“What did you talk about?”
“We argued. We always argue.”
“What did you… argue about?”
“What we always argue about: money.”
“But Grandpa’s dead. He died before I was even born.”
And LC remembered that too. Of course Herb was dead. How could he misplace the passing of his own father in the jumbled closet of his memories?
“It’s because you’re different. You look like him. You talk like him, sort of… but you’re not him. You’re… different. You’re…”
Herbert-Hasani shook his head, his eyes squinted nearly shut behind his thick eyeglasses.
“You’re… other. You’re like a puzzle piece with no place to go. All the other pieces are right; they belong. But you don’t belong.”
“Stop it, Hasa.”
“You even smell like him. But you’re the wrong piece. It’s like you’re from a different puzzle altogeth…”
LC slapped him.
The blow grazed the boy’s chin, barely turned his head and he instantly regretted it. It seemed the familiar response. Even now, Herbert-Hasani held his head proudly, a single tear slipping down his cheek.
“You don’t even hit like him.”
Then he was gone.
LC stood in the center of his office while the horrors crowded in around him.
He didn’t know who he was.
He spent the next three hours staring at his computer screen, scanning the global gateway, consuming all he could about things he remembered but didn’t know. His head was throbbing. His eyes ached from scanning hundreds of geographic and historical files.
The horrors were back with a vengeance.
“Anowarkawa is the most populous continent in the Northern Hemisphere. Its three main partitions are called (generically) North, Central and South Anowarkawa.”
My name is Lando Calrissian Darnell Cooper and I live in North America
“Its peoples are an ethnic conglomeration descended from indigenous tribal cultures thousands of years old: Apache, Mohawk, Iroquois, African and Asian-derived peoples largely descended from transoceanic trade partnerships dating back to the Era of the Pharaohs.”
I was born January 12th, 1980. I hate English muffins.
“Coptic is the most widespread language currently in use in North Anowarkawa, although in many places, particularly in the South and Central Partitions, Chumash, the language of the most widely spread of Anowarkawa’s indigenous tribes, is still spoken, largely by first generation émigrés to the Northern Partition and in many traditional religious ceremonies...”
My parents are Herbert and Barbara Cooper. He sells auto parts. She smokes.
“Because of its widespread ethnic diversity, Anowarkawa is host to many religious traditions. However, the Light of Amon-Ra remains the most widespread and popular among the Anowarkawan people. Adherents refer to themselves and others as ‘brothers and sisters…’”
I have three brothers: Renfield, Atticus and Gandalf Gary…
“The most widely observed of all the Egyptian-derived belief systems transplanted into the Anowarkawans by pre-European traders and missionaries, Amon’s Light is considered one of the ‘Great Planetary Faiths’ and, alongside Hinduism, Judeo-Christian-Islamicism, Shinto Buddhism and similarly themed ‘ancestor worship’ systems common to indigenous peoples, is among the most widely practiced religions in the modern world.”
I live in Hyde Park. I grew up in Chicago…
“The Midwestern city of Sheekawaa was founded by the indigenous Potowatomi people a century before the first recorded European visitors set foot on Anowarkawa. The Potowatomi later enslaved members of older local tribes, Miami, Sauk and Fox peoples, forcing them to lay the foundations for what would later be known as the ‘City of the Wild Onion’.”
“LC, I’m talking to you.”
This is wrong. This is other.
“In the Seventeenth Year of Pharoah HorAha, Sheekawaa was destroyed by fire during the second Egyptian invasion. One hundred years later, after the fall of the Potowatomi and the successful assimilation of the ‘debtor tribes’ who had assisted the Egyptians in overthrowing their Potowatomi enslavers, the ‘Burned Mound’ was renamed, New Shekawaa and rededicated as a ‘Wedded City’ to the Egyptian capital city of Cairo.”
“LC, I’m leaving.”
I’m engaged to Surabhi Moloke. We’re going to…
“…welcome you to the Happy Weddings Show, where our celebrity Bridesmaids help five lucky couples create ‘Weddings to Anger the Gods Themselves!’”
“Surabhi!”
He came back to himself with a physical lurch, a sense of engagement so intense that he bolted from his chair.
“I remember! Oh my God… I remember!”
“I can’t do this anymore, LC.”
Danielle was standing in the doorway to his office.
“I’m leaving.”
“Danielle…”
Inside his head, memories were unspooling, memories from another man’s life. “You’re my wife…”
But how can this be?
Look at that damn head. Boy I swear, you look like a damn spear chucker!
LC saw Danielle, her anger and resolution, but he also saw someone else superimposed over her; another woman who loved him, who needed him, whom he had failed.
I want to trust you, Lando. But you don’t let me in.
Danielle. No. Someone else…
My parents taught me how to deal with depression, which was only right since they were the reason I was depressed.
“LC, are you listening?”
And he remembered the headaches, the suffering that seemed to bracket him between both lives, disparate experiences joined and ratified by the blinding throb of…
Power.
…pain. The pain had threatened to…
Save the world.
…destroy him. It had been like this right before his surgery. But the tumor, the source of his pain, had been excised. Now the pain was back; worse than before. It pushed at him, powerful as a tsunami, threatening to sweep him away on a wave of revelation and dread: if his cancer was back, he didn’t know if he could survive another surgery.
“You didn’t survive, Lando Cooper. And that places us upon the horns of a great dilemma.”
That was the worst moment, the moment before he collapsed. Because the new voice was one he’d never heard before, deep as the rushing of blood through his veins, too powerful to ever be mistaken for human. It spoke in his head as clearly as the tolling of a funeral bell.
“Everything you think you know is wrong, Lando Cooper. You must be corrected. Death cannot be long cheated, even by the gods. You are a great wrong in My universe.”
“LC… Amadou and I are in love. I want a divorce.”
The last thing he saw, before the pain claimed him, was the face of the woman he loved, resolving itself like the ghost of a cherished memory over the face of another man’s wife.
“I remember.”
Then darkness.
CHAPTER XXIII
REVELATIONS
“The House of Angels was rocked last week by the news that LC Cooper, a popular fixture on the late night chat circuit, was rushed to New Amon Center of Medical Arts and Healing after suffering from an apparent nervous breakdown. Cooper’s representatives have been quiet as to the chatshow star’s state. But sources inside the Cooper Empire have called his condition ‘serious’. Production of his number one talkshow, Night Talk With LC Cooper, is on hold until healers can scry the true extent of his condition. Speculation went global this morning, however, when noted mental health Counselor and popular afternoon chatshow host, Healer Ba’al appeared at the Amon Center. Healer Ba’al, a frequent guest on Night Talk, would not comment on the purpose of his visit, but close sources in both celebrity camps report that, and I’m quoting here, ‘LC Cooper’s chances for a full recovery just rose like the Sun Chariot of Amon Ra’.”
The Daily Interna
tional
Lando’s right leg was cramping. The arms of the straitjacket were too tight, and the man who had come to help him was a raving lunatic.
“Now I want you to repeat after me,” Healer Ba’al drawled. “My name is LC Cooper. I live in House of Angels. I’m a father, a husband with a gorgeous wife and three beautiful kids. I love my life and I mean to make the best of it. Right here! Right now!”
Lando shifted, grimacing against the flare of agony this produced in his right thigh. He had been lying in the same position, unable to move while the bombardment of images flooded his senses. He’d refused to speak with his doctors. The images, memories from both lives, were too powerful to ignore. He had stared into the blank gray wall directly in front of his face for the next three days.
It had come to him in the autobarque, as he lay on his stretcher, screaming out ridiculous facts and nonsensical dates.
“My name is Lando Calrissian Darnell Cooper! I’m twenty-nine years old. I drive a 1984 Saab convertible. My mother is an alcoholic and my father is alive! My fiancée’s name is Surabhi Moloke! I have to help her!”
He still couldn’t remember why the woman in that other life, Surabhi, was in danger, though he knew her need was great. Important matters turned upon the spit of his self awareness, but he was unable to start the barbecue. He was remembering more and more with each passing hour, but parts of his “real life” remained hidden. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t penetrate the darkness that occluded the center of his recollections. It was as if he had forgotten how to move one of his hands, even though it remained at the end of his arm. He envisioned this darkness as a dense void, a howling storm of black noise in the center of his mind. Somehow, he sensed, if he could pierce that darkness, peer beneath the clouds of that internal storm, he could find the answers. But the shadowstorm remained.
It had occurred to him that since he was living in the body of a dead man, (or a “nearly dead” man) that other Lando was probably living in his body back in the real world. Since he had woken up in LC Cooper’s life after LC’s near-death experience, it stood to reason that another such experience could set matters in their proper order. All he needed was a moment to himself and a chance to lay his hands on a sharp object, something to cut his bonds, and then his wrists.
He had no intention of actually dying: it was LC’s near-death experience, he believed, that had summoned him from his world. If he could duplicate that experience, maybe he could reverse the process and send himself back.
But the bastards in the sanatorium had taken everything he might have used to initiate the transfer: his belt, his shoelaces. They’d bound him in a straitjacket after he’d tried to knock himself unconscious by banging his head against the walls of the observation room. Now, he lay there, dejected and diapered, while the insane Counselor he remembered from LC’s life rattled on.
“Come on, mate,” Healer Ba’al twanged, his Australian accent blaring through Lando’s memories. “It’s time to strap your trouncers on and kick this catatonia thing in the balls!”
Lando remembered Healer Ba’al, an internationally famous mental health practitioner who had gained notoriety after numerous appearances on a popular afternoon talkshow. Famous for his “Downunderisms” and colorful vocabulary, he was the former Main Counselor of a notoriously violent Melbourne mental asylum. He’d written a bestselling memoir about his struggle with depression, Ba’al… Busted, and was the subject of his own afternoon factshow, The Mind Healer. LC’s memories revealed that the host of Night Talk had thought very little of Ba’al’s prowess, believing him to be more charlatan than savior. He’d irritated LC with his habit of compulsively shouting out nuggets of his personal philosophy in the form of his so-called “Ba’alistics”.
“You’re the Apex Predator in the jungle of your life! The Alpha Dog in Your Own Personal Junkyard! It’s time to piss on your fears, climb up the leg of your private Doubt Demon and hump the shit out of him! Reclaim Your Mental Territory!”
Lando spoke calmly, deliberately. “I’m ready.”
“You’ve got to churn the waters of your emoceans with the blood of your spiritual enemies!”
“I’m ready, Ba’al.”
“Summon the Self-Sharks! Ignite the feeding frenzy that will set you… What did you say?”
Lando rolled over onto his side and faced his doctors. Philip Chapman had spent the last two days of his internment examining him, questioning him, at times haranguing him to lay down his delusions. He’d regarded Chapman as a friend, but Chapman had taken his collapse as a personal affront. The appearance of Ba’al had only aggravated the tension between them. Wen Nouri, the head psychiatrist at New Amon’s psychiatric ward, had been blown back into the rushes by the two more forceful practitioners. He glared resentfully at the proceedings, excluded from making any pronouncements without incurring the wrath of his more “upmarket” colleagues.
“I’m ready to reclaim my emotional territory,” Lando said. “I’m back.”
Healer Ba’al smiled. But Phil Chapman shook his head, the movement so slight that Lando almost missed it.
“Do you know who you are?”
“Of course. My name is LC Cooper. I have three children, Haru, Oheo and Herbert-Hasani.”
Nouri nodded, his face brightening, encouraging. Chapman waved him aside. “Who is the President?”
“Thutmose X. We had him on the show two weeks after he took office.”
“Who was the First Pharoah of the Anowarkawas?”
“Memphis III. He unified the feuding Egyptian armies and helped assimilate the Iroquois Nation after the Yellow Plague decimated–”
“That’s great, LC,” Ba’al interrupted. “You’re halfway home!”
But Chapman wasn’t satisfied. “LC do you still believe that you are an alien to this reality?”
Lando kept his voice level: he had to convince them. “No. That was a lie.”
All three psychiatrists leaned forward. Healer Ba’al’s nostrils flared.
“A lie?”
“Yes. It’s a little embarrassing…”
“Go on, mate. Nothin’ to be embarrassed about.”
“Well… things have been rough at home, because of the show, my illness… things have deteriorated between me and Danielle.”
“I see.”
“I thought maybe if I could convince myself that I was having a relapse, maybe Danielle would stay.”
Nouri looked bored. Ba’al seemed barely able to conceal his excitement. But Chapman leaned back in his chair, a smile fluttering at the corners of his mouth.
“I don’t believe you.”
A tinny jingle emanated from Chapman’s person. He reached into the pocket of his dashiiki and produced his roving data device and checked the message window. A frown ruffled his normally placid features. When he looked back at Lando, an unfamiliar emotion shimmered in his eyes.
“That was Doctor Aziz, LC. He’s just received word that–”
“Let me guess. My tumor is back.”
If Chapman was shocked he didn’t allow it to show on his face. “Yes. Aziz ran scans on you while you were sedated. It appears that they didn’t get it all…”
“Aziz is one of the greatest resectionists on the planet, Phil. I paid him a small fortune to do what he does, and he did. I saw my scans before and after the surgery. He got most of the tumor.”
Chapman nodded. “But there was a small bit of it that Aziz was unable to reach. That bit has…”
“Phil, it’s only been two months since the surgery. Not enough time for a benign tumor to have changed that much. Judging by the expression on your face, the tumor must be large and I’m guessing it’s gone malignant.”
Chapman shifted in his seat. “Well… it seems you’ve got all the answers.”
“It’s not a tumor.”
“Beg pardon?”
“The thing in my head, it’s not a brain tumor. Well in this reality I suppose it is. But back there it’s… something else
.”
Chapman smirked; a man back in familiar territory. “And by ‘back there’ I take it you’re referring to your ‘other life’. This other world where you’re young and healthy?”
Lando shrugged. “Back there I have asthma. I’m allergic to just about anything that moves. I think I even have a drinking problem…”
“And your father is alive.”
“I’ve got to get back.”
“Why the rush?”
“Someone needs me.”
“Ah yes, your mystery woman.”
“Surabhi.”
“Let me see if I remember… you two are engaged?”
“Yes.”
“Even though the United Kingdom outlawed marriage between British Citizens and Anowarkalis a hundred years ago.”
“I live in the United States. They were a colony of the British Empire until the Revolutionary War.”
Chapman chuckled. “You’ve certainly painted a compelling picture of this fantasy land. But you realize it’s just that, don’t you, LC? A fantasy?”
“I don’t belong here.”
“Better than us mere mortals, eh?” Chapman said. “Everyone on the planet toiling along in their little lives, blissfully unaware of your superiority.”
Chapman leaned forward. “When I look at you I see a powerful but frightened man suffering from a life-threatening illness.”
“Phil,” Lando said. “I’m not crazy. You have to listen to me.”
“I am listening, LC. I’m going to help you find your way back to your world. This world. The real world.”
Behind him, the door to the padded room swung open. Then Chenzira Nkuku walked into the room.
“Can I help you?” Chapman said.
The old security warden bowed to the tall psychiatrist. Then he turned to Lando and waved.
“Hey, LC! You ready to get out of here?”
Healer Ba’al leaped to his feet. “Who’s this bastard?”
“Hey!” the old security warden grinned. “I’ve seen you on television.”
Ba’al nodded. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. Your show stinks.”
Ba’al turned a bright shade of purple, sputtering like an old carbuerator. Then Chenzira pointed at him and said, “You look tired. Why don’t you take a nap?”
Last God Standing Page 25