The memory of that moment still brought tears to her eyes and Ness wiped at her face. Memories are worse than onions, she thought, as she picked up the last potato and began peeling. She didn't know if it was her bow, her Namaste, or just her old, wrinkled face, but Linda Travis had seen something good in Ness, and had reached out to her. In the time since, Ness had become a close and integral part of the President's family. Except for times like this, when stray bits of her past came back to haunt her with their fuzzy possibilities, Ness was as happy as could be.
Linda Travis saved Ness's life that day. Ness was sure of it. She'd been as skinny as a rail, there at that gate. Like she hadn't eaten in weeks. And the condition of her shoes argued that she'd walked the whole distance from Tacoma to Augusta.
Maybe she had. Ness just couldn't really remember.
5.6
Though the kids could tune to the physical level and know that night had fallen, the Astral realm did not seem to work with light. At least not the sorts of light that hit the surfaces of eyeballs and let the human brain "see." Here, seeing was not a matter of light and dark or eyeballs and brains. Here, seeing was something else entirely, something that happened at the intersection of vibration and imagination. Here, it did not matter that night had fallen. The kids stayed attuned to the Astral realm as they had first experienced it, with the sky multihued, the clouds glowing from within, and the landscape, fuzzy and jumbled, rolling slowly beneath them as they headed east. There was some comfort in that, and they needed comfort, Emily and Iain especially. This world was weird beyond their wildest expectations.
Emily pondered these matters of light and comfort as she "flew" east, following in the rear as Grace led the way. They knew they were here to find Linda. Linda, whose mole had mysteriously moved. Linda who had been abducted from their lives by men in scary space suits and a black, armored ambulance. Linda who'd become like their mother. Linda whom they loved. They had to find her. That's what Grace had told them, anyway. That's what Alice had told Grace in her dream. And they knew Linda was being kept in her old cottage on the coast, a place they'd briefly visited not long after they'd moved to Maine.
But they weren't certain how to just blink over there, and they didn't know if that was a good idea in any event. Better to approach slowly, they agreed amongst themselves. Better to see what’s coming from afar. And better to give more time for help to arrive. Grace had expected somebody to meet them on this side. That somebody had yet to appear. Springing the President from a level-four biocontainment facility, if that's what they were even supposed to do, was one thing for an alien. But they were just kids. They could use some help.
Then the lights went out. It was as quick as that. Emily had just noticed a peculiar cloud ahead of them, dark like a thunderhead, and they were moving rapidly toward it. She'd just started to say something. Then the lights went out. Here in this realm where light was not really light, the three kids were thrust into pitch black.
"Hey!" said Iain and Grace, together. Emily came to a full stop. Or what she imagined was a full stop. In the darkness, there was no way to tell.
"Iain?" she said. "Grace?"
"I'm here," said Grace.
"Me too," said Iain.
Dennis barked.
"You guys okay?" asked Emily.
"Yeah," they both replied. "You?"
"I think so," said Emily. "Do you know what happened, Grace?"
"No," said Grace. "This never happened before."
Emily tried to feel herself, tried to switch from her human form to her fireball shape, tried to make herself light up from within. Nothing happened. She could make no light. She could not even tell if she was in a body any more. She felt like a tiny pinprick of thought, as if the entire Cosmos had been stripped away from all around her. All that was left was her mind and her voice.
"Em?" asked Grace.
"Yeah?" said Emily.
"Can you move? Can you even tell where you are? Or where Iain is? Or me?"
Emily shook her head, then stopped to notice that she could feel no head and no movement. The shaking was in her mind alone. "No," she said. "I don't think I can. You?"
"There's no way to know!" said Iain.
"I know," said Emily.
The three hovered in silence for a moment. But they had real no idea whether they were hovering or not.
"Anybody got any ideas?" asked Iain at last. His voice was tinged with frustration. Rightly or wrongly, he'd felt, as the big brother, that it was his job to protect his sisters. But how did you protect them from darkness and nothing?
"None," said Emily at last.
"None," agreed Grace.
"Crap!" said Iain.
The three kids hovered in silence some more.
"I guess we wait," said Grace at last.
Iain began to laugh. "Good one, Graceful!" he said.
"Shut up," said Grace.
Iain stopped laughing. They waited in silence.
"What's that?" said Emily, at last. Dennis started barking.
“It’s okay, Dennis,” said Grace. “We’re here. Okay? Stop barking so we can listen, okay?” Dennis stopped.
The three kids hovered in silence a moment longer.
"I don't hear anything," said Grace.
"It's not a sound," said Emily, her voice was hushed, almost a whisper.
"What is it?" said Iain.
"It's... it's like I'm feeling something. In my mind. Not a body feeling, though. Not a sensation, like touch or cold or something. More an... an idea, like. An image."
"An image?" asked Grace.
"Yeah," said Emily, her tone now one of confusion. "I don't know. I just... I keep getting this picture. Like, there's somebody in my room, going through my closet and my dresser. Opening drawers and searching under the bed. Only, it's not my room. It's my head. Somebody's in my head."
"Like a mind reader?" asked Iain.
"Like a robber," said Emily.
Dennis barked again.
5.7
Colonel McAfee thought he understood exactly what it was the President had loved about this place. The view over the bay was exquisite. And at night, the distant mainland lights, fewer now but still there, sparkled and streamed across the waves in a glorious, lightshow sort of way that brought life and definition to the darkness. Sitting on the cottage's deck with a highball in one hand, Nicky sleeping on his lap, and the VLT's summit speech almost set to begin on the tablet he balanced on his knees, McAfee was in heaven. Or as close as one could get to heaven on this trodden, soiled planet.
The summit speech would be short and to the point, in part because it was easier and less time-consuming, when creating a simulation such as this, to keep it as short as was possible; in part because they wanted to emulate Lincoln's address at Gettysburg, not only because that would be a hoot but because it would resonate with the masses; and in part because they knew a short speech would get more viewings and reposts than a long speech. As the virtual POTUS stepped to the same "podium in an aquarium" they'd had her use for her re-election announcement, McAfee noted with approval the work facial modeling had done to increase the severity of her rash. The presence of a number of new, small, dark-brown markings would most certainly obfuscate the whole "molegate issue," as it had come to be called by his techs, and those new marks, along with the intensification and spread of the background redness, the exhaustion in her eyes, and that delicate touch of shakiness they'd added to her lower lip, would certainly heighten both the fear and empathy factors in the audience. The President was clearly struggling for her life now. The disease was taking its toll. It could go either way.
McAfee chuckled to himself and tossed his drink down his throat. Nicky, as if scolding him for his unkind thoughts, dug his claws into the Colonel's leg. McAfee winced but did not push the cat away. He knew that Nicky was right: he didn't have to be so nasty. As the President began to speak, McAfee increased the volume and settled back into his chaise lounge.
"Abraham Lincoln
," the simulated President began, "speaking in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in the middle of what we Americans call 'the Civil War,' considered the United States a 'new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.'" McAfee grinned. It'd been his idea to use Lincoln as a jumping off point. The common folk loved ol' Honest Abe. Noticing that his drink was gone, the Colonel fished a beer from the small, ice-filled Styrofoam cooler that sat beside his chair. He'd come prepared.
"We see now, of course, those of us who are paying attention, that this liberty, this equality, this new nation, fell, first and foremost, to men, just as Mr. Lincoln said. To rich men over poor. To men over women. To white-skinned peoples over peoples of color. To people living in technological-industrial societies over people living in the so-called undeveloped lands. And to human beings over every other living thing. The vast majority of souls on this planet - plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria included - would scoff at such lofty claims to liberty and equality."
It was all the Colonel could do not to break out in laughter, so delighted was he by how well this had turned out. How did the techs get that note of barely contained anger into her voice? And the weariness? This was masterful work. And the best part was how well it obliterated their tracks in the sand. McAfee knew that people were already suspicious about the "real truth" of the President's situation. He'd seen some of the wild stories online, a few of which his own people had seeded. But who could seriously believe that Linda Travis had been abducted by a hidden elite ruling group and replaced with a virtual copy when the President said such things as this? By having her continue to harp on her same, tired old themes about the “bad” people in charge, they deflected suspicion. What would not work was for her to suddenly change.
That was what most people did not seem to understand. Project Changeling was not about changing Linda Travis and her work in the world, to make her more like The Families wanted her to be. It was about keeping her the same. The same as she’d always been. Just for a while. To keep the proles calm and hopeful. Until the Giant Leap.
5.8
Stan and Cole stood in the hospital visitor's lounge and watched the President's speech on the television hanging from the ceiling. "No matter what was in the heart and mind of our sixteenth president," she continued, "and in the hearts and minds of those who came before him, it is difficult to argue, now, that this 'new nation' has not failed miserably. We have been brought to our knees by the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology, as some of you have long warned we would be. Forced to my knees, I, for one, am now willing to bend them."
Cole bristled at the thought of Linda "forced to her knees." He understood why she'd chosen those words. She was trying to strike right at the heart of what she considered "the problem": our collective refusal to give up "ruling the world," even as disastrously as that project has turned out. Though not a religious person by any stretch of the imagination, Linda saw the human predicament in spiritual terms now, and knew they would have to surrender to truths larger than their rational, materialist belief systems. Once again, she was trying to lead the way. But it seemed that his wife was the only one who was willing to put her money where her mouth was.
"We are engaged now in what the late ‘geologian’ Thomas Berry called our 'Great Work,' the work of reconnecting to the living, real world, the work of reversing the horrible destruction we have wrought on this beautiful planet. We see now, finally, as global climate chaos exceeds our wildest imaginings, as ecosystems falter and institutions unravel, that nothing is as important to the human endeavor as a healthy, living world. But we come to this great work far too late, I think, as if we might stop a boulder from plummeting to the ground below after it has been pushed over the cliff. What hope we now have, in the physical plane at least, depends on just how much leverage we can manage whilst in free fall. It seems an impossible task. Probably because it is. No matter the claims of mystics and quantum physicists, no matter the possibility for salvation some find in the knowledge of so-called ‘alien visitors,’ I fear, I believe, that, before this is all over, we of massive skyscrapers and solid flesh shall hit the ground quite hard, even if we, our very molecules, are mostly empty space. I wish I could say otherwise, but I vowed when I began my term that I would always tell you the truth as I see it. We have already fallen far. The ground rushes up to meet us."
Stan put a hand on Cole's arm. "We have to go," he said quietly. He hiked his pack higher onto his back, adjusting for more comfort, then started toward the hallway. He stopped and turned back to Cole, who was watching still. He walked back to Cole, got his attention, and nodded toward the television. "We can watch the rest later, Cole. Online. Okay?" Stan smiled gently and pulled Cole toward the door. Cole glanced back toward the screen for one more look at his ailing wife, who so bravely told her people the truth. At last he sighed and turned to follow.
5.9
"So it was they who set you up?" asked the Fisherman, waving vaguely toward the watching crowd.
Linda shook her head. "It was all of us," she said. "Myself included. All of us who believed we could manage and control an entire life-filled planet. Generations of us. The whole culture, extending back centuries."
"Centuries of hoping, you might say," said William.
"And now there's no more left," said Linda.
"No more what, Madam President?"
"No more hope."
5.10
Ness watched the tiny screen on her kitchen counter with tears welling in her eyes. This was the President she'd grown to love and admire, a woman who told the whole truth. "And yet life remains," Linda continued. "Hope remains. That is also the truth. And I know about hope, believe me, as I worry for my children, now missing. As I stave off the mysterious virus that now ravages my body, and pray for others now similarly stricken. As I think of us all now living in a world of declining energy and food and water and warmth and stability. I know about hope because I know that, in the words of writer Stephen King, 'there are other worlds than these.' I've been given a peek into those other worlds. I know they exist. And I know that, while Mr. Lincoln's address may have begun in the naivety of his times, it ended in wisdom for our times. We can resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain. We can bring some measure of meaning, resolution, healing, even redemption, to the centuries of domination and destruction now lying heaped about our feet. We can resolve that the good and beautiful spirit of the human species shall not perish from the Earth, even as we acknowledge the distinct possibility that our bodies, our species, may fall into ashes and dust."
Ness grabbed her apron to daub her wet eyes. Linda's words had reached right inside and squeezed her tired old heart. The thought of her President dying was too much for her, too much to hold. So she resolved not to think about that, and focus, instead, on the hope. She was not yet ready for ashes and dust. With a shake of her head, she grabbed a knife from the block on the counter and headed for the back door, and the chicken coop just outside. There was always hope in hot soup.
5.11
"We can begin this tonight. Right now. In our shelters and in our state houses. In our neighborhoods and our corporate meeting rooms. In our own backyards, yes, and around the planet. It's 'clutch time,' ladies and gentlemen. It's time to show the Universe, and ourselves, who we really are, and what we've really got, even when all seems lost. This, at the very least, is something we can do: we can reclaim what Mr. Lincoln, in his First Inaugural Address, called 'the better angels of our nature.'
"Or in the words of writer Khaled Hosseini, 'there is a way to be good again.'
"I thank you."
Paul DuPont raised his arms over his head and clasped his hands to crack his knuckles. The tech was flawless, as he'd known it would be. But he was most proud of the copy. Keep it going as long as you can, they'd said. Keep them hoping. That was his mandate, and, in Paul's opinion, he had performed admirably. All he'd had to do was keep Linda Travis on message, no matter that it was growing ev
er more difficult for the good citizens of the world to believe what she said.
5.12
Crouched in the hot darkness in the back of the military ambulance, Stan opened his backpack and pulled out a small, black, rectangular device.
"What's that?" whispered Cole.
"Transmitter," muttered Stan, extending the tiny antenna. Holding it high, he pressed the single button on the transmitter's face. After a moment came the sounds of a distant explosion, a sharp crack followed by a low rumble. Stan put a hand on Cole's shoulder and pushed. "Get down," he whispered. "They'll be here soon."
It all hinged on this moment, thought Cole. Stan's hope was that the medics would just jump into the front seat and take off. If they decided to check the back first, Stan and Cole would be found out.
The medics jumped into the front seat and took off. Cole breathed silent relief. Stan squeezed Cole's shoulder in solidarity and settled in for the ride.
Cole had been amazed to learn that Stan had planned and prepared for this escape months ago. "I could read the writing on the wall," he'd said. Getting to the hospital had been easy enough. Stan was the Secretary of Homeland Security, after all. And Cole was the father of those missing children. Of course they'd want to inspect the hospital for themselves. And once there, it had been a simple matter of ducking downstairs and out to where the ambulances were parked. But getting the explosives rigged, that had been more difficult. Stan had had to invent a mission outside of the cordon and then convince his people, and the military, that he should be allowed to accompany them. It had raised a few eyebrows, and Stan had almost been discovered when he'd "gone to take a piss" in order to install the charges. But he had managed it. His stellar reputation in the military, and his close relationship with the President, had diverted any real suspicion. The explosives were set. Once detonated, military patrols would be sent to investigate. An ambulance would be sent as well. It just might work.
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