“Uh ... what’s this?” Kyle wanted to know.
“Nothing. A box of my mother’s things,” she answered, casually, signing the invoice, for GD 743.60 .
“Nothing? An Overnight Delivery of nothing?!”
“Emergency Overnight Rush Service, technically,” the EasyStore driver offered, helpfully, printing out a copy of the digital invoice.
“Honey, listen ... we need to talk.”
“You’re going to miss your plane,” she said.
The Pewter Palisades Airport Shuttle, which was parked there, waiting, flashed its headlights.
“I’ll call you from the hotel tonight.”
Kyle was using his extremely concerned voice.
“OK, honey,” she answered mechanically. “Have a nice flight.”
“Tonight ... OK?”
“OK, you folks have an awesome day now,” the EasyStore driver chimed in cheerfully. “And thanks for going with EasyStore Storage.”
He turned and sprinted back down to his van.
Kyle just stood there, shaking his head. The Airport Shuttle hit him with the high-beams.
“Keep your phone on.”
“OK, honey.”
Valentina clutched the box.
She carried the box into the kitchen, set it down on the kitchen table, cut through the tape, flipped up the flaps, dug down into the sea of little indestructible Styrofoam peanuts, felt around, and found the Hand. She carefully cut free the tape on the bubble-wrap, pried it out and set it on the table. There it stood, all black and shiny, its ophidian fingers reaching heavenward.
Valentina thought she might faint.
She thrust her hand down into her pajamas and compulsively masturbated for two and half minutes, imagining she was being ravaged by Joachim Maria-Torres Oakley, the well-built Pewter Palisades gardener, except that Joachim was a Terrorist shaman whose body was oiled, or slick with sweat, and all around them other Terrorists were dancing naked by the light of a bonfire, and chanting something backwards in Latin and ...
After she came, and got her breath back, and made a quick cup of ginger-lemon tea, she turned her attention back to the Hand.
The Hand, a ring and bracelet holder, was a family heirloom ... a real antique. It was probably over one hundred years old, definitely worth a lot of money. It wasn’t real ebony, but some kind of glass, or glazed, seamless, glass-like material, heavy, but fragile. It didn’t feel hollow. She picked it up and gently shook it. No. It definitely was not hollow. She stood there at the kitchen table, sipping her tea and staring at it.
What had Catherine been trying to tell her? The particular way she’d bent her wrist, and extended her fingers, reaching, straining, and the way she had pinched Valentina’s ring ... that had to have something to do with the Hand ... or, then again, maybe it didn’t. Maybe it had all meant nothing, and Catherine had just been having a spasm, and her eyes had simply been drawn to the ring as they were to any other shiny object.
No, she told herself, it wasn’t nothing. It didn’t mean nothing. Nothing meant nothing. Everything meant something. Everything counted. Either everything counted ... or nothing counted.
Valentina was coming to know this, and not in the purely abstract way she had always known it, and everyone knew it, but experientially, to really know it, to know it in the very core of her being. Ever since that fateful day, the day of her Lomax Escalator Vision, the One had been guiding her, showing her things, teaching her how to see the world, not as it had always appeared, veiled, or shrouded, or clouded over, but to see it as it really was, sharp, clear, charged with meaning, brimming with meaning, oozing signs. Everything, every word, gesture, advertising slogan, random comment, everything, every detail was part of it. This was what was really meant by the infinite aspects of the One Who Was Many, which was The Truth, which IT had twisted, and bent, and spindled, and mutilated, and stripped of its meaning, and made to conform to its own perverted demiurgic logic, which was all a lie and ...
She caught herself. She repeated her mantra, and tried to refocus. Examine the Hand, she ordered herself. Look at it. Look at what it is. Not what you expect it to be, or want it to be, or remember it being. It isn’t the Hand that is there in your head. It’s not in your head. It’s here on the table. The Hand is this actual, physical object.
She examined the actual, physical object.
The skin of the Hand was black and shiny. Nothing was etched, scratched, engraved, or otherwise written on the seamless surface. It bore no trademarks, no dates, names, no artist’s signature, no initials ... nothing. Nothing that might have been a coded message, or a hint, or clue. There had to be something. Maybe it wasn’t the Hand itself. Maybe the Hand was a sign ... a symbol. A symbol for what? For some other hand?
No. That didn’t make any sense.
Valentina sat there, staring. She stared at the Hand. She said her mantra. She emptied her mind. She made it a blank. The jabbering of her thoughts subsided. She sat there, empty, desiring nothing, looking ... listening for the voice of the One.
She sat there like that for twenty-three minutes.
Something was hidden inside the Hand.
Valentina got up from the table, fetched a solid sky blue dish towel from the drawer where she kept the sky blue dish towels, spread the towel out flat on the table, wrapped the hand inside the towel, tucked the ends of the towel in neatly, and hurled the hand down onto the floor with every ounce of strength in her body. She heard it shatter, or crack at least. She knelt and felt it. There were three big pieces. She grabbed it like a shank of TŌ Lamb and slammed it against the floor repeatedly. Once she’d decided it was thoroughly demolished, she carefully placed it back on the table, opened the towel, and examined its contents. There, among the shiny black shards and nuggets of whatever material it was, sealed in a plastic Ziploc packet, was what looked like an old-fashioned 3x3 MemCard. She ripped the packet open with her teeth. It was an old-fashioned 3x3 MemCard, which of course was totally obsolete, having been replaced by a series of other identical MemCards of other sizes ... but being the wife of an Associate Professor of Info-Entertainment Content at the Bloomberg Virtual Community College of Communications & Informatics, at least in this case, had its upsides. Among the prodigious assortment of crap Kyle kept in the bedroom he used as his office were a number of fairly antique Viewers and other ancient, out-of-date gadgets, some of them twenty or thirty years old, including, Valentina now wagered, something that would take a 3x3 MemCard.
The Viewer she found was an HCS60, a cumbersome proto-All-in-One that she vaguely remembered from her early childhood and that barely fit in the palm of her hand. She dropped it into its power station, connected the station, and plugged it in. The HC Systems welcome message appeared on the screen ... which was seriously primitive. An eternity later a series of little red indicator lights started flashing, frantically, indicating that the HCS60 was attempting to connect to the Internet, and failing. This was just as well, she noted. Whatever was on that ancient MemCard, she didn’t want to be connected to the Internet, which was monitored, when she booted it up.
She popped the card in. Nothing happened. She sat there and waited ... nothing happened. She popped the card out. She popped it back in. She sat there and waited ... nothing happened. That was OK, she told herself. There were probably other Viewers she could try. The HCS60 was the first one she’d found that looked like it took a 3x3 MemCard. She would just keep digging through the drawer until she found one. She took a deep breath and said her mantra. The loving compassionate oneness of the ...
Before she could finish, the MemCard loaded. A textfile directory of files appeared. It took forever, ten full seconds. It started like this:
aleph/spokework/statement/ver/ar-2265-12-01-77723
clownfish/manifest/dever/ar-2420-09-09-2247885
disinf/spargel/erklaerung/ver-2210-04-04-1138540
And ended like this:
regen/mantel/response/unver/urar-5512-2027-3341
wachowski/
statement/ver/ar-2315-10-08-3375-9919
wilder/gedichte/unver/ar-9999-88-42-3547-000
And somewhere near the middle was this:
norma/vangelium/barnicoat/ver/ar-2550-02-08-4368
Valentina clicked on the file. A prompt appeared and asked for the password. She sat there, staring at the message, thinking. The prompt was there on the screen, blinking. She keyed in CONSTANCE, which was not the password. She keyed in ROSENTHAL, which was not the password. She keyed in CATHERINE, which was also not the password. The password prompt screen disappeared.
The screen went blue. There was nothing on it.
She took a breath and said her mantra.
Everything happening for a reason ...
The screen went black, flickered briefly, then came back to life. A message appeared. The message was in a different typeface.
WHO ARE YOU?
Valentina froze.
Time slowed down. The room got brighter. She closed her eyes, inhaled through her nostrils, pursed her lips, and exhaled slowly. She did this until her panic subsided. Then she opened her eyes and looked at the screen.
WHO ARE YOU?
She checked the readouts. The online indicator light was red. Which meant she was definitely not connected. Which meant the message could not be live. It was probably just another password prompt. Which theory she decided to test.
She typed in the following:
WHO ARE YOU?
The screen responded:
YOU KNOW WHO WE ARE.
Valentina suddenly felt the need to move her bowels extensively. She stared at the online indicator light. Maybe the indicator light was broken. She snatched the device up out of its station and tried to access online Content, weather, news, markets, whatever. She couldn’t. Because she was not online. And now the screen read:
WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
NOTHING, she typed.
Nothing happened. Then she typed:
ARE YOU STILL THERE?
All of this could have been preprogrammed. But now it read:
THIS IS NOT PREPROGRAMMED.
The following exchange of messages ensued:
I DON’T BELIEVE YOU.
YES. YOU DO.
WHAT TIME IS IT ?
WHERE?
WHERE I AM NOW.
0720. THERE’S A CLOCK IN THE VIEWER.
The Viewer was right. Stupid question. She tried again.
WHERE AM I NOW?
3258 MARIGOLD LANE.
Which could have been some kind of GPS trick. She desperately tried to think of a question to stump the possibly pre-programmed software. A question having to do with history. Recent history. That would do it. The MemCard had been inside the Hand since before she was born. A lot had happened. Forty-one years of her life had happened. Why then couldn’t she think of anything ... one single significant historical event? Then it hit her. Variant Correction. The Clear generation. That was it. She opened her eyes, and was about to type, but now the screen read:
CAN WE SPEED THIS UP?
HOW?
USE YOUR LIVING ROOM VIEWER. GO TO CHANNEL 313. THERE’S A LITTLE BLUE GNOME, OR SOMETHING, WITH A FLUTE.
Valentina sat there in shock ... the HCS60 could not know this. Channel 313 was a children’s channel. The little blue gnome was Peter Pitpatrick, the roly poly pansexual spokes-being that taught the children to respect private property and to pay back the interest on their loans on time. Peter Pitpatrick’s PreSchool Playhouse was eight, maybe nine years old, on top of which Channel 313, back in the days of the HCS60, had been an Asian women’s channel. A software program could not do this.
And now the HCS60 informed her:
THE GNOME IS RIDING A FERET OR SOMETHING.
Valentina went into the living room, leaving the HCS60 in its dock. She switched on the Viewer, keyed in the Channel, and there he was, Peter Pitpatrick, playing his trademark magic pan flute. His magical ferret, Gibby the Ferret, was licking the tears off the face of some kid who had just learned one of life’s valuable lessons. Valentina clicked off the Viewer. She stood there staring at herself in the screen. There was no other explanation .. .
Someone was live on the HCS60.
Someone, either a Security Specialist, or possibly a member of the N.I.N., was sitting at an online console somewhere typing the messages she had just received. This someone, who was probably a Security Specialist, had been alerted when she had tried, and failed, to open the file she had tried to open. Probably when she’d blown the password. Or maybe the moment she had loaded the MemCard. It didn’t matter. What mattered was, whoever it was on the HCS60 was sitting there, right at that very moment, waiting for her to return from the living room. Something told her not to do that. It told her, explicitly, never to do that, to never, ever, return from the living room.
Valentina returned from the living room.
And now the screen read:
WHO ARE YOU?
She typed her name in, VALENTINA BRIGGS, reasoning, if it was Security Services, they probably already knew who she was, and were on their way to Marigold Lane ... and would be there in approximately three and a half minutes.
HI VALENTINA. WAIT ONE MOMENT.
She listened for the sound of Security units screeching up into her driveway, bolting up to the house in force, setting their mini-Semtex charges, blowing her front door off its hinges and ...
VALENTINA CONSTANCE BRIGGS?
YES.
DAUGHTER OF CATHERINE AND WALTER?
YES.
CATHERINE ROSENTHAL BRIGGS?
YES.
GOOD. WAIT ONE MOMENT.
Out the window of the bedroom office the sun was up and baking the orange “Spanish”-tiled roofs of Pewter Palisades. No one was out there. Nothing moved. Not one leaf. There was no breeze.
VALENTINA? ARE YOU STILL THERE?
YES.
LISTEN.
Valentina listened. The HVAC unit was humming softly. Other than that there was nothing to hear. No one was screeching up into the driveway, or blowing the hinges off her Persian green door, or otherwise storming the house in strength.
WE CAN’T STAY ON THIS LINE MUCH LONGER.
OK.
WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM US?
Valentina’s thumb was paralyzed She willed it to work.
I WANT TO HELP.
ARE YOU SURE?
YES.
ABSOLUTELY SURE?
YES.
YOU HAVE TO BE TOTALLY SURE.
I AM.
OK. DO YOU WANT TO MEET?
YES. WHERE?
LEAVE THE HOUSE. EJECT THE MEMCARD. TAKE THE MEMCARD. TAKE THIS VIEWER. FIND SOMEWHERE SAFE.
WHERE?
GO TO CENTER CITY. RELOAD THE MEMCARD. WAIT FOR INSTRUCTIONS. OK?
OK.
EJECT THE MEMCARD!
Valentina ejected the MemCard. The screen went blank. The HVAC hummed. She sat there for a moment, stunned. Her heart was hammering against her sternum. She closed her eyes, recited her mantra, and did her pursed lip breathing thing.
The infinite, unknowable Oneness of the ...
One of two possible things had just happened.
Either the MemCard, her grandmother’s MemCard, maybe even Stanislav Barnicoat’s MemCard, and in any event an obsolete MemCard, had been equipped with some kind of feature that whenever someone loaded the MemCard sent a ping to the N.I.N. (i.e., to some underground safe house or basement, which would have to be manned around the clock, because how would they know when someone would load it? But why would they do that ... unless ... wait ... maybe there were hundreds or thousands of these MemCards hidden in horrible, ugly hands, and other seemingly mundane objects, scattered throughout the United Territories, waiting for people like her to find them ... which, OK, that was totally nuts ... unless some earlier generation, as in Stanislav Barnicoat’s generation, of the N.I.N., facing capture, had, in a desperate last ditch gambit, hidden their files inside such objects, hoping that one day, many years later, people l
ike her might stumble upon them, just as she had ... and she had, after all ... which would mean that her mother, Catherine, knew ... which of course she did, she knew it was in there, and had always known, and had always been waiting, waiting for Valentina to awaken, and visit her in the Seaview unit ... all of which seemed to Valentina, even in her borderline delusional state, highly unlikely, to put it mildly), or else (and this was rather more likely) what had happened was, she had loaded the MemCard, and Security Services had picked up its signal with some kind of covert surveillance technology that could monitor devices that weren’t online (which she’d never heard of such technology, but that didn’t mean it didn’t exist), and now they were simply toying with her, leading her on, setting her up, possibly trying to lure her away from Pewter Palisades Private Community in order to avoid unsavory publicity, and detain her elsewhere, and render her off to ...
Valentina got up from the desk and looked around the bedroom office. There, in the corner, was the faux leather easy chair Kyle had had since their days at college, the stuffing poking out of a hole in the seat. Standing behind it were Kyle’s father’s golf clubs, which neither Kyle nor anyone played with, not even on the air-conditioned indoor courses. Against one wall was the sleeper sofa nobody ever came to sleep on. The walls were adorned with photos of Kyle and assorted other smiling professors standing around with assorted groups of assorted smiling corporate executives. Valentina had no idea where Kyle was or who he was with. She stared at the faces of the men in the photos. Who were these men? She didn’t know them. They looked like all the other men you saw in all the other photos of abundant white men in their forties to sixties with receding hairlines and expensive watches who were on the boards of corporations, or institutions, and were interchangeable. They stared back out of the photos, smiling ... no ... impossible, they could not know .. .
She gathered up the HCS60, its power station, cords, case, and switched off the light in the office as she left. She walked down the plushly carpeted hallway, passing the glossy color photos of exotic animals that no longer existed ... the Bengal tigers, Boa constrictors, African lions, leopards, cheetahs, gazelles, zebras, antelopes, elephants, sea lions, herons, pelicans, partridges, penguins, parrots, birds of paradise, dolphins, whales, treefrogs, toads, catfish, redfish, sharks, rays, bighorn sheep, cave shrimp, crayfish, Barrington iguanas, hairy armadillos, Andean condors, sportive Lemurs ... there were literally hundreds of these photos in the hall, crowded together, frame to frame, floor to ceiling, obscuring both walls, a virtual gauntlet of gaping eyes ... staring at her like the eyes of children ... exterminated ... for the sake of ... what? She couldn’t remember. There had been a reason, or an explanation ... hadn’t there, once? Why had she framed and hung these photos? She’d done it because that was what everyone did. Everyone had these walls of photos ... these shrines, or were they trophy walls? She cupped the Viewer and the gear to her breast and ran the last few steps down the hall, away from the eyes and into her bedroom. She closed the door behind her and locked it. She dumped the Viewer and the gear on the bed and went back to the door and unlocked it. She changed her mind, and locked it again. Then once more, and unlocked it, and opened it.
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