A flash of silver.
Zin wasn’t fast enough to stop the aluminum table leg from cracking Danny’s hand. The tablet hit the floor, the glass screen spiderwebbed. The old man jumped back, table leg back and ready for another swing. Danny got behind Zin, his hand already tingling.
“You all right?” Zin asked, faking a swing at the attacker.
“What the hell you kids doing up here?” the old man said.
“None of your business!” Zin shouted. “What the hell you still doing awake?”
The old man huffed, his eyes darting around. “You did this? You knocked out the power and killed the Investors? You did this?”
He shook his head.
“You boys are done, you hear me? You’re done, out of the program. You had your chance but you’re finished now. The Director will be down any second.”
“Why is he still awake?” Zin muttered back to Danny.
“I don’t know. Maybe he wasn’t on the tracker net.”
“And neither is the Director,” the old man said. “You can say goodbye any second now. Any second.”
He stepped behind the hospital bed that was on the other side of the curtain, this one parallel to Sid’s. An old man was on it, same position as Sid and a needle in his head that was attached to the same machine. They had never seen an Investor with a hole. They never went to Foreverland.
“Isn’t that Mr. Williams?” Zin asked.
Yeah, thought Danny. Sid’s Investor.
Side by side, same machine. Needles in their head.
That’s how Parker graduated. And when he was done, they never saw his Investor again.
After that, Parker began parting his hair on the left.
“What the hell is going on?” Zin said.
“I think I know.”
66
Reed felt nothing.
Saw nothing.
And liked it.
He’d been trapped in a broken body for too long. He couldn’t remember the last time he was without pain. If this is death, then it is sweeter than imagined.
But it wasn’t death.
He drifted in the black nothingness, his identity drawn inside the needle, drifting toward Foreverland. He only knew the sweet release.
But another body formed around him. This one firm and pain-free. Curled up. Fetal.
He clutched at tufts of grass with his eyes tightly closed. There was wind in his ears. Light on his face. There was sound—
“Reed.”
Her voice. It was feeble. It was near.
It was not a dream.
He blinked. A blurry layer of fluid smeared over his eyes. But he could see her. She was out of reach. She was on the ground, curled up like he was. Her head turned so that she could see him.
Blink. Blink, blink, blink.
Her lips quivered. Her body shook. She was in pain.
He tried to move his hand, tried to reach for her, but he couldn’t feel his body enough to control it. Barely felt the ground below him. But his heart ached. He couldn’t reach her. Couldn’t help her.
Couldn’t save her. Again.
She managed to crawl out of the circle scratched from the grass. She pulled her body over the ground, dragging her legs behind her. Her breath was labored. Tears in her eyes. She stopped to gather her strength, then pulled herself closer. One handful of grass at a time.
Until her breath was on his face.
“Where am I?” he asked.
“You’re with me, my love.”
Her hand, convulsing, reached out. Gently cradled his cheek. Warm and soft.
And he remembered.
Lucy.
He knew her when he was very young. He stopped a boy on the playground from pulling her hair when they were seven. She watched him in church, leaning forward and smiling at him from the end of the pew. He watched her at basketball games, with her friends.
They held hands in the back of a friend’s truck on the way home from a concert. Their fingers interlaced like broken pieces that belonged together.
Their first kiss was on the couch when her family was gone.
He remembered her smell.
The memories returned, and filled him. All the joy. All the pain.
She put her arms around him. In a full embrace, they merged. His body became light. It became sweet.
He was home.
The bitch is a liar.
She manipulated the memories in the Nowhere to fool the Director, to make him forget who he was. He was not those things. He was not a murderer, he was a savior.
He felt Reed arrive near the sundial. His body appearing like a full grown baby, naked and curled up. So helpless.
And the Director felt such happiness.
He’s here.
The air shifted. Suddenly, it was not so heavy. The gray seemed lighter.
Reed couldn’t move. He was lucky to open his eyes, to see his memory – the bitch – in front of him. The Director released her from the confining circle so that she could crawl to him like a wounded animal.
Specks of gray flitted from the sky, penetrating them like tiny bullets the closer she got. And when she touched his cheek, it rained gray pellets. They had become a magnet the Nowhere could not resist. When they embraced, they absorbed the lost identities that filled the Nowhere.
And in a burst of light—
An explosion—
A thunderous clap—
Foreverland expanded into infinity.
The Director closed his eyes, shielded his face from the burst. And when he opened them, they were gone.
Not a hole in the ground, not a depression, no sign they ever existed.
And the blue sky reached into the heavens.
And the ocean reached the horizon.
In that moment, he realized how puny Foreverland had become. Now it was all existence. He was free. For the first time in his life, he was free.
Enlightened.
He was these things. He created them. He was a god, after all.
And it was finally time to act like one.
To stretch out, let the world know who hears their prayers.
He reached out, feeling a connection with all of Foreverland. His body, back in the Chimney, was of no use to him now. He was free to be his mind, to be whatever he wanted. He dissolved into the air, his identity drifting like vapor, like the data Danny Boy had demonstrated.
The Director moved his identity into the Chimney’s network where he would slip out into the world, melt into the vast web of data that inhabited homes and businesses and governments. He would know everything. He would be everywhere.
I’m God.
The computers bent to his will, the network did what it was told. And as he streamed through the Chimney network, as he passed through his last portal, just before he graced the world with his omnipresence, a room formed around him. He didn’t recall this avenue.
It was a large room. There were shelves all around, filled with books.
A pedestal in front of him.
A book slid off one of the shelves near the ceiling, floating like an invisible hand had pulled it and brought it to the pedestal. There was a name on the front.
Harold Ballard.
He willed the book to be gone, for the room to disappear. He was ready to leave. But none of that happened. The book remained. And it opened.
And the Director witnessed Harold Ballard’s past.
Foreverland faded into sunbleached colors.
First the sky turned lighter blue, then white. Then the ocean followed. Whiteness crept over the trees. It was a different kind of nothingness, not filled with random memories of lost identities but the void of non-existence.
Foreverland was ending.
Reed walked out of the trees just before they evaporated.
He crossed the Yard with the white void nipping away the ground behind him. He went to the sundial. Put his hand on it. Just like she told him.
And he was absorbed by it.
He le
ft Foreverland as it ended.
Forever.
67
Why didn’t we see this before?
It seemed so obvious, now that the answer was lying in a pair of parallel beds. An old man and a young kid, their brains wired to the same machine.
“Don’t you see, Zin? They kept us physically fit and exercised our brains. They let us doing anything we wanted so that we were happy. They put our memories inside the needle and made us go after them. You said it yourself, you just wanted to leave. You belong inside Foreverland.”
Zin was squeezing the stick with both hands. His face relaxed but his hands didn’t.
“It’s a body farm,” he said.
“Every Investor has a kid,” Danny said. “And when the kid graduates, we never see the Investor again, do we?”
Zin stepped toward the old man. “Oh, we saw one of the Investors. We saw one inside Parker’s body.”
“How are we doing so far?” Danny asked the old man.
He backed into the door, slid all the way into the corner, the table leg held in front of him like a four-sided long sword.
After Danny went inside the needle the very first time, the old men were telling Mr. Jones that he got a good one. Yeah, he got a kid that would graduate soon. A smart one. And Mr. Smith was so desperate because Reed refused to cooperate. The amount of money it took for them to acquire one of them had to be a lot. These were billionaires from all over the world that refused to die. The Director showed them a way that they could live another 70 years. All they needed was a kid that no one cared about and bring him to the island so they could lure him out of his body, scatter his identity into the Nowhere until his body was empty.
So they could take it.
“The rich old bastards?” Danny said. “None of them are using their real names. It’s all regular names like Jones and Smith. None of them really want to know who each other are. They aren’t helping us, Zin. They’re just kidnapping kids that no one will miss, kids with a troubled past and no connections. Like you and me, Zin. No one’s looking for us. No one will notice when our bodies return to the outside world. Without us in them.”
“You’re done,” the old man said. “You’ll go right in the oven for this.”
Danny grabbed the back of Zin’s shirt before he charged. The table leg was shaking in the old man’s hands. Zin tried to get loose.
“WHY ISN’T HE KNOCKED OUT?” Zin shouted.
Danny shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Tie his ass up, we’ll figure it out later.”
“Don’t come near me.” The old man reached behind him while holding his table leg in the other hand. He scattered the items off the table, swung his arm around with a syringe in his hand. He pulled the rubber cover off with his teeth.
“There’s enough in here to kill one of you,” he said. “Come after me, and one of you dies.”
“If someone has to do, then I vote for you.” Zin raised the club over his head.
Danny stopped him, again. “Don’t hurt him.”
“Are you kidding me?” Zin didn’t drop the stick. “Weren’t you listening to your own story? He’s one of them… he’s some rich old bastard that’s going to kill one of those kids out there and steal his body. If we ace this old bastard, we save the kid. Eye for an eye, Danny Boy.”
He poked the stick at him. The old man hit it like they were dueling.
“Who’s your kid?” Zin asked. “Which one of us were you going to steal, you sick bastard, huh? Did you import a nice little Kenyan for your next life?”
The old man’s head was shaking as bad as the table leg. Danny’s grip loosened. Zin stepped closer.
“A Kenyan too dark?” Zin said. “How about a Canadian, they got nice white skin, you might like that better, you know with racism and everything. It might make things easier.”
The old man pointed the needle at Zin, then Danny. Back to Zin. His eyes darted back and forth with the needle.
“We didn’t hurt you boys,” he said. “No one got hurt.”
“Oh, no. That Haystack was a blast,” Zin said. “We loved freezing our balls off.”
“But you didn’t get hurt, we just make you uncomfortable so… so…”
“So you could what?” Zin said. “So you could kill us with kindness. You’re demented. You’re the ones sick in the head. You’re the ones that deserve to die.”
“You wasted your lives!” The old man dropped the table leg and held the syringe with two hands like he was going to squirt it at them. “Maybe it wasn’t your faults, but it didn’t matter. You were going nowhere, your lives were a waste of time, you didn’t need your bodies to continue a life of misery. Trust me, you were heading for a lot more suffering than that Haystack. You would’ve ended up in jail or killing someone or something worse. The Investors have lived good lives, they’ve helped a lot of people, and they deserve your bodies a lot more than you.”
“It’s murder, and you know it,” Danny said. “I don’t care what you say.”
“You choose to leave your body,” the old man said. “You reached for the needle, you went inside it. We didn’t make you, it doesn’t work that way. You have to want to leave your body. All we did was make it uncomfortable and you did the rest.”
Danny thought about the two splotchy purple lines down the front of Reed’s chest where the bars had crushed him. He wouldn’t cooperate. So they killed him.
Danny pulled Zin back and shoved the corner of the bed against the back wall, pinning the old man in the corner. “Knock the needle out of his hands, Zin. Just don’t hurt him. Not yet.”
“Are you kidding, I’m going to knock the brain out of his head.”
“No, don’t. I want him tied up and alive. He doesn’t deserve to die, not yet. I want him alive when the authorities get here—”
The old man genuinely laughed. “Stupid kids. No one’s going to find this place. It’s been operating for over thirty years, you think a couple rogue teenagers are going to bring it down? There are trillions of dollars that protect it. The rich stay rich, son. And they stay alive.”
Zin swiped at the needle, narrowly missing. The old man tried to back up further but continued to smile. They couldn’t charge him with that needle and they’d wasted enough time. Danny wheeled the bed back a few feet, put his weight into it and shoved it like a battering ram into the old man’s gut. He picked his leg up to absorb the blow at the same time Zin took a full swing. He caught the old man on the hand, knocking the syringe into the wall. It skittered across the floor.
Danny pulled the bed out. “Grab some of those wires, Zin. We’ll lace his ass to the bed—”
“That’s enough, boys.”
It was the one voice that could freeze them.
The Director stood in the doorway with his hand in his pocket.
68
“I need you boys to step over to the booth.” The Director pointed to the observation window. “Just do as I say.”
Danny didn’t move. Zin was fingering the stick like he was deciding if the next pitch would be a strike.
“Boys, you realize I’ll knock you into next week.” He wiggled the hand in his pocket. “And it won’t be any kinder than what you’ve done to the Investors. Now step away from the bed and plant your backs to the wall. Do it, now.”
The Director stared them down.
The man had exceptional skills, some sort of hypnotic spell he cast just by looking. It didn’t matter if it was a rich, power-hungry oil baron or a juvenile delinquent, he knew how to get people to do what he wanted them to do. And the boys did just that.
Zin lowered the stick and followed Danny. Neither one of them turned their back on the Director. It wouldn’t matter, all the power he needed was in his pocket, the miniature controller that activated trackers. And the boys knew it.
“Are you all right, Mr. Jackson?”
Was he all right? The island was filled with troubled youth. An occasional uprising wasn’t surprising, but when half the Investors drop de
ad and two little maniacs show up with a stick to knock his brains out his ear? No, Mr. Jackson was a little less than all right.
But the Director had arrived. He would put things back in order. He always did. You don’t run an island like that for thirty years without ironing out a few wrinkles.
“We’ve had some problems, Mr. Jackson. I’d like to start in the network room.”
Mr. Jackson cradled his hand against his chest. It was probably broke. The Director moved the bed out of his way. He wasn’t concerned about the Investors or the aborted crossover lying in the bed.
“Problems,” Mr. Jackson said. “Yeah, I think we need to start in the observation booth, Director. Some of the Investors don’t have a pulse.”
“Yes, we’ll get to that. First thing’s first. Let’s have a look at the network room.”
The boys watched them cross the room. Mr. Jackson kept his distance. Why doesn’t he just knock them out?
The Director was barefoot. He let Mr. Jackson lead the way. They stepped over Mr. Lee – spread-eagle in the doorway – and crossed the hall to the only other door on the fourth floor.
There were endless racks of servers in the network room that went up to the ceiling in aisles that paralleled the curvature of the building. The network room took up half of the fourth floor. Midway around the semi-circular room was a large monitor with continuously scrolling data.
Mr. Jackson sat down. His left hand took the majority of Zin’s stick. He couldn’t move his fingers. Broke, for sure. He placed it gently on his lap and worked the mouse with his right.
“What the hell happened?” he asked. “Power is out on the entire island. The Chimney only has about three hours of charge left in the backup generators. And the Investors…” He looked back. “How could this happen?”
The Director stood behind him, arms crossed, staring at the monitor.
“Something unexpected happened, Mr. Jackson.” He fiercely scratched his beard. “Call up the Looping Program, please.”
“Looping…? That’s not active. We shut that down after Danny Boy hacked into it and thought it was the outside world.”
“Humor me.”
The Director was acting weird. He was an odd-ball, but none of this seemed all that alarming. Things went wrong, but never at this magnitude. And now he was concerned about some insignificant computer program.
What Tomorrow May Bring Page 168