What Lies Beyond the Stars

by Micael Goorjian

  “Thank you.” Adam hoped that would be the end of it.

  “You seem awful chipper today. Do you need any touristy recommendations? I know some totally awesome places for sightseeing.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate it. But I’m fine. I’m spending the day with a friend.”

  “Okeydoke.” Dorothy held firmly onto her smile. “So I guess you found her, then? The, um, redhead you were looking for?”

  “I did.”

  Dorothy looked around with wide-eyed mock curiosity. “So where is she?”

  “She’s in the bathroom. Freshening up—”

  “Sure you’re not just trying to—oh, I don’t know—get rid of me?”

  “No. Honest—”

  “Cause I can take a hint, folks,” Dorothy said to her imaginary audience.

  “Seriously,” Adam pleaded. “I’m really not trying to—”

  “No, that’s fine. I was just trying to be helpful, so just . . . Have a great day!”

  Dorothy turned and walked toward the hotel. Between her and the head-banging kid in the minivan, Adam felt like his blissful day with Beatrice was somehow under attack.

  A few moments later, Adam felt something touch his ear. A bug? Again—this time on his cheek. Adam swatted at it and heard a giggle behind him. Turning, he saw Beatrice had snuck up on the other side of the fence and was tickling him with a long reed of oat grass.

  “Hey!” Adam said, relieved to see her.

  Beatrice laughed and took off running.

  Adam jumped the fence and chased after her. The dirt path wove down toward the Presbyterian Church then eventually curved off into a small grove of cypress trees at the edge of the bluff. Beatrice disappeared into the grove, well ahead of Adam. The stand of trees was thick, and as he entered it, Adam’s eyes took a moment to adjust to the unexpected darkness in the cool sanctuary. “Beatrice?” She was nowhere to be seen. Adam walked farther into the grove.

  Something about the moment reminded him of an Alfred Hitchcock film. The one with Kim Novak. Didn’t something like this happen to Jimmy Stewart in that movie? After a few twists and turns, the trail made its way through the cypresses and back out into the open right at the edge of the bluff. Adam slowly approached the edge and looked down, thinking perhaps there might be another set of stairs leading to the beach. There was nothing, no possible way for Beatrice to have gone any farther. A hundred feet below he could see the rocky base of the cliff, and out beyond it, the beach. To fall from here would be a direct splat. If Adam really wanted to end it all, this would be the spot to do it. Vertigo—that was it! Adam suddenly remembered the title of the Hitchcock film.

  “Wanna jump?” Beatrice whispered in his ear.

  Adam just about jumped out of his skin and over the edge of the bluff. Beatrice quickly grabbed on to him to keep him from going over.

  “Oh my God! Oh my God!” Adam’s heart was close to bursting.

  “I’m sorry! I couldn’t help it!” Beatrice said, gasping with laughter. She was hugging him from behind now, pulling him back into the grove.

  “Where?” Adam sputtered. “Where were you?!”

  “I was just hiding, silly. Behind a tree.”

  “You almost . . . killed me!” Adam’s voice was colored slightly with anger.

  “I’m sorry. Please don’t be mad!” Still laughing, Beatrice flipped Adam around and buried her head against his chest. Adam’s heart continued to thump, but the panic was dissipating. He looked down, wrapping his arms around her. Beatrice looked up, her eyes glowing, like emerald sea glass. For a long while, they simply stood there, holding each other.

  There was a raw vulnerability in Beatrice’s face that Adam had not seen before. Since meeting out on the cliffs, she had always seemed checked behind a wall of self-control. Even while making love the night before, there had been something safely anonymous about it. But now that wall was down. She was revealing herself to him, like a marble statue turning to flesh. Adam could feel the entire landscape disappearing around them. He was falling, deeper and deeper into her gaze, following her down, until falling became ascending, ascending toward something beyond this world—

  It ended. Just as effortlessly, Beatrice closed off the circuit she had opened between them; the marble sheen returned to her skin, covering back over her delicate inner world. Releasing Adam, she turned to look at the ocean. Her big trip, Adam thought. She’s leaving and she may not be coming back. He didn’t need words from her to understand. After a few moments, she looked back to Adam with a bright, unexpected smile. “The wind is perfect!” Turning, she ran up the path toward town. “Come on!”

  Paradiso 9 flew across the open water with Beatrice at the helm. At her side Adam carefully watched her every move. She trimmed the sails and adjusted the lines, then shouted, “Now you do it!” It was harder than it looked. Given the strong wind and choppy water, just keeping the boat on course required constant attention, leaving no time to get lost in anxiety or self-judgment. He simply did his best. At one point while they were trying to tack into the wind, the boat came around so hard that Adam almost lost his footing on the slick deck. Still, for a first-time sailor, Adam wasn’t doing that bad.

  A few hours later, the water was calm enough for Adam to sit up near the bow of the boat with his feet dangling over the side. Before him the ocean extended all the way to the horizon. It looked different from this perspective. From a boat on the water, the distant line that signified the edge of the world looked closer and sort of two-dimensional, like a painting on the wall. A wall that doesn’t seem so far away, Adam thought. I might even be able to touch it if I just reach hard enough.

  Adam heard the sound of Beatrice’s sat phone ringing. Glancing back toward middeck, he saw her answer. He tried not to eavesdrop, but he still caught small bits of conversation. She was needed . . . weather conditions . . . how long it would take . . .

  When the clock strikes midnight, Adam thought. Maybe the boat is going to turn into a pumpkin.

  Beatrice was giving nautical coordinates to someone. Her voice had that tone of authority Adam had heard when they had first met out on the cliffs, and he had mistaken her for a park ranger. Now she was asking to speak with someone else, and her voice grew quieter. Adam wasn’t able to make out much more after that, but he thought he heard his own name mentioned several times.

  Beatrice hung up.

  “No more hooky, I guess?” Adam called back toward the helm.

  Beatrice shook her head, frustrated. “We don’t launch until the day after tomorrow, but I have supplies on board that are needed up there tonight.”

  “If you really need to go, then you should go. I don’t want to hold you up any longer . . . well, actually, I do.” Adam shrugged. “Trying to not lie so much.”

  Beatrice flashed a sad smile.

  “Sounds like quite a trip,” Adam said casually, hoping Beatrice would share more information about it. She set the auto-helm to keep the boat on course, and then headed up the side of the boat toward Adam. For a while they both sat quietly looking at the horizon.

  “I came across a place once,” Beatrice finally said, her chin slightly nodding toward the distance. “Out there. An island. Unlike anywhere I’ve ever been. Like a completely different world. Pristine.” She seemed to be choosing her words carefully. “It’s extremely remote, this place. So difficult to get to that very few people have ever made the journey. I know it’s hard to believe—that there is still somewhere out there that’s remained relatively hidden from the globalized world. But it really exists. I’ve seen it.”

  Adam did think that was hard to believe but chose not to say anything.

  “My father,” Beatrice continued, “the kind of research he does requires conditions that, for many reasons, have become nearly impossible to create in the world today. That’s one of the reasons we’ve organized this trip.”

  “Sounds like a lot of people are involved.”

  “We’re one group of several coming from differe
nt countries. The others are involved in similar work, some first-rate minds, all of whom have been preparing for this for years now.” Beatrice looked down at her hands. “And for me—I’ve always wanted to be a part of something that could make a real difference, that could truly serve a greater cause. Everything I was doing before, all the protests and activism and charity work, was always just . . . like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Nothing changes when you try to fight directly.”

  “The currents are too strong,” Adam threw in, thinking of Navigations of the Hidden Domain.

  Beatrice glanced at Adam when he said this but then turned her gaze back to the horizon without saying anything.

  “So what will you be doing there?” Adam asked. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Actually you do.” Beatrice took a deep breath. “Remember when I told you there was a reason we met? That it wasn’t just a coincidence? What I meant was—there is more to us meeting than just . . . you and me.”

  “Okay. Now I’m really confused.”

  As the afternoon sun filtered through her hair, amplifying it into an amber brilliance, Beatrice again searched for words.

  “Sometimes things happen in life, and on the surface, they seem random or meaningless, but in truth they’re part of something much bigger. It’s like there’s this invisible layer to the world, folded into this one, connecting everything in a very deep and sacred way. And even though we’ve been conditioned not to see it anymore, conditioned not to give our attention to it . . . Certain people can still make contact.”

  Adam felt her words tugging at that hidden place inside him that was longing to breathe again. “I think I understand, but . . . What does that have to do with me?”

  Beatrice weaved her fingers into Adam’s. Again that sting, the slight burning sensation tickling his skin. “Would you come with me to where the boat is loading? It would be for just one night. I’ll bring you back in the morning. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

  CHAPTER 20

  BLEEDING THROUGH GLASS

  Blake sat alone in the glass aquariumlike conference room of the abandoned offices on the 34th floor. The rumors turned out to be true when the floor’s former occupants, Ad-Detailer, got the axe last week. Already an apocalyptic wasteland of a tech company gone bust, strewn with empty cubicles, tangled piles of Ethernet cable, random keyboards, and power strips.

  When the end comes, it comes quick, Blake thought.

  Almost as bad as the fear that this unthinkable fate might one day befall his own company was the knowledge that this office space would not remain empty for long. If Blake was going to take advantage of the misfortunes of Ad-Detailer and expand Pixilate to an additional floor, he needed to move quickly. He needed to show Adiklein an idea so exciting that he would have no choice but to green-light it. He needed Zombies. Specifically the ones that were locked up inside of Adam’s b-drive in an encrypted project labeled Zombie.v12.

  USER NAME: SheppardA@PixalateGH.Vskies.com

  PASSWORD:_________________________

  Blake stared at the password prompt. He had snuck up here to have room to think and hopefully to hack his way into Adam’s drive. If humanly possible, he wanted to do this on his own. Blake was familiar with cracking passwords using a brute-force attack, a method of traversing the password window with every possible key combination, but that would take an incredibly long time. It made more sense to try some good old-fashioned guesswork first.

  So far he had tried all of Adam’s personal information: birthday, address, family names, and family birthdays. No luck. He had then moved on to the zombie theme, but the hundred or so variations he’d come up with had all been declined. After a few other fruitless approaches, Blake decided to go with free association, but that quickly deteriorated into pure frustration.

  IHATEBLAKE; password declined. IHATEBLAKEDORSEY; password declined. IDONTAPPRECIATEBLAKEASMUCHASISHOULD; password declined.

  IHATEMYLIFE, I’MAFUCKINGNUTCASE, I’MAFUCKINGNUTJOB. Declined, declined, declined.

  Blake stood up. Of course he didn’t really think Adam was a fucking nut job. I’m just pissed off right now, that’s all, Blake told himself. And I have every right to be. If he was feeling so overworked, why didn’t he say something? Or maybe choose a better time to snap? Like after we showed the Zombie idea to Adiklein. Or at least after the Expansion launch.

  Blake had never been a big drinker, but he sure felt like a shot or two of whiskey right now. After all that talk about butterflies and bees with Adiklein, Blake wondered if his boss was the one with the mental health issue. One thing’s for sure—Adam’s no butterfly, and I’m not about to pin him to some fucking case. All I’ve ever wanted was to help him. Adiklein just doesn’t know the complexities of our relationship. Our history.

  Blake sat back down in front of the laptop. He needed to crack this password, but he kept hearing Adiklein’s voice in his head, whispering in that sneaky accent. “I know who he is, Blake . . . I know what he is, for you.”

  I have always had Adam’s best interest in mind, Blake argued back in his head. Even those few times I wasn’t completely honest, that was only to protect him. Blake was now thinking about Softools, where he’d gotten Adam his first job. It was absolutely true that no one at the company liked Adam. I had only suggested they fire him because I knew it would be better for him to be near his stepmother and work out of his garage. And it did work out better. For everyone—especially Adam.

  Blake went on to assure himself that he had always given Adam credit for his work, and he’d always seen to it that Adam got paid generously. So Adiklein insinuating that I’m somehow stealing Adam’s ideas—that’s complete bullshit. They’re Pixilate’s ideas. Adam contributes to the company just like everybody else.

  The plain and simple fact was that Adam would be nowhere without Blake, and Blake had nothing whatsoever to feel guilty about. There was no need for Adam to know about Blake’s history with Jane. It wasn’t like they had ever officially dated. Just the occasional hookup in high school . . . and a few times after that, Blake admitted to himself. But that had all changed once Adam entered the picture. Once Jane and Adam became an item, the whole fuck-buddies thing ended. Okay, there was that one time we slipped. But that was 100 percent Jane’s doing. Jane had come over to Blake’s place one night when the kids were at their grandparents’ and Adam was pulling all-nighters at work. She was just lonely and horny, and Adam wasn’t paying her any attention, so whose fault was that? Certainly not mine, Blake told himself.

  He began to type again. BLAKEUSESME, BLAKELIES, BLAKECHEATS, BLAKESOLDHISSOUL, BLAKEISNOTHINGWITHOUTME.

  Blake slammed the laptop shut.

  Back down in his own office, Blake leaned his forehead against the glass wall that faced the Bay. It was late enough now that no one would interrupt him. On his desktop he’d started up the brute-force attack on Adam’s drive. As the software cycled through possible combinations of characters, the time estimator gave Blake a projection of 6,065 hours—not a number he wanted to dwell on.

  Leaning with his forehead against the windows was oddly comforting. Ever since moving into this new office, this was the position Blake took whenever things got stressful. In the weeks after he bombed at that Cross-Pollination Brunch, he had stood here for hours. What no one else knew about that epic failure was that the concept Blake had presented that day was 100 percent his own; Adam Sheppard had had nothing to do with it. At the time Blake hadn’t been completely aware of why this idea was so important to him, but now he saw it clearly. He’d wanted to prove to himself that he didn’t depend on Adam, that his own ideas were valuable.

  And here he was again. Back up against the glass, this thin layer of crystalline matter holding him in place, keeping him suspended in air. Without it he would plummet down into oblivion. The glass is Adam, Blake thought, despite himself. The glass is Adam.

  On one of the smaller buildings across the street, a new billboard was going up. Blake watch
ed as two men used their push brooms to glue up a section of a woman’s cheek. It was an advertisement for Hawaii travel and pictured a family of four laughing on the beach. The copy read: Live the dream. Be the dream. Be Hawaii.

  Blake wondered how the fuck someone could be Hawaii. Why wasn’t it enough just to go to Hawaii? Blake had listened to Adiklein speak many times about the innovative marketing he’d done early in his career, about “identity culture,” and “pulling the invisible strings in the collective subconscious.” Blake honestly couldn’t give a shit about any of that. All he knew was that if he didn’t get Adam back, Adiklein would make Pixilate disappear. Like he did to the company that used to occupy the floor above us.

  Looking down at the street below, Blake imagined where his body would go splat. Right there on the sidewalk, maybe. Right between the building’s back entrance and that row of old newspaper stands.

  At that exact moment, 33 stories below, Michael looked up from his wheelchair and, despite his cloudy, damaged vision, saw not only Blake but Blake’s thoughts as well. Plain as day, Michael watched them bleeding through the window at the spot where Blake’s forehead touched the glass, precipitating on the opposite side of the pane in a milky, gray mist. Collecting together like drops of rain on a windshield, the mist formed into small rivulets sliding up the side of the Tower, growing into capillaries, then veins, merging with larger and larger vessels. This pulsing, gray latticework that Michael saw covering the Virtual Skies Tower was no less than the collective mental chatter of every distracted, overstimulated mind in the city. A constant flow of attention, in the highly potent form of low-level anxiety, collected here against the walls of the Tower, the city’s magnetic center. Up the sides of the Tower, gray tentacles continued to merge, again and again, swelling in girth until they reached the Tower’s foggy crown and disappeared into the glass pyramid.