Slumberland

by Bradley Carter

  There’s no time to wait for her. Throwing her office door open, I flip on the lights.

  Her desk is covered with papers, folders, and beta tapes.

  All of it goes to the floor as my arms clear a space.

  Randi comes in, slamming the door behind her.

  “What are you doing?” she asks.

  “Give me a second. I need something to write with.”

  The only thing within reach is a permanent black marker.

  “Sierra, you’ve gone crazy,” she shouts.

  Doug stands down the hall, touching the young intern’s chin when the sound of Randi shouting catches him off guard. Behind him, I see Mark heading in the direction of the control room.

  Snatching a map from her wall, I slam it to her desk and circle our location, Kansas City.

  “I’m adding a small change in the initial weather conditions…”

  “You need sleep,” says Randi.

  I draw two squares to make a rectangle. Inside both, I write 1 and another 1. Then a larger square with those to make an even bigger rectangle. Inside those, I write a 3 and a 5. The shapes gets bigger and bigger as do the numbers.

  8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89…

  These numbers I’ve seen before, they grow bigger.

  144, 233, 377… just like the times on the clocks.

  These numbers, they form the Fibonacci Sequence.

  610, 987, 15997… on and on into infinity.

  Elegant, pleasing to the eye… perfection.

  From the center point, the circle around the city, the tip of the marker draws a curved line around the corners of each square to make an outward spiral— The Golden Spiral

  The numbers that flashed to me before, they’re coordinates. Latitudes and longitudes.

  32.7157 and 117.1611— San Diego, California

  49.89561 and 97.1384—Winnipeg, Canada

  39.1031 and 84.5120— Cincinnati, Ohio

  34.7465 and 92.2896— Little Rock, Arkansas

  “What do coordinates have to do with anything?” Randi asks.

  Ignoring her, I run my finger around the map, around the spiral.

  Each city lands at the exact point where a line curves.

  “Warm air from the South, moving upward to cold air from the North and then back down again…This is not how weather patterns move. That’s why the computers won’t pick it up.”

  “Sierra,” says Randi, “this is crazy. You’ve gone crazy!”

  "At first, anything I set at the beginning would turn out bigger than the state of the nonlinear system. You’d expect this to flow perfect, but there’s a monkey wrench.”

  “A what?” she asks.

  The door swings open and closes again as Doug adds himself to the problem.

  “What is she doing here?” he asks.

  Flipping my fingers through Randi’s cup of ink pens, I find a red one.

  “Pi is too big,” I say, “but if you take the empty variable at face value…”

  Tracing the perfect circle around Kansas City with red, I toss the pen to the desk.

  “…it can still result in a large difference in a later state. Later being now.”

  Both eyebrows of both Doug and Randi’s faces go flat. It’s spring, and in this area, the weather jumps from one temperature to the other.

  “But you said so yourself,” says Randi. “Weather patterns don’t move this way. So your prediction is impossible.”

  “Its motion is an illusion. You need to take all of the numbers and divide.”

  “Divide by what?” She asks.

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull to get your job back,” says Doug, “but we have a news broadcast to air.”

  Grabbing the marker and the calendar, I loop a thick circle around a single date

  “That’s not what’s important right now,” I reply. “Calculating the distance around the spiral and the weather speeds… we have two days.”

  Both of them stand still and the room briefly falls silent.

  “What happens in two days?” asks Randi.

  “The worst storm this city has ever seen,” I reply.

  Doug chuckles.

  “The computers would have picked it up,” he says, pointing to the desk. “The National Weather Service would have given us the heads up a week ago. Your calculations don’t even add up. It shouldn’t be until next week.”

  “That may be true when you start from today, but I’m going from the day I was struck by lightning…My birthday. March 14th at 1:59 P.M.”

  3.14159…

  His eyes scan my writing as his finger touches one specific character—the red circle.

  “You’ve lost your mind, Sierra,” he adds. “This isn’t even a number. It has no value. If you throw the absence of a value into a calculation, the entire thing crashes.”

  “Precisely my point. To anyone else, a circle is perfect. But mathematically, a circle can’t be perfect. One bad apple and the perfect weather is anything but.”

  Doug scoffs and turns.

  “You cannot divide anything by that,” he says, throwing the door open.

  By this time, Mark should be finished setting up in the control room.

  Time before the Channel 6 Morning news is running low.

  Randi is still at a loss for words. It’s hard to tell if she’s angry or if she feels sorry for me. Either way, she has a show to run.

  Amidst the chaos of the studio, people scrounge to make their final preparations before going on the air. Anyone can see Mark running one of the cameras but no one realizes it’s his day off.

  Standing in the back, watching my fellow colleagues take their seats, I push strands of hair behind my ears. The back of Mark’s hand raises as the music begins.

  “Five… Four… Three… Two…”

  The one is silent.

  His index finger swings to point at Doug and Olivia.

  “Good morning,” says Doug, “and welcome to Channel Six morning news. This morning’s top story: The largest lottery is still up for grabs. After the winning numbers were announced last night, the state lottery office states no one has claimed their ticket as of yet.”

  “Boy,” says Olivia. “Can you imagine holding a winning lottery ticket in your hands?”

  “Sounds amazing,” Doug replies, nodding to her. “A hundred and forty-three million dollars is a lot of money.”

  The inflection of his voice sounds as fake as he is.

  “If you’re holding a ticket but missed last nights drawing, the winning numbers are: 03, 01, 04, 01, 05, 09.”

  Olivia continues with the next headliner as the new weather intern preps herself. This intern rubs the floor leaf clover from her necklace. Her papers shake between her fingers.

  Only Olivia is shown on the screen and Doug takes hold of the intern’s hand to calm her, whispering something into her ear. Then his arms rubs up and down along her back as she composes herself.

  Randi’s voice cues Mark in his earpiece to get ready for the weather. He looks over his shoulders to me and winks.

  Doug pulls away from his new intern friend as she aims her nervous smile at the camera.

  Mark’s hand rises.

  Olivia cues up, “Right now we go to our new Channel Six intern with today’s weather.”

  Five…Four…Three…Two…

  Mark’s index finger swings around along with the camera, toward me in the back corner.

  With a microphone clipped to my collar and the wire dangling on the outside of my shirt, I smile. It’s a microphone Mark had patched in to the control room along with an alternate feed from his camera.

  The intern gets a few words out before she realizes she’s not on the air.

  Mark and I have hijacked the weather forecast.

  "Thank you, Olivia. This city has less than two days to prepare itself for one of the worst storms in history…”

  Randi can be heard screaming from the control room.

  Doug stands from the news desk, his face
turning red.

  “Get her off!” he shouts.

  Mark gives me a thumbs up, signaling to me the viewers at home can hear every word. That’s when I respond.

  “You wish, Dougie-Pooh.”

  Mark tries not to laugh as I continue the broadcast.

  “What news anchor Doug Kelley’s new side dish won’t tell you is a major threat is moving its way into the area and leaves us with little time to prepare…”

  As I speak, Randi and her staff fumble with switches to cut to commercial but Mark has managed to buy me some time.

  “According to my calculations, the spring temperatures will plummet, creating ice, snow, and freezing winds. Shortly after, the numbers will rise bringing in large amounts of humidity and moisture, creating vicious cells that are certain to unleash destructive tornadoes, dangerous lightning, and flooding rains…”

  Doug jumps from the news desk, trying to take control of Mark’s camera, but Mark turns and stands his ground, leaving the lens pointed at me.

  “The unpredictable chaos of this storm system is expected to last no longer than fourteen hours. However, during that time, we will be without power. Buildings will crumble. Trees will fall. Streets will flood. People will die.”

  With Mark holding Doug back, no one is to stop Randi from bursting out of the control room. She shoves the studio camera, toppling it to the floor and yanks its cords from the wall. The red light goes dim. The screens on the monitors dance with scrambled static.

  Every person in the room stands silent with their mouths open.

  Randi’s shoes crunch the shattered glass as she steps toward me. Our eyes locked with each other.

  “Doug,” she says. “Call the police.”

  To others, my actions can be justified by sleep deprivation. When an unsteady mind is pushed to its boundaries, it makes people do crazy things.

  To others, Mark’s actions can be justified by his feelings for me. His care for my well-being.

  But to me, everything makes sense.

  The numbers add up.

  And as for Mark, he believes me.

  A familiar face comes walking through the door.

  A woman dressed in black with a police vest and the name, Avery, stenciled above the pocket.

  Her black ponytail pulled tight and her left arm decorated with a sleeve of tattoos.

  Behind her, another officer. A large, muscular dark man with a shaved head. His arms big enough to fit but barely able to squeeze through the sleeves of his uniform.

  Mark looks to me while he folds his arms behind his back. The bulky officer clicks a set of handcuffs.

  Unlike Mark, the plan for me isn’t to go to jail. The police won’t arrest someone in needed of medical or psychiatric attention. They won’t take me to jail but they can force me to a hospital.

  There’s no way they will understand there’s no treatment that will help. It’s been days and I’ve tried everything to sleep. Telling them I’ve downed an entire bottle of sleeping pills, even with no effect, would only worsen my case.

  Only one thing gives me the faintest glimpse of hope.

  One thing I’ve grown to fear is possibly my only salvation—The possibility none of this can be real.

  This could be another hallucination.

  Any moment now I’m going to come back to reality.

  Wherever I am right now, whatever I’m doing, I’ll snap back to it.

  All of this, it could be in my head… but it’s not.

  Avery steps close to me and sighs.

  My lips won’t pout but my tears build up and stream down my cheeks.

  “You have to believe me.”

  She shakes her head.

  “You need to come with me,” she says, taking ahold of my arm. “We can find something that will help.”

  Everyone in the room watches.

  Doug hangs his head.

  Mark looks to me and grins. He nods an unspoken message that everything will be okay.

  But it won’t.

  Avery walks with me, holding my uninjured wrist, but I stop. There’s a sudden flash of bright light from my side that causes me to flinch but I try to stay focused.

  5

  “Your perfume,” I say. “Bulgari Omnia, it’s the only thing you wear.”

  “So do a lot of women,” she replies.

  “Your daughter.”

  “How do you know about my daughter?” she asks.

  Another flash of light burns through my eyes and into my head.

  4

  “You have a full Polynesian tattoo sleeve that goes down your back and halfway down your left thigh.”

  Again with the flashes, too bright to be from the studio and I’m the only one who sees them.

  3.

  Avery’s grip weakens and her eyebrows bend toward each other.

  “You have your daughter’s name on your right ankle. A nautical star, the same as one of your best friends, on your right wrist.”

  She looks to the star tattoo on the wrist she holds me with.

  Even while squinting, the darkness I see is interrupted with another blinding flash.

  2

  “You have the Chinese Mandarin symbol for ‘mother’ on your right shoulder.”

  The next thing I see again is Avery’s face. Her bottom lip spaced from the top. She lets go of my arm but grips the front of my shirt, leaning in to whisper.

  “Whatever magic tricks you have up your sleeve,” she says, “they don’t impress me.”

  "Sophia is your favorite of the women on that sitcom.”

  Avery’s head pulls back to face me.

  “Your friend is an author. You proof-read his books. You’re a character in each of his stories. He’s not allowed to kill you.”

  Her fist frees the top of my shirt as she steps back.

  “None of this is a trick. You think I’m crazy, I get it. But I know when something is certain. Your daughter will end up in a hospital. She’s in danger. This entire city is in danger."

  The 1 is silent.

  If the word please doesn’t change her mind, hopefully my begging eyes will.

  “You remember when my dog died?” I ask.

  Her grip weakens.

  “You fell off your bike and scraped up your arm,” I say. “That’s what stopped you from going after him. Your friend, the truck driver, the woman, they all had something to keep them from running to the streets. Mark, he saved me. Only now, it’s me who has to do the saving.”

  My breath holds while watching her make a decision.

  After a moment, she releases her grip.

  “Dax,” she says, to the bulky officer. “Let him go.”

  Relief washes over me but I know I’m still on thin ice.

  “You better be right,” she says.

  To everyone else’s disappointment, Mark and I won’t be punished for today’s fiasco.

  But to their satisfaction, the police escort the two of us from the studio.

  TODAY

  22

  The best place to be is home.

  Though I’m not certain it’s where I am anymore.

  This should have worked. I should be free to sleep. Predicting the weather leaves nothing to calculate. No more math to solve. But if no one believes me, or worse yet, a storm never comes, there’s no time left to figure anything else.

  It is what it is, or so they say.

  I’ve used up every resource to calm myself.

  A hot shower. A bottle of wine. Rubbing my feet together. Having Mark stay over to look after me in case bad things happen. Not that I could tell him to leave.

  Paranoia haunts me.

  Why can’t I sleep?

  Who’s outside my condo?

  Who’s waiting to burst in here to take me away?

  The glowing cigarette from the patio of the other building hasn’t shown itself all night.

  Pacing by the front door, I stop to listen each time I hear a noise.

  It is really a noise or something
in my head?

  My potted sunflower in the kitchen keeps trying to give me advice but I’m not sure what it expect me to do. I’ve been trying to clean as much as I can, to keep myself busy but the walls of the living room are stained. Scrubbing the floor over and over, the ladybugs continue congregating in the hallway. They’re not real. I know they’re not.

  I sit in bed and try to read a book but the letters crawl across the page just like the bugs do.

  It’s to the point where I can’t watch Mark sleep because the dim light causes his face to morph into scary masks. It’s not real. None of it. But it won’t go away.

  There’s no sense of time. No sense of anything, really.

  My wrist hurts more now than it ever did.

  Low barometric pressure causes an increase in bone pain.

  At the freezer, a handful of ice falls from my hand, missing the plastic bag. Kneeling on the floor, there must be a leak somewhere. The linoleum is too shiny, like water. But as many times as I touch it, my fingers stay dry. Minutes must have passed down here because I’ve completely forgotten about my wrist pain.

  “Why are you on the floor?” asks Mark.

  “You startled me. Does the tile look wet to you?”

  Mark helps me stand, careful of my wrist.

  “You haven’t slept at all, have you?” he asks.

  My head shakes.

  Mark walks me to the living room and tells me to lay on the sofa.

  We don’t talk about the storm. If anything comes of it, we stay here and take cover toward the center of the building. How we survive isn’t the question. The question is: does anyone else believe me?

  Mark says it doesn’t matter.

  Mark says you can’t make everything right.

  He says you do what you can and move on. If others follow, then they follow. If they don’t, their actions are not a responsibility I need to bear.

  “I’m glad you're here."

  Through all of this, Mark is the one who holds me together. It’s a shame I took him for granted. The guilt weighs heavily on me.

  That’s not sarcasm, by the way.

  Sometimes, I guess, the people you need the most are the ones you overlook. The ones who have the answers. The ones in the crowd who have virtues you’d never know about until you spend time with them.

  I love my friends and family but I’m sure they would only add to the anxiety, my parents for sure.