Applause filled the auditorium.
“Now, observe the technology all medical personnel will soon possess.” He reached for the woman in the yellow blouse and firmly wrapped his hands around her forearms. He knew as soon as he touched her that she was numbered in the hundred with cancer, and it was bad. Choosing someone at random was Kerstin’s idea. Now Chase didn’t know how to handle it. No one told him what to do if he tried this trick and found serious illness.
“Soon illness will become a thing of the past. Please take your seat.” The woman’s bewilderment showed, but Chase prodded her off the stage as some in the crowd verbalized their frustration at how things were going.
“Please, my friends, we have so much to do before we bring out the host of our new program. I have good news for seven among you. Within me is a storehouse of information that will benefit you this very night.” Chase called the names of the lucky seven, chosen beforehand by Kerstin and the directors. He brought them on stage and told them about their exciting new job assignments or housing upgrades. The selected showed some enthusiasm. The fans clapped. They shuffled in their seats and whispered complaints Chase wished he couldn’t hear.
The seven took their seats, and Chase moved to center stage. “Now, as you all know, the last contestant from Change Your Life is the host of SynVue’s brand new show, Reach Your Destiny. Let’s give a big round of applause for Larin Andrews.”
The fans showed their pleasure. A spotlight lit a darkened corner, and Chase walked to Larin and shook his hand. The two settled into comfortable chairs. The set looked much like the one from the last time the two sat together in this place.
“Doesn’t he look wonderful?” Chase asked as he faced the crowd. They responded with cheers and applause. Larin smiled, his shiny new teeth catching the light.
“But look at you,” Larin said. He turned to the fans. “This man had a hole blown clean through him. Everything in his mid-section was rebuilt using the latest technology. He is closer to being immortal than anyone outside of the movies has ever been.”
Someone in the crowd muttered loud enough for more than just Chase to hear, “So he’s got a computer in his head, and he can see in the dark. Nice perks if you can get them. Hand out the goods to all of us—that’d be a big deal.”
Chase stood and faced the stranger. “It’s coming, buddy. But you won’t get it, it will get you.”
Larin grabbed Chase by the arm and laughed a bit. “Now, Chase, let’s get on with the night’s programming.”
Chase jerked free and took his seat. “Yes, Larin, let’s do that. Tell me about your new show.”
“It’s simple, really. Thanks to what we’ve learned in just the past few weeks, we can offer what’s called auto-educational implementation to anyone. These lucky souls will not only gain years of education in a matter of hours, they’ll be put in the best positions possible and their knowledge will benefit us all.”
Chase had not been given the privilege of hearing any of this ahead of time. He could only imagine what they would cram into people’s heads and what those best positions might be. He searched his exoself for any information on the real purpose of Reach Your Destiny. He found nothing. He had to go along. “Tell me, Larin, how are these lucky souls, as you call them, chosen? And what will they do with their new super brains?”
“That is the question, Chase. The only thing we need to know tonight is that the seven you chose already—the ones who just left the stage—will be the first to receive this marvelous gift.” Larin stood and lifted his hands. “Please return to the stage, and to Destiny’s Road.”
Five stood right away and moved through the audience to the aisles. “Where are the other two?” Larin said. “No need to be afraid.”
Chase stood and came beside Larin. “Tell them what’s on that road, Larin. What is their destiny?”
“To usher in a new world. To become a building block in the government’s infrastructure. That’s right, those of you receiving this marvelous gift tonight will go to work directly for the WR. The melding of the internal man and the external program will lead us to a world without end. No one can stop us.” Larin’s appearance and the audacity of his speech brought an ovation from the crowd. They were coming on board.
But to the right of the auditorium Chase could see two people—two of the seven—slinking out an exit.
They didn’t get far.
Soon all seven of the night’s contestants, as Larin now called them, were back on stage. Three seemed genuinely excited about what would happen. Two appeared nervous. And the two who’d tried to run now stood among the others, captured. Guards waited just out of view of the crowd.
The exoself told Chase this was the future and that it was not only acceptable but something to be embraced. The world would be a better place. Less sickness, boundless knowledge. Death suspended. Soon people would live as long as…
“Who decides?” Chase asked.
Larin stopped his sales pitch. “Who decides what, my partner?”
“Partner? I’m only here for the night, Larin. After that, who knows? Who decides where I go from here? Who decides who is augmented and who is not? How long will people live? How adaptable must a mind or a body be before it’s determined worthy of this new life?”
Larin fumbled for words. The audience grew restless.
“People, just a few weeks ago you wanted new cars and bigger houses and more beautiful faces and bodies,” Chase said. “I was glad to deliver. But things have changed.”
“Things have changed indeed.” Larin stepped in front of Chase. “Life improvement is no longer about mansions and flawless skin and car dealerships. It’s not about organ transplants and dream jobs. It’s about the continuance of our race. Now nothing can destroy us. Not pollution or poor health or stupidity. It’s only lack of knowledge that brings us to our end. Now knowledge knows no boundaries. We have become invincible.”
“You are not there yet, partner.” With one arm, Chase grabbed Larin around the middle like he was a misbehaving toddler and hauled him off the stage. The crowd roared. Some laughed. Some protested. The backstage crew scattered like ants. All except for Kerstin. The queen stood still in the center of the disturbed mound. Chase stopped before her, Larin flailing and screaming in his strong grip.
“Shut up, Larin.” Kerstin’s temples seemed to bulge under her black hair. “Chase, put him down.”
“Not until you tell me what’s happening here.”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Put me down, Mr. Sterling,” Larin said, his voice shaking.
“You know I can break him in two. Tell me who started all this. It’s mad, Kerstin. I won’t be a part of turning these people into—”
“Into what, Chase? Into augmented specimens of the new human race? Like you?”
Chase tightened his grip. Behind him, the audience stomped their feet in unison and yelled for Larin to return. The chosen seven came backstage. Three of them rushed to Larin’s aid, but Chase, still holding Larin with one arm, wrapped his other hand around Larin’s neck and the three backed off.
“Chase, you can’t just snap a person’s neck the way you did that cat,” Kerstin said.
“Of course I can. You programmed me, remember? I can do all sorts of marvelous tricks.”
“No, let me go,” Larin cried.
“Shut up,” Chase said.
“Just put me down. Please.”
“Only after you tell me the truth.”
“About what?”
“About the night I was injured.” Chase tightened his grip on Larin’s scrawny neck.
“I didn’t know they were going to shoot you. I just knew I was getting assigned to host a new show. That’s the truth, Chase. I tried to save you from the M-Snipe but it was no use.” Chase dropped him to the floor, and the three eager ones of the seven helped him to his feet. Larin shook himself off. “What do I do, Kerstin? Should I go back out there?”
“Yes,” she said. “But the sho
w is over. Tell the people we’ve had some technical difficulties. Tell them they’ll each receive an external prep transmitter.”
“OK.” He straightened his clothes and looked at Chase. “I’m sorry, Chase. I don’t know what they did to your brain, but they’d better work the bugs out before they do it to anyone else.” He turned toward the stage and then looked back. “Kerstin?”
“Get out there, Larin.”
“But I need to know—”
“What is it?” She screeched.
“What’s an external prep transmitter?”
Kerstin balled her fists. “It will help them prepare for augmentation.”
Chase breathed deep and flexed his shoulders. “What if they don’t want it, kitten?”
“Larin, tell them they’ve all been chosen as potential candidates. We will usher them into the future. Tell them you’ve already received your augmentation, and it’s changed your life like nothing else.”
“I’ll tell them, Kerstin,” he said, and he pointed at Chase. “But you are not doing that to me. Poor man doesn’t know if he’s coming or going.” Larin turned to the stage.
“Watch out, Larin,” Chase said. “Someone out there might blow a hole through you. Then you’ll wake up like me whether you like it or not.”
Larin slowed for a moment, but then he kept going. The audience applauded. The backstage crew and directors hurried to their posts to terminate the night’s ruined show. But Chase wasn’t finished.
“Kerstin, what happened to us?”
Emotion showed in her eyes but only for an instant. “The future has captured our imaginations and altered our beings.”
“Your imagination, my being. Please, please explain it to me. You’ve wrapped me tight in your new world, and I don’t understand it.”
“It’s all there. Can’t you feel it deep down in your—”
“In my exoself? Yes. But it doesn’t make any sense, and I want out.”
“That is what doesn’t make sense.” She pulled her VPad from the pocket of her silk blazer. “Fiender is incompetent, and you are a disaster.”
“What are you doing?”
She swiped the screen. Chase fell to his knees.
“Kerstin, you can’t control me. I’m a human being.”
“But darling, I can control human beings.” One more time she ran her finger over the screen.
Chase’s face hit the floor, and everything went black.
36
“Charles, I have something to show you.”
Not again. As glad as he was to escape his real life, this game world was just as beyond Chase’s control. He didn’t want to get sucked into the movie screen and relive the past. Of course, the voice had told Chase the last time that they were through with the past. Chase thought about Mel and his mother in that field under a blue sky. The voice said it was his future.
“Can I see my mother again? Is she with Mel?”
“In good time. Right now you’re going to have a talk with your father.”
“You said we were through with the past.”
“Don’t alter my words, Charles. What I said was, ‘We’re through with the past, at least for now.’ This is a new day.”
“But I want to go back to that place—the open land and all those people. They seemed so happy. It was beautiful.”
“Not so. It’s a place of persecution. Now watch the screen.”
The blindness didn’t bother Chase anymore—he knew he’d see soon enough. He felt beside him. Everything was there—the nightstand and the metal bowl. He dipped his fingers into the cool water and turned his face upward in the darkness. The screen filled his vision.
Chase’s father appeared older than the last time he’d seen him—the day they’d found the bottle on the beach. Trouble showed on the man’s face. He stood on the back patio of their old house in Bradenton, and he looked right at Chase. “Son, come here,” he said. “Let’s have a talk.”
Chase saw himself walking out the open sliding glass door and stepping onto the patio. He knew by the cut of his jeans and his soured expression that he was sixteen.
Dad put his arm around Chase’s shoulders. That’s when the dream became real.
“I know we’ve had our differences lately,” Dad said. “I still love you, Charlie. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yeah, sure, Dad. Whatever. When are you gonna stop calling me Charlie? Nobody else calls me that.”
Chase’s father dropped his arm to his side and looked across the backyard. Chase turned his eyes as well, and they stood there watching two mockingbirds fly from tree to tree. The grass needed mowing—something Chase should’ve done days ago. But his dad didn’t say anything about it.
“I wanted to tell you something,” Dad said. But he just stood there.
“Dad, we’ve had this talk before—the one where you pull me outside and we look at the stars or the birds or something. And then you talk about life and my future or whatever.”
Dad lifted his shoulders and huffed. “There’s more to this world than what we can see right now, Charlie. Do you ever think of the bigger picture? The meaning of it all?”
“Nope. Never.”
“I think about it. I’ve got things settled in my heart.”
“Dad, seriously, are you dying or something?”
“Sooner or later.”
“And you want to tell me something before it happens? Just wait awhile if you’re not gonna be pushing up daisies anytime soon.”
His father laughed. “Sounds like something my grandmother would say. Where did you hear that?”
“Me and some guys in my language class did a report on clichés, and I found all these stupid old ways to say somebody died.”
“Tell me some more,” Dad said with a wide smile.
“I don’t know. There was kicked the bucket, crossed the river, gone to glory. Or you could say somebody went to meet his Maker.” Chase scuttled his flip-flops on the sandy patio. “I don’t know.”
Dad nodded. “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “When you meet your Maker, what will you say to Him?”
Chase had no answer for this absurd question, so he just shrugged his shoulders. They watched the birds a little while longer, and when he’d had enough Chase turned to his father to let him know he had better things to do. But when Chase looked at him, his father had changed. His eyes were bright, and his hair wasn’t graying like it was only a few seconds ago. The lines on his face were smoothed away. He looked at Chase and smiled.
“Dad, what’s happening?”
The smile faded. “I came to believe some things, Charlie, when you were a boy. But the world was a confusing place and nobody, well hardly anybody, made a habit of talking about life and death. Even if they knew the truth.”
“You’re not making sense, Dad. And what happened to you? Why do you look different?”
“I look different? You look different. You’re a man. I never got to see what became of you.”
Chase looked down. By his designer shoes and suit Chase knew he was grown, successful. The host of Change Your Life. And he was talking to his dead father. The tears would not be stifled.
“Dad, I can’t believe this. I’ve missed you.” Chase hugged him hard and then backed away and looked into his father’s young face. “Tell me now what you wanted to say a few minutes ago. I mean, when I was a kid.”
“You can’t learn the truth from a dead man.”
“But you’re not dead; you’re right here. Just like I’m not messed up with all that stuff they did to me. I’m just me—Chase Sterling.”
“Chase Sterling is no more, son. In fact, he never was.”
“Yes he was, Dad. I changed—they changed—my name. I became a great man. I helped people. Then they messed me up.” Chase thought he was back to his old self, before they’d blown him apart and put him back together. But then he knew the sensors and processors were all there, and the organs in his body were manufactured. “No.”
“What i
s it, son?”
“I didn’t feel it at first, but the new stuff is still in me. I’m still wired. ‘The first-born of an evolutionary leap.’ I hate it.”
“Everything happens for a reason, Charlie.”
Chase bent his head and cried again. His dad put his arms around him. “Look, son,” he said as he let go.
Chase turned his eyes to the yard, expecting the birds would be there on the overgrown lawn. But an open field lay before him. The sky was so blue—bluer than he’d ever seen it. And his mother and Mel were there, arm in arm, walking among the others.
“I can’t believe this,” Chase said through his tears. “I can’t believe any of it.”
“These are the ones to tell you what I never did,” my father said. “But they’re not much better at it than I was. They’ve been hiding too long, and they’re running scared. Find them and use what you’ve got inside you to protect them.”
“The voice—the one that makes me dream these things—said this was a place of persecution. What did he mean by that?”
His father looked at him and smiled. “You think you’re dreaming?”
“Dad, we look like we’re the same age, and we’re standing on our old patio. Of course it’s a dream. But that voice—who is he?”
“You know that much, son. Everybody knows.”
Chase did know. Not in the exoself, but in his soul. “He made me. Not Fiender or any of the rest of them.”
“That’s right, son.”
Chase looked across the field again. S-drones came over the horizon. He wanted to warn the people, but there was nothing he could do. The drones fired. Screams filled the open field and the cloudless blue sky. Mom and Mel disappeared before he knew it. Most of the crowd seemed to run straight into hills surrounding the place. But some lay dead on the ground.
Only they weren’t dead. They woke up and flew away. No flight packs. No angel wings. They just took flight and disappeared. “Amazing,” Chase said, and he laughed. “Flying doesn’t seem so scary anymore.”
Wake the Dead Page 17