“So how’s a bunch of crypt keepers going to keep us from getting pummeled?”
“Right here.” Zin’s dim figure tapped the tracker on the back of his neck. “They got some sort of remote in their pocket. They put their hand in there and they can kick a volt or two into your spine and you’re sleeping, my friend. And Sid knows it. The geezers load you on a cart and it’s over.”
“What’re you saying over there?” Sid’s voice carried from across the dark aisle. “You got something to say about me?”
“Nothing, Cap-i-tan,” Zin said. “Just girl talk over here, that’s all.”
Sid grunted. His teeth ground together. He said, “You just make sure—”
Click. Hmmmmmmmm.
The fan engaged. The blades began to crawl.
Conversation died.
“Let’s get on with the suffering,” Zin said.
Danny was already counting his breath. He glanced at Reed, still standing, still facing the other direction. It would be long and hard for him. Maybe if they held first place, he’d get a reprieve.
But he wouldn’t take the needle, so then what?
Danny thought about doing the same. He could talk to Reed when everyone was out. He could tell Danny more about the underlying secrets of the island, the red-headed girl, and why he resisted. Maybe they could talk long enough to sort through each other’s memories, figure out which ones were their own without having to go inside the needle.
But then the sprinklers began to hiss.
Moments later, Danny looked at the top of his cage. He knew he’d reach for the needle as soon as it dropped. Just like everyone else.
16
Reed settled into the rhythm of breathing.
The wet cold had reached his bones, but he found peace with it. Even the shivers seemed to fall into rhythm. He was at peace with misery.
He didn’t like the suffering, didn’t prefer it. If the gates opened, he’d gladly leave. But he didn’t resist it.
He found space for it.
Mr. Smith’s familiar walk-shuffle came down the aisle. Reed could smell him.
In-out, he breathed. In-out.
“Reed, look at me.”
Reed saw a haggard face that was losing the battle with time and gravity, the cheeks sagging like an old dog that needed putting down. The eyes were hidden in the shadows.
“You’ve put me in a very difficult position, my boy. In an effort to convince you what’s best, the Director and I have decided to alter your experience. We hope you’ll make the best of your opportunity.”
Reed drew a long breath through his nostrils.
“You understand we put you under duress to facilitate your progress. It’s not meant to harm you, you see. Only to propel you forward. But you refuse our guidance, Reed; therefore, we’ll need to push harder.”
The back of the cell began closing. It did not stop until the bars were pressed against his chest and back. Reed was sandwiched tightly in place, barely able to move. The lucid gear dropped from the top of his cage and brushed the top of his head. He would only need to lift himself onto his toes to let it slide into place.
Mr. Smith clamped something on the bars, turning the wingnuts with his arthritic fingers. It was a metal frame, box-like. An empty bracket was centered twelve inches from Reed’s face.
Mr. Smith remained a few seconds longer, then headed for the exit.
Reed closed his eyes. He squirmed against the bars and panic threatened to overwhelm him. He just wanted to move.
The lucid gear touched his head. They were making escape easy.
Each breath was forced to be shallow and quick as his chest was constricted by the bars. He wasn’t able to turn his head. Thoughts of being buried alive piled up. Trapped, he focused his efforts on breathing, again.
Mr. Smith returned. He was dragging something long and snake-like.
Reed wouldn’t look. He barely controlled his breathing.
Mr. Smith fastened it onto the metal bracket, turning wingnuts to hold it into place. He left the Haystack, the heavy door clicked shut. Locking the darkness inside.
Reed was tempted to lift up and take the needle. What if it’s a box of rats?
Water hit his face.
He choked. Struggled to breathe. Unable to turn his head, he was forced to swallow too much of it, choking on the rest. He managed to hold his breath until it stopped. He coughed up excess liquid.
Drowning.
A hose was locked into the metal frame.
When he had regained his breath, when the burning subsided in his chest, when the bars weren’t pressing as hard, the water came again.
And again.
17
Floating in darkness.
Not exactly floating, that implied motion.
Danny was just nowhere. There was no sound, smell or flesh. No nothing.
When the needle had dropped, Danny couldn’t pull it down fast enough. He didn’t bother looking at Reed. He was shivering too much to care about anything but escape. The suffering was worse than the first time. Felt longer, colder. He welcomed the needle like a savior.
The strap numbed his forehead. The needle hit the stent with a dull thump. His back arched. And then he went to the dark place.
And it was better than the Haystack.
Boundaries formed.
What felt like an endless void shaped into arms and legs and a body. He had no sense of up or down, just a feeling of being curled up in a fetal position.
Slowly, there was something hard beneath him. Gravity pulled the weight of his body against it. A rhythmic beating throbbed distantly, got louder. Heartbeat. Blood rushed past his ears.
The ground thundered beneath him.
The world spun and pain struck his arms—
“Don’t challenge me, son.” The voice was modulated and robotic. “Wake up.”
Danny’s head bobbled and neck popped. His eyes began to open. First, light. Then color. Then the details of a mechanical face. Danny was twenty feet off the ground, in the clutches of giant mechanical hands.
Danny’s world shook violently, again. A word vibrated in his throat but didn’t make it out.
“You ever have any delusions about who runs our camp, let this be a reminder,” the thing said.
Danny’s arms filled with sparking pain. The monster squeezed until they were painfully numb.
“You might be a hero in the game room, but you’re a little thirteen year old bitch. You got that? Life on the island is short, and I’ve been here way longer than you, so get in line, son. I don’t care what Zin told you about the tracker volts, I’ll stuff your head up your cornhole before they konk me out. You’ll be tasting last night’s dinner for weeks.”
The lower jaw jutted out. Flames ignited on the incisors like pilot lights.
“Try me again and I’ll set your head on fire. You hear?”
When Danny didn’t respond, his world shook. The popping in his neck was louder.
“You hear—”
“Whoa, whoa there, Sid. You’re going to turn him into a jellyfish if you’re not—”
Danny crumpled on the ground. The mechanical beast’s enormous hand clamped around Zin and lifted him up. The fingers squeezed so hard that Zin bulged like a water balloon. Then he melted, dripped to the ground like mercury, coagulating and reforming. Zin was whole again.
“I’m not kidding, Zinski! You start putting ideas in Danny Boy’s head and I’ll cook you both.”
“Sid, you got to remember that he just got here. He’s still a poke, man. He needs a little introduction to the needle before you start throwing him in the Foreverland game room. Just give him a second to get used to it, will you? You remember what it was like on your second round?”
Zin was engulfed in a cloud of fire. He was unfazed when the fire died, pinching off a small flame dancing on his sleeve.
“Both of you.” Sid pointed back and forth. “Don’t jerk off all day, you hear? If we lose and you’re MIA, then it’s co
rnhole time. Got it?”
Danny nodded. Zin gave him a thumbs up.
The ground shuddered as the monster trotted across the Yard. Danny bounced with each step.
How’d you do that? Those words were stuck inside Danny.
Zin grabbed his arm and lifted him to his feet. “Lean against the sundial and stand there a minute.”
It vibrated beneath his hand, penetrating into his chest until he was filled with warmth. The aches from Sid’s punishment faded. He noticed other sensations, too. The breeze brushed his cheeks. The grass tickled between his toes. He noticed the shouting and laughter from across the Yard. People running. People flying.
“Welcome to Foreverland, Danny Boy.” Zin let go of his arm. “You’re all the way inside this time, my friend.”
A body began to appear in the empty space only a few feet away. It first appeared translucent and ghostly, slowly solidified into one of the new pokes that came to the island shortly after Danny. He was sucking his thumb, eyes closed.
“That’s what most people look like on the second round,” Zin said. “Don’t tell Sid, but I heard he sucked his thumb for five rounds.” He looked around, suspiciously, whispered too loudly, “Even sucked his thumb inside the Haystack.”
Danny laughed.
“How’d you do all that?” Danny asked, weakly.
“What? Turn to water? Old trick, man. Sid was just trying to scare you. He knew you’d be lucid enough to feel it but not enough to control the pain. After this round, Danny Boy, you’ll be able to do anything. You can feel as much pleasure or as little pain as you want.”
Zin splayed his hand on the sundial. He pulled a meat cleaver from his pocket and rammed it through the back of his hand. No blood. He didn’t even flinch.
“See?” Zin held up his hand, the tip sticking through his palm. “If I wanted to feel that, I could. But I don’t.”
Danny felt dizzy. The blade sticking through the flesh and people flying like birds and the ground swaying and—
“Whoa, hold on there.” Zin placed Danny’s hands on the sundial before he fell over. “Hang on a bit longer, Danny Boy.”
Feelings of seasickness subsided. The ground held still. The alternate reality felt normal again and the urge to vomit disappeared.
“You good?” Zin asked.
Danny nodded.
“All right, give it another minute. The sundial is the center of Foreverland, where we feel most solid when we get inside. It helps to touch it when you first get here. After while, you’ll just hit the ground running.”
“Where are we?”
“You mean you don’t know?”
Danny shook his head.
Zin laughed. “We’re inside a computer, Danny Boy! This is a program, a digital environment. Our identity has been sucked out of our heads, and the needle is doing the sucking. Hell of lot better than freezing your ass off on that concrete floor, right?”
Danny smiled. Yeah, it is.
“Once you’re fully here, fully present, you’ll figure out how to control this body. You can dial up pleasure, push out pain, turn yourself into a baboon or swim to the bottom of the ocean… whatever you want to do. The sky’s the limit, Danny Boy. And the sky has none.”
Zin pulled Danny from the sundial. They walked around the poke curled on the ground. Danny felt shaky the further they got from the sundial, but he was still solid. He had a new body, one he could control with a thought.
“So what do you want to do, Danny Boy? What’ll it be?”
Danny stepped away from Zin. The Yard was exactly like it was on the island. The same buildings, same trees. Even the Haystack. But it was different. It all felt interconnected. Danny could feel the grass shifting in the wind. He could feel it crush when a footstep landed. He sensed the birds singing and the crackle of heat as a fire erupted in the trees. He was one with everything.
Not separate. But one. And the sky was the limit.
“That,” Danny said. “I want to do that.”
Zin looked up. “All right.”
The island was lushly shaped like the state of South Carolina, dominated by trees with a bald spot of turf in the middle.
Tears streamed down Danny’s cheeks in the cold wind. He kept his arms out for balance, like walking a tightrope for the first time, 3000 miles above the ground. Zin flew next to him on his back with his hands laced behind his head. For him, it was as thrilling as riding a bike for the thousandth time. For Danny, it was everything he imagined.
The ocean was choppy, but the distant horizon disappeared in a gray haze. Even the sky above them looked more gray than blue, like they were inside a fuzzy dome.
“What’s all that?” Danny shouted above the wind.
“The Nowhere.” Zin made hardly any effort to speak, but his words resounded clearly across the whistling wind. “You can’t go out there, it’s the edge of the program. Where your memories are.”
“Wait. What?”
“Your memories.” Zin put a finger on Danny’s forehead. Inside Foreverland, there was no hole. “Haven’t you noticed?”
Danny concentrated on flying straight, but he was remembering the time he stepped on a nail when he was six and had to get a tetanus shot; the time he got caught smoking his mom’s cigarette and had to finish the pack in front of her as punishment. The time he kissed a girl behind the garage on a dare—
He began to wobble. Zin grabbed his arm to straighten him out.
“I don’t get it,” Danny shouted.
“It’s part of the reprogramming, Danny Boy. The healing. They sucked our memories out so our bad habits get fixed. You know, like addiction and stealing and whatever else the bunch of us lowlifes did wrong before we got here. Inside the needle, we get them back until we’re whole again.”
“Reed said we’ll get sucked inside the needle.”
“Yeah, well, he’s not exactly the voice of reason.” Zin resumed his relaxed posture. “But he might not be all that crazy.”
“Why?”
“You might not want to remember everything, Danny Boy. There’s a reason we’re here.”
He didn’t have a chance to ask for more. Zin floated farther away, eyes closed. Not so happy. If they were a bunch of screw-ups before they got to the island, it wouldn’t be so rosy to remember.
They soared over the beach. The waves were just as angry as the day he went to visit Reed but the beach was empty. Reed was still back in the Haystack, forced to stand in the blowing cold. How would he know what was going on if he’d never been inside the needle?
Danny liked the way it felt, remembering his life. He wasn’t sure it made sense, how it was fixing him, but if he was broken then maybe he shouldn’t know how it worked. Just because he was regaining memories, though, didn’t make him more of who he was.
Is that what I am, memories? Or am I something else?
It was too confusing to think about. He was perfectly fine with the thrilling sensation of flying, of being so far off the ground without the fear of falling. If they just did circles all day, it would be a good one.
There were no girls on the ground. Zin was flying with his eyes closed. Danny wanted to ask about them, even about the redheaded one, but then a squad of boys blasted between them in v-shaped formation and tossed Danny head over heel. He went tumbling.
I’m going to crash, I’m going to die!
Zin steadied him. “You got to watch it. If you let your thoughts get a hold of you, you’ll divebomb out, man. You crash, it’s going to hurt. You’re not ready to control your pain so if you split a bone, you’re going to feel it. Remember, they’re just thoughts. You are not your thoughts. Stay focused. Sometimes it helps to imagine a dot in the middle of your brain. Breathe in and out of it until there’s nothing left but the dot. You’ll get the hang of it.”
He did that. First, with his eyes closed. Next, eyes open.
They did a complete circle around the island. The second time around, he felt a little more in control. In fact, he put his
arms down and did a Superman pose. Zin was pretending to swim.
They were over the south end of the island where the Investors’ Mansion divided the trees from the coast. They soared around it and cut across the middle of the island. Zin turned on the jets and did loops around the Chimney.
The Chimney, where everyone woke up and everyone disappeared. Graduated. Smoked. But no one knew what really happened. Would Foreverland really show them what was inside?
“Get to the ground, Danny Boy,” he said. “I don’t want you crashing and burning, my man.”
“Where you going?”
Zin pointed down. Danny could see the girls popping into existence near the sundial. “Girl plus boy… you do the math.”
They landed safely. Danny didn’t see Zin after that.
The two moons had fallen below the tree line. There was a castle in the Yard with smolder holes in it. The moat was on fire. Danny watched Vikings carry out chests of gold. They celebrated around a fire with pre-historic turkey legs and vats of beer, wine or whatever was slurring their speech. Apparently, they won.
Danny had gone to the beach. It was empty. No sign of the redhead. He explored the island, messed around inside the castle and went swimming. He even went to the game room and helped the team win.
(They were getting slaughtered before he showed up.)
DA-NNY! DA-NNY! DA-NNY!
Sid was all happy.
Danny looked for the redhead some more. He ended up where he first met her on the Yard. The castle had crumbled into dust by then. The moat continued to burn with eerie red flames. Campfires were all around it. When the moons began to fade, they were hugging and saying goodbye. Some of them were crying. Danny watched from the edge of the trees, alone.
Someone walked toward him.
“You Danny Boy?” It was one of the girls. “Someone found this by the fire.”
She handed him a gift. It was wrapped in red paper that sparkled in the dimming light. He opened the card taped to the top.
Merry Christmas, Danny Boy.
He could hardly see his hands as he ripped the paper from the box. The fires were nearly gone when he pulled the top open. He put his hand inside.
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