* * *
Chick turned to Harry and Harry was suddenly a dozen attendants fractured by reflections in a dozen jars, then a hundred Harrys, a hundred jars, all trapped in a diamond of light.
“What’re you doing to me?” Chick cried out.
“Not me,” a hundred Harrys answered. “Out of gas, out of time, too hot… It isn’t me.”
Chick spun, furious, hand raised, ready to throw the object he held. The object that was… so beautiful. So perfect. So meant for him. His upheld hand trembled, unsure, uncertain.
“You don’t want to do that,” all the Harrys said. “Not ‘till the story’s finished.”
* * *
Andrugene snapped alert, sat up, eyesight perfect, muscles feeling… surprisingly good. It was as if he had just awakened after drifting off during a fantastically good massage. He felt like standing up from the warm seat he was sitting on, stretching, running a mile or two then—
He couldn’t stand.
He looked down. Saw a seatbelt. More straps across his chest. He looked for a clasp or connector.
“They don’t like you doing that, dear.”
The soft voice came from an older woman he didn’t recognize. Her hair was short and white, her face lined, but her eyes were bright. Her pale blue hospital gown was decorated with what looked to be three-fingered hands and starbursts.
“I’m Ann,” she said. Like him, she was seatbelted and chest-strapped into a small chair that reminded him of something from an airplane. Both chairs were mounted against a white wall and flanked by more chairs running the length of it. Each one past Ann was occupied by a man or woman, all ages but mostly old, all races but mostly Asian, all of them except Ann looking stunned, eyes open, but not responsive, though the man immediately beside her seemed to be coming around. Andrugene looked to the other side. He was first in line. Looking down, he saw the chairs were on a track that ran along the floor by the wall. He realized then they were moving, slowly and silently, along it.
“What’s your name, dear?”
“Andrugene.”
She smiled. “Of course. Andrugene comes before Ann. Some of the facilities still go by the old ways.”
“What facilities? Where are we?”
“Oh, could be anywhere by now.” She looked at him more closely, her expression sympathetic. “Is this your first time, dear?”
“First time what?”
“Extracted from storage.”
“Storage?”
“Well, there are so many of us. No place to put us. But they are humane.” She made a comical face. “Won’t pull the plug, I mean.”
Andrugene stared at her in confusion, not wanting — not daring — to believe what she was saying.
Ann smiled brightly. “I like to think we’re like books in a library.” Again, the narrowed eyes, the expression of concern. “You do remember books, dear? What year were you born?”
Andrugene told her.
Ann’s eyes widened, impressed. “Oh my goddess. You are an oldtimer.” She looked down the row behind them. “I’ve met some of these others before. I think the researchers want to ask most of us about the Nomii riots. I get asked about that every generation or so.” She looked back at him. “But you were born a century before the Nomii were even invented.” She leaned forward, whispered, “I believe you’ve been misfiled, dear.”
Quite understandably, Andrugene screamed then, but somehow, he suddenly felt a surge of wellbeing as if his brain had been flooded with endorphins from a really great workout and he felt so good that he couldn’t even remember why he had screamed and—
* * *
Chick sat on the dirt floor of the tent surrounded by walls of jars through which no path gave exit.
As good as he felt, as rested and as calm as his body was, his mind was a gibbering fool, sobbing with fear. He had to get out of here, back to the Jeep, full of gas, cooled with fresh water, the money in the gym bag his ticket to a brand new life free from Fat Ernie and the collections and the squalid emptiness his life had become to the point at which he could imagine taking someone else’s in order to escape his own.
It had seemed like such a good idea at the time.
Getting up seemed like such a good idea right now.
Never stopping here. Never entering the tent. Never looking in the jar.
All such good ideas.
All too late.
“Shh,” all the Harrys whispered. “The story’s almost over. Listen to it.”
Chick sat on the dirt floor, wanting to scream, wanting to run, but all he could do was look down at the oh-so-beautiful blue object in his hand, with its dry crusted residue that might have been blood, with the little dots of light that now glowed and flickered along one side of it, that in its perfection spoke to him, and to him alone—
* * *
Andrugene next woke in an office.
He had no reason to think that’s what it was, but that was what it felt like. A small cubicle. Walls a bit grimy. Plastic? Metal? Glass? No way to tell. This time he was sitting in a chair, with no straps and no padding. He glanced down and saw he was wearing a one-piece gray overall with no buttons, zippers, or pockets. The sleeves were long so he couldn’t see his bare arms, but he was certain no needles were stuck into them.
Across from him was a desk, or something desklike. A block of the same material the walls were made from. Behind it sat a man, Asian again, though his skin was darker than Andrugene would expect, heavily creased and wrinkled, with deep furrows like parched land. He was bald, as well, not even eyebrows.
The man was writing, wielding a distinctive blue pen with a smooth metallic finish. Lights flickered along the shaft of the pen, synchronized with the movements the man was making as he wrote.
Andrugene’s fingers knew exactly how that pen would feel.
* * *
Chick’s fingers knew exactly how that pen would feel. He was holding it after all.
* * *
Though the bald man’s motions suggested writing, he wasn’t actually writing on anything. Instead, a stream of glowing letters formed inches above the surface of the desk, scrolling from side to side. Andrugene didn’t recognize the letters. Their shapes were nothing he had seen before.
The man seemed to become aware of Andrugene studying him. He looked up. “Greetings. I am Aarl.” He moved the pen over the desktop and new streams of glowing letters appeared. Now Andrugene saw an image of himself mixed in among the unreadable text. “You are, Andrew Michael Gennaro. Sino Pax Epoch.” Aarl had a thick accent. Andrugene couldn’t place it.
“Where am I?”
Aarl made a coughing sound, moved his pen, read new unreadable letters. “Just a few questions, first.” The last word sounded like “fust.”
“I don’t think so,” Andrugene said. He stood up, hiding his surprise at being able to do so. He waited for something to happen, for restraints to shoot from the wall, for his brain to be flooded with drugs. Nothing happened.
Aarl didn’t seem concerned, didn’t react. “Fust question,” he said.
“No questions,” Andrugene told him. “Not ‘till you answer mine. What is this place? What year is it?”
Aarl wrote, read, looked up at Andrugene, held out the pen as if inviting him to sign something.
“You asking for my autograph?” Andrugene wanted to laugh. But he knew he couldn’t waste time. What if he had been taken out of suspension by mistake again? What if they were going to put him back on the shelf?
“Screw that,” Andrugene said. He’d given up everything for another chance at life. He wasn’t about to let some useless clerk or librarian or whatever Aarl was cost another second of lost time.
Andrugene took the pen from Aarl’s hand, no resistance.
Aarl bared his teeth in some twisted form of a smile, as if it was something
he’d never done. He mumbled a few syllables, waved his hand at the glowing letters above his desk, the glowing image of Andrugene.
The smooth hard surface of the pen felt perfect in Andrugene’s hand. As balanced as the finest throwing knife.
Nothing was worth another lost second of his life.
He drove the pen up under Aarl’s jaw, felt the pop of membranes and the soft parting of flesh as the perfect instrument slid perfectly through muscle and bone and into brain.
Aarl blinked once, his eyelids fluttered, and then he slumped back in his chair, blood dribbling down past the pen embedded in his jaw.
Andrugene waited. But still nothing happened.
There was a door on the far side of the room.
Andrugene pulled the pen from the dead man’s jaw, held it as a weapon, walked toward the door.
Finally, his life was about to begin again.
The door opened as if it had been expecting him.
* * *
“No, no, no!” Chick said. He shook his hand violently, as if he’d been burned, desperate to throw the blue object onto the dirt floor of the tent. But it was as if the thick dark material had crusted to his skin, like the dried blood across his ribs.
He could not let go.
* * *
Andrugene stepped out onto a metal floor in a dark corridor. He shivered in a draft of cold air, puzzled by the crisp scent of plastic and electronics.
He became aware of the deep vibration of some vast unseen machinery at work somewhere nearby. Far down the corridor, a solitary point of light gleamed and shimmered. He walked toward it, bloody pen in hand.
The corridor opened into an atrium. Immense. The full scope and size of it hidden by shadows. The machinery thrummed and echoed. The air was colder. The walls of the place were lined with large cylinders, glass-walled, frosted, stacked like jars.
His hand shook as he scraped at the closest cylinder.
Inside, a person. Sleeping. Suspended.
He scraped at another, and another. Eventually, he even found Ann, though her face was no longer wrinkled and her hair no longer white, her bright eyes unseen behind serene, closed lids.
He stood back, confused, upset, and called out. To rouse anyone outside the cylinders who could hear him.
But no one answered. Totally alone.
With the spur of growing panic, he began running, through the atrium, heading for the far side where, in the dim light, it seemed the towering walls of glass cylinders ended.
Halfway, there, lungs burning in the frigid air, he could tell the source of the illumination was starlight. He saw the Milky Way before him, thankful at least to be at ground level and not buried inside some long lost underground storage chamber.
Then he arrived at the edge of the atrium and saw that the Milky Way and the endless stars were behind an enormous window that stretched hundreds of feet side to side and overhead.
That’s where he found the dedication plaques. Dozens of them, in languages known and unknown, and eventually the one written in English.
The one that apologized to the four million resurrectees aboard the Fair Wind, held too long against their will. The one that explained they had been genetically restored to live healthily and happily on the new world that awaited them at the end of their journey.
The dedication plaque had a small icon of what was apparently a communications device at the bottom. The pen. Andrugene touched his murder weapon to it.
Glowing letters and numbers appeared over the plaque then, along with lines and circles showing the great journey now underway between Earth and the new world, only four hundred more years to go. Please report to Mr. Aarl, the letters said, to resume suspension…
* * *
Chick gasped as the pen escaped his hand and flew through the close air of the tent, gleaming end over blood-encrusted end until it clattered inside the jar he’d found it in.
He didn’t know how long he stood there, trying to separate himself from the story, until he began to suspect that maybe he never would.
That’s when he became aware of Harry standing behind him, taking a step even closer as he whispered into Chick’s ear, “That’ll be twenty-five cents.”
* * *
Chick staggered from the tent and into harsh desert sunlight. His eyes stung and his muscles hurt as if he’d been held motionless for days, for untold time.
He looked for the attendant but mercifully didn’t see him. Maybe his luck was back. About time.
He walked as quickly as he could to the front of the shed.
His Jeep wasn’t by the gas pump. Instead, a cherry red 1958 El Dorado Cadillac purred there, freshly polished, top down, ready to go.
Harry emerged from the shed, overalls gone, clad in a sharp plaid sports coat that Chick was vaguely aware would’ve been all the rage half a century ago.
“Jeep’s around back,” Harry said. He spoke quickly, a man in a hurry. He jingled a set of car keys on a rabbit’s foot chain. He cocked a thumb in the direction of the shed. “Hung yours up by your working duds.”
Chick’s eyes were caught by the sparkle of sunlight dancing on the metal key ring hanging on a small hook just inside the shed. Beside it, a set of brand-new overalls. He could guess the name embroidered in the oval.
“How long?” Chick asked.
Harry was already behind the big white wheel of his El Dorado. “That’s up to the jars.” He slammed the car into gear. “It won’t be forever.”
Then gravel sprayed and dust billowed and as Harry shot toward the shimmering horizon, his last words trailed off in the dry, still air. “But sure as hell they’ll make it feel that way.”
* * *
Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens are New York and Los Angeles Times bestselling novelists. Stephen King praised their thriller, Icefire, as “the best suspense novel of its type since The Hunt for Red October.” Their newest novel of supernatural horror and suspense is Wraith, from Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press. Recent projects include consulting with the Disney Imagineers as writers for the new Shanghai Disneyland, and creating the horror series, Incarnate, based on one of Garfield’s novels, for HBO Canada.
Right of Survivorship
by Nancy Holder and Erin Underwood
That’s gotta hurt, Michael thought, as he spared a glance at a streaming BBC news report on his laptop. On the screen, grainy security footage showed three men breaking into the Old Map, the pub down the street from his uncle’s antiquarian bookshop. One skinhead shattered the window with a tire iron and the other two barreled on in. Michael pursed his lips together in a grim half-smile. No, he didn’t think he’d be flying to London anytime soon.
He was about to resume work on the merger when Mr. Hartner, one of the senior partners, rapped on the doorjamb. Michael kept his door open. International corporate law was like a war, and he did everything necessary to maintain his position on the front lines. Drawbridge down, no moat in sight.
He half-stood as his boss walked in— and forced himself not to grimace as Asha Sen followed after, very chummy with the old man, smiling in triumph at Michael. She didn’t have an appointment, and he’d refused to see her.
The British attorney was as beautiful in person as she was on Skype. She wore her long, straight black hair tied back with a golden pin and a black suit that complemented her lovely dark complexion and almond-shaped eyes. There were shadows under those eyes and her cheeks were gaunt. When she saw him, she sucked in her breath just a little and blinked. The O’Dare genes were strong. He knew he looked like his uncle, only younger, with his coal black hair and silver eyes.
“Look who I found in the waiting room,” Mr. Hartner declared, the traces of his British accent more pronounced than usual. “Why didn’t you tell me you had family business with Morris and Fletcher? You know we have a longstanding relationsh
ip with them.” He smiled at Ms. Sen, and she smiled pleasantly back. “The timing is providential as we have a London client who’s been sitting on her proxies. Michael, you can hold her hand and get your uncle’s papers in order at the same time.”
“I have the merger,” Michael protested. It was the plum assignment of the quarter, and he had fought tooth and nail to get it.
“You’ll only be gone a few days, yes? If anything comes up, I’ll put Brian on it,” Mr. Hartner said, and Michael tried to flash Ms. Sen a killing look. Brian Glick was his bitterest rival. Michael had given up what was left of his social life in order to score this assignment and he would be damned before he let Glick touch it. But Ms. Sen stood firmly in the elderly attorney’s line of sight, and hence, protected from Michael’s glare.
“There are two flights out tonight,” Ms. Sen informed Michael and Mr. Hartner at the same time.
“Our staff keep suitcases packed and ready,” Mr. Hartner told her. “We have an in-house travel agent who can book the tickets. Got your passport, Michael?” His voice was amiable, but Michael heard the warning in it: he’d better be ready. He knew better than to disappoint a partner.
He’d better go.
“Of course, sir,” he said.
Mr. Hartner left, and Ms. Sen stayed behind. Maybe she was used to swaying men with her beauty, but it wasn’t working on him.
“Congratulations,” he snapped at her.
“I wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t absolutely necessary,” she replied, unruffled. “As you know, you stand to inherit everything, if you agree to sign the lease in our London office by ten o’clock this Thursday.”
“A lease that you neglected to FedEx along with every other piece of paper in my uncle’s file cabinet,” he said pointedly. “All of which I’ve already signed and had notarized, and returned to you.”
“I was unable to include it,” she replied.
“Because it’s enchanted.”
She dipped her head in assent, and he made a point of returning his attention to his laptop. “My uncle never once mentioned any of this… insanity.”
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