by Gwynn White
She was teasing him. He had accepted his very own name because it was what he remembered. He’d accepted the reality presented to him and never doubted it.
A pot banged on the stove.
The VR phone strained in Hunter’s grip. Someone was humming a familiar song. Kernels were pinging off a metal lid. The smell of popcorn reached the bedroom. Hunter tested his footing before attempting a step toward the front room. His entire body was vibrating. He held the door jamb with both hands.
Sunny Grimm was at the stove.
She was swirling the pot and humming a song she always hummed—when she was sad, when she was happy, in the shower or cooking. A yellow bandana was around her neck, the stiff collar of a work uniform. Her hair was short and sweaty.
Hunter struggled to breathe.
The rapid fire of exploding kernels drowned out her tune. She shook it once more before dumping the contents into a big bowl then filled a small bowl—a bowl she always left for her son, just in case he wanted to join her.
Bright light jumped on the television. A slur of words streamed from channel to channel. She settled back and hugged the big bowl.
A balloon swelled in his stomach and leaked into his throat. He wiped his face and watched the light of a movie glitter in her eyes, the twinkle of a long day forgotten.
Someone made great sacrifices.
The truth was hiding just below his awareness when he saw her in the tank. His memories might have been wiped, but his soul couldn’t be cleansed. Some part of him recognized her, knew what she’d done and who she didn’t leave behind. Hunter had come to the city in search of Sunny Grimm.
Because she didn’t deserve this.
He knelt next to her. She didn’t see him because she wasn’t really there. The image was a memory playing out in front of him, a memory he cherished now so far away. He swallowed a tide of emotion until it gave way to a single word, one that would change it all. One word that would allow the truth to finally emerge. Hunter Montebank would disappear.
“Mom.”
She changed the channel, not hearing him. Not seeing him. Not there. A crystalized memory that played out a part of his life he couldn’t leave behind, one that couldn’t be erased. One he could witness one last time.
“I’m sorry.”
It wasn’t Hunter Montebank’s voice that whispered the apology. Grey Grimm was kneeling next to the couch. He found himself in a violent web of sobbing, collapsing on the cushions as the memory of his mother talked at the television between handfuls of popcorn.
“You need to go,” she said.
She was sitting very still. Placing the bowl next to her, she leaned forward to drop a business card on the table. She sat back without appearing to see anything, as if she was talking to the television and had found the card between the cushions. He wiped his eyes.
Three o’clock was stenciled on the blank side of the business card. Beneath it a snake was eating its tail. He stood on newborn knees and looked at the time and snake, then flipped the card over.
It was a homeless shelter.
Interview With Grey Grimm
Freddy looks at his watch. He should’ve been home an hour ago.
“What if you woke up with different memories?” Grey says. “One morning you remember a different name in a different place. Who are you then?”
“You’re talking about Foreverland.”
Freddy’s familiar with the tropical island incident. Everyone is. He knows it’s true, has seen the photos of the island and the buildings. He’s seen the footage of the Coast Guard rescuing boys who were told they had been in an accident and were being healed by some hi-tech technology. What Freddy doesn’t know is how much of it is true. Rich old men body-swapping for a younger model seems a bit much.
“So what you’re saying,” Freddy continues, “is that you woke up a divorced Asian man in his mid-fifties named Hunter Montebank—” He holds up his hand to stop Grey from interrupting. “I know what it means.”
Montebank is a fancy word that means imposter. Fake hunter. Freddy likes to think if he wakes up with a joke of a name like that he’ll figure it out before he pours coffee. Then again, dreams are convincing until the dreamer wakes up.
“But a Foreverland survivor?” Freddy says. “That’s a bit odd, don’t you think?”
“I was doing a research paper on the event. I know everything about Foreverland. The knowledge was fresh when I punched in. I’m guessing they drew on that to build Hunter Montebank to keep me obsessed and distracted.”
“Why?”
“To keep me lost.”
“No, I mean what’s the point? You’re saying this was an experiment. There was no audience or sponsors to make money. I don’t see the point of keeping you and your mom lost and confused.”
“The Maze is more than a game.”
Grey pauses to finish his water. Freddy is half-expecting Andrew to deliver another glass. When he doesn’t, Freddy takes the bait.
“What is it? If it’s not a game.”
“You know how we’re told the sky is the limit when we’re kids?” Grey regards him with that heavy-lidded stare. Blinking doesn’t seem to be necessary. “It’s a lie, Kaleb. There is no sky. There are no limits.”
Freddy clears his throat. The kid isn’t trying to goad him with his middle name, but he’s still tired of hearing it. Unless it’s his mother calling, that’s not his name.
“Dreams are real, is that it?” Freddy says.
Foreverland proved that assumption, or so the reports suggest. The boys visited a convincing dream that was limited only by their imagination. They felt pain and hunger, experienced pleasure and joy that were no different than the flesh world. It was how the old men got them to leave their bodies and not return.
However, the concepts of multiverses and parallel universes created from these dreams were above his pay grade. People dreaming up a world that solidifies into reality would mean we could be living in a dream right now.
Freddy is only concerned with this world, the one where he has to feed his children and pay his bills. If there’s another Freddy out there, it’s not him any more than a clone or an identical twin.
Even if his middle name is Kaleb.
“What about Hunter Montebank?” Freddy says. “Is he still out there?”
Grey appears caught off-guard. It’s the first time he’s blinked since they started. He looks up and left, contemplating the question. Perhaps he hasn’t thought of it until now.
“Maybe.”
“The investors, who are they?”
Grey shakes his head.
“Were they just some random billionaires that forced you and your mom into an experiment?”
“Only the willing enter the Maze.”
“So how did you get access to the equipment?”
Grey frowns. Freddy feels the air grow heavy and damp; he takes a deep breath and rubs his face. It’s been a long day.
“I was tempted,” is all Grey says.
“So your mom finds you punched in and comes after you. They throw her in a tank; she saves you and drowns.”
“She’s not dead.” His voice is thick and wavering.
“You’re not convincing me.”
Grey casts his eyes down. He slides the empty glass from hand to hand and grimaces. When he stops, he looks up without blinking again. His eyelids are heavier.
“I grieve for her suffering, Detective. She sacrificed a great deal for me, but she’s free now.”
“She might be free, but her body is dead.” Freddy snaps his fingers. “Ah, the multiverse.”
Grey is nodding.
The pieces are coming together. Freddy is beginning to understand what’s happening here. The kid punched into the Maze, but he didn’t come out sane. He’s coping with his mother’s death with the belief that she lives in another reality. Why he’s treating Freddy’s interrogation room like a confessional, he’s still not sure.
“I know you’re having trouble believ
ing this,” Grey says, “but you’re not a child. You once were a child, but you’re not anymore. Time is what separates you from the child. And time is an illusion.”
This is a troubled young man. He’s a little Zen master who’s good with body language. But he’s not reading my mind, Freddy thinks.
“Time is an illusion,” Freddy muses. “And you lived a thousand lives as Hunter Montebank—”
“I don’t know how many lives I lived.”
“You lived more than one, correct? And then you woke up in your bed as Grey Grimm”—Freddy gestured to the kid—“only twenty-four hours after you punched in. Did you know your mom was dead?”
Grey hesitates. “I knew she wasn’t coming back.”
“From the multiverse?”
“As you said, her body is dead. She couldn’t return.”
“Where’s your dad?”
“He is where he is.”
Freddy doesn’t know if he’s more annoyed with the young Zen master act or his refusal to answer questions. His father has been missing since Sunny Grimm’s death. He didn’t show up for work that morning and hasn’t returned since. His apartment was unlocked and hastily vacated. The drawers were out and the luggage gone. If he had anything to do with his ex-wife’s death, the kid isn’t going to help. Although the grim tension around Grey’s lips says different.
Freddy is good with body language, too.
“If you know anything about him, it’s best you let us handle it.”
“He’ll come talk with you sometime soon, Detective.”
“Don’t do anything stupid, Grey.”
“I’m here.” He chuckles. It’s his first outburst of emotion since he sat down. “I’ve already confessed to the Maze. By all accounts, I’ve already done something stupid.”
“At this point, I’ll have to hold you and report this to the feds.”
“I’ve already posted bail.”
That seems unlikely since charges haven’t been filed. But he seems prepared for whatever Freddy has to do.
“Okay,” Freddy says. “Are we done here? Did you get everything off your chest?”
“For now.”
Andrew comes in the room. Freddy figured he would’ve gone home by now. He holds the door open. Grey stops before leaving.
“Thanks for listening, Kaleb. I’ll see you soon.”
Andrew gives Freddy a strange look before escorting the kid to the back of the precinct. Freddy wants to hate the kid for being so flippant with his middle name. He’s making a point about something and Freddy’s patience with object lessons is maxed out.
The phone is still on the table. The water droplets have completely evaporated. That was the kid’s analogy for death. His mom is vapor instead of water; she exists in another state. Does that mean she’s still the same person?
Freddy takes the phone back to his office.
He’s missed dinner. The kids will be getting ready for bed by the time he gets home. His birthday cake will be half-eaten with the candles blown out. They’ll be sad he wasn’t there. His wife will be pissed.
There’s a yellow envelope buried in his inbox. He pulls it out and sees it’s from his mother. She sends a card to his home address as well as his office. His full name is written out in loopy cursive. So everyone in the office probably did know his middle name was Kaleb.
The kid’s not a magician after all.
He sits back in his chair and opens the card. He doesn’t want to see the kid hang for this. His mother is dead, water droplets or not. Whether he made up part of the story or all of it, he just needs to get on with his life.
Later, when the feds send someone to investigate, he’s relieved to find out the audio recording of the interview is faulty. The conversation is lost. Subsequent interviews lead nowhere and the kid is off the hook. Although it is mildly disturbing that the federal agent doing the investigation is Asian, Freddy believes it’s just a coincidence.
His name isn’t Hunter Montebank.
However, a few weeks later, Henk Grimm comes into the office just like Grey said he would. Freddy meets him in the interrogation room, where he gives a full confession.
This time the audio works.
Part V
JAGGED END
36
Grey
After the Punch
Rach swerved into traffic while singing. She made up the words because she could never remember them.
Grey felt the car’s loose suspension bounce. He smelled the slice of pizza a man was eating on the corner—pepperoni and Italian sausage. Senses heightened, he felt the angry conversation between the driver and passenger in the car behind them. It was strange, like he was breathing experience, inhaling sounds and sights and tastes, merging with the chaos without becoming lost in it.
When Rach slammed on the brakes, he braced his hand on the dashboard. His pulse quickened. A car cut them off on the right and ended up costing them the green light. Rach was texting when his brake lights lit up.
“Idiot.” She went back to texting.
Grey took a deep breath. Despite what he’d told Freddy, death was final in this life. He was human. He couldn’t magically leap to another plane of existence. This life demanded a body. This experience of flesh had hard rules. Flying through the windshield would hurt.
He didn’t know what happened after death. Maybe there was reincarnation and he’d start over in the flesh. Maybe he’d go to another plane of existence, or heaven or hell or somewhere in between.
Or maybe nothing happened.
He wasn’t going to test the theories. He closed his eyes and inhaled a mixture of fallen leaves and exhaust. A squirrel chirped in a street tree and a car hit the horn. It was all vivid.
I am Grey Grimm.
He reminded himself of his name daily, did a reality check by observing his surroundings and checked in with his senses. When he was Hunter Montebank, he’d believed he was a survivor of Foreverland. He remembered the visceral crack of the needle in his forehead and the greedy old men, the lavish environment of the tropical island.
How was he to know they had wiped his memories and planted new ones as real and vivid as the ones he now held? Now he was Grey Grimm, eighteen-year-old entrepreneur. How did he know that wasn’t just another suggestion, a program to fool him into living another life in the Maze?
Is Grey Grimm just another dream?
“Is it this one?” Rach pointed at the stoplight. “I can never remember.”
Tight-lipped, he pointed to the right, careful not to sound nervous about rear-ending another car. They caught another green light. If not for getting cut off, they would have caught every light, a statistical impossibility.
“Good luck charm,” Rach muttered.
Even she noticed the unusual number of green lights when he was in the car. They weren’t all green, but it was safer to limit the number of red lights she would undoubtedly run.
Grey couldn’t explain how he did it.
He woke up with this expanded sense of awareness. There was an electrical field in the city. It was a web of pulses, something he could feel under his skin and taste beneath his tongue. It was the wireless communications, the technology in cars and buildings and the subway beneath them. He had a hard time tweezing apart the noise. It was a ball of multicolored yarn the size of a house, each thread representing an alarm system, a television or phone.
Or streetlight.
But if he focused on the light, he could convince the sensors to give them a green light by the time they reached it. It was a little tricky if the system was on a timer. That would require more manipulation, and that brought up an ethical question: just how much of his environment did he want to influence to his advantage? It was a slippery slope that was steep and long and only required one step to start sliding.
To improve his odds of survival, he turned as many lights green as Rach would see.
It was instinctual. He couldn’t explain the mechanism that allowed him to lift his arm—the n
erves that fired, the muscles that contracted—but that didn’t prevent him from painting something wonderful.
It was the same for Freddy’s interrogation room.
There would be recording devices to capture their conversation. Grey wanted to be frank with the detective. He wanted him to know the truth of what had happened to his mother and to prepare him for the arrival of his dad, when that day came. Keeping their conversation off the record, a conversation that could have legal consequences, was important. He was certain that he could speed up Freddy’s heart rate if he wanted. He could induce an adrenaline dump and step on the panic button. After all, the human body relied on electrical impulses.
Could I induce a heart attack?
These were just ideas. They were nothing he had attempted since waking on his bed and removing the punch. But he was certain they were possible in the same way he didn’t have to step on an egg to know he could break it.
How many people are like me?
It seemed unlikely he was the only one. But would someone be tempted to use these skills for their own desires? If Henk had access to another person’s mind, he would be a super villain.
The odds were slim he was alone with these abilities. This was a question he pondered often. Perhaps, he wondered, the only way to obtain this level is through some sort of enlightenment.
Grey wasn’t claiming enlightenment in the Buddhist sense of the word. But his experience of the world had broadened. There was a general lack of fear because he didn’t sense separation. He was okay with just sitting in the car as Rach checked her phone while changing lanes. His heart would race when they nearly hit someone on a bicycle, and, strangely, that was okay. It was all right. Everything was exactly as it was supposed to be. This ability to say yes to his experience had been completely opened.
How could he abuse this ability?
It seemed impossible. In fact, this was beyond enlightenment. It was the end result of the experiment he had unwittingly stepped into when he strapped the punch around his head—an experiment that had unknowingly drawn his mother into a submersion tank. The sight of her gray skin and open mouth would remain with him until this life ended. The emerald sparkle in her eyes had been snuffed.