“Freddie, why? Please, mio amore!” Jessica sobbed as her face puffed and eyes reddened.
Her face, so beautiful—oh, my heart, my love... Yet these words he kept inside, wrapped tight in his chest around his own breaking heart.
“Please don’t cry, Jessie. You make this so hard for me.” His statement only produced a greater amount of tears and sobbing. She buried her face in the rumpled bed covers. Grabbing two fistfuls of fabric, she wrapped her head further and screamed into the blankets.
Fred cringed, feeling lost and inadequate in his attempt to follow his heart to the stars, while at the same time preserving his heart at home. He held his tongue not knowing what words to say. Kneeling on the bed beside her, his hands were clenched in fists of tension between his thighs.
Then, something changed. New and wrong.
Jessica lay in her huddled position, but was now still and quiet, no longer screaming or sobbing. Immediately, he feared that it was something to do with the weakness that had recently shown up in her heart. He reached out an anxious hand, laying his palm on her back. With unexpected speed she sat up, throwing his hand back in the process.
She no longer cried as she wiped the wetness from her eyes. He experienced a momentary relief. But then, as Jessica looked at him, he saw in her eyes the true meaning of the change. In that one moment she went from desperation for him to anger and bitterness toward him. Fred felt the change inside his own body. It twisted him inside out, frightening him.
“No, no, sweetheart...” He shifted from his previously withdrawn state of emotion in a desperate attempt to redirect a severely deteriorating situation. “I will return in… in nine months, in tutto. This is what I have waited for, studied for, all my miserable life. Jessie, you are the one who has kept me going. I could not have done it otherwise!”
“Well, my dear Federico,” her voice was full of new and unfamiliar disdain. She wiped her nose with the long sleeve of his shirt she wore as pajamas, and knuckled her wet eyes in quick spasmodic motions, “I was part of that miserable life. I am sure you’ll be fine without me!”
The words ricocheted now, tearing holes through his mind, without me...
She took his happiness away that day, and with it she took a secret.
He had been so blind. He’d let his whole focus be monopolized with the wonders that lay ahead. His aching excitement to see the newly completed Dock: Toroid Alpha. So grand were his visions, he had lost sight of his truest needs.
In an effort to heal things, he told her he would cancel his first terralogic commission, and he did, withdrawing from the small pool of Terrologist candidates. But then he never got his chance to mend things. Instead, his efforts had gone into a search to find her—a vain effort.
The first month of her absence passed in deepening debt and depression. Is she dead? Have I killed her? His mind was awash with morbid and depressing fantasies. What is left for me? Only his hope of her return kept him holding on.
The polizia had ended their efforts early on. The detective agency removed themselves from the case the first time his credit chip returned an “insufficient” declaration. Fred begged credits for basic expenses from sympathetic relatives as he continued to search on his own. He haunted the police headquarters, hoping for any sign.
After another couple of weeks, a clue had arrived at his home. It was a paper note. His heart soared when he saw his name on the envelope, written in her familiar hand. His were shaking, making it difficult to open the old-fashioned seal. He set it back down, staring at it. She was alive. Thank the heavens. His heart was pounding. He took a deep breath, retrieved a knife from the kitchen, and as calmly as possible, cut the seal. In nanoseconds his mind raced across a spectrum of dark and wonderful possibilities of what would he find inside.
Her note, carried with him from that day forward, was his turning point. It brought news that was at once joyous and heart slaying. It was the day he returned to the world, renewed at first. Hopeful.
She was alive.
But where was she?
His neighbors had seen a woman deliver something earlier; no, it wasn’t Jessica, so sorry. He checked with the courier services in the town. No luck. Expanding his search, he found the agency out toward the Boundary Zone.
Fred speedily packed a duffel, then went to a Stak-kar dispenser, vending a vehicle from the nested row. In the direction of what once had been the city of Rome, he drove into the night, wide-awake.
It was 3:45 in the morning when he pulled into the parking lot of the courier company. Dead tired, Fred still failed in his attempt to sleep in the cramped Stak-kar. He got out and walked the dewy grass in the pre-dawn gloom till he found a dry spot under a tree, and sat against the aged, rough bark. Without transition, it was full daylight and he was awoken by the sound of a nearby conversation. He rubbed his eyes and leaned around the tree, blinking; he saw the door to the courier business swing closed. Fred jumped up and raced to the door, hitting it at a run.
Entering a business this way, disheveled as he was, was not the ideal way to make an introduction: the two women inside abruptly screamed. Startled in turn, Fred held up his hands in a disarming gesture, raising his voice. “SCUSI, SCUSI, scusi,” bringing the volume down with his hands, as the women quieted, sensing no real danger. “I am so sorry; I did not mean to scare you.”
He gave them a moment, offering a weak smile. “My name is Federico Comani.” Then he told them why he was here, offering the salient points of his grief. “I drove all night. Could you please help?”
One of the women was taller with red-gold hair, wearing a floral print dress. The other was dark-haired and wore a form-fitting black jumpsuit; Fred guessed her for a courier. “Was it you who delivered the letter?” Fred appeared a pathetic figure as he begged for their help: his white shirt was dirty and wrinkled, his short brown hair stuck out haphazardly having been teased by the tree bark during his sleep.
The courier remained mute, shaking her head “no” at his question, though tearing up at his sad story.
The taller one spoke up. “Mr. Comani, I am distressed to hear such a sorry tale. Let us see if we might be able to help. What is Jessica’s full name? Maybe we will find something.” They looked through yesterday’s deliveries. She found Comani’s name. “Here it is.” His heart was pounding once again and he was having trouble getting a breath. They looked at him with some concern, but he motioned that he was fine; she looked back at the z-card. “Oh no. Oh, Mr. Comani, I’m sorry, I won’t be able to be of any help, there’s nothing I can tell you about the woman who sent this.”
Fred was desperate. “Per favore, I beg you, can you not bend the rules a little, just this once?”
“It is not that; it’s just that there is nothing here in the file to tell you. The delivery was confidential. With this type of package the sender is not absolutely required to give their information. She has not.”
His heart was crushed; it sank heavily. He dropped his face, staring, unseeingly, at his dew-damp shoes.
The younger woman was beside herself with emotion. “Wait, wait, now what did she look like? Was it she who brought the letter to us?” Her tone was urgent, looking back and forth between Comani and taller woman.
Fred perked up: Yes, he must be sure it was Jessica who had dropped off the letter for delivery. Then he would know that she was still close by. He pulled out his mini-zephyr and showed them a vid. The woman in the floral dress said with relief, “Yes, that was the young woman, she could still be near.”
Light-headed, he wanted to jump up and down. His mind raced to the conclusion that he still had a lot of work to do to find her. “Where do I start?” he wondered aloud.
“Right here,” the emotional courier volunteered cheerily. She sauntered to him and took his arm as she looked back at her co-worker for agreement, “Sì?”
“Of course.”
He was led
to an uncluttered desk, and the tall woman showed up with a z-vellum showing a directory-interface. “I have pulled it to housing; you can take it from there. Use our phone for whatever calls you need to make. My name is Vanda, by the way.”
“And I am Sonia.”
Fred was buzzing with his excitement, and the women were happy to get to see how the drama might unfold. He got on with the calls. Unfortunately, time after time, one contact after another, his query was answered by blank stares.
The day wore on; Sonia had long left on a delivery schedule. The only lead that remained to Fred at this point was an agency that made discreet rentals of Cubes: self-contained, semi-portable, single occupant units that were self-cleaning and virtually indestructible. They were rented without security deposits or background checks. The people that rented these units sometimes used assumed identities. In the end it was all he had. But the Cube rental agency would not give out any specific locations, other than to say that all the units were located on the Glaze.
The Glaze was the area that marked the border between the Boundary Zone and Habitable Zone. It was where Boundary Renewal Zones were established as the local governments of growing communities saw the need for more space. Residents on the Glaze were often there because it was an ideal location to be isolated and alone. Its glassy-rock characteristic, which gave it its name, was left over from the intense heat of the Boundary Fires of two hundred years earlier. Farther out it became a dangerous place to go, full of sharp lava stones and thin crusts of igneous rock covering various sized bubble chambers, the bottoms of which were sharp and jagged.
Fred was quiet for a time as he pondered his next move. It caught Vanda’s attention. She walked over. “How goes it, Mr. Comani?”
“Kind of a dead end,” he said, frustration in his voice. Then he explained about the Cubes. “But how can I search for her there? It is a maze. The best information I can get is a single address if I pay a month’s rental. And to be honest, Vanda, I am broke. My relatives are loaning me living expenses, but that is it.”
“Momento,” she said. She ran across the office to her desk and talked into her own phone for a moment. He followed her with his eyes as she then walked over to the office’s Zephyr hub. With a wave she slid whatever information she had gotten onto another z-vellum, and headed straight back to him, beaming. She plunked down the vellum as ceremoniously as was possible for a flimsy sheet of plastic. “Hey presto! I have a friend,” she explained.
Fred looked down at its title, “Cubo Catálogo Estación”, a scrollable list of Cube addresses with other unimportant details. There were only fifteen but Fred wouldn’t have cared if there were a hundred—for the second time today he experienced a renewed sense of what was possible.
The light in his eyes seem to excite Vanda, as if she watched her favorite reality soap program. She said, like a cheerleader, “Go find her, Mr. Comani!”
“Thank you, Vanda, and you’ll thank Sonia for me?” He was full of intensity again.
“Yes, of course.” She added, “Please let us know how things go?”
“I will. I really cannot say thank you enough. Grazie, grazie.” He was backing toward the front door.
“Well, when you find her I am sure she will take you back, and that will be thanks enough.” Vanda played her part in the little drama.
By the time night had fallen in earnest, he’d only been able to check five of the units. All but the fifth had been occupied; none were pleased by his visit. None were Jessie. Fred parked a short ways away from the fifth, keeping the unoccupied cube in sight. He did some mass equations in his head to pass the time. As uncomfortable as the little vehicle was, sleep finally took him.
Shivers, which had come on during the frosty night, woke him early. The unit was still vacant. On closer inspection, peering through a tinted window that faced the wastes, it looked lived-in. Uncertain, he moved on as the sun crested a jagged horizon and spilled over the waste. The rest of the Cubes were dead-ends. Fred’s hopes once again eroded.
Late that day, he returned to the one unknown and looked into the windows a bit longer, fantasizing that this was Jessie’s cube. There were no truly identifying objects visible from his vantage point, but there were signs that occupancy had been recent. He turned and scanned the barren wastes, walking out about thirty meters, stopping when the ground started to sound hollow under foot. Nobody would be crazy enough to go out there. He turned back. This must be Jessie’s; it has to be. After following every lead, this was his last hope. But where was she? Fred was ill prepared to spend another night out here; he was starving, his nose was running, and a few hard sneezes had shaken his vision.
During the long ride back to find a town of any size, his mind drifted. He had little on his cred chip for his needs of the moment. He wished he were wealthy—money for all his needs and then some. He could take care of Jessie and then everything would be all right.
But Fred had to earn the money. He could do that very well. He had the knowledge and the ability. Terrologist pay was enormous, because it took a certain sacrifice—time. And that was the problem. That was why she walked out on him in the first place.
So, he’d given it up. Fred would stay on Earth for her. He did not know how to be the wealthy man of his fantasy, but maybe they would figure out something together. He was smart.
He had to tell her that he’d quit it. Fred was right back to where he’d started. He had to find her.
The lights of a town were ahead. Fred got his needs met and found a portable shelter that was designed to look like a boulder. It didn’t cost him quite the last of his creds. He debated where to sleep. In the end he decided to drive back out to the Cube and pitch there.
It was the small hours of the morning before he finally fell asleep inside his shelter, during a long pause between sneezes.
The quiet was broken by the tire-squeal of an otherwise silent vehicle rounding a corner on the winding roads. It was full daylight again. Fred climbed out of the ‘large boulder’ shelter but the vehicle was already out of sight. No changes at the Cube either.
Fred passed two more days of waiting like this, rationing his food for the unexpected length of stay. The sneezes passed but a headache now plagued him. His hopes rose and fell like waves as each vehicle approached and receded. He had a bad case of nerves by the time a vehicle actually stopped.
He watched, mostly hidden, from the door of his ‘rock’. He shook from anticipation, nerves, and poor nutrition. A woman emerged from the utilitarian-looking vehicle. His heart felt ready to burst—it looked like Jess from the back. Then, a second Jessica emerged.
Blinking, he shook his head to clear the hallucination, there were still two women walking toward the cube. They didn’t have Jessie’s walk. The first turned back to the second. She wasn’t even pretty like Jess.
Fred stumbled out of his hiding place—half shambling, half jogging—toward the Cube and the women. The first woman saw him come out of nowhere but didn’t seem alarmed. The second turned toward Fred while he was still ten meters away, and pulled something from her belt.
Neither appeared threatened, but as he came to within five or six meters, the second girl lifted her hand, holding what must have been a weapon, and said, “Alt! Hold right there.” Fred obliged. He was light in the head and stood unsteadily, squinting at them.
The first one took a step to stand with her companion. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”
“Uh, Federico, I am Fred Comani… and I am looking for Jessie.” The girl lowered her weapon as Comani’s threat status dropped.
The other continued talking in her crude dialect, “There is no dude here. You got the wrong Cube.”
Fred’s addled and sleep deprived mind tried to make sense of what she said. “Oh, that’s good… So what about Jessie, is she here?”
“Jessie’s a girl, eh?” Fred nodded, swaying; she went on. “
Yeah, was girl here; don’t know her name tho’.”
“Was?” Fred’s vision blurred as his eyes began to water.
The girl with the weapon looked concerned now, though she did not level the device at him again—it was a different type of worry.
The talkative one continued, “Yeah, a girl; hey, you alright mister?” She cocked her head at him. He didn’t respond, but remained standing, her cue to go on. “There was a woman here but she left, I guess. We just came out ‘cause the occupancy sensor wasn’t set for absence, and we ain’t got no calls ‘bout her bein’ gone or nuthin’, so we’re checkin’ it out. Make sure it’s okay for the cleaning cycle.”
At that, Fred became angry. “No! Appartenenza Jessie! You leave it alone!” He lunged forward as the girls leapt aside, opening a path for him as he dashed haphazardly toward the Cube.
Someone was yelling something at him. “CHE CAZZO VOUI?! Cazzo!”
But he was going to protect Jessie. Fred covered the distance to the structure and, still moving at a good clip, leaning too far into his dash, he abruptly slammed into the side, his forehead taking the brunt of the flexsteel impact.
It was lights out.
* * *
Fred woke some days later in a care facility in his hometown. His head hurt. He suffered from a short-term amnesia. Once he figured out where he was, he began asking why. His Uncle Angelo showed up that evening and told him what they’d pieced together about what had happened.
It all came flooding back at once. Angelo shared with him that he had gotten the police to do some checking. They found that while no one was sure that it was Jessica, since the Cube had been rented by phone, the woman never showed up again. She had vanished, just as Jessica had done originally.
Fred was inconsolable in his abject misery.
This second loss dropped him into a black depression. He was kept under close supervision. For a time he wasn’t able to walk; vertigo overcame him when he tried to stand. This eventually eased and then disappeared.
In the following weeks, something inside Comani changed. It could have been called healing, but it was like a broken bone mending without having been set properly; it healed in an ugly way.
Parallel Extinction (Extinction Encounters Book 1) Page 10