The Pedestal

by Daniel Wimberley

  Rackley’s no exception.

  This time, there’s no question that he recognizes me—unless I’m misinterpreting his speechless moment of doe-eyed awkwardness. I explain to the inspector why I’m here and his shock only intensifies. I can’t tell if he’s disturbed by the frightfulness of my claims, or if he’s merely blown away that I’d expect him to find them credible. Bear in mind that of all the inspectors in this great city, I have the least amount of credibility with Rackley. Not only was I once listed chiefly among suspects in his little black book, I spent a fair amount of time being uncooperative back then, rather than making an effort to set his mind at ease.

  When I’ve finished my narrative, which sounds startlingly fictional to my ear—and downright disingenuous, for my occasional nervous stammering—Rackley tosses his pen onto his desk and stares at me like I have a third eye.

  “Mr. Abby,” he says with a sigh, “you seem to be smack dab in the middle of every nightmare coming across my desk lately.” I resist the urge to point out that the happenings of Houston are surely not landing on his desk, but his point is well taken. I smile crookedly with a shrug.

  What can you do?

  I leave with no real understanding of Rackley’s intentions. I’ve just given him notice that a travesty of unprecedented proportion and oddity might well scourge the planet of human life, yet even I recognize the distinct ring of implausibility in my claim. The truth is that I’m not capable of doing justice to the extraordinary potential for disaster; I’m at the mercy of Rackley’s intuition here, and that scares me. It isn’t that I don’t trust his abilities—though neither do I have any faith in them, considering I know next to nothing about the man—it’s that I don’t trust his willingness to overlook his warped—and perfectly justified—perception of me to see the truth.

  As I’m heading home, I pass a bar and my step falters. It’s a dirty hole-in-the-wall, the same I once made Adrian’s acquaintance in. I have no desire to repeat my business there—the booze was nasty and the company was decidedly deadly—yet, as did Rackley, this place takes me back to before I left this planet and returned as a husk. I catch my distorted reflection in the filthy window and I’m reminded that things aren’t all bad—I look and feel better, and I’m sitting on more credits than I’m capable of burning through without concentrated effort—but life remains a lonely affair for me. It’s a depressing part of my psychological makeup, that I crave the affection of a woman so acutely.

  Still, I’ve had a lifetime to accept it. Somewhere along the line, I think I became numb to its implications regarding the larger picture of who I am. I feel like that has changed—like I have changed. Since the other night, I’ve been thinking about Mitzy almost nonstop. I’m so sick of being yanked along by the leash of my libido. I’ve gotta learn how to be okay on my own. Scrap that—I’m already okay on my own. I’ve spent most of my life alone, and I’m doing just fine. I’ve just gotta remember that when it matters.

  Nevertheless, I don’t care how bummed I feel—I’m not stepping foot in that skunk hole again.

  I awake to an irritating trill; I’d cover my ears to wait it out, if not for a nagging sense of unease that has consistently deprived me of a decent night’s sleep since returning to Earth. I’m betting on Tim, or maybe even Rackley, but I’m absolutely unprepared for the face that lights up my wall. Literally, I mean: I’m wearing boxers, and my hair looks like I spent an hour with my head out the window in a hurricane.

  “Oh my God,” Mitzy says with a breathless giggle. “I didn’t expect you to answer. I just figured it was worth a try.”

  My mouth is dry and agape. “Is it really you?” is all I can think to say. She’s so alive, so beautiful.

  “Yeah, it’s me.”

  I don’t even know where to start here, so I just stare at my screen and breathe.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” she says, her smile dimming to a prim line with every second. “This was a mistake; I should’ve taken the hint before. I just—I just wanted to see for myself that you’re okay.”

  “Wait, no. I’m, uh, I’m—fine. You’re—you look so good.”

  “I do?” She does. She really does. Yet I’m aware, as perhaps I have always been, that her beauty follows a completely new and unexplored tract of physicality for me. There’s a wholesomeness about her, a sweetness that digs through lust and into the soul, where my loneliness has always stemmed. I’m very aware, drinking in her image, that this is a woman who can build me up or tear me down on a level that causes me to shudder.

  “Yeah, look at you.”

  “Not so bad yourself,” she says. “I like the outfit.”

  I’m suddenly very conscious of my scant attire. “What, this old thing?” I can feel myself blushing—and I don’t mean just my face.

  “So how have you been?”

  “Good. Well, actually—you know what? I’m feeling a little bit, uh, naked. Why don’t we have lunch and catch up?” I feel stupid as soon as I say this last part—I mean, what exactly is there to catch up on, considering our conversation this morning amounts to nearly half our total history?

  “Little early for lunch, isn’t it?”

  “Well, it’ll take some time to get there, you know.”

  “You mean, you’d just jump on a plane and come all the way out here just to have lunch with me?”

  I realize as I ponder her question that that’s the least of what I’d do for her, and I don’t even know her yet. I recognize just how ridiculous, how unhealthy my willingness is, but I’m in the habit of overlooking such details, and now is no exception.

  “Wow, that’s really—”

  “Creepy? Yeah, I guess it kind of is.”

  “I was going to say romantic.”

  “Really?”

  Mitzy grins wistfully, pushing a lock of loose bangs behind her ear. “Yeah. But I’m thinking I’ll just save you the plane ticket and come to you.”

  “Here? Oh, uh—”

  “How about nine o’clock?”

  Nine o’clock? It’s eight now. “Uh, do you mean tonight?”

  “Are you really this lowQ?”

  Boy, I wish I could say I wasn’t. “Absolutely.”

  “See you at nine for breakfast. Clothing required.”

  At ten ’til nine, my doorbell chimes. Until just now, I’ve completely forgotten I even have a doorbell. Pretty much everyone I know just knocks. I open the door with an elated snap, butterflies fluttering throughout my body with anticipation.

  “Morning, Mr. Abby.”

  Sigh.

  “Inspector Rackley. You have a knack for catching me on my way out.”

  “We all have our gifts. I just need a moment.”

  I usher him in, though I’d just as soon toss him off the balcony right now. Inside, I lean against the wall and wait for an explanation. I don’t offer Rackley a seat, and he doesn’t ask for one.

  “So?”

  “You watched the news yet this morning?”

  “Nope.”

  He nods and chews his lip.

  “Should we reconvene after I do, or are you going to save me the trouble?”

  “There’s been another incident.”

  “As in ... ?”

  “Your blood plant; four more victims, this time in Dallas.”

  “Jeez.”

  “That’s not the worst of it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I contacted the CDC; they’re reporting innumerable incidents of nonlethal contact with the plant.”

  “Nonlethal contact?”

  “It’s already establishing an invasive presence in the Midwest, popping up in places where no plant should be able to survive. It seems to grow at an alarming rate, too, and it’s got a lot of people on high alert.”

  “Listen, Inspector, I wish there was something else I could do. But the truth is—”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, if past experience counts for anything here, it’s too late.”

  Rackley cross
es his arms. “What do you mean?”

  Before I can answer, Mitzy knocks on my door, and for the briefest of moments, I forget that our world is quite probably coming to an end.

  I send a somewhat miffed inspector on his way and escort Mitzy to Enrique’s for breakfast. They have the best chorizo omelets—if you’re into that sort of thing; turns out, Mitzy’s not. She settles for some sort of crepes, which look a little gross to me, but she seems to enjoy. I’m ecstatic to be in her presence, her living, breathing body inches from mine—but beneath the hum of excitement is the gnawing of fear.

  “What’s wrong with your daygrid? It’s always blank.”

  My cheeks flush. “I’m just that pathetic, I guess. So, what brings you to Chicago?”

  “You have to ask?”

  “Well, I don’t have to, but I have to.”

  “Okay, if you must know, I moved here a while back.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, my roommate was killed and I just couldn’t stay in Vegas anymore.” Her eyes are glassing over.

  For a moment, I’m tempted to let this pass; after all, what good can come of her knowing the truth? But as I look into her sweet eyes, I know that—although I never want to contribute to her pain—I’d rather cut her now than destroy her later. We finish our breakfast and return to my condo, holding hands like old lovers. My hand is trembling, and so is hers. I tell myself I’m just freaked out by what I have to tell her, but the truth is that my body is a raging mess of charges. Without my NanoPrint to regulate my chemical processes, I’m left to the underdeveloped power of my will to keep from running.

  We sit on my couch, and before I can resolve to speak, she kisses me. It’s a long, sweet, passionate kiss that’s so visceral and real that I feel as though I’m flying away into a land that is Mitzy and nothing else. When she breaks away, there are tears gathered at the corners of my eyes. Not the sort of reaction women are looking for following such an event, I gather from her reaction.

  “Listen, Mitzy. There’s something I need to tell you.” I squeeze her hand, because I know well that she’ll pull it away the moment she has an inkling of the truth.

  She looks into my eyes, and seeing the intensity therein, her already drooping face falls a little more. She gives my hand a squeeze, and it seems to say, Don’t, Wilson. Whatever you’re gonna do, just don’t.

  Even now, knowing full well that I’m safe from Palmer Gunn, I’m afraid to speak of the past—so many people have died because of my loose lips. Yet I can’t allow myself to walk away from this—especially not now, with so much death looming on my doorstep. If I’m to be the man I aspire to be, I have to come clean. I have to do it, and my future with this lovely creature cannot be a consideration in that decision.

  So I close my eyes and, taking a breath so deep that it hurts, I begin.

  It’s after one in the morning, and I’m not sleeping. I’m lying here, doing my best to believe that life has meaning—that tomorrow has even the slightest chance of being better. But I’m no better at lying to myself than to anyone else. I’m not buying what I’m selling.

  I expected Mitzy to be horrified by what I had to tell her—by me, and the senseless misery that my existence has inadvertently dragged into her life—and for once, I was right. The tears come now, and as each worms past my temples and tickles at my ears, I feel exhaustion gently push me into the consoling embrace of the darkness. As it turns out, there’s no sleep aid quite as powerful as grief. I sleep for the better part of the next twenty hours.

  I’m being punished, I decide, though for what exactly is a question I can’t seem to resolve. I’ve always felt I was a good person at my core, so why all this? It’s a cruel thing for Mitzy to step in and out of my life with such brutal efficiency. But even if I don’t feel deserving of my fate, I know it’s a powerfully toxic force, and I don’t mean just in terms of the drama it has cast over Mitzy’s life. I get this strange sense, deep in my heart—where logic and culpability carry no weight—that I simply don’t deserve her. Maybe not because I’m particularly bad, but because I’m simply not good enough. It’s something I struggle to wrap my mind around, because it transcends the intellectual properties I rely on to make sense of the world.

  Incidentally, I never felt this way about Adrian. Don’t get me wrong: I often felt that she didn’t make any sense in my life, as though we were an obtuse mismatch that favored me immeasurably, but I never felt that she was a better person, and therefore more deserving of happiness than me.

  I leave a contact request with Tim, who’s doubtlessly immersed in a nexus game against some kid in Japan or something. I ask him to give me a holler without expressing a reason, because I don’t really have one. I feel as though my heart has been gouged, not in a deathly blow that will kill me quickly, but more like a sickly puncture that will bleed me out slowly.

  With little else to do, I spend the rest of the day working on my secret program.

  It’s not a terribly complicated program, but it contains more straight code than I’ve written in a long time. I’m used to tapping IDS’s immense corporate library of code classes—as in families of program functions rather than the instructional venues you might be thinking of—and in doing so, I’m spared the nuisance of reinventing the wheel throughout my projects. The problem with that approach to this program is that accessing those resources will leave an imprint in IDS’s system, registering the codebank to a project that isn’t supposed to exist. For Tim and me to circumvent the logs, I don’t have to just reinvent the wheel, but also the axles, and even the roads.

  Fortunately, the pitiful state of my social life leaves plenty of time to work it all out. I just hope that in the end, we reap some fruit for all my efforts. The plan is to create an irresistible trap. My little program will carve out a new asset repository in our accounting system and hopefully entice Keith into making a grab for it. There’s a lot of opportunity for error—not only in the program, but with our lone participant, who must do her—I mean, his—unwitting part precisely.

  Mrs. Grace stops by at seven thirty and invites me over for dinner. I decline without an excuse. She gives me a sweet hug that shows me she’s a very perceptive woman. She reminds me of my Aunt Gertrude.

  I sit on my patio and sip tea, lonely and afraid—no longer only for myself, but for the world. For Mitzy, and Mrs. Grace. For Tim. And Misty Edwards, wherever she is these days.

  In the movies, the faceless government comes for you in the middle of the night. In real life—at least in my own case—they come in the middle of breakfast. And they don’t bother knocking.

  Before I can begin to react, I’m whisked from my condo and into a private tram, accompanied by three men who can only be described as nondescript and cold-blooded. They don’t speak a word, though one allows me a brief glance at his badge. He looks at me with great suspicion, and I realize that his credentials are probably readily available to my NanoPrint, which I must access manually.

  I’m driven to an unfamiliar part of downtown and into a parking garage. From there, I’m hustled through darkened hallways and stairwells without explanation. On a seemingly empty floor, my captors finally come to a halt. They deposit me in a small room that could easily be mistaken for a storage room but for the keyless entry scanner on the door and a large, worn table within. I’m left for an hour or more without a word, though I hear the occasional muffled voice outside the door.

  I’m lost in thought when the door finally swings open. The man who enters is a stranger to me, yet I recognize his kind of boldness and charisma, having seen it similarly at work in Palmer Gunn.

  “Mr. Abby,” he says blandly. “I appreciate your time this morning.”

  Though he’s done nothing yet to cause me alarm, I sense that this is a man I should be hesitant to upset. But I’m compelled to test the waters.

  “No need for thanks; I wasn’t given much of a choice.”

  No smile, no frown.

  “I’m Special Agent Eugene Dryers
of the Chicago field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigations. In a moment, we’ll be joined by Dr. Roger Tisdale of the CDC. He’s come a fair distance to speak with you, on the recommendation of a local inspector. I would appreciate your full cooperation.”

  “I’m not sure what help I can be, but I’ll give it a shot.”

  Dryers nods curtly and promptly departs. Five minutes pass, and then he returns with a companion and a few folding chairs.

  “Dr. Tisdale, Mr. Abby.” I unconsciously rise at the introduction. A moment later, we’re all seated with the scarred table between us.

  And the interrogation begins.

  I withhold little, though I make every effort to veil the status of my NanoPrint. When it’s all over, Dr. Tisdale is escorted from the room. Dryers remains behind, deadpan eyes locked on mine like magnets. I have nothing to hide—not really, anyway—yet the silence in here is disarming, and the urge to fill it with something is all but overwhelming. But I’m not a complete idiot. I hold my tongue.

  A full five minutes of wordless silence passes, at the end of which Dryers rises from his seat and leaves me alone, yet again. I smile inwardly that I’ve withstood round one. A half hour later, when my stomach is beginning to rumble, Dryers returns with a soft drink and a sandwich and hovers in the farthest corner of the room as I eat. The moment I’ve finished, the door opens and we’re joined by a new face.

  I very nearly fall from my chair as she steps inside, appraising me with the unimpressed disinterest of a complete stranger.