Pursued

by Gary Urey

  The doorbell rang again.

  “Do not stare,” her mother instructed.

  Daisha nodded. Her mother ran to answer the door. Daisha had no idea what her mother had meant by a birthmark, but when the Doctor stepped from the foyer into the living room, she understood immediately. The whole left side of man’s face was extremely red.

  The Doctor smiled wide at Daisha and reached for her hand. “You must be Daisha,” he said.

  Daisha giggled uncomfortably and pulled her hand away. His palm was cold and sweaty, and she did not like the look in his eyes.

  “I brought this for you,” the Doctor said, handing her mother a bottle of wine.

  “You shouldn’t have,” her mother said.

  “It’s a bottle of 1986 Château Mouton Rothschild, and it only set me back a thousand dollars.”

  Her mother’s mouth dropped open. “I…uh…um…” she stuttered. “I don’t know whether to drink this or put it in my safety deposit box at the bank.”

  The Doctor laughed. “Wine is for drinking. Money is for the bank and for funding your amazing work.”

  Her mother smiled at the Doctor and led him into the living room. They took a seat while the Doctor popped the cork and poured two glasses of wine. Daisha excused herself to the kitchen and chugged a glass of lemonade. The man freaked her out, and she wanted to get away from him as quickly as possible. But that didn’t stop her from eavesdropping on them.

  “I wish Roswell could be here tonight,” her mother said.

  “No need for him right now,” the Doctor said. “I wanted to spend the evening with just you and your precious daughter.”

  “She’s a bit shy. I hope you understand.”

  “Most children are in my presence. Now, tell me more about your groundbreaking work. I have to say that I was quite stunned when you told me about your breakthrough.”

  Her mother stood up from her chair and took a seat next to the Doctor on the couch. “The technology is going to change the world,” she said.

  “And make me an even wealthier and more powerful man,” the Doctor added.

  “The Satellite Warp and geographical transportation aren’t just about money—they’re about making the world a better place.”

  Daisha peeked around the corner and listened intently. She had only been vaguely aware of her mother’s work but wanted to know more.

  “The first tests have been phenomenally successful,” her mother explained. “Both Roswell and I are convinced that within a year the Warp will be up and running.”

  “And its New York Stock Exchange ticker symbol up and running as well?”

  “Is money all you think about?”

  “No. I think about you a lot too.”

  Her mother flashed him an uncomfortable look and scooted slightly farther down on the couch.

  “Just imagine all the good things that will happen, thanks to the Warp,” she continued. “If you were in San Francisco and needed to be in Miami, you could just set the GeoPort’s coordinates and be there in seconds. Say good-bye to pollution, traffic, and ugly freeways. Instantly, you could have food for starving children in any part of the world, no need for ships, airplanes, trains, cars, or motorcycles. Greenhouse gases could be history, stinky combustion engines as outdated as a horse and carriage. We’ll be heroes of the environment. They’ll name high schools and airports after…”

  Daisha watched in horror as the Doctor lunged at her mother. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and planted a wet, sloppy, and unwelcomed kiss on her lips.

  “Stop!” her mother blurted out. “This isn’t what I invited you here for.”

  “Mom!” Daisha shouted from the kitchen, trying to diffuse the situation. “The chicken’s done!”

  “Thank you, Daisha,” her mother answered. “I’ll be right there.”

  Daisha stepped into the living room as her mother rushed toward the kitchen. The Doctor was staring at her, an angry look on his flaming face.

  “Do you want to be a scientist like your mother?” he asked.

  “I think so,” Daisha answered.

  “Then you’ll need very wealthy investors like me to fund your work. Did you know that?”

  Daisha shook her head.

  The Doctor stood up and walked over to her. “Use this experience as a lesson, young lady. If you take up the science trade, always treat your sponsors with respect or the money may dry up.”

  “Dinner’s ready,” her mother said, stepping back into the living room.

  The Doctor grabbed his jacket and walked to the front door. “Please, accept my apologies,” he said. “I have been called away on urgent business. Keep the bottle of wine, and don’t worry about your funding. I wouldn’t stop supporting you for anything in the world.”

  The front door slammed, and the Doctor was gone. Tears gushed from her mother’s eyes, and she ran into her bedroom. Daisha just stood there, shocked at what had happened in her own house.

  A year later, the Warp was up and running. Her mother and Axel’s father were dead, and she and Axel were running for their lives.

  Chapter Eight

  DOCTOR STAIN

  As darkness descended over Ohio and New York City, stillness fell over the Monitoring Room on the third floor of the Doctor’s headquarters in the heart of Silicon Valley. The modest sign in front of the building read: Hatch Management, LLC. To the outside world, the Doctor was a highly successful, multibillionaire hedge-fund manager with a love for science. The inside of his building told a much different story.

  The first floor was typical office cubicles, conference rooms, an employee break area, and a well-stocked supply closet. The next five floors were part of the most sophisticated satellite control center in the world. More than a hundred scientists—each sworn to secrecy—manned wall-to-wall computers, antenna systems, communications modulators, signal conversion systems, subcarrier synthesizers, and dozens of other pieces of high-tech equipment. The Doctor dedicated the top floor to his conventional reconnaissance satellite and to the Jack-Tandala satellite (named after the inventors) that harnessed the sun’s solar wind and made geographical transportation possible.

  “Tomorrow’s sunrise in New York City is 5:33 a.m.,” Pinchole said. “Central Ohio’s rise-and-shine is 6:08 a.m. The Pursuers’ trackers should take exactly nine minutes to recharge and be up and running.”

  “And the chase begins again,” the Doctor said with a sigh.

  “They can’t run forever. Their time will run out soon.”

  “Power everything down, and meet me in my office. We need to talk.” The Doctor grabbed his personal laptop and left the room.

  Without sunlight, the trackers could not work; without detectable trackers, the reconnaissance satellite could not follow the action on the ground. Pinchole instructed his SWTs to place the computers on sleep mode. The constant whine of the equipment’s cooling fans fell silent, making the Monitoring Room eerily quiet. Weary-eyed SWTs collected their belongings, double-checked the locks and passwords, and followed Pinchole down the hallway. They would all be back early at 4:15 a.m. for another day of high-tech hide-and-seek.

  The Doctor had a spacious office suite with a view of Googleplex, the corporate headquarters of Google, Inc. He still remembered the day two scruffy Stanford students named Larry Page and Sergey Brin had approached him about investing in their Internet search engine company. The kids had impressed him, so he wrote them a check for two hundred thousand dollars on the spot. The simple investment had made him millions.

  A knock came at his office door.

  “Come in,” he said.

  Pinchole stepped inside, took off his lab coat, and sat down on a leather couch. Dark circles rimmed his bloodshot eyes. “I’m starving,” he said.

  “I’ve ordered us dinner from Maki,” the Doctor said. “I hope you like sushi.”

  Pinchole nodded his approval. “The solar wind gives, and the solar wind takes away.”

  “What do you mean?” the Doctor asked
.

  “Thanks to Einstein’s theory of a space and time bend, Professors Jack and Tandala figured out how to use space magnets to capture the electrons found in the solar wind. Once technicians transfer the electrons to Earth via infrared lasers, the massive amount of energy gives us the ability to dematerialize the elemental composition of the human body to a stream of charged particles. We then use the GeoPort to reconstitute those particles back to human form and transfer them to any latitudinal and longitudinal point on Earth.”

  “We don’t do anything,” the Doctor said with disgust. “It’s those two kids who are doing all the reconstituting and transferring.”

  “We need to locate the mysterious Magnes Solace. Several of our men stated that before the professors…ahem…left the project, they were overheard instructing their kids to take the GeoPorts to this person.”

  The Doctor twisted the cap on a bottle of water and took a huge gulp. “Then we have to find those kids before they find Magnes Solace.”

  “We are working very hard on that. For some yet-unknown reason, the charged particles released from the solar wind drain the batteries in the tracking units as they go through the Warp. Solar energy works just fine, though.”

  “Solace is an odd name. Are you sure the men heard it correctly?”

  “Again, that’s what every man in the dog park said. I have some of my best Googlers scouring the Internet for any reference to Magnes Solace. The most interesting thing they’ve come up with so far is a fourteenth-century reference to a man named Robert Solace from the Calendar of Letter-Books of the City of London.”

  “I don’t need an Ancestry.com lesson. I want to know who this person is and why Axel and Daisha were instructed to find him…or her.”

  “Magnes Solace obviously must have been working with the professors on the GeoPort. If we find this person before the kids, we can sit back and wait for them to arrive.”

  A voice rang out through the intercom.

  “Doctor,” a woman’s voice said. “Your dinner is here.”

  “Thank you,” the Doctor said. “Please bring it to my office.”

  A young woman with shoulder-length platinum-blond hair came into the room and laid out their food on a table. “Will you need anything else tonight, sir?” she asked.

  “That will be all, Kari. Have a pleasant evening, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Pinchole tore into the miso soup and shrimp tempura appetizers like a ravenous dog. “You know, the Warp is infinite just like space. But you need a GeoPort or tracker to get into it. I wish we could have gleaned more information from the professors before they…”

  “They had to go,” the Doctor said abruptly. “You are the main science man now. I don’t want their names mentioned around me again. And change the official name of the Jack-Tandala satellite to the Doctor Lennon Hatch satellite.”

  “The two of them were such brilliant physicists. They knew the ins and outs of this thing better than any man alive did. The Warp was their baby.”

  The Doctor took a sip of green tea and nibbled on a California roll. “This is your baby now, Pinchole,” he said. “And it’s time for you to take off the diapers and learn to potty by yourself.”

  “It’s still unbelievable how those two kids stole the only working GeoPorts in the world. We don’t even know how to make another one,” Pinchole said, digging into the sashimi rolls. “Fortunately, we have the technology on how to track the darn things.”

  “Those darn things are the greatest technological advancement of mankind,” the Doctor reminded him. “The Warp and GeoPorts are more powerful and will be more profitable than a million nuclear power plants.”

  Pinchole sat up to grab a bottle of water when his cell phone rang. “It’s Stetson,” he said. “He’s one of my top SWTs.” He punched in the phone’s pass code and hit the speaker button. “Hello?”

  “Mr. Pinchole,” Stetson’s nervous voice echoed from the speaker.

  “Yes,” Pinchole said. “I’m with the Doctor, and you’re on speaker.”

  “You need to come down to the Monitoring Room. My team and I have something to show you.”

  “We’re in the middle of dinner. Can this wait?”

  “No. It can’t wait.”

  “What is it?” the Doctor asked, raising his voice.

  “It’s the GeoPort tracking devices. We’ve figured out what’s causing the batteries to drain while transporting through the Warp. We’ve corrected the problem remotely. As of five minutes ago, the Pursuers are able to track the GeoPorts at night.”

  The Doctor and Pinchole looked at each other with the same excited expressions. They dropped their chopsticks and rushed as fast as they could to the Monitoring Room.

  Chapter Nine

  AXEL

  Axel quickly figured out that the New York City subway system was a great way to dodge the Pursuers. The underground trains were even better than the busy streets of Ho Chi Minh City. Without direct sun, the solar trackers were only able to store enough power for an hour or so. That meant the Pursuers could only hunt him for a short time before having to leave the subway system and recharge their trackers.

  He carefully studied a subway map. His journey had begun at the Twenty-Third Street Station on a Q train. He then rode north through Manhattan and into Queens to where the tracks ended at a place called Astoria-Ditmars Boulevard. After backtracking and changing to the D train, he was at Coney Island and Stillwell Avenue.

  The train was now traveling above ground, and he watched the sun disappear over the horizon. He glanced at his watch. The time was eight thirty-six in the evening. Darkness fell over the city. The Pursuers’ trackers temporarily could not locate him.

  Axel wandered out of the train station and into the busy streets. Hundreds of people strolled up and down the sidewalks. The place was all lit up. Live music blared from an elevated stage. A huge Ferris wheel slowly spun in the distance. The smell of hot dogs, cotton candy, pizza, and other luscious food smells filled his nostrils.

  “I’m so hungry I could eat a dead rat,” Axel said to himself as he blended into the crowd.

  As he walked closer to the beach, he saw a huge outdoor movie screen playing an action-adventure film. He heard the whining engines of go-carts as they whizzed around a track. Little kids rushed to and from all the different amusements and carnival games, their cheeks smeared with sticky cotton candy. Parents, couples, old people, and gangs of teenagers strolled up and down the boardwalk. The place looked like so much fun, and he wished Daisha could be here with him.

  “Yuck!” A girl’s disgusted voice yelled out from behind him. “I forgot how much I hate corn dogs!”

  Axel turned and saw a girl with large hoop earrings and wearing cut-off shorts set down on the rail of the boardwalk a fresh corn dog with a bite taken out of it. His mouth began to water, his stomach grumbled in hunger, and without so much as a second thought, Axel plucked the corn dog off the rail and ran down to the beach.

  Ocean waves gently rolled on the sand. The New York City skyline burned brilliantly in the distance. Axel pinched off the girl’s bite mark with his fingertips, and shoved the entire corn dog into his mouth. The golden batter was still warm, the encased hot dog juicy and succulent. The only thing that could have made his dinner any better was a dollop of ketchup for dipping.

  With his stomach temporarily satisfied, he walked along the beach. Hermit crabs scuttled across the sand. Many people were still splashing around, but the beach wasn’t nearly as crowded as the boardwalk. When he came to a large pier jutting into the ocean, he took a quick look over his shoulder to see if anyone was looking and then dashed to a dry spot beneath.

  He rested in the sand, completely oblivious to the raucous party noise going on all around him. One day without Daisha was too long, and he had made his decision. He would ride the New York City subways until tomorrow, trying his best to outsmart the Pursuers who would surely be back on his trail come morning. At noon when the Warp reset, he’d punc
h in the coordinates to their prearranged spot at the dog park in Palo Alto. He hoped that his friend would make the same decision.

  Her husky voice echoed in his head. “Let’s just get rid of these stupid things,” she’d always say. “We’ll never find Magnes Solace.”

  If he had a dollar for every time Daisha talked about throwing away the GeoPorts, he’d have enough money for a large pepperoni pizza and an order of fried mozzarella sticks right now. He too often fantasized about chucking his GeoPort into the garbage. But getting rid of their parents’ work would not be so easy.

  “Besides,” Axel mused. “They said to take the GeoPorts to Magnes Solace. The GeoPorts can only be destroyed in one of the electron diffusion regions, wherever and whatever the heck that is.”

  Who was this Magnes Solace person anyway? The identity was a complete mystery to him. He didn’t even know if Magnes was a boy or girl. Daisha and he had spent hours in a Vietnamese Internet café googling the name. There was nothing, not one online mention of the person. The only hope they had of finding him or her was to figure out the rest of the coordinate numbers Daisha’s mother had managed to spit out before a bullet pierced her heart.

  Latitude 23.1483…

  He knew the latitude number specified the north-south position of a point on Earth’s surface. But the partial coordinates were not enough to find anything. He needed both the latitude and longitude coordinates to have any hope of finding Magnes Solace.

  A teenage couple ran under the pier, interrupting his thoughts. Axel pushed himself deeper into the sand. He watched as they sucked face for a good five minutes and then ran off hand in hand.

  When the lovebirds disappeared, he let his thoughts drift back to Warping home. Materializing in the middle of Palo Alto was risky—maybe even suicidal—but the running had to stop. He wondered how his friends back home were spending their summer. Probably getting ready for high school, surfing at Half Moon Bay, skating at Greer Park, taking the bus to Great America amusement park in Santa Clara, and a hundred other fun things.

  Axel’s eyes fought to stay open. His head bobbed like a fishing buoy as he tried to stay awake. The sound of soft footsteps in the sand filled his ears. For a dozing moment, he wasn’t sure if they were real or just the echoes of a dream. The sound grew louder, and his eyes snapped open. He saw what looked like two bright, bloody eyeballs slicing through the darkness. They were actually two men carrying flashlights, walking calmly toward him. His GeoPort throbbed to life. When the men were within ten yards of his bed in the sand, he knew exactly who they were.