by Thomas Locke
Ridley creased Carl’s ribs with an inked fist. “You hear that? They’re singing our tune.”
Carl rubbed the point on his chest, but he did not look like he minded the contact. “I heard.”
Reese said to the group at large, “I’m thinking you should all pair up. One serves as anchor, the other hunts. Choose your partner and decide who holds back this first round.” She gave that a beat, then concluded, “I’ll be on duty in the monitoring station. Your objective is to stay safe while we go after the required intel. We clear?”
“Protect and serve,” Ridley said.
“We roll in ten,” Reese said. “But first I need to have a word with the midnight crew.”
Most of the voyagers decided to walk with her. Reese listened to the easy chatter that trailed in her wake. She did not hear the words so much as the tone. They talked like kids let out early from school. Released from some restrictive and uncomfortable hour. Free to do whatever. Because of her.
Her posse. Ready to go wherever she asked. Do whatever she said.
The midnight crew was clumped together on a sofa and uncomfortable chair positioned between the reception desk and the front window. They were being watched by Stu, who greeted Reese with, “One big happy family.”
Reese wondered if there would ever come a time when she would feel relaxed around armed guards. “Thanks. A lot.”
“De nada.”
“I got this.”
Stu took that as his dismissal and slipped back into the security suite. Reese surveyed the four in silence until the door clicked shut, then told the midnight crew, “Everything’s changed.”
Heather must have been their appointed spokesman. “They’re going to get you. Sooner or later. It’s inevitable.”
Reese saw no need to ask who Heather meant. “We’ll see.”
Carl told the midnight crew, “Haven’t you heard? We ate your pets for lunch.”
Heather looked over, the cold gaze meant to terrify. Then back to Reese. “They can’t watch you forever.”
The young woman, Erin, spoke from the group behind them. “Actually, we can.”
Carl said, “We got her back, 24-7.”
Erin added, “New game, new rules.”
Carl said, “We’re posting our own guards. Night and day.”
Ridley stepped in tight, right in the midnight crew’s personal space, and crouched down. Her voice barely above a whisper. Like it was an intimate moment just between them. “Here’s the thing. You come for any of us, or you let your little friends try anything, we’re coming for you.”
A dark, rich female voice said, “Tell them, girl.”
“It doesn’t matter what you do. It doesn’t matter how you plan.”
Carl said, “You got to sleep sometime, right?”
“The deal is simple,” Ridley said. “Forget what your little friends want. You keep them caged, or we take you out.”
The united response caused all four to waver. Reese saw it happen because she was watching for it. She knew it had little to do with Ridley’s threat. These four were true psychopaths. They did not respond to fear like others did. Their world was not defined the same way. What troubled them now was the prospect Reese saw in all their eyes. They were no longer needed. She could shut them out. One word from Reese and their days of moving beyond the physical realm were finished. Over.
They knew this. And it terrified them.
Reese said, “You’re welcome to stay.”
They clearly did not believe her. It was Carl who said, “And do what? Didn’t you get the memo? We got your back.”
Reese nodded and continued to address the crew. “All you need to do is obey the new rules.”
But she did not really want them to stay. Reese had spoken because she wanted to gauge their reaction. And there beneath the flat gazes and silent rage, she saw the same response. They had no intention of doing what she wanted. Which could only mean one thing.
There on the sofa were Vera’s watchdogs.
Reese dismissed them and headed back down the hall, followed by her crew. If anything, the voyagers were even more amped. They thought the threat was vanquished. They were safe. Because of Reese.
She decided to let them live that myth a little bit longer.
45
Lena climbed the stairs to the townhouse off Park Avenue and rang the bell. A woman in a nurse’s uniform opened the door and asked, “Yes?”
“I’m Lena Fennan—”
“Of course, Ms. Fennan. Dr. Riffkind is expecting you.” The nurse had greying hair and the over-bright eyes of recent tears. “Do come in.”
“This is Marjorie Foretrain—”
“Yes, yes, Dr. Riffkind said you’d be coming with a guest. I’m Doris, Mrs. Lockwood’s nurse.” She locked the front door, then hurried across the foyer, almost running by the time she entered the hall. “This way.”
The corridor opened into a very grand sitting room, totally at odds with the hospital bed and the clinical smells. One look at the old woman left Lena certain she stared into the face of death. Agnes Lockwood wore a neural net, which compressed her slack features. Wisps of translucent hair stuck out in various places. A hand that appeared little more than bones and parchment lifted from the covers and waved them forward. “Do come in, my dears. Forgive me for receiving you in this manner. I realize I might appear rather, well, horrid.”
“You are nothing of the sort,” chided a man seated in the chair by her bed. He wore the vest and trousers of a black suit, a starched white shirt, and another neural net.
The cables draped over his chair back and wound into the laptop monitored by Brett, who turned and smiled and said, “Almost done.”
“Thank goodness.” The man shook his head. “I find these questions most unsettling.”
“That’s pretty much their intention,” Brett replied.
A second laptop was placed on the table beside his own, this one containing four graphs with a myriad of wave patterns. Most were jagged and uneven, and these were colored either red or green. Overlaid upon them was another wave, this one golden, steady and flowing like an ocean current. Every few seconds all the graphs but one were replaced by others.
Lena asked, “They’re showing the different segments of Mrs. Lockwood’s brain?”
“Please, dear,” the old woman said. “I insist you call me Agnes.”
“Exactly,” Brett said. He stopped long enough to tap the central graph. “This is the mother lode. What you might refer to as pain central.” He tapped the screen. “See that clear rhythm? Not even a shadow of disturbance.”
Lena looked at the woman on the bed. “You don’t feel anything?”
“Not a tickle,” she replied. “Isn’t it marvelous?”
Lena was by nature an extremely private person. And yet, as Brett asked her the probing questions, Lena did not feel the least bit disconcerted. What was more, the presence of others made the calibration process feel almost comfortable. They were bound together by something they did not fully understand. There on the bed lay the living testimony of just how important this entire episode truly was. Agnes Lockwood now approached death free of pain, free of drugs, alert, at peace. And something more.
Agnes Lockwood was happy.
She radiated a joy that embraced them all. She had been unable to describe what was happening, but it did not really matter. They could all see the impact the neural net was having. The electromagnetic process was not a dominating force. It did not control her mind.
It freed her.
Agnes was able to die on her own terms. Alert and engaged.
When Brett asked her to recall a scene when she had been emotionally hurt by another person, Lena relived the episode. On and on it went, eighty-nine minutes of difficult recollections and emotions. She knew the neural net made her look ridiculous. It mashed her hair and compressed her face. Lena accepted it all as the price of admission.
Marjorie’s calibration followed. Lena accompanied the nurse in
to the kitchen, where Doris made her a cup of tea. When they returned to the sickroom, Agnes gestured to Lena, who understood the invitation and shifted a chair over to the bed’s other side.
Agnes said, “Brett tells me you’ve had some experiences of your own.”
“Not the same,” Lena replied. “But Brett thinks they’re related.”
“Not think, know,” Brett said. “Okay, Marjorie, we’re done.”
Marjorie slipped off the net, gave her scalp a good scratching, and asked Lena, “What haven’t you told me?”
“There’s no way to describe what I’ve been through in a few minutes,” Lena replied. “I’ll tell you, just not now.”
Marjorie sniffed. “You sound just like my husband.”
Brett stood, stretched his back, said, “Where do we want to do this?”
“Here, of course,” Agnes said. “What an absurd question.”
He looked down at the lady in the bed and said gently, “This technology is new to me. I’m concerned that if I insert the ascendant commands into your system, the pain control might be diminished.”
Lena shivered slightly and wondered if the words impacted anyone else. Ascendant commands. Pain control. Gentle verbal bombs lobbed into the realm they called reality.
Agnes replied, “I have no intention of ascending again. I shall be making that final flight soon enough. I am quite content to play the observer.”
Brett turned to Doris. “We need to make up four pallets.”
Lena asked, “What about you?”
“My thoughts exactly,” Agnes said.
Brett froze in the process of uncoiling cables. “You received a message about this?”
“I did not require one.” Agnes pointed the translucent hand at Lena. “She knows it is time. As do I.”
Brett resumed keying in the four neural nets. But his motions were slower, his hands somewhat unsteady. “I’ll think about it.”
The transition was very frightening, such that Lena instinctively drew back. The terror formed a repulsive barrier. She jerked in a panic, as though she fled a premature death.
At that exact moment, Brett’s calm voice repeated the words for the third time, “You are in complete control.”
Control was the issue. Control was the anchor. Lena grasped this with a swiftness that defied the speed of thought.
One instant she was retreating in dread. The next and she . . .
Just.
Went.
The fear vanished so completely it might as well have never existed. In its place Lena knew a sense of exhilarated release. The world of the physical still surrounded her. But it no longer held her.
She saw a vivid portion of the world wherever she looked, on whatever she focused. Yet overlaid upon the physical reality was something new. Lena’s perspective felt scrubbed clean. Not in terms of image. Rather, in terms of the viewer.
Lena could have remained there forever, hovering above her body. She turned and looked at the form upon the bed, and saw the beauty of a woman who was a few breaths from her next transition. She felt the woman’s peace. She knew the strength this represented. Then she turned away and looked at Brett.
All the barriers she had known were no more. The fact that her temporal self had promised coming heartache no longer existed. Brett was a wounded soul who was doing his best to make amends. He was . . .
Beautiful.
46
When Brett finished bringing everyone back, Doris rose from her pallet and served them all tea. The nurse raised Agnes’s bed and held a mug with a straw so the old lady could sip. Brett asked the others if they had ascended. Doris and Frederick said they had not, and yet there was a calm satisfaction to both their expressions and their voices. Lena had the distinct impression something concrete had been experienced, but she felt no need to press. Marjorie did not respond at all. She sat cross-legged upon her pallet and stared at the steam rising from her tea. Brett observed her thoughtfully and did not press.
Doris said, “I don’t know if I dreamed or if it was real. But I had a conversation with my late mother. It was . . .”
“Remarkable,” Frederick murmured. The butler’s vest and trousers and tie and starched white shirt formed a sharp contrast to his position on the pallet, legs outstretched, his back against the side wall. His shoes were lined up like two soldiers next to his mug.
Doris gave him time to say more, but when he remained silent, she turned to Agnes and said, “You never told me how wonderful it was.”
“I thought perhaps it was only because of my state.”
Brett quietly asked, “Marjorie, did you—”
“No.”
The sharpness of her response drew them all around. Brett asked, “Is there anything I need to know?” When Marjorie continued to stare at the mug in her hands, he asked, “Are you all right?”
“Fine.” She rose in the jerky swiftness of an angry teen. “Just drop it.”
“Don’t go.” Agnes spoke hardly above a whisper, but it carried enough force to halt Marjorie in the doorway. “My dear, we can’t drop it. Brett needs to know—”
“There was a message waiting for me. It said I’m pregnant.” Marjorie leaned her head against the door frame. “We’ve tried for eleven years. And now . . . What if it’s a lie?”
Lena rose and walked over. She said to Marjorie, “I need to tell you what has been going on.”
They stood like that while Lena related the events and the messages and her actions and everything that had happened as a result. She finished with, “I’m not sure it would be a good idea for me to tell Roger—”
“Don’t,” Marjorie said. “Not yet. First Roger needs to do this for himself. Or at least try. Then you tell him. Until then it won’t make sense.”
“I agree.”
Marjorie’s eyes were coal-black diamonds, washed by a river of hope. “There was a second message. It said that I am to help you any way I can. I think that’s why I was told about my child. So I would understand how important this is.”
Agnes grew very tired after that, so they moved into the living room. Frederick left and returned with takeout from a Park Avenue deli. The elegant onyx coffee table was soon littered with cardboard cartons and sterling silver cutlery and linen napkins and Limoges china plates. No one said much. Marjorie called her husband, left a message, and spent the meal watching her phone.
When Roger called back, Marjorie left the room, only to return and announce that her husband was rushing to complete the same urgent matter that had compressed so many of his recent hours. He had agreed to meet with her, but only if she could come join him at the bank. Marjorie gathered up her things, hugged Lena and Brett once more, promised to return the next day, and was gone.
When Brett left to teach an afternoon class, Lena carried a sense of pleasant exhaustion downstairs. She lay down on the sofa, expecting to rest for a few moments, and the next thing she knew it was two in the morning. Brett had obviously come in, for she was covered with a quilt. Lena was amazed he had not woken her. Normally she remained completely aware of her surroundings at all times and could be woken by the tiniest of changes to her room’s atmosphere. Yet Brett had come in, obviously seen her asleep, moved about the apartment, spread a covering over her, and then gone to bed. The longer she thought on this, the more convinced she became that it represented far more than a simple case of needing sleep.
The next morning she was making coffee when Marjorie texted that she had finished with the arrangements for the place where Charlie and the team could locate. She and Roger were having coffee, and then she would come by and pick up Lena. Twenty minutes later, Robin called Lena to say they were making good time, and finished with the news, “Bernie is one amazing mind.”
“So it’s Bernie now.”
“The guy has a photographic recollection of every step of his research, every circuit of the neural net, every patient right back to med school. He’d be scary if he wasn’t so nice.”
“I kind
of figured Charlie Hazard would give you all the scary you need.”
“No, Charlie’s just a big puppy at heart.”
Lena listened to laughter rock the truck. “You’ve been making friends.”
“Thirteen hours in a truck with this crew, it’s either become pals or borrow Charlie’s gun.”
Lena gave her the address Marjorie had located, then asked to speak with Bishop. When the surgeon came on the line, she said, “Brett calibrated five neural nets, and with four of them he added the brain-wave pattern that stimulates ascending. The fifth neural net is being used by our host, Agnes Lockwood. She’s dying. What I wanted you to know is, yesterday Agnes remained without pain all afternoon.”
“Wait, he’s . . . You’ve . . .”
“Brett then counted the four of us up. I ascended. The other three all reported having experiences. Not actual ascents, but very important just the same. All because of your wonderful, amazing, incredible invention.”
There was a long silence, a fumbling noise, then Robin came back on the line and asked, “What did you say to make Bernie cry?”
Brett entered the kitchen as Lena cut the connection. His hair was still wet from the shower, and his eyes were clouded. Lena wanted to tell him about yesterday’s ascent. She wanted to thank him for the quilt. She wanted him to help her adjust to this strange mix of emotions that filled her heart and mind. But as she watched him move with careful deliberation around the kitchen, then frown out the rear window as he sipped his coffee, she knew now was not the time.
Finally he said, “I woke up to a very strong impression that you need to ascend again.”
“All right.”
“This raises a number of issues.” He did not seem to have heard her. He stared at the garden as he continued, “I have not had any direct contact with . . .”
“Whatever this is,” Lena offered.
“With anything related to ascents for over a year. And yet, that was how it felt. As though I walked into some message that was . . .” He grasped the air in front of his face. “I can’t describe what just happened. Much less explain it.”