“You mean in Foreverland?”
“If we are not this body, Mrs. Diosa, then we must be something else. Something more essential.”
“You mean a soul?”
“Perhaps.”
“And Foreverland is heaven?”
“Foreverland,” he said, grinning, “is just a word, Mrs. Diosa.”
“Foreverland was built with the souls of innocent boys and girls, remember. And you approved of it.”
“Lack of disapproval is not approval.”
“Then your crime is inaction.”
“I’m in prison, Mrs. Diosa.” He stood with a groan. “How could I have stopped him?”
“Did you want to stop him?”
“I believe that is irrelevant.”
The walk continued. His footsteps were still quiet and carefully measured. Occasionally, he would look up at the sky while she asked questions and he would answer distantly, as if the conversation had grown stale. The conversation was going in a circle.
Because she was chasing her tail.
They were on the far side of the yard, alone on the track. The distant shouting of a basketball game was small compared to the wind rushing through the barbed wire, blowing through the open field, carrying fragments of voices from beyond the fence. She closed her eyes, pinched her nose. When the static of voices frayed her attention, she had learned focusing quieted them.
The voices fell on her like pellets, pricking her cheeks and neck. She searched the sky. The sky is blue.
He took her by the elbow and silence returned. The thin skin of his fingers slid the length of her forearm until he held her hand. “I need to ask a question, Alessandra.”
“How do you know my name?” She wanted to shout, but it came out as a whisper.
The words broke the downward spiral of thoughts, the eddy of confusion, and rooted her in the present moment with the wind on her face and the sky—the blue, blue sky—above and the smell of sweat and fear and suffering.
“Why do you care about Foreverland?” He waited for an answer. It was a formality, really. He can see inside me.
“The children...”
“Yes, the children. You care about the children. You care about all people, the old and the young, the innocent and the powerful. Why do you care?” His eyelids grew heavy but unblinking. “Why?”
She shook her head.
“Because you love, Alessandra. You love deeply, truly. And you have so much to give. You love.”
She nodded. Yes. I love.
“Are you happy?” he whispered. “With all the justice and injustice in the universe, with the lion eating the antelope, cancer ravaging bodies, black holes trapping light?”
His hand was so warm on her arm.
“God allows the good and bad, the pleasant and the suffering.”
She shook her head.
“Good and bad are just words, words that God allows. He allows it all to be as it is because He loves. And your love, Alessandra, is as big as His.”
“How do you know my name?”
“Can you be a god?”
“I don’t believe...”
“Something gave rise to all of this.” He spread his arms. “Allows it all to be. Can you do that?”
The air was dense, like breathing water. The ground was soft and the sky—the blue, blue sky—was down and the mountains were up and the wind in her lungs—
A tear fell.
A raindrop smacked the dirt.
“It’s the answer you came for. It’s truth, Alessandra. You have truth. You can be truth. Only true love has space to allow for the saints and the sinners, the heroes and the villains. You are the truth and the reality.”
His face was blurry through brimming tears.
“You are the words.”
She was crying, but this time the tears were different. They sprang not from a mysterious emotional hole inside her, but from the wind and the sky and the gentle hands cradling hers.
And knowing that she could be all right with everything. Just as it was. She could be everything.
Everything.
The rain splattered around them. Spots darkened on the old man’s shirt. A cart pulled next to them. The big guard, the man at the interview, was driving. The old man fell into the passenger seat and propped his hands on the cane. He looked straight ahead. The cart remained still. Alex felt the heat of a thousand eyes.
The inmates were staring at them.
The basketball games had stopped, the card games frozen. Their clothes were wet; the cards rain-soaked.
The cart moved forward, turning onto the track, slowly grinding its way back to the building. Alex remained at the far end of the yard, but she wasn’t afraid. She wiped her eyes, sniffed a final time and walked back as they watched her. She felt their eyes, their hunger and fear.
Saints and sinners.
She could be with the saints. But the sinners...yes, she could be with them, too.
She walked to her car and drove down the road. When the hill ascended in her rearview mirror and the prison was no longer in sight, she stopped in the middle of the road and began to cry. A deluge smeared the world into blurry colors, pounding the hood, snapping on the window.
Alex cried tears of joy.
Because she loved.
22. Tyler
ADMAX Penitentiary, Colorado
Gramm was waiting. There were tears in his eyes.
“Temper your enthusiasm.” Tyler sat on the edge of his bed, twirling the wet needle between his fingers. His head throbbed, an electric spike pulsing through his forehead. He dared not move until his heart rate settled.
The mere thought of speaking caused it to rise. In spite of the pain, even he couldn’t suppress the smile. Alessandra is the one.
He knew what she looked like. Patricia had sent stills and video of Alessandra. He had heard her talk, saw her quickened pace when she was agitated, the furrowed brow when she concentrated, the tip of her tongue dragging over her teeth when she was curious. But to finally meet her, to be with her, all of her, was stunning.
She’s beautiful.
He’d meant to calm her down, to sway her with dialog like a mythical siren. Half of what he said flowed out of him spontaneously, as if her beauty gave rise to inspiration. She was a beautifully tortured soul, full of pain and pleasure, suffering and joy. He spoke nothing but the truth—she is love.
And that’s why they needed her.
Regardless of the disruptions, Reed couldn’t stop the inevitable—Alessandra Diosa would close her eyes and dream a new reality. Humanity would join her.
Tyler and Patricia would lead the way.
He wished to immerse himself right then, to see his wife on the inside, in her mind, to meet her at the opera or walk the streets of her city, to share the good news and celebrate, but pain spread across his face.
The stent was done.
He had pulled the needle for the last time. The hole was swollen, nearly closed, like he’d used the prong of a pitchfork. Raw fingers scratched his brain. He would have to make the change; his next leap into Foreverland would be through biomites.
“Call the guards.” He couldn’t feel them out there, couldn’t feel Gramm in front of him. To expand his mind would exhaust what little strength he still had and ignite the brain storm that had finally passed.
The rubber wheels of a wheelchair approached. He reached up and took Melfy’s hand. He wanted to sit in the yard, feel the sun on his face before the good doctor injected more biomites up his nostril.
“Sir,” Gramm said, “there’s a problem.”
The yard would have to wait. It would have to wait much longer than Tyler realized.
They went straight to the basement.
——————————————
Yellow and red lights everywhere.
The guards dry heaved when they entered. Melfy splattered the floor before she could get out, the acrid smell of vomit steamrolled by the smell of death.
&nb
sp; “What happened?” Tyler asked.
Gramm held a cloth over his face with one hand, spastically raking his hair with the other, hair follicles wedged between his fingers. “The health indicators,” he said, “all started dropping.”
“When?”
“When Alessandra left.”
Tyler was too weak to stand. He waved forward until Gramm pushed, pointing when to turn. Half of them were still green, the ones he deemed most important. He didn’t need them all. And when Alessandra was asleep, when she gave herself to hosting Foreverland—completely and eternally—he wouldn’t need any of them.
He just needed her.
Tyler covered his face and had Gramm turn right at the fourth table. He raised his hand. He grabbed the edge of the nearest table, his fingers brushing the cool flesh of its occupant—a bald white man from the Arian brotherhood, his chest a canvas of ink.
The light was red.
The occupant was fat when he first took the needle, an obese man sent to the penitentiary for double murder. Now his ribs were showing beneath olive-colored skin. Wisps of remaining hair stuck to his balding scalp, swirling around a purple birthmark distinctly shaped like the state of Florida.
Santiago.
“What happened?” Tyler asked.
“He had flown to the United States this morning and arrived in Minneapolis. He met with Macy. That afternoon, just after lunch, he stopped breathing.” Gramm stopped to rake his hair. “I can’t explain it. There was no reason for them to...it was like they were just turned off.”
Tyler held the Spaniard’s hand. It was colder than usual.
Death usually is.
This was a time to rejoice, not mourn. Alessandra had nearly gone to sleep during their interview. It was only a matter of time, and now this.
“What’s the biofeedback?” Tyler asked. “The cause of death?”
“Preliminary reports suggest...it’s just...” Gramm pulled at his graying hair.
“What?”
“He stopped breathing.”
“That’s not an answer, Gramm! Goddamn it, it can’t be nothing. No one stops breathing for no reason.”
Gramm’s breathing became shallow. He pursed his lips and took short stabbing breaths like a woman going into labor. If Tyler was twenty years younger, he’d snatch the pansy by the earlobe and drag him down to the table, shove his worried face into Santiago’s clammy stomach and let him smell death until it was burned into his palette.
The pounding started again; this time his forehead was being stabbed with an ice pick in time to his heartbeat.
“The good doctor needs to see your stent,” Gramm said.
Tyler clenched his teeth, driving the ice pick deeper into his gray matter. Reed did this.
It was a slap to the face, an insult. A warning. Santiago was a good soldier. He was meant to guide Danny, but when it was clear that the boy wasn’t capable of supporting a Foreverland on the level Tyler wanted, Santiago watched after him.
But now that Danny was missing, it was irrelevant.
Damn him.
“The good doctor,” Tyler said, “will perform a full autopsy—”
Beep-beep-beep...
The lamp next to them dimmed. The monitor was red lights.
Tyler reached for the table—the man’s chest sweaty, pale and still—when another warning chimed. The next table, red lights signaling another loss.
And then another. And another.
Like dominos falling.
“Do something!” Tyler shuffled around the table. “Damn it, Gramm, stop this!”
Gramm’s hands fluttered at his sides. He looked around like a bird sensing a predator, his brain stuck in a panic loop. His hands went to his scalp and locked onto his hair, gray tufts between his fingers.
Tyler took several short steps and grabbed a handful of the former chemist’s shirt. “Puh the pugs,” Tyler said, the words slurring past his swollen tongue. He wet his lips and slowly enunciated, “Pull...the...plugs.”
More warnings joined the chorus.
Six tables had been lost, and now a seventh. They were dropping one after another. Tyler looked down the long row, looked for the one table they could not afford to lose. If the man in the back stopped breathing, all would be lost.
Alessandra would not sleep.
Tyler shoved off and began sliding his feet. When he reached the end of the table, he made a three-step lunge to the next table, and then the next.
The red lights were behind him, but they were gaining. The room was dimming. They were going to lose them all. Tyler kept his eyes on the back.
Three more tables.
His breath shortened. Darkness bled into the fringes of his vision.
His knees shattered like glass. Warmth spilled into the crown of his skull, spread over his head and face like oil, washing away the throbbing pain, and trickled into his burning chest.
One more.
He could barely feel the edge of the table beneath his cold fingers. The beeping was behind him. He reached out, focused on the table against the back wall, when warmth bled through his hips, into his thighs and knees, taking all his strength with it.
The floor began rising.
He took one big step and closed his eyes. The impact was dull, but a sharp crack cut through the numbing fog as his hip shattered.
The beeping was a distant warning. The red lights were still coming.
The table was above him, the lights on the panel still green. He reached up, his senseless fingers finding the buttons. He pushed randomly, pushed them all.
With every bit of strength, he pecked at the monitor, hoping to hit the button that would pull Samuel offline.
We can’t lose him!
All at once, the beeping stopped. The room was quiet.
His wheezy breath scratched the silence. He tried to swallow.
“Doctor?” Warm hands were on his cheeks. “Doctor?”
Gramm was squatting in front of him. The good doctor was with him. Tyler’s eyelids were so heavy, so tired. A green haze shaded Gramm’s worried expression. Tyler barely moved his lips. Words would not fall off his tongue.
He tried to whisper his wife’s name, but he couldn’t feel his lips, couldn’t feel his body. He’d run out of time and could only send out a thought and hope it would reach her.
I’m sorry.
AUTUMN
Dreams are strange.
Some never-ending.
The elevator descended with purpose.
The smell of manufacturing gave way to what was below ground: a distinct odor of burnt plastic and clay.
Jonathan pushed his hair back. His distorted reflection—his eyes still green, the bent hump on his nose—split in half as the elevator doors opened to reveal a long empty hall and an attractive young woman in a white lab coat.
“Welcome, Mr. Deer.”
“Jonathan.”
“Of course.” She extended her hand. “My name is Dr. Jones. You can call me Julie. Watch your step.”
The hairs on his head stiffened. An electrified field slowly rode down his neck, over his shoulders and arms until all the hair on his body was rigid.
“It’ll take just a moment,” she said.
“Aren’t you certain by now?”
“Redundancy ensures our security, Jonathan.”
The scan sank through his epidermal layers, vibrating through subdural layers until it reached his core, examining every cell that composed his body.
Julie paced around him, her eyes crawling over him like he was on display in the Smithsonian. “Remarkable,” she whispered. “Simply remarkable.”
They didn’t know who he was. What he was, though...they knew what he was. They were in the business of biomites.
She took his hand, traced the veins forking over his knuckles, leaned close enough that he could smell toothpaste. He held his ground while the scan penetrated his chest. She looked at his eyes, his bent nose.
“You altered your face,” she said.
“Anonymity is my ally as much as yours.”
“Where were you done?”
He sighed. “Are we finished?”
Julie turned down the hall. There was no end in sight. The subsurface laboratory felt cool and damp. If he was correct, they were at least one hundred feet below the manufacturing plant. They passed heavy lab doors where vibrations leaked out.
“Can I ask a question?” she said. “Why come to us? Why on earth would you come here when you can have anything you want in one of those Foreverland worlds?”
She stopped at a set of double doors. Her hand hovered over a scanner.
“You have the secret to creating a Foreverland reality, why would you want to toil in the physical world?”
The doors opened.
The room was the size of a warehouse. They stepped between two long rows of glass cubicles that resembled side-by-side shower stalls, the glass black and reflective. The cold air settled around him and he shivered. He would count the stalls to make sure they were all present, they were all functional.
“To balance the scales,” he answered her question. “I came to balance the scales.”
23. Cyn
The wilderness of Wyoming
Her sleep was endless.
She swam in the ether of unconsciousness, where dreams came in fragments and images blurred into colors and sound smeared the background. There were snippets of waking, of seeing the landscape slur past her, of night falling. For the most part, her eyelids were too heavy and she remained in dream purgatory.
Until all was quiet.
She rolled her head off the glass, her chin wet with saliva. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes.
It was a truck.
She was in an SUV. It took a moment to notice the person in the driver’s seat, a boy with long red hair. His name limped out of the fog.
Danny.
That was all she could remember. They were parked on an incline, surrounded by trees. Senescing foliage, in the grip of autumn’s approach, was among needled evergreens. A single tree stood before them, one barren of life, wedged between two halves of a boulder, a tree with silver-gray branches, dead and gnarled.
She knew this tree. Impossible.
“No.” She slammed her fist into her leg. Pain radiated across her thigh. This was no longer a dream.
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