by B. B. Ullman
There was a sound rising—maybe it was outside, or maybe it was inside my head. It reminded me of a train rumbling, coming from far, far away. By the sound and the feel of the vibration, it was coming closer. And it was big.
37
Back to the source
The rumble seemed to vibrate in my skull and was followed by a blast of energy that shook the forest. The sound shifted from a very low octave to an even lower-down bass—though I wasn’t sure if it was a sound or a feeling—and then everything around us grew deadly quiet and still.
On the TV, I was saying bring all the love and kindness . . .
“And be super bold,” I cut in. I smiled at Brit and Lars. What else could we do but hope and believe?
“The bait is working,” Brit said. “I don’t feel the red spiders at all.”
“It’s not over yet,” Lars said cautiously. “Enough positive energy has to get into the half-constant to balance it out. Keep sending your best.”
At this moment, I totally believed in the good. The belief gave me courage, and the courage gave me hope, and both those feelings gave me this sense of resolve, like it was set in cement—that somehow this world would be restored and I’d get my brother back. In my head I said, Albie, if you are listening, Pearl will save you.
We all held hands again. Lars kept his eyes on Brit, looking out for her like he always did. My eyes found my brother, and I thought about the monumental strength of loyalty.
“You guys are awesome.” I said it like it was a casual thing, but only because I couldn’t explain how big that feeling was.
In Times Square I was saying, “Think your best thoughts and fill them with love…”
The white lasers flashed and the blue beam burned, and the awful column of red mist that had been blasting into the sky made a total reversal. The woods trembled as the negative energy rolled in waves, faster and faster, like water circling a drain. It was a whirlpool of bad thoughts getting flushed through the channel that Albert had opened. It was all roaring back.
I cringed as a corner of the roof blew off in a quaking gust of red snow. Tree branches shook and cracked, and debris went flying as the thunderous, deafening train of bad thoughts rushed wildly back to the source. The garage rattled and convulsed and the glass in the window shattered. The forest quivered and leaned into the rip. I watched red mist fly off the Partner. It flew off of us, too. I felt thrilled with the triumph and could only imagine that sense of boundless joy being amplified exponentially. What power!
A bright light alerted us to the SMHR craft hovering low overhead, glowing like the sun. It was caught in the whirlpool and was getting sucked down. The craft tipped lower and lower, burning branches and cracking tree trunks, but the blue beam that amplified our thoughts kept shining—and then the whole craft disappeared, vanishing like poor Mr. Shinn at his last, crazy stand.
The idea came to me that this might have been intentional, that maybe the triad was so intrigued by the data they hoped to gain, they’d driven into the whirlpool on purpose. Either that, or they sacrificed themselves for our world—which filled me with an admiration that ached.
One last wave followed, but this one was bubbly and light. It was the same effervescence we’d felt on Mars, only now it had a purpose, a direction. Maybe it was the leftover good chasing the bad; maybe that’s what Albert called good order. The brilliant wave bubbled and foamed like a stormy sea, pushing the red spiders back through the channel.
And then all was quiet.
Just quiet.
We were still holding hands, white-knuckled, gaping at each other when Albert raised his head, and blinked.
“Albert! Are you okay?”
A big bump was forming on his temple. It was a perfectly round welt that was bleeding. He groped around the desk and found something . . . he held out his hand and showed me the last electrode. It was a mess, with a bullet-size dimple in the center. I ran over and hugged him, and he let me.
“Albert, did it work?” I asked. “Did we close the rip?”
38
Good order day
The memo Albert sent was quietly triumphant. Good Order Day, it said. A follow-up memo showed a red spider content in a group of butterflies. The butterflies were flapping their wings, displaying pretty colors and patterns—when a door slammed shut on the memo and an oversized key locked it. The spiders and butterflies would stay where they belonged.
Pretty order, Albert emphasized, which made me think of the first message he’d ever sent me.
Lars was watching us. “What did he say?”
“He said it worked. The rip is closed.”
“Where’s Agent Saunders?” Brit asked nervously.
“I know where he is,” a voice croaked from the floor. It was the horrible Partner trying to get up. “I almost killed him,” he said. “I knocked him out when we were fighting—I almost shot him until I remembered . . . he owes me a coffee.” The Partner smiled through his pain and struggled to get up. Lars gave him a hand and the disheveled agent rose with a grunt. He limped outside to where Saunders was sprawled in the snow.
Poor Saunders. I hated to see his clean clothes all messed up. I knew he would have hated it, too.
I knelt down. “Agent Saunders?” I touched his face.
Behind me, the Partner said, “Terrence, how’re you doing?”
“Your name is Terrence?” I couldn’t keep the giggle from my voice.
His eyes opened and he groaned.
“That seems sort of funny,” I said. “I mean, that your name is Terrence. It seems like kind of a fancy name for man as tough as you are.”
He groaned again.
I held his hand and squeezed it. “You’ll be okay, Saunders.”
A BETI guy asked me to stand aside so he could treat his fellow agent, and I realized that our yard was alive with activity. The BETI forces were scurrying around and collecting the injured. Agent Saunders and the Partner were being helped into the woods. Helicopters were flying. They must have landed in Mr. Shinn’s goat field—and now, they were exiting fast.
At the same time, emergency vehicles were cramming the cul-de-sac. There was an ambulance, a fire engine, and three police cars. I guess they’d come to investigate the “meth house” now that the BETI force gave them the okay. Their lights were flashing blue and red and white, and the uniformed people were rushing about—but I found it all strangely distant. I looked up. The moon was like a bright, fat nickel shining down. I could almost imagine a face on that nickel, and I was pretty sure it was smiling.
“Wow,” said Brit. “This was an awesome sleepover. I think it was the best New Year’s Eve we’ve ever had.”
“I know!” I couldn’t stop grinning and neither could Brit. We were pretty ecstatic about being alive.
“Brit, you look terrible,” I said. She had a goose egg forming on her forehead where the Partner bashed her with his elbow.
“So do you,” she said happily. “Lars got you good. You’re going to have a black eye.”
I felt my eye. It was sore and getting puffy. We all looked awful, with bumps and bruises from the fighting—and from the garage coming down around our ears! We began to limp over to the ambulance parked in the dead end. I hoped we could get cleaned up before Ma and Meemaw got home. Ma would have a heart attack seeing us like this, and Meemaw would probably start swearing at the EMTs. “Hup to and get your rear in gear before these kids bleed out!” I smirked to myself at the thought.
We tromped through the snow—which now had hundreds of footprints in it. The BETI force didn’t have time to get those cleaned up. And yet, Agent Saunders, the Partner, and those faceless BETI guys were gone. In a few days when the snow melted, it would be like they’d never been.
Near the porch, Albert took my hand, which wasn’t like him. The bump on his temple was even more swollen and it was turning purple. It was starting to make his eye bruised, too. Poor little guy.
He tugged on my jacket and I leaned down to check on hi
m—maybe he felt sick.
He put his mouth by my ear and whispered in a voice that came from his throat, “I knew my Pearl would save me.”
39
One week later . . .
Lars was going to drop Brit off at my house—we’d made a plan to study, which meant we’d probably just paint our nails and watch TV. Albert was on the couch, thinking about stuff. He never did start chattering away after he whispered in my ear. It was a gift for me, and I knew it. Maybe he’d talk more someday, and maybe he wouldn’t. That was up to him.
We didn’t know how to explain it all to Ma. It seemed so unlikely and crazy. But half the garage was gone, and our front door had bullet holes in it. Plus the four of us were pretty beat up—I still had a black eye, and Albert’s head was swollen and bruised. So we told Ma and Meemaw most of the story—minus the information about the role Ma played in how Albert turned out. I didn’t want her to know. I was sure she’d feel rotten and blame herself for participating in the one stupid experiment that changed Albert’s life forever. And anyhow, it was Albert’s story to tell. When he wanted to talk to Ma about it, he would.
When Meemaw heard the bizarre tale, she took it well. She said, “I figured it was something like that.”
What? How could she possibly? That made me laugh.
Agent Saunders talked to Ma on the phone and insisted that Albert get checked to make sure his head was okay. Saunders said the “Bureau” would cover it, as well as medical visits for the Stickles. Plus there’d be money for the damage done to our property from some “federal claim group.” Saunders was all official about the deal, so Ma had to accept the incredible story.
The weirdest thing was that nobody (not even Ma or Meemaw) recognized me as the girl in the commercial. Albert memoed me that the SMHR units had an app or something that altered the sound and the picture. They’d done it this way because I guess they picked up on how I wouldn’t like the attention, which was true. I was grateful. The SMHR units saved me from being pestered by tons and tons of people. Pretty thoughtful, for machines.
Most of the world thought it was just a show or a stunt—and the triad was so smooth there was no way to trace it to them. The mass hysteria and the violence that occurred beforehand couldn’t be explained. It was chalked up to just that—mass hysteria; a viral blip of madness that happened one shameful New Year’s Eve.
And the amazing fireworks of good thoughts that followed? Well, that couldn’t be explained either. I had to admit that the fireworks could have been another trick of the SMHRs’s technology, but I liked to believe it was the people who did it—just regular people creating something beautiful in a moment of goodness and unity. Those who were there and who experienced it said that they felt wonderful. They said the wonderful feeling lasted for a long, long time. I could still feel it, that sense of joy and wonder. But I guess I felt like that a lot of the time anyway, which was a super nice way to feel.
Most of the snow had melted, and with it, the evidence that we’d waged a battle here at the end of Myrtle Road. All that was left was a shrinking snowman that Brit and I had made the day after. We’d dressed him in an old trench coat and put dark glasses on him and called him Agent Saunders. Later we added a red plastic squirt gun and a broken earmuff that was supposed to be his communication device. The fun-relativity factor was still working because we definitely got some good giggles out of making that dumb snowman.
I went out to meet Brit by the road. She was climbing out of Lars’s truck just as a black car pulled up behind them.
It was the real Agent Saunders.
He got out of his car and gave us a curt nod. His overcoat was crisp and his suit was impeccable, but his handsome face was definitely worse for wear after the beating he’d taken from the Partner.
“I wanted to check on you kids in person,” he said, very proper and businesslike. “Agent Guy couldn’t be here; he’s still in the hospital with a concussion.”
Brit grimaced.
“He’ll be fine,” Saunders said quickly. “He’s getting tip-top care.”
“I was sorta worried,” Brit confided.
“I’m glad to see the four of you are recovering. I brought some compensation for your mom, and for the Stickle family.” He patted some envelopes in his pocket. “The Bureau’s going to pay for medical expenses plus damages.”
“The Bureau, huh? That’s pretty nice,” Brit said. “Thanks, Saunders. Hey, could I get, like, a whole check-up and some prescriptions if I needed them?”
I knew what Brit was thinking—something for her skin!
“I would expect nothing less,” he assured her.
“How are you feeling, Saunders?” I asked.
“Excellent.”
He said this like, why wouldn’t I be excellent? Then he furtively glanced left and right. “I have something I want you to see.” He made a curt nod to the briefcase he was carrying.
“Well, come on in. I know how to make coffee—oh wait, you don’t like coffee.”
Lars came in, too, and after an awkward pause in the front room, Lars said, “Agent Saunders, I wanted to thank you for knocking me out when you did. I was losing it.” He held out his hand for Saunders to shake.
“It was hell,” Saunders said. He clutched Lars’s hand and shook it. “I don’t know how you did what you did, Lars. Even from where I was standing, I could barely hang on to my sanity.” Saunders gave Lars a formal nod, like he’d won an award or something. Lars blushed pink but he stood straighter.
“Ma is still at work,” I said. “And Meemaw is at Mrs. Zucker’s. Sorry you can’t meet them.” Secretly, I could picture Meemaw commenting about Saunders looking uptight—or she might pop off about a stick being up his you-know-what. So I guess I was relieved she wasn’t here.
“Actually, I knew your mother and grandmother wouldn’t be at home.” (Saunders just couldn’t resist the chance to be a know-it-all.)
Brit arched her eyebrows but didn’t say anything.
Saunders promptly set his briefcase on the dining room table and opened it. He pulled out a laptop and opened that, too. Then he navigated to a file he’d saved. Once again he looked around cautiously as if he had something to hide. The four of us gathered around him as he clicked PLAY on the screen.
40
Classified
The screen showed the big control room at NASA where the tech crew was getting the latest feed from the Rover. The camera scanned the rocky landscape, and then it focused in on three shapes in the distance.
Saunders turned to us and gave us his uptight little grin. Then he watched the screen again—so we did, too.
The camera panned closer and closer to reveal three humanoid figures standing on the rocky plane. They were lined up tall to short, dressed in black, smiling. They began to wave a childish, four-fingered wave.
At the bottom of the NASA screen was a strip for a crawler-message. And these words were rolling by:
This reality is a conscious, real-time event..........It has no distortions or other possibilities..........It could only happen this way, and in fact, it always happened this way..............In short, Operation Super Bold was a success.....FYI, Lambert was meant for the exemplary one, Pearl............................................................................Goodbye
We all exchanged stunned glances—except for Saunders, who was smirking and shaking his head. He was getting a real kick out of how cheeky the SMHR units were, but the mention of Lambert sorta made me want to cry. It shined a whole new light on how things began with me and Albert and how thoughtful the SMHR units had been. I was so glad to see they survived their journey—and they probably got tons of data.
Brit spoke first. “Thanks, Saunders. Thank you for showing us this. I feel a lot better knowing they made it.”
“Agent Saunders, is showing us this video going to get you in trouble?” Lars asked. “I mean wouldn’t this information be classified?”
Saunders seemed to appreciate Lars’s concern. “A
fter everything you kids went through, we figured we owed you. Agent Guy and I were extremely careful in appropriating this file. No one’s going to know about this but us.”
Albert sent me a memo that had cartoon binoculars with “BETI” stamped on the side. They were focusing in on four dumb-looking stick drawings. Under each figure blinked a name—Albert, Mary, Brit, and Lars.
“Hmm,” I said quizzically, “will you be keeping an eye on us, Saunders?”
Surprise and irritation flashed before he could hide it. Then he sort of snickered. “For some reason, you four seem to attract very unusual phenomenon. The Bureau is—shall we say—interested.” He’d gone back to being the aloof and braggy Saunders. “Don’t concern yourselves. BETI is, above all things, discreet.”
Suddenly Albert straightened up to face Agent Saunders. He held out his hand to the tall man, mimicking what he’d seen Lars do. Saunders seemed baffled for a moment, but then he grasped the little hand and they solemnly shook on a deal that perhaps only Albert understood.
That’s when Albert sent me a memo that felt safe and secure, the way I feel in our little house with Ma in the kitchen, and Meemaw folding clothes, and Albert counting dust in the dining room, and Brit raising her eyebrows at me, and Lars pointing at Brit to show her that he is always on her side. In the midst of all these comforting bits was the image of a single black shoe. The shoe had integrity; it was trustworthy, and above all, courageous.
I looked at Albert—and then at Agent Saunders. “You’re a good man, Saunders.” I patted his arm. “I’m glad it’s you. Maybe we’ll see you around.”
“You certainly will not,” he snapped, like I’d offended him.
“Oh, brother.” Brit rolled her eyes.
At that moment, something small but really big happened. With a contagious tickle, sort of like a SMHR unit, Albert laughed.