servers began to slide across the floor and out of the opening. Soon there wouldn’t be anything left for Paul and Claire to hold onto. Still, they searched for something, anything.

  Another shift, and Paul went first, sliding across the slick linoleum floor toward the opening, desperately grasping at anything that might slow (and hopefully prevent) his descent. The edge was fast approaching, with serrated bundles of wires and pipes and beams protruding into the clear August night. He closed his eyes and reached back one last time as he went over, and that’s when he felt the mother of all jolts to his left shoulder as he clung tightly to the bundle of wires in his left fist.

  “HANG ON, PAUL!” Claire yelled from above. He couldn’t see her, couldn’t see how she’d kept from falling, but was relieved that she hadn’t.

  He looked down toward his feet, dangling high above the north entrance to Asteria above what looked like a warzone of concrete and rubble below. Then he looked up at his grip. His hands were slick. Sweaty. And he was starting to slip.

  Claire called once more, but her voice was distant now. Everything was getting quiet, the sounds of twisting metal and creaking walls and the cr
umbling façade of Asteria’s skyscraper morphing into a loud ringing in Paul’s ears.

  Then, the voice again:

  “Let go, Mr. Freeman. It’s okay. You can let go now.”

  Who was this? What was this?

  “Trust me, Mr. Freeman. Just let go.”

  Trust you? Seriously? He looked down once more. God, it was so far. No way a person could survive such a fall. And you’re telling me to just let go?

  “It’s okay, Paul.”

  The voice had changed now. It was familiar. Affectionate. And for some reason, it immediately hushed the skeptic in Paul.

  He could trust it. Could trust that everything was going to be okay.

  He closed his eyes, thought about his wife and son, then loosened his grip and let go, falling far through the humid night air.

  Down, down, into the unknown.

  Chapter 30:

  The Pinch

  “Mr. Freeman. Please. You can let go, Mr. Freeman.” The nurse begged the patient to loosen his white-knuckle grip as she worked to pry the hand off her arm one finger at a time, but it was no use. She called to the doctor for a little help when Michelle leaned over to whisper in her husband’s ear.

  “It’s okay, Paul. You can let go now.”

  His eyes rolled and fluttered as the blur of a fluorescent ceiling and two silhouettes standing over him began to clear. He lifted up a hand to rub the fog from his eyes and flake the crust of sleep off at the corners. Then he saw her. Those eyes. Those big, pretty, hazel eyes. Long, sandy blonde hair draped down like a beautiful curtain across the right side of the bed.

  “Michelle? My God …” He looked around. “Where—where am I?”

  “You’re at Grady, in the ICU. You were in an accident, Paul. A car accident, on your way to work.”

  He gripped the side rail as he struggled to sit up in bed, determined to get his bearings back. Confused, “That’s impossible, Michelle. I was just at Asteria. We had to get the Ocula files back, but then the building started collapsing, and I was falling, and I—I …”

  “I know it’s a lot to take in,” Michelle said as she gently urged him back down. “We don’t have to talk about it right now, and I don’t want you getting upset. You’ve been through a lot and you need your rest.”

  A doctor entered the room and stood by the nurse. “Well, well, well,” she said. “Look who finally decided to wake up.” She spoke with the nurse in hushed tones as Michelle stood by the bed, hands clasping Paul’s while Aaron slept quietly in a bassinet nearby.

  Michelle smiled and said, “It’s just so good to hear your voice.”

  “Yours too, Michelle.” The light from the window behind her caught his right eye and sent a sliver of pain through his right temple. He winced and instinctively reached to soothe it.

  Suddenly, he remembered what had happened. The truck. The sunbeam. The lane change on the way to work …

  “What is it, Paul?”

  “Nothing. Just my head. Got this killer headache all of a sudden.”

  “How bad, scale of one to ten?” Michelle asked, nursing reflexes arising.

  “I don’t know, a six maybe?”

  Coming from Paul, she knew that meant a nine. She turned to the doctor and nurse and said, “Can we get him something here?”

  The doctor stepped forward. “Don’t worry, Michelle. We’ll make sure he’s comfortable.” He turned to the nurse to put in an order when Paul lifted up again, clinging to Michelle’s arm. Desperately, “Don’t let them give me any narcotics, Michelle. I don’t want to go to sleep again.”

  “But Paul, you’re in pain and you need to rest—”

  “I’ve rested enough, Michelle. Please, just don’t let them dope me up right now.” He lowered himself back down onto the bed, surprised by how exhausting sitting up and talking had been as every muscle in his body now burned like he’d just run a marathon.

  “We’re not going to dope you up, Paul, but you do need to rest, okay?” She stepped over to talk to the doctor and nurse. Paul wasn’t able to make out what they were saying, but he didn’t want to listen anyway. Listening was so tiresome. So was talking.

  Instead, he turned his head to look out the window, lifting a heavy hand to shield his right eye while gazing into a cloudless Atlanta sky with his left. Aside from the car accident, he didn’t have a clue what in the hell was going on, but he didn’t care. The sun was shining, he could wiggle his toes, and he was alive and in one piece.

  And no one was chasing him. Not a bad situation to be in. Not bad at all.

  ***

  That evening, Paul awoke to a voice in the room that was quite unexpected. He lifted his eyes to see his brother Alex standing in front of the television mounted on the wall in front of his bed, fumbling with the remote and cursing the man on the screen. Paul reached for the button by his bed and raised up to get a better listen.

  “Jonas Perch, that bastard,” he mumbled as he slapped the remote and pointed it back at the screen, but the sticking buttons failed to get a signal through. The man on the screen continued to preach as Alex stepped over to the cracked door and yelled out into the hall, “HEY! Who keeps turning the TV in 702 to this shit, anyway?” A nurse at the nurses’ station looked up, rolled her eyes, and went back to charting. He stepped back in and noticed his brother was finally awake.

  “Well hey, man! How the hell are ya?”

  “Hey, Alex,” Paul said, not quite sure what to say to his estranged brother, meds still fogging his brain. He shifted in his bed and opted for small talk (at this point, that’s all he was really capable of, anyway). “What brings you here?”

  Alex sat in the chair next to the bed and propped a foot up. “Michelle called me. Told me what happened.”

  “Yeah, you know I’m still not really clear on all of that. I remember driving to work that day; remember the truck swerving out in front of me; remember yelling something along the lines of ‘oh shit’ before the sun hit my eyes … Everything after that is just—it’s just not clear, you know?”

  Alex leaned forward and asked somberly, “And did they tell you everything, Paul?”

  Paul wasn’t sure what to make of the emphasis. So, he lied and nodded yes.

  “Damn, Paul. I’m so sorry, man. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be out for the count for six months like that. But can’t dwell on what we can’t change, can we. Just gotta keep your eyes on the here and now, brother.”

  Out for the count? Six months? What in the hell was Alex talking about?

  “They got you up and walking around yet?” Alex asked.

  “No, not yet.”

  “You know, Michelle mentioned something called muscular atrophy, I think was the term? I ain’t no doctor, but it makes sense, not being able to move too much after being in a coma for so long.”

  Coma? I wasn’t in a coma, you were in a coma!

  Paul’s head was spinning now, but he managed to get a question out. “They tell you what caused the accident?”

  “A few witnesses said an eighteen-wheeler was swerving real bad and crossed over in front of you. Probably hit a patch of ice or something. That’s about the gist of it.”

  “Anyone else get hurt?”

  “Just you, bud. Guess you inherited Dad’s bad luck. Anyway, you’ve been in and out for the last couple of weeks. Talking. Moving around some. Even got up to ask one of the nurses for a beer.”

  “Seriously? I don’t remember any of that!”

  “Yeah, they said that would happen. Like, you don’t just wake up from a coma, apparently. There are stages of being awake when folks come out of comas and you probably wouldn’t remember a lot of it. That’s what the doctors said, anyway.” Alex stretched and yawned, then said, “Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention. Reporter came by earlier, wanted to interview you. Said she was working on a piece about you. Apparently, you’ve turned into a big news story ’round here.”

  Inquisitively, “She?” He was about to ask for a name when a nurse walked in to che
ck his vitals. “Hi, Mr. Freeman. My name’s Natalie and I’ll be your nurse tonight.” Paul and Alex exchanged cordialities as she walked to the bedside opposite Alex and leaned over to check the patient’s IV and PIC lines, the V-neck of her scrub top hanging just low enough for Alex to catch a glimpse of heaven. He looked over to Paul, bouncing his eyebrows and darting his eyes, drawing a stern would-you-stop-already look from the elder Freeman. As quickly as the show had begun, she turned to check the bedside monitor (no doubt sensing the unwelcome glare coming from the creeper in the snake boots) and it was all over.

  Alex sighed as his eyes drifted to the muted televangelist on the TV. The showman on screen hooped and hollered and punched the air in front of him while a 1-800 number filled the screen below him. Alex pointed and said, “Got the mute button to work, but I can’t seem to change the damn channel. Just seeing that guy makes my blood boil. Can you believe he’s still preaching after all those scandals?”

  “I wouldn’t call it ‘preaching,’ Alex.”

  “Well hell, me neither. But you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I know.” A camera change showed Perch’s audience. The house was packed.

  Alex said, “Can’t reckon why people buy into this shit, anyway.”

  “It used to baffle me a lot. A helluva lot. But I guess everyone just wants answers. And sometimes, they’ll go anywhere looking for them or listen to anybody to get them, even when the alarm bells are going off that they’re being taken for a ride.”

  “Well, I can’t disagree with that,” Alex lamented. “I mean, you’d have to be in a pretty bad place to buy into this shit right here.”

  The nurse walked around the bed to Alex and reached out her hand, motioning for the remote. “Sometimes the buttons stick,” she said. “Don’t worry, I can get you another if you like.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” Paul said, holding up his call bell, remote included. “One’s all we need. Thanks anyway.”

  “You know who he reminds me of?” Alex piped up. “That self-help guy who wound up killing his business partner and running for the hills. What was his name, Donny Ford, right?”