by Gwynn White
“Come up with me,” he said.
Grey stopped outside the elevator. His dad waited outside his apartment door. Hands on his hips and a dad-pooch pushing against his belt, he blocked the hall.
“You,” he said. “Get in here.”
Two teenagers were on one end, a bowed-up dentist on the other. It was a showdown of teenage angst and failed parenting. He chopped his arm at the open door.
“Now!”
The dad-voice had been engaged. It reached deep into Grey and snatched the five-year-old still hiding inside to the front line. The legs cooled a few degrees. A year ago, it would have bullied his ass down the hall and sat him on the couch. Hell, maybe even a month.
Not anymore.
“Let’s do this out here,” Grey said.
“What did you say?” His dad took a step. “What did you… get down here, you shit. Get down here!”
A door opened halfway between them. Mrs. Nichols peeked out, her robe revealing fuzzy pajama bottoms that matched her slippers. She looked in both directions, a casual observer caught in a gunfight but too fascinated to find cover.
Grey started the walk, slow and even. He greeted Mrs. Nichols with a smile.
“Rachel, go home,” his dad said.
“She’s coming inside.”
Grey stepped into his dad to screen her. He was almost half a foot taller than his old man, with eighteen-year-old muscles to back him up. His old man had dad-power, a special skill that made children brush their teeth and do their chores. But that universal power was dimming. They touched bellies as Rach snuck into the apartment behind Grey.
His dad took a moment to explain things to Mrs. Nichols, said it was fine, you know how kids are these days. They never listen.
Or listen to the wrong things.
His dad’s cell phone was in three different pieces. His footsteps were as measured as his words. He shut the door gently and propped his thin arms on his hips again.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Grey stood a half step in front of Rach. Suddenly, this seemed like a bad idea. He was certain he could pin his dad to the ground if it came to that, but he didn’t factor in the instinctual dad-rage that kicks in when the young bull steps up.
“Answer me!” He kicked a chair and raked a stack of paper off the table. “You followed me, is that what you did? You followed me and… what?”
“What were you doing out there?” Grey said.
“I gave you a home, gave you food and clothing and you rape my privacy, you savage! I have to install security cameras on my own son for real?” Hands on hips, he paced. His breath scratched its way in and out. “Answer me!”
Grey slammed the invitation on the counter with an open palm. The flaps hinged open, but the symbol was still apparent. His dad stared, eyes flickering to the refrigerator and back. Then he laughed.
“Is that what you think?”
“What else is it?”
“A game? You think I was driving out there for that game?”
“Then what is it?” Grey slapped the invitation over and over. His dad watched his tantrum peak. The more heated Grey became, the calmer his dad appeared.
“The Maze is a poor man’s desperation,” his dad said. “Nothing more.”
“There were some sick motherfuckers that met us at the gate and turned us around. What are you doing?”
“You wouldn’t understand. You’re a kid.” His slender finger darted at Grey. “And you betrayed me.”
“I betrayed you?” The top of Grey’s head was about to explode. “What are you doing?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“What were you doing?”
“It doesn’t matter!” His dad’s delicate fingers curled into fists. “What I was doing depended on confidentiality and not my son dragging his girlfriend to their front door. What I was doing is over because of you.”
He took a strong step in their direction. Grey braced for his old man’s rage then watched him go to the refrigerator and wipe everything off. He picked up the second invitation off the floor, the one Grey left on the freezer, and tore it into pieces.
“Done! Everything I worked for is done because you had to stick your nose in it, Grey. Couldn’t let me have a moment, could you?” Spit bubbled in the corners of his mouth, lips pulled over perfect teeth. “All my money, gone. Wasted. Because of you. Because of you!”
“Your money?” Grey snapped. “That was my money you wasted. My college fund, my savings. You took it; you spent it. That was my money, you say it! Who betrayed who, Dad? Huh? Say it, that was my money!”
His dad stiffened. A flash-frozen expression of shock snuffed out his rage.
“Yeah, I know you spent my money,” Grey said. “It doesn’t take a genius. You put Maze invitations on the refrigerator, leave bank statements on the table, tape your passwords underneath your keyboard. My college fund went to zero when you went on that month-long vacation. Or, more specifically, the Sessions.”
His dad looked at the kitchen table, his bedroom and rested on the floor as he recounted all the carelessness. Of course Grey was snooping. He’d just had no idea to what extent. Until now.
“I know what you do, always. Your emails, your weed. Your porn. You scatter breadcrumbs like a child. The respirator gear.” Grey pointed at the bathroom. “You were practicing for the tank, weren’t you? You were getting used to long-term submersion, the way it felt to breathe underwater. Why else would you keep it in the bathroom? It’s like you want to be caught. And then you blame me.”
His dad rubbed his mouth, still staring at the floor. A trapdoor had just swallowed all his plans. Maybe his dad was just a glutton and the Sessions was just a month on a tropical island. Maybe this was his last attempt to make it up, win the Maze and start a new life.
He shuffled to the giant glass wall that overlooked the bright city. “Get out.”
“Tell me what you were doing.”
“Get out of my apartment.”
The iron grip of guilt or shame or hopelessness that was just there moments ago vanished. He spun around, grabbed Grey by the throat, and slammed him against the window. An inch of glass was between him and a nine-story plunge. Grey seized his dad’s shirt, bunching it in both hands. Rach shouted, pulling at their arms. His dad leaned in until their noses were almost touching. Minty breath mingled with his lotioned hands.
“Get out of my life,” he hissed.
He shoved Grey into Rach.
The secrets were exposed. The empty bank accounts, bankrupt morals and bottomless self-doubt. And his dad had more to hide. That was what was behind the rage and panic. These secrets were out. But there was more.
“You were tanking,” Grey said. “Practicing awareness leaping, admit it.”
His dad said nothing.
“You strapped on a sensory suit and dropped into a tank. Your senses were transformed, your awareness pulled into an alternate reality where a new universe awaited. You came home stinking of it. You think I’m an idiot?”
His dad turned his hollow stare back out the window. Perhaps he was rethinking everything—the Sessions, the marriage. His son. If it would all go away, he would be happy; if he could just create a new reality, escape into another universe, then he could start a new life. He could be happy again. At least for a weekend.
“You couldn’t do it, could you?” Grey said. “You failed to drop in the tank, so you bought the respirator to practice. But the tub ain’t like the tank, is it? It doesn’t have the same claustrophobic feel, doesn’t have the walls, the finality.”
The Internet was filled with failed attempts. Tanking wasn’t scuba diving. The long-term respirator for awareness leaping fit deeper into the mouth. Even if the user didn’t have a gag reflex, there was the coffin-like experience, the tightness of being buried alive.
Users would thrash against the glass, claw at the cable attached to their backs, ripped the respirator out as they were winched to the surface, crying as they hung
over the edge. Some of them were frightened, caught in a reaction they couldn’t escape. Deep down, though, they all wept because they couldn’t do it. They knew they wouldn’t be able to awareness leap.
And they wanted it more than anything.
They hated this world. They wanted out. Wanted a dream that felt warm and fuzzy. And if they had a taste of a new universe before the panic set in, if they visited a new reality that made them happy for just a moment before failure ripped it away, they went full-on manic. They would never escape who they are.
And this world is dull and lonely.
“Where were you leaping?” Rach asked. “If you weren’t joining the Maze, where were you going?”
“He was training, Rach. That’s what that place on the lake is. You get invited, they train you for the leap, then commit you to the Maze. Isn’t that right?”
“You’re just a kid.” His voice leaked out.
“Then tell me. You’re my dad, tell me what you’re doing. Maybe I can help.”
“Not everything is a game, son. Sometimes it’s life and death.”
“What does that mean?”
He rubbed his chin, contemplating thoughts that seemed to evaporate just beyond the window. He dropped his hand and casually, as if he suddenly needed a nap, started for the bedroom.
“Close the door behind you and don’t come back. I’ll tell your mother that we’re done now, she can deal with you. I’m a shitty dad; you’re a shitty kid. I’ll take responsibility for both of us. Just get out.”
“I’ll get you back in there,” Grey said. “I can tell them it was an accident, that I didn’t mean to go out there.”
Grey grabbed his arm. His dad yanked away. This was all a mistake. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. They were supposed to get things off their minds, air out the dirty laundry then sit down and fix things.
“Don’t do this,” Grey said.
“I didn’t. You did.”
“Let’s figure them out.”
“What you did is final. They terminated my access. I’m finished. Because of you. So you win, Grey. You and your mother. I’m a piece of shit that spent your money, ruined your childhood. That’s that. Nothing can be fixed or changed. Ever.”
Grey wanted to say it wasn’t true. There were fond memories of them in the distance, of late nights watching movies and being perched on his shoulders. They were faded and fragmented, but they were there, the building blocks of a relationship that fell apart. They had to mean something.
So why didn’t he say that?
Because that distant life was covered in a muck of shit that hurt. Hurt him. Hurt his mother. The man that locked himself in the bedroom deserved this life. He built it. Who was Grey to take it away?
That’s that.
19
Grey
Before the Punch
Mom leaned into the room with a toothbrush, white foam in the corners of her mouth. “Not going to your dad’s?”
“No.”
She waited. “What’s up?”
Her radar was picking up trouble. Her instincts for misfortune were finely tuned. You look for trouble, a therapist once told her. If you look for it, you’ll find it. She never went back to her. Instead, she visited a psychic that read her past lives—thousands of them—where she’d done terrible things and was now balancing the karmic scales.
His mom had bought that one.
She just had to hold on until this life was over, pay her debts and hope for something better the next time around. If you believed that sort of thing.
“He’s not feeling well,” Grey said.
That was close to the truth. He didn’t say his dad was sick, even though that was dead on true—sick in the head and sick in the heart.
“He’s not returning my texts,” Mom said. “Or calls.”
“You surprised?”
She nodded with the x-ray vision beaming through him, a spotlight in search of the truth. Grey gave her his full attention, let her look, hoping she wouldn’t see. She didn’t need to know about the bottomed-out college fund or his dad’s state of mind. She didn’t believe her opinion of him could get lower.
The truth was hidden for her protection.
Maybe his dad would change his mind, call him one day and invite him over. Grey was accustomed to the absentee-dad thing, but what if he got access to the Maze again? Grey wanted that. The college fund would be worth it.
I am a selfish shit because the nut doesn’t fall far from the tree.
His mother finished brushing her teeth at the kitchen sink, gave final instructions to clean up, don’t make a mess, don’t do drugs and see you in the morning. She tied the bandana around her neck and was off to work.
Just another Friday night.
A small bowl of popcorn waited in the kitchen—his mother’s nightly gift, just in case he was hungry. Grey ate while he whittled the hours away on his phone, watching tank drops. Not everyone could drop into a sensory tank without blowing a circuit. His dad was one of them. The respirator in the bathroom was just a guess. The look on his face confirmed it.
He can’t do it.
Sensory tanks started out as horizontal deprivation tanks. Black walls, buoyant saline solution, and the complete absence of the five senses created hallucinations. The brain didn’t evolve to be ignored. When deprived of input, it made up its own reality.
Even if it was a dream.
The shift to vertical tanks began when manufactured sensory input was substituted for the absence of reality. Instead of letting the brain wander through a miasma of fragmented dreams, computer-aided realities were created by hijacking the latent five senses.
The subject could be monitored through the glass. Weightless in a viscous solution, a nervous system hijacking was achieved through a skinsuit. The brain was fooled into believing its environment when nerve endings were stimulated. The user would see, hear, smell, feel and taste what it was being told to see, hear, smell, feel and taste. The experience was no different than the real world. Their thoughts and awareness were integrated into a computer-animated reality with an auto feedback loop.
Awareness leaping.
The technology was used to correct brain deficiencies as well as mental illnesses—PTSD, traumatic childhoods, etc. It worked well for decades, for those who could afford it.
And then came reality confusion.
People were coming out messed up. They couldn’t trust their senses, didn’t know if they were in a dream or the real world. Even the word real was becoming subjective. If reality is determined by our five senses, then what was real? But assholes were jumping off buildings. In the tank, they could fly. In the skin, they were water balloons. That’s real.
These reality-confused users assaulted others, raped and robbed and looted because in the tank none of that mattered. You could treat people like meat puppets when you were in the tank.
Rach texted. Sleeping?
Yes, he typed.
It was past midnight. She wouldn’t fall asleep until after two o’clock and get out of bed at noon. That was Grey’s schedule, too. There had to be a way they could sleep together without sex. Friends without benefits.
Can’t stop thinking about it, she texted.
She had more questions than he did. She was fuel to his obsession. Whenever he forgot about his dad or the people at the gate, she was in his ear, on his phone, wondering how far his dad got, if it really was the Maze.
Nothing we can do about it, he texted back.
Except go back.
Go back?
To the house.
In a way, it was a relief to have it over with, to be done with his dad. It was like a death in the family, without the guilt. And inheritance. But it was clean and final. His dad was an asshole. So was Grey. It ran in the family. Whose fault was that?
He wants you to go back, she wrote.
He rolled his eyes. It was like she didn’t witness the rage-a-thon.
He left the clues in the open, she
texted.
Because he’s an idiot.
Or he wanted you to find out. He’s not stupid.
Grey hesitated. Why would he want that?
He wants help?
If he wanted help, why would he excommunicate Grey from the apartment. Why didn’t he just ask for help instead of leaving out clues? Besides, they weren’t obvious. Grey did some major snooping to put it all together. Maybe he underestimated me, Grey thought.
Let’s go back, Rach texted.
That guy clearly wants us to.
We don’t go in the front door.
Parachute into the backyard?
Head sunk in his pillow, he waited for a reply. His arm got tired. He dropped the phone and turned the music up, head thumping. Sometimes she fell asleep before finishing a thought. It was best just to forget the whole thing. Go back to school, study hard, get a job, pay some bills and then die. There was a song that went like that—birth, school, work, death.
Exactly, he thought.
The phone vibrated. He tipped it up. Pick you up in the morning.
She wasn’t giving up.
The sun was setting. A warm glow was cast upon the parking lot litter. Styrofoam cups and paper bags and empty cans were flattened on the asphalt. Similar trash floated near a boat ramp.
A shirtless man was steering a two-person Sun Dolphin toward shore, his shoulders bright red. One hand on the wheel, the other wrapped around a beer, he shouted at the truck backing down the ramp.
“Rach—”
“Shhh. We’re doing this,” she said. “You want to. I want to. Stop crying.”
She had picked him up that afternoon. Half an hour later, they arrived at her grandparents’ farm. An hour after that, they pulled off with a johnboat. Now they were watching the driver attempt to back the trailer down the ramp for the third time. He didn’t look old enough to have a license. His dad kept the boat steady, waving him down.
Rach’s grandfather’s johnboat was about the same size as the Sun Dolphin. It was big enough for two people and a cooler. It was also older than both of them. Many holes had been patched over its lifetime.