by Alex Shakar
A pulse from these free-floating heart cells. But no, it’s not the Reiki group. Or rather, not that Reiki group. It’s an altogether new one. There’s a new dwarf—a thick-hewed bodybuilder, six foot four at least, his skybound fingers tense as talons. And a new elf, Indian or possibly American Indian, her straight black hair in a headband, her wrists gently crossed above her forehead. And a black Strider, his dangling, beaded cornrows slowly waving in time with his lifted hands, like tree limbs in a breeze.
Something new, it seems, is happening to all these inner twinklings and pulsings. It’s as if they’re freeing themselves into a dance all their own, not even disconnected thought or feeling anymore so much as forces in their own right, pure energy, hectic and harmonious by turns. Even the flashing pains from ankle, fingers, ribs, temple, the burning skin of the arms and legs and hands are all sparking and diffusing into it, as the Fredless body limps around the corner of the site; as it stops at a photograph, on the fence along the southern rim, of the old pair of towers, and an artist’s rendition of the bright single tower to come; as it’s jostled by a loping man with a luminous bald head and a pretzel back into motion, amid hundreds of other swinging legs and arms, up through an enclosed elevated walkway, and back down to the West Side Highway.
The cameras on this side of the site are bulkier, professional-grade, mounted on tripods. They’re aimed at doll-like reporters, with hair sprayed to a gloss and rouged cheeks, men and women alike. Off ahead, on a raised platform in a fenced-off area at the crater’s edge, the recitation of the three thousand names by surviving family members has ended, the last echoes of taps on a bugle have dissolved, and a choir has begun to sing. A few last reports are going out, while other news vans are lowering their dishes, their crews already packing up, photographers unscrewing lenses, technicians unweaving webs of bright electrical cables duct-taped to the ground. As the reporters finish, like statues magically restored to life, they stretch their necks, look around, drain bottled water into their mouths. A peppy blond reporter who looks a bit like Mel zips off her lipstick with a thumb-swipe, widens her eyes, and sighs.
There is no meaning anywhere, and the dance of energy has become a plosive, liquid radiance. It twirls with the vibrations of the choir and the satellite feeds, the rants, the prayers, the irrepressible pheromones, the sobs and guffaws and quiet chatter. Two strangely bright forms, one of a beefy old fireman, the other of an equally beefy security guard, hug by a revolving door. “Happy 9/11,” says the first to the second, with hearty pats on the back.
On the grassy slope outside the Marriott Financial Center, across the street from the fenced-in ceremony area, more beings of light, dozens, are sitting and spectating. They shine like gods and goddesses one moment, shimmer like ghosts the next. A big spirit man with an elephant pin on his shirt and a broken tooth chats up a spirit woman with a swanlike neck who busies herself with a Palm Pilot. Another spirit woman, her body incandescent as a sunrise, whispers into the ear of a spirit toddler pressing lit-up, Gummi-colored buttons on a toy cell phone.
Even the Fredless body gives off a little light, though it’s mostly just the glaring tuxedo jacket and strobing shoes. It ceases its limping and stands among the dazzle of the rest, to all appearances awed, though there is no one to be awed, no one to scratch an ostensibly dumbstruck head, no one to observe its fingers coming down glistening with blood. Nearby, a midriff-baring, lower-back-tattooed spirit leans into the broad chest of a spirit with a linen jacket draped wing-like over his shoulders, and points, bangles jangling on her wrist, down at the gate of the fenced-in area, from which the mourning family members are beginning to emerge, shining forms themselves, in jackets and ties and summer dresses.
From their midst comes a tallish, Roman-haired spirit, followed by a spirit with night-black hair and a glowing moon for a face. She stops in the middle of the street, lowers her sunglasses, her dark eyes locking on no one.
There’s no one to be surprised, no one to be dumbfounded, when, with a coy head tilt, she smiles—smiles—and waves. She walks over, the tall spirit behind her looking on with a faint, approving smile of his own.
“I had a dream about you last night,” she says.
Real or no, she seems happy, at ease, freed from some long spirit toil. She squints a little, even behind those shaded lenses, the brightness all around.
“We were in some spaceship together, floating back to Earth,” she says. “We’d thought we’d never see it again. But we’d found our way back. And all we wanted to do was land, so we could just go on a normal date.”
She grins, embarrassed, expectant.
When it came time to sunder those inner bonds to her yesterday, there’d been no one left to carry out the task. And now there’s no one left to feel any obligation to do so, to sunder any piece of this from any other. And all the vibrations, all the twinklings and pulsings, within and without, are resolving into an unearthly harmony, nothing anywhere but a single, living love. It resonates, for a spell, as if to its own possibility, then slips away as the tune keeps changing. The Fredless Fred’s energy is twining in a larger body, whose wheeling extremities are afire, whose brain is a heating protostar, whose heart is an as-yet-arrhythmic drumming of plasm. The body coils and flays, dancing order from or into bedlam, life from or into extinction.
Far below, now, the little moon spirit asks a question of the clownishly attired no one, but from here, all that registers is her rising intonation as things get even brighter.
Oxygen deprivation, a brainbit twinkles.
Last minute of brainlife, twinkles another.
And the moon spirit lets out a barely heard shout, as the pixel-small avatar beside her is finally down.
Darkness. A warmth. Then a light.
A flashlight to one side.
Two trembling palms to the other.
Mom and Dad, leaning in.
A steady chirp.
Smell of antiseptic.
Two shadows in the fluorescence. A woman. And an older man, arm around her, hand on the ball of her shoulder.
Ten palms.
Five towering forms in the light: goateed/buzzcut/ponytailed/translucent-eared.
Mom overhead, upside down, eyes closed.
“Hey, nurse. It’s time for a sponge bath. No, not his. Mine. Wait. I’m a filmmaker. Hey. Take my card!”
Manfred cranes his head around, two fingers in his fishing vest.
Vartan hoists an eyebrow. “The third time you’ve woken him up, Manny.”
“This guy’s a famous actor,” Manfred calls out, pointing to Vartan. “Did you know that?” He turns back, grin crooked. “Your dad’s gonna act again.”
Vartan tilts his shaggy head. A mouth hole forms in his beard. Manfred cuts him off:
“The Tempest. I’ll be Gonzo, the old counselor. I’ve got a whole new take for the island.”
Vartan’s mouth flattens, vanishes in the surrounding hair.
“Get this.” Manny’s giant octopus hands, framing: “Atlantis.”
“It’s Sam,” Holly says, pressing a cell phone close.
“Hey, Freddo.”
Freddo …
“You don’t have to talk. They say you’re on some massive painkillers. I can do the talking.”
The sound of a sliding door.
“So let’s see. I’m sitting here on my deck. My deck. I can hardly believe it. On a … what’s it called? Oh yeah. A deck chair. One of those kinds with the reclinable backs. With an iced tea, no less. What else? Some kind of bugs are chirping. I thought the noise must have been a power station at first.” The sound of clinking cubes. “Ask me how’s my new office.”
The sound of the drink glugging down his throat.
“Office,” he answers himself, his tone a shade darker. “That’s a good one. A ‘corner cubicle,’ the personnel guy called it.”
The sound of calling birds.
“Urrr …”
“Yeah,” Sam says, “I was getting to that. I fixed it. With a wh
ole lot of help from You Know Who.”
“Whaaa?”
“I turned on my phone when the plane landed and there was a text from George. Saying to check my email. He sent me everything, where all the malware was and how to quarantine it. I had the place up and running again in twenty minutes. They think I’m a genius now. Talk about pressure.”
“Y’OK, Fred?” Holly whispers.
“Think he needs Dr. Papan?” Vartan asks, out of view.
“Demo went well today,” Sam says. “We’ll see. What else? Oh.” His tone flattens a bit. “I put off those lunch dates. I don’t know why. Maybe I just need some time.”
Cicadas in the background.
“Did check out Christworld,” he adds. “The flag corps and the mimes were all right … I guess.”
He sighs.
“The smoothies taste like ass.”
“Hhheh.”
“He went this morning,” Mom says, sitting by the bedside, leaning in close. “Before any of us even got here. And then you showed up not too long after.”
She looks puzzled, like she hasn’t a clue what any of it means.
“Dr. Chia said it was baffling that George survived so long.”
She holds out a hand, regarding it in the light like something she’s never quite seen before, her fingers fairly steady.
“He asked me to do Reiki on his tennis elbow.”
Two men. One silver-haired and ruddy-faced in a blazer, the other greasy blond, his face a raucous party of freckles.
“Mr. Brounian,” the older one announces, “I’m Detective Nelson and this is Detective Sullivan. Your parents said we could have a word.”
The same flecked green eyes. The same hammered cheekbones.
“Cousins,” Nelson explains.
“We get that look a lot,” Sullivan chimes in with a grin. “I bet you’re sure used to that look.”
“We’re very sorry about your brother,” says Nelson.
“Truly.” Sullivan puts a hand over his heart.
“We know you’re not in peak condition right now, but we just wanted to drop in and say hello.”
“We’re incorrigibly social,” Sullivan says.
“Mr. Brounian, someone calling himself the Avenging Angel has been stalking executives at a company down in Florida I believe you’ve had dealings with.”
Sullivan’s head lists right and left: “Emails, faxes, text messages. At work, at home.”
“Nothing exactly threatening,” Nelson says.
“Cute stuff. Philosophical.” Sullivan strokes his chin. “About the afterlife.”
“Maybe no bad intentions. But can you understand how repeated mentions of the afterlife might be misinterpreted?”
They wait.
“Is that a smile?” Sullivan says.
“Did I say something funny, Mr. Brounian?”
“Maybe it was your intonation, Nelly.”
“About a week ago, Mr. Brounian, they suggested you might be someone worth talking to.”
Sullivan half smiles, blinks rapidly. “They said you had a little episode down there?”
“End of last week, their personal bank accounts started dropping,” Nelson says. “Turns out this Avenging Angel posted their names, addresses, and socials on some hacker message board.”
“Look at that, Nelly,” Sullivan says. “His smile grew.”
“I know I didn’t say anything funny that time.”
“I’m telling you. It’s that deadpan delivery.” Sullivan leans in, a hand cupping the side of his mouth. “I keep telling my partner he should do stand-up.”
“To be honest,” Nelson says, “we didn’t have anything on you.”
Sullivan slices the air. “Zilch.”
“Until you nearly blew yourself up with that big-ass computer.”
“Janitor happened to mention it was from your office?”
“Some twisted shit down there, in your secret hideout.”
“Hey, Nelly.” Sullivan rests his chin on an index finger. “What color cape you think the Avenging Angel would wear?”
“Well, Sully.” Nelson folds his arms. “I’d probably go with white.”
Sullivan leans in. “My partner’s a real fashion bug.”
“OK, Mr. Brounian. Have yourself a speedy recovery.”
“Oh, and did we mention you’re under arrest?”
“Missed your arraignment. That’ll serve for now.”
“Still smiling, eh? You’re a tough cookie, Mr. Avenger.”
“What did the big, bad Avenger steal?” Nelson mutters. “Pair of tweezers, was it?”
Sullivan frowns, scrunches his eyes. “I hate that. Pair of tweezers. Sounds like two of ’em.”
“’Cause there are two of ’em,” Nelson says, annoyed. “Two tweezing thingamabobs.”
“But they’re joined. It’s a single tool. What if you only had two pantlegs and no crotch? You’d be marching in the Gay Pride Parade.”
Nelson raises a finger, suddenly animated. “But what if it was all joined, and you only had one big pantleg?” He wags the finger at Sullivan. “Then you’d be marching in a skirt.”
Sullivan laughs, a nasal clucking. Nelson joins in with dry, throaty barks. They stop.
“Mr. Brounian, what’s with the teary eyes all the sudden?”
Sullivan, flummoxed, turns to Nelson. “And just when you made the first joke of your life.”
Guy, above. Hair falling free around his shoulders. A single palm out, slowly moving, testing the air.
“Your aura has changed, my friend.”
He nods, and walks off.
Manfred’s sunspotted head looms into view.
“That Guy guy’s kinda nutty, huh?”
His craggy, windswept sea cliff of a face leans in close.
“I went over to the golf course. Me and some Holy Land pals are working on the owner. Talked about a fund drive, kicked around some rebuilding ideas. Bigger than before. Spotlights. Said he might not sic the cops on us.”
He looks right, looks left.
“So’d you figure out mu yet?”
Fred takes a breath, and gives his answer.
Manfred regards him, eyes aqueous and bright.
“OK. What about this one: A guy named Yunmen once asked, ‘If the world is vast and wide, why do you put on your seven-piece robe at the sound of a bell?’ So he’s saying: Hey monk, if you’re so free, why the hell do you go on sitting there, sweating it out, day after day, tied up like a human pretzel?”
“I don’t know,” Fred whispers. “Why do you?”
“Damn. I don’t know either. Was hoping you could tell me.”
Manny rubs his chin.
“I’m getting my ass back to the monastery soon. When mu cracked open, I thought I’d reached the summit, but it’s just base camp, far as those monks are concerned. Last time I saw the Roshi, he beat me with a broom and called me a dust devil.” He looks off, a rare moment of anxiousness. “I didn’t think he knew that much English.”
At Manny’s side, Vartan and Holly appear. And to the other side, Guy and Dot.
“Visiting hours are up,” Vartan says. “Let’s give him a rest.”
Guy, Dot, and Manny wave and say goodnight. Holly kisses Fred’s cheek and goes.
Vartan leans in close. “Kiddo,” he whispers. “Don’t worry. Whatever drugs you’ve been on, we’ll get you off.”
Firmly, Vartan grips Fred’s arm. His eyes crinkle, dauntless.
“The first few days are the toughest,” he says.
“Oh.” Holly steps back into view. “Something came for you, early this morning.” She holds up an envelope. “It looks like a telegram.”
As he lay in the dark, the lightning pulses of the cardiac monitor beside him, Fred thought back on his first moments of consciousness, when he hadn’t known which of them he was. He’d been both. He’d been George, waking from a coma. He’d been Fred at the same time, wondering what he was doing there behind George’s eyes. Then Dr. Papan had s
tarted asking questions, one blink for yes, two for no, and the quantum suspension had begun to abate. Then Sam had called him Freddo, and everything had come flooding back.
Even now, though, he might have been both. That’s how he felt. Or he might have been neither. Both felt equally true. It didn’t so much matter to him who he was or wasn’t. He was aware. He was awareness itself.
Turning off the monitor, working the sensor clip off his finger, he eased himself out of bed and, in the light from under the doorway, slipped his bandaged feet and lotioned legs into his jeans and slid the tuxedo jacket over his hospital gown, smarting from the pain. One whole hand was a big, splinted bandage. The other, at least, had its fingers free. His scalp, those fingers determined, was partly shaved, and wrapped up tight enough to know its own pulse. He’d been told that the burns were mostly first and second degree. He’d sprained an ankle, broken a couple of fingers, fractured a rib, suffered a concussion. He felt like he’d been bagged up with a bee colony and booted off a cliff. Even so, it was nice, being in motion. Every stabbing inhalation, every flinching limp down the hall, felt like freedom.
His first stop was George’s old room. They hadn’t put someone in his brother’s place yet, so he went in and sat in his usual chair. For a while he stared at the empty bed, thinking about how George had transcended his uncontrollable illness, his coma, his unstoppable death, to play Fred and everyone else like puppets from beyond his existence. Fred wondered whether it had been George’s plan from the start to restore Urth to Armation in such a way that made Sam look like a hero, or whether George’s heart had softened somewhere along the way. Fred wondered whether that episode with the countdown, and George and himself joined under that malevolent hat, had been designed to punish him or, conversely, to forgive him, to grant him the opportunity to stand by George’s side to the very end. To prove he’d be loyal to George no matter the cost, prove it to Fred’s own conscience, so that he might then forgive himself.
He opened the envelope, the telegram his mother had left with him. Nothing but coordinates, a longitude and latitude, undisguised this time. Where was George leading him now? For a few minutes, Fred’s imagination roamed once more, until he was all but certain the answer was Central Florida, the Urth version thereof, where the Armation headquarters would appear before Fred’s avatar like some virtual Mount Doom—a pyramid with a flaming eye at the top, the command center of the Military-Entertainment Complex. And in it, he’d battle a twenty-foot-tall demon-robot Dan Gretta. And he’d hack into the demon-Gretta’s control panel with his Blade of Many Powers, short-circuit its innards of pulsing circuitry and brain tissue, then corkscrew and tweezer and screwdriver them into an upgrade that would bring about a golden age. And Little George would appear, transformed from a Gollum into an angel in earnest, hair restored, oxygen tubes gone, hospital gown swapped for flowing white robes. And before winging off into the blue, he’d leave Fred with the plans for that game he’d spoken of in the coffee shop, that game to end the games, that game of spiritual evolution, where you start out playing one way but soon discover a whole new way to play.