by B. B. Ullman
“You’re doing a really good job, Albie,” I said quietly. I wanted to support him but not distract him. I wished the blue beam would kick in to amplify the bait. But even without the amplifier there came a subtle vibration and a change in the atmosphere.
“Do you feel that?” Brit asked. “Something is happening.”
When I looked out the window I could see the white light of the lasers flashing in the heart of the red mist, but the red stuff had stopped spewing from the rip, and now it just hovered. Slowly, slowly the mist began to reverse itself. It rolled in sluggish waves back toward the six posts. The woods seemed to blur with the sickening crawl of it, and I felt a little carsick watching.
Why weren’t the SMHRs using the amplifier? The mist was traveling backward—but very slowly.
We were startled when the little TV in the corner turned on; the triad must have done it remotely. The local news was showing one bad thing after another. Animals were acting crazy, just like poor Beau. People were lashing out for the dumbest reasons, starting fights with friends and family. There were altercations in restaurants and on trains because the other guy looked different—or for no reason at all. One messed-up boy shot his best friend and there were dozens of road-rage incidents. The red spiders were doing their worst; the infection had begun. “Oh, Brit!” I could feel the yucky energy scuttling around me but a wave of self-loathing reminded me to stay calm. I fashioned the icy wall and imagined the frozen wasteland. Calm and boring, I tried to tell myself.
“This is gross,” Brit said. “Why would the Commodore want us to watch it?” She switched the channel and found a shot of Times Square, where the New Year’s throng had gathered to celebrate. But things were getting out of hand there, too; several fights had broken out and the crowd seemed agitated.
Suddenly the pink light was shining outside. Hopefully Albert could keep sending the bait of good energy. The bad stuff had to be distracted while I gave my speech.
“It’s the signal! Come on, Lars, let’s go. Brit, would you stay with Albie? I’ll leave the door open.”
Lars and I tromped out into the snow. I could see Agent Saunders standing very still over by the compost. “You okay, Saunders?”
He gave me a sober thumbs-up. “Good luck, kid.”
“Hey Lars, what’s that tune they always play on New Year’s—‘Old Sing-Sang’?”
“It’s called ‘Auld Lang Syne,’” he corrected. “It’s a song about the good old days.”
“Can you play it?”
“I can figure it out.”
“Try playing it really slow, and sort of sad.”
He nodded and began to search for the notes. It didn’t take him long before he could play the tune, and he played it amazingly well.
With Lars plinking “Auld Lang Syne” on the guitar, and with the pale, pink light shining, I gathered myself to speak.
“Okay.” I coughed once. “Lars, do you feel the spiders?”
“No. They’re still distracted.” He gave me the thumbs-up.
I was wasting time. I just had to dive in.
“Happy New Year, Earth,” I said in a serious voice. “Where I live it’s snowy and it’s as pretty as it can be. Maybe in your town there’s snow on the ground, or maybe it’s raining and the air is getting all cleaned up. Maybe it’s warm and there’s a nice, balmy breeze. It could be night or it could be day, but here on Earth, it’s home.”
“Mary, you’re on TV!” Brit shouted from inside the garage.
I could see her pointing at the little TV while Albert concentrated, not moving a muscle. Good boy, I thought. But I had to concentrate, too. How could I possibly say the right thing—who did I think I was?
Sister and daughter and friend. Good and nice. The positive memo appeared with a warm glow that felt like home. Albert was doing his job and still looking out for me. I shifted my feet and looked down at my hands. I was startled to see the ten different colors of polish on my nails. I thought of Brit and me and the dorky fun we had and of other kids who just wanted to be kids. My colorful nails made me feel a lot better. I checked with Lars and he nodded. I could do this. I had to do this.
I cleared my throat and continued. “At my house I have my Ma and my Meemaw, and my little brother. Ma is a hard worker and she takes life as it comes. Mostly she sees the good in people, and she doesn’t judge—well, except for my dad, who died. I think she’s mad at him because he left her alone. But she’s not really alone. She’s got lots of love around her.
“My Meemaw is a bit prickly but she’s willing to learn new lessons even though she’s older. She’s got our backs and we love her for that—for being strong and fierce.
“My best friend who I go to school with is so loyal and smart, and she’s good to me, even though she’s way smarter than I am. But she is never a know-it-all and she believes in me. So I love her lots.
“Her big brother is playing the guitar right now, and he is so good that the song is almost breaking my heart. He’s secretly really smart even though he hides it to be tough and strong, and he’s good at car engines and the guitar and I wish he were my big brother because he’s so awesome.”
Lars was delicately picking the tune—for auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne—
“My own brother is like the smartest, most unique-est kid in the whole world. All my life since he was born, he’s been sharing his good and beautiful thoughts with me. He made me what I am today—which is happy. And that’s why I’m talking to you right now, to remind you of the happiness of small things—”
Albert interrupted my dialogue with an urgent memo. One laser is offline. With that, the pink light turned off and I was standing alone in the darkness.
35
Going to war
Laser Offline! he memoed again. An image appeared in my head of a disengaged wire and a red exclamation mark that kept jumping. Albert followed it up with a picture of one of the six posts—the one that was closest to the trail. Easy fix—black tape!! I noticed that inside the garage Albert was holding a spool of tape. He waggled it to get me moving.
“Oh, great,” I said to Lars. “There’s a messed-up wire in the woods. I gotta go fix it!”
“Where is it?” Lars asked.
“On the post nearest the trail.” I darted into the garage and snatched the tape from Albert. He reminded me to keep cold and calm by placing the image of a frozen pond in my mind’s eye. I nodded at him and then I hurried back out.
At the doorway, Lars grabbed the tape from me. “I’ll do it,” he said like there was no argument. “I’m good at fixing things.”
“Lars, don’t go,” Brit begged him from the door—but he was already running down the trail.
“Keep the snow in your mind!” Brit yelled after him.
Albert had to turn the big lever to OFF so that Lars could make the repair. The screeching sound of the lasers stopped and the white light immediately vanished. Now the red spiders grew restless; they had no bait to chase. They probed and scuttled with mean little thoughts. Be calm, I told myself, be icy calm. “Brit, we can’t be fearful right now.”
“It should have been you,” she said bitterly. “Albert could have protected you with his memos. There’s no one out there to protect Lars.” Her eyes had gone shifty and mean.
“Brit, please don’t give in to the anger. Remember the icy wall.”
“Right,” she whispered. “You’re right.” Her face was as pale as the snow she envisioned.
I realized that the TV was on and there was a girl talking.
“They’ve been playing a loop of it, over and over,” Brit said. “You’re on that big sign above Times Square.”
The sweet notes from Lars’s guitar sang in the background, and there I was, standing in the snow in a dark forest with the pink light shining down. I looked small and determined. In a voice that was like melancholy music, I talked about my family and Brit and Lars. But this Mary didn’t exactly look like me—and she didn’t exactly sound like me, ei
ther. She could have been anyone’s daughter, talking about anyone’s family.
The crowd was silent as they watched me on the high-up electronic billboard, waiting, wondering what this was about. I don’t know how they felt, but here in the garage I was glad to have this reminder of small things that are big. As I spoke in Times Square, BREAKING NEWS showed a segment in the corner that flipped to channels all over the world, and to websites, too. In all those places I spoke all their languages! There I was on the news in Italy, and Russia, and Nigeria, and South Korea . . . the Commodore had put our commercial all over the globe.
I remembered with a start that I had to stay neutral! The evil thoughts were sneaking in and my distrust of those people watching in Times Square and the people watching in those other countries had become my main concern. I froze the angry thoughts in midair and I raised the icy wall just in time.
Suddenly Albert memoed Laser back online, and he reached to flip the large lever to ON. Once again the white light flashed in the forest. The electrical sound buzzed and screeched. Albert intently watched the screen.
“Lars must have fixed it,” Brit said hopefully. She waited by the door, biting a nail.
Across the room Albert sat rigidly on his tall stool, focusing inward, creating the fractals to open the wormhole again. He was getting better at it—it wasn’t long before he memoed the image of the tunnel that twisted and writhed as he filled it with his best thoughts.
“There’s Lars,” Brit announced. She was smiling expectantly, the relief shining in her eyes. “Thank goodness you’re back!” she hailed—but it was an angry Lars that pushed past her and he lunged at me, smacking me hard in the face. He was flushed and fidgety and his eyes were horribly bloodshot. He raised his fist to pound me again, but there was Agent Saunders in the doorway. Just that quick, Saunders chopped a secret agent move on Lars’s neck.
Poor Lars collapsed, and Saunders set him gently on the concrete floor.
“Sorry about that, kid,” Saunders said in a husky voice.
The smack I’d taken from Lars kicked in and I saw stars. I staggered, but Brit held my arm to steady me.
Albert stayed on task, still sending the good energy as best he could, but a noise had begun outside—or maybe it was inside my mind. It was like a howling monster scraping on metal. The red mist stalled and hovered. It lay frozen in the air, as if undecided about which way to go. And then it chose a direction. Lazy waves of red began to roll through the forest away from the rip, heading back out into the world where it could find billions of conscious minds to ruin.
Albert memoed a message of DANGER that felt stressed and brittle and ready to snap. My head was throbbing from where Lars hit me, and a gnawing fear was growing in my gut. “Icy calm, icy calm,” I said desperately.
A shadow appeared in the doorway and a man’s voice bellowed, “Found you!”
We all turned to see the Partner, his face contorted with hatred. He fired a gun at Saunders, but in his crazy excitement, he missed. Saunders ducked and swiveled and tried to pull a move on the Partner, but that guy knew his tricks. With punches and grunts, they fell out the door and continued to battle in the snow.
“Hurry, Albert,” I urged.
Albert memoed an image of hearts cracking and shriveling and turning to dust. He couldn’t keep sending the positive thoughts in the midst of this madness. The garage window told me all I needed to know; the red column was blasting up again and the spiders were roiling at the base like poison from a geyser.
Suddenly the Partner was back in the doorway, grinning like a lunatic. Had he killed Saunders? His eyes locked onto Albert and he smiled that angry smile. But Brit surprised the fiendish Partner, jumping him from behind, trying to grab his gun. Without mercy or remorse he smacked her head with his elbow—and she fell to the floor. Now the sick Partner pointed his gun at Albert, and he fired. My brother slumped into the computer screen.
“Albert!” I cried.
But I didn’t have time to help him because now the Partner was aiming at me.
36
Emergency
I dove behind the metal desk and when I peeked out, I was amazed to see that Lars was up and grabbing the guy’s arm, trying to wrestle the gun from his hand. Neither of them saw Brit, who had recovered and was sneaking up behind them with a shovel. With a mighty whack, she hit the Partner and he fell—hitting his head a second time when he struck the concrete floor.
“Brit, he shot my Albert.” I could hardly speak or think; the red spiders scuttled in a cloud around me. They were turning my snowy mind red, and my heart black. I barely noticed that Lars was checking Albert’s pulse, listening for him to breathe. Lars was saying something but I couldn’t hear him.
“What? What did you say?”
The red spiders told me that Albert was dead and the world was total crap.
Lars sounded muffled and far away. I strained to hear him. “He’s alive, Mary.”
“He’s—alive?” I slogged back from the black and crammed my mind with snow.
“He’s got a pulse and he’s breathing.” Poor Lars looked half-crazed himself with his bloodshot eyes and a greenish tinge to his skin. “Mary, we’ve got to finish this if we’re going to save him—if we’re going to save anything at all.” Lars was speaking slowly in his effort to concentrate.
“None of us can think like Albert,” Brit said. “He’s the key—the Commodore said so.”
I was so grateful that Albert still had a chance; that we all still had a chance. “Citizen Lady said we all play a part.” I was trying to remember the exact words. “She said, ‘Albert is the key, but Pearl is compassionate, Equationaut is clever, and Lars is brave. Excellent counterparts if one were to encounter an emergency.’”
“Yeah, I’d call this an emergency,” Brit said.
“She also said Albert needed our support,” Lars pointed out. “Maybe it wasn’t enough to just be here. I mean, the blue light never turned on. Maybe Albert wasn’t meant to do this alone.”
“You’re right.” The soundness of what Lars said gave me hope.
“Albert had the key that opened the channel,” Brit said. “Maybe we can do the rest.”
“Quick, get the electrodes off Albert,” I said. I was walking a fine line of staying cold and calm but a small part of me dared to hope. “We’ll hook ourselves up. Maybe we can bait the charge and do the commercial at the same time.”
Brit and Lars started sticking the components on their heads anywhere they would adhere. I did the same.
“All the switches are on.” I checked the window; it looked like the lasers were flashing. “I hope the tunnel is still open.” We had to lean in toward each other because we were sharing the electrode gizmo. I held Brit’s hand on one side, and Lars’s hand on the other. For some reason I suddenly recalled the happy idea that had consoled me that morning—that maybe good thoughts made reality, too.
“Good thoughts make reality,” I said excitedly, even as I tried to reel in my hope.
The pink light was back on, brighter than before.
“I think our good thoughts make reality,” I said in a passion-filled voice. “Our good thoughts have value, and they’re worth more than diamonds and gold.”
I was speaking on the TV again, still on the big screen above Times Square, still standing in the snow doused in pink light—even though here I was, speaking these words from inside the garage. My eyes found Brit and we shared a What the hay? moment. But I couldn’t revel in the SMHRs’s tricky technology. I had a memo to make.
“Our beautiful thoughts create beauty,” I continued, “and our bad thoughts make things ugly. If we could all pretend for a minute that our good thoughts were golden and sparkly, maybe we could send them into the world and make it a better place. You could try. You could take your best thoughts and fill them up with love and kindness—because the world needs them right now.”
I thought my deepest thoughts of love and concern, and the red spiders stayed away.
“You could call it a prayer or a wish or a dream. You could call it anything you want, but just think your best thoughts and fill them with love.”
I quit holding hands with Brit and Lars and concentrated with all my might. I rolled my fingers into fists and squeezed my eyes shut.
“Try as hard as you can to bring all that love and kindness from your toes up to your heart, and zoom it into your arms.” I raised my arms as high as they would go. “And then open your hands—” I stretched my fingers in the cold garage and I opened my eyes to see Brit and Lars with their arms raised, too. “AND THEN JUST LET IT ALL GO!”
I could imagine the love in my hands exploding like fireworks, filling the garage, racing out the door, and shooting into the frosty sky.
When I checked the TV, everyone in Times Square was doing it. Everyone was raising their arms and sending their own versions of beauty and love into the world. Did they sense the critical moment, or were they just carried along with the crowd, like doing the wave with thousands of fans? It didn’t matter. They all participated and smiled and laughed. They all shared their humanity and their joy.
To my astonishment, when those thousands of people opened their hands and let out their love—I could see it. It was as real as diamonds and gold. I could see the good explode and swirl like galaxies rushing into the atmosphere. And all those people could see it, too. They oohed and ahhed like they were watching fireworks, only the sparks and swirls and glittering lights came from each one of them.
If you could paint a picture of love, it would look like that night. The joyful faces and the eruptions of color and sparks and intertwining comets told a story of all that was good, all that was simple, and all that was kind. The worst of humanity might have been awful, but the very best was this heart-wrenching painting of love.
A blue light caught my eye. I gazed out the window to see the thin blue beam stabbing at the heart of the red mist. It was the amplifier. At last!