The Presence

by Paul Black

  “You, like mankind, struggle every day with your rational and primal natures.”

  “That’s pretty lame psychology coming from a superior race.”

  Marl smiled. “I’ll grant you it’s not – oh, what’s the phrase – an earth-shattering discovery. But you have to admit, Sonny, you are an excellent example. You have learned to control your primal side, but not completely. When pushed, as with the perceived rape of Deja, your emotional state spins out of balance. Your primal drive intrudes on your brain’s higher functions; your rational control breaks down; and you descend into a blinding rage.” He stepped away from the BioBug and leveled that look again. “One that can kill.” The screen door creaked again, and Marl’s eyes went to it. “Like father, like son?”

  “Shut the fuck up.” The door creaked again. Chaco covered his ears and closed his eyes. “Damn it, stop that wind!”

  The wind ebbed. Chacho slowly opened his eyes and found Marl directly in front of him.

  “Don’t worry, Sonny,” he said. “You’ll never be as violent as your father was.”

  Chaco looked away and wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. Just that last gust of wind, he thought.

  Marl placed a hand on his shoulder. “It’s not the wind, Sonny.”

  Chaco shrugged off the gesture. “I’ve already been in therapy,” he said. “Just tell me how you can justify your actions. What about Deja and Corazon?”

  The blackness of Marl’s coat grew so dense it hid any indications of folds or creases. For a second, Chaco lost any sense of its surface, as if it had no depth or dimensional form. Then, as if from inside it, a million little white specs pulsed and faded. They had flared so quickly that all Chaco could make out were random patterns peppered with tiny clusters. It all looked so familiar. Then it clicked.

  Space.

  “Why are we really here?” Marl asked, his voice now melodic and sounding like one those aboriginal Australian horns.

  Chaco threw his attention to the dirt. “I don’t know,” he said, following the stitch pattern across the red tips of his Tony Lamas. “Because this is where I’m from?”

  “This place,” Marl motioned to the mobile home and the yard, “makes up the core of your true self ... the foundation of your nature. Like you, your species has become so preoccupied with commerce that it’s forgotten where its home is.”

  Chaco cautiously looked up and met the alien’s eyes. Their color shifted in a thixotropic movement that seemed in sync with the clouds. “What are you, Marl?” he asked. “Why have you come?”

  The smile that etched Marl’s face reminded Chaco of his father’s – before the hard life began. “I find it curious,” he said, “that all of your religions, even atheism, share two common fundamentals: to respect one another, and to help one another. Don’t you think it’s about time your world started putting these concepts into practice?”

  “You haven’t answered my questions.”

  “Where I’m from is really irrelevant, Sonny, because in my estimation, it’ll be centuries before your species makes it past your own solar system. To your question of ‘what are you?’ you could say I’m a projector.”

  Chaco remembered the stupid machine his grandfather used to drag out of the closet every Christmas to make him and his cousins watch old vids called “home movies,” which was strange since there was never a home in any of them. His dad had called the machine a projector. “I-I don’t understand,” he said.

  “I project my being, my ... true self. That’s one way we communicate. My original form projected to your world, then that form expanded across the collective consciousness. It’s difficult to translate. We used to be like you.”

  “But I see you in reality. Physically, I mean.”

  “You see me, Sonny, with your mind, not your eyes.”

  Chaco flashed on another memory of a weird neighbor in the transport park. She was one of those fringe “MacLainians,” always trying to convert his mom. She would go on and on about how she could look into a person’s eyes and tell if they were going to have cancer or something. When he was older, his mom explained that this lady’s religion had taken a 20th-century actress as their prophet, but now he was remembering how this lady always talked about her travels, and how his mom tried to explain it wasn’t to places like Guymon, or Alva, or even Dallas. This lady’s spirit was traveling. She called it a couple of different things. One was soul travel, and the other was astral something, but he couldn’t remember. “Are you talking about soul travel?” he asked.

  Marl stood there thinking, but Chaco suspected it was more like processing. “Not really,” he said finally, “but that’s probably the best description your culture would possess.”

  “You still haven’t answered my last question.”

  “I believe I’m here,” Marl said, his voice now soft and liquid-like, “to remind your species where their home is.”

  At that, an omnipresent calm settled around Chaco and Marl. It deadened all sound and rendered the landscape a monochromatic canvas of grays and blues. Marl’s face became questioning, as if he had suddenly forgotten something.

  “What’s wrong?” Chaco asked. He figured it was unlikely a creature like Marl actually had the capacity to forget.

  Marl stared at the dying sunset, his attention apparently consumed with whatever had invaded his mind. “Interesting,” he said to himself.

  “What’s that?”

  Marl slowly brought his gaze around. His eyes glowed the color of magma. “It appears,” he said, his voice harmonizing with the wind that had kicked up, “that Mr. Pavia has just entered my hotel room.”

  32. AND THE NEXT

  Through the angular darkness he senses the hatred, guttural and abraded, as it overflows into the room like floodwaters from an unholy river. Drops of sweat slide from his armpits.

  Marl opens his eyes.

  The 30-million candlepower spotlight of a police gunship cuts a narrow path across the wall. The familiar droning of the craft’s rotors follow as it passes above the building on its nightly flyover. The beam traverses the room and catches the edge of a hat’s brim, traces the contours of an arm, and reveals just a hint of a figure’s threatening mass. It quickly passes over the silhouette of a gun, whose chrome muzzle winks before the beam vanishes. The room is black again.

  There is an explosion of light, seemingly brighter than the combined luminosity of his world’s twin suns. He senses the air expand as the weapon sends trillions of photons, each laden with matter-altering death, down a super-heated beam that consumes the distance to impact at 299 thousand meters per second.

  He feels for the thread count and screams.

  * * *

  The maid stands at Room 360’s only window and greets the sun for the first time that day. The ashen clouds that hung over the city only hours earlier have dissipated to reveal a brilliant sunrise. The room’s Netscreen displays the day’s forecast: a low-pressure front is moving down from the Canadian boarder, and the expected high temperature is 58 degrees.

  Behind her, the cleaning cart goes about its duties, moving through the room with a systematic precision. She listens to its sounds as it methodically cleans every surface: the squeak of the dry towel across the glass of the unused shower, the low industrial hum of its vacuum head, the hiss of the toilet’s disposal jets cycling through a test. Finally, there is a rush of water as it refills the decanter.

  She collects her things and solemnly follows the cart as it automatically departs the suite, a ritual she has repeated for over 30 years.

  On to the next room.

  And the next.

  She never questions the odd smell, or the large stain in the carpet where the bed had stood.

  33. I’M A STRONG GIRL

  Deja woke to a vicious headache carving its way into the canals of her teeth. She gingerly lifted her head from the pillow and opened her eyes. The dull red glow from the bedside table read 2:34 a.m.

  “Hey,” she heard out of the room�
��s twilight. The voice seemed distant.

  She tried to speak but found this sent the pounding in her head into an unbearable cycle.

  “Don’t try,” she heard.

  A dark, blurred form sat on the bed and placed something cool and moist to her forehead. “How many fingers am I holding up?” It sounded like something Chaco would say.

  She could only make out the bulbous silhouette of a hand. She limply raised two fingers.

  “Good. Now this is going to sting a little, but in about 60 seconds you’ll begin feeling wonderful. Actually, this is going to sting a lot ... sorry.”

  It was Chaco.

  He took hold of her upper arm near her armpit. She tried to resist, but a pain struck the side of her neck with such force that her whole body seized in fear. She felt, rather than heard, herself scream. Her neck grew hot and then cold, like a very thick ice cream was being pumped into her artery. There were tears on her lips, but she hadn’t felt them roll down her cheeks.

  After what seemed like an eternity, the pain that had been ravaging Deja from her neck up vanished as if she had stepped into a shower and simply rinsed it out of her hair.

  “Oh, my God,” she said, her voice returning.

  “Feeling better?” Chaco asked, his form now somewhat more discernable.

  She felt as though she’d just woken from a perfect night’s sleep. “Not only better, I feel great.”

  “I told you.” He leaned over and kissed her forehead.

  “What’s in that stuff?”

  Chaco held up a small pneumatic infuser, about a quarter of the size a doctor would use. “Back at the lab, we call this a ‘Neuro Cocktail.’” He tossed the tiny instrument into the trashcan, and it hardly made a sound. “What you were feeling,” he said as he stroked the side of her face, “is pretty common after what you’ve been through.”

  “How long have I been asleep?” she asked, wiping the tears from her eyes with the edge of the bed sheet. She glanced about and saw that she was in Chaco’s room at The Thin.

  He hesitated. His eyes shifted to the mounds made by her knees under the blanket. “28 hours,” he said, barely above a whisper.

  Deja thought she felt the pain coming back. “What?!”

  “Don’t worry. It’s typical for a first-timer.” He patted her knees through the blanket and waited for a reaction.

  A strange uneasiness began to sink in, and Deja could sense that something was off. It wasn’t that Chaco was hiding something: more like he was protecting her. He hadn’t said or done anything specific, though. It was just a feeling. She sat up and rubbed the side of her head. “Sonny,” she began before she stopped and pulled the blanket up to her chest. “What happened? H-how did I get here?”

  Chaco forced a smile. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  She tried to recall, but a thick haze of angst seemed to be blocking her. “Oh, Sonny, I’m sorry. I did something really stupid.”

  “Shhh,” he said and placed a finger to her lips. “Don’t worry. You didn’t do anything stupid. Now tell me, what’s the last thing you can remember? Why don’t you start from the night Cor died.”

  “Okay. I couldn’t sleep much that night, so I guess around 5:30 I finally got up. I walked down to Bar of Soap and ordered some breakfast. I remember I was reading The Times – something about fashion – when Marl suddenly appeared and scared the shit out of me. I guess it was in my head, because that weird waitress said I was talking to myself.” A slight ache returned to Deja’s head, so she rubbed her temples.

  “It’s okay, baby.... Go on.”

  “He asked me to meet him in your Net conference room. I know it was dumb, but there’s something about him that makes me think he’s got a plan. So I called Pavia’s brother. I thought he’d let me use that virt chair of his. I figured he’d still have the coordinates in his system.” A memory surfaced of the chair’s tentacles, which caused her to bury her face into the palms of her hands.

  “Hey, easy there,” Chaco said. “Come on, tell me.... What happened next?”

  “I got to Bartas’s, and I ... I don’t remember anything after that.” Fear gripped her as she suddenly recalled the creepy look on Bartas’s face. “Oh, God, Sonny ... Bartas didn’t do anything sick, did he?”

  “No, no he didn’t. In fact, by what I could tell, he was trying to shut the chair down.”

  “Is he all right?”

  Chaco hesitated, and then shook his head.

  “Is he dead?”

  “No, but he’s going to be in a Neuro ICU for a long time. It’s probably just as well. He was pretty bad off. Maybe they can do something for him.”

  “Sonny, how did I get here?” Deja had woken confused about the night before plenty of times, but the issues surrounding this question were different. Just the act of asking it unnerved her.

  “I had Tsuka find you on the grid, and when I got to Bartas’s, I shut the chair down before you got any deeper into the Net. That chair’s powerful. If you’re not used to it, it can mess with your nervous system. By the time I got there, you were already unconscious. I called in a med team for Bartas. I woke you, but you were still pretty out of it, so I brought you back here to the room.”

  Another memory of the tentacles flashed across Deja’s mind. She began to rock slowly on the bed. “Was Marl anywhere in the Net ... when I was in?” she asked.

  “There were no signs of his presence. At least, none that I could find.”

  “I wonder if he’s still here ... on the planet?”

  “I doubt it. We checked, and he’s definitely off the grid. I had Tsuka go to his hotel room, but it’s clean. No prints, no DNA, nothing. It’s like he was never there. Whatever he is, he’s beyond our technology. I’d sure like to meet the people who made him.”

  Deja still felt like Chaco was protecting her from something, but she couldn’t imagine what. Anyway, it didn’t really matter, because all she wanted was to forget about Marl and Bartas and Pavia – the whole fucking thing for that matter. Deja always knew getting involved with a government agent might mean things could get a little crazy, which, to be honest, was the main reason she started dating Chaco in the first place ... to add some excitement to her life. But if someone had told her that within a year she would be siphoning data to the government, witnessing death by Light-Force, and possibly dialoguing with an alien life form, Deja wouldn’t have believed it. She bit her lower lip and began to rock harder.

  “Hey, don’t worry, I’m not going to let anything bad ever happen to you.” Chaco placed a hand to her shoulder. “You’re safe now, and I’ll bet you’re pretty hungry, too.”

  Deja suddenly realized the tightness in her stomach. “Yeah,” she said, rubbing her belly, “I could eat a hamburger.”

  Chaco laughed. “You are hungry.” He walked over to the door of the bathroom and gestured. “But before I order us some burgers, you need a little pampering.” A soft light flicked from within and cast the tip of his nose and the rim of his brow into hot yellow edges. “I thought you might need this.”

  Deja gingerly walked from the bed to Chaco. She was in one of her camisole tees and a pair of panties, though she couldn’t remember putting them on. She could tell her hair had been washed because it was free of its usual stiffness. She slipped her arm around his waist and peered into the bathroom.

  Around the large whirlpool bath were dozens of tiny candles, and the room smelled like that quaint toiletry shop they had stumbled into during the last day of their Paris trip.

  “Sonny, thank you.” Deja kissed him before she crept up to the tub and dipped her finger through the bubbles. She turned and smiled, then removed her camisole and panties and tossed them into a corner. She carefully stepped in and slipped under the water.

  Surfacing, she wiped the bubbles from her face to find Chaco kneeling by the side of the tub. He was staring at her as if she were a fragile doll. Not in an overly protective way, though – just genuinely concerned. It made her feel safe and pro
tected.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  Deja leaned back and guided a generously large bubbleburg across her chest. “Great, considering I’ve been in a coma for over a day. Why?”

  Chaco didn’t respond. She sensed her answer had brought some kind of relief for him. She scooped up a handful of bubbles and began making him a puffy goatee. He took her hand, kissed it, and nestled it to his cheek.

  “Oh, Sonny,” she said, cradling his face, “you’re sweet to be this concerned. Don’t worry. I’m not going to fall all to pieces over Cor.” She tenderly kissed him. “I’m a strong girl,” she whispered.

  Chaco laughed slightly. “So I’ve been told.“

  34. NO QUESTIONS

  Meatball shot off the counter like he had been fired from a pneumatic cannon.

  Chaco turned the blender off. “Why are you acting like you’ve never heard this before. Meat?”

  The cat darted under the bed so fast that his tail slapped the edge of the metal frame.

  “What a ’fraidy cat,” Chaco said and resumed making breakfast, which today consisted of a spoonful of protein powder, a banana, two cups of plain yogurt, and a bag of frozen, genetically improved strawberries.

  He poured the mixture into a tall glass and took a gulp before he collapsed onto the couch and stared at his New York case file. Its unchanging position relentlessly reminded him that it had been two weeks since he had returned from his assignment. With Slowinski still out on medical leave, he had procrastinated way past the brink of departmental acceptance and had entered a time frame that could get his ass in a serious crack. He picked up the file’s Netpad and scanned through its folders. Losing all trace of Marl, failing to connect Goya to the rest of the case, and the disappearance of AztecaNet’s top security man had paralyzed him. He couldn’t bring himself to complete his report. The whole Corazon issue, he hoped, would work itself out. And he sure as hell couldn’t bring up the “close encounter” thing; it was definitely a career ender. “Hell,” he said and flipped it shut.