Seeds of Foreverland: A Science Fiction Thriller

by Tony Bertauski

  His star quality dimmed once the eye patch was gone, leaving him with a less than sympathy-worthy pink-puffy left eye for his followers to worship. Injury-attention only lasted so long.

  Things had become so normal, in fact, that Harold had gone back to secretly pulling wings off insects in class. It was winter, so houseflies were hard to find on the windows. Occasionally, he unearthed an earwig at the bottom of his locker and surgery would be scheduled during the next class.

  The last day before Christmas break was a half day.

  He had been living at Flatulence Castle for almost a month. Harold received a text from his mom’s phone at the beginning of December, a short message that hoped he was doing well and they would see him soon. It wasn’t his mom that sent it, though. She didn’t send short sterile messages that were empty and pointless.

  Had to be his father.

  Harold just wished Christmas wouldn’t be like Thanksgiving, eating jellied desserts and drinking tepid water for dinner. Besides, who was going to buy the presents? The grandparents didn’t believe cash was a gift and what they wrapped was too sensible. He was good on socks and underwear.

  John wasn’t at school that day.

  The teachers didn’t give out homework, everyone got to talk, and no one took a set of knuckles between the shoulder blades for walking too slow in the hallway.

  It was like Christmas came early.

  Harold took the bus route home. He wanted to skim the cash drawer one last time. He promised it would just be the last time until his parents came out of the basement.

  A few parents waited at the bus stop. There was also a high schooler buried in his phone, waiting for his little sister or brother. His coat was open, his concert T-shirt worn out and ragged. Harold climbed off the bus with the other kids in his neighborhood.

  His street was empty.

  Dead strands of Christmas lights dangled from trees and eaves, waiting for night to light up. The Ballard house showed no sign of celebration. Christmas died on the front step.

  “Hey!” someone shouted. “Wait up.”

  It was the high schooler from the bus stop. His coat was still unzipped, the face of heavy metal on his T-shirt trotting toward Harold. An earbud fell out of his right ear as he picked up his pace. He was ten yards away and still running at a full sprint.

  Harold turned and got two steps down the sidewalk when he felt the flat side of a boot on his book bag. The force sent him stumbling forward. The concrete raked the skin from the pads of his palms, his fingers stinging with cold numbness.

  “You that fat little Ballard asshole?” The kid was winded. “Huh?”

  Harold rolled onto a neighbor’s lawn, the grass stiff against the back of his head. The high schooler sniffed back a snarl and planted the tip of his boot into the soft spot below Harold’s ribs, pain knifing through his internal organs.

  “What are you doing? Get away from him before I call the police!” A neighbor was on the front porch, a stack of mail in her hand.

  The high schooler backed up and looked at Harold with half a thought to stomp him one across the forehead. If the neighbor hadn’t come down the steps, he would’ve. Instead, the stoner turned to run.

  “You all right?” She crossed the street and helped Harold sit up.

  “I’m okay.”

  “You’re bleeding.”

  He touched his lip. His fingers came back red.

  “We should call the police,” she said.

  “No, no. It’s all right.”

  “That boy attacked you.”

  “It was just some bully. It’s no big deal, really. I just want to go home.”

  She helped him stand, brushed the debris from his coat and watched him start toward his house. He didn’t say thank you. A few days later, the police would interview her along with all the other neighbors. She would tell them about the assault, that Harold seemed like a nice boy. That it wasn’t his fault.

  He kept his head down, avoiding grabbing his side where he swore his kidney was bruised and possibly bleeding. Maybe he would die in the front of the house and his parents would find him when they finally came up. Merry Christmas!

  Mom would be upset. His father, well, it really would be Merry Christmas.

  He didn’t know the high schooler, had never seen him before. It didn’t take an episode of CSI to connect the dots, though. John figured out the mystery shooter. And he was smart enough to have a friend send a message. And there would be more messages.

  What did you think would happen?

  When Harold reached his driveway, it was clear that John wasn’t all that smart, after all. Because he stepped out from behind the bushes along with his creepy little sidekick. They had been watching and waiting. If they weren’t such idiots, they would have waited a week or two, let Harold worry himself into an ulcer before sending another message. But a dinosaur brain can only think so far ahead.

  The neighbor had already gone inside her house.

  Maybe if she was wearing a coat, she would’ve stood on the sidewalk until he was safely inside his house.

  Harold was in the driveway, ten steps from the front steps. John was five steps away. Blake pulled his finger across his throat like a bad actor. Harold had never actually punched someone, but if John wasn’t standing in the way, he was sure he would pop that cherry in the middle of Blake’s face.

  “Merry Christmas, you tool,” John said.

  A tear slid down his cheek. His eye would forever be leaky. Especially when it was cold. There would be times when a tear dripped on his dinner plate or it looked like he was crying in front of the boys. He would always have Harold to thank for that. Harold was going to pay a pound of flesh for those future hassles.

  He was going to pay in advance.

  “Got you a present,” John said. “Guess what it is.”

  No point in asking why. It was pretty clear. “Right here?” Harold said. “In the front yard? Broad daylight?”

  “Maybe,” John said.

  “All right. Well, I’ll call the police and have you arrested. That’s assault, idiot.”

  “You think I give a damn?” He wiped a tear.

  Harold couldn’t explain why this shook him.

  One day, looking back, he realized it was the grim determination set deep in John’s bad eye, a burning vengeance that seriously didn’t give a damn. It was a disconnect, a loose wire in John’s psyche that short-circuited any guilt for his trespasses.

  Harold would come to emulate that very same disconnect one day himself, would learn how to separate himself from the things he would do to other people and the guilt that told him not to.

  But unlike Harold, John wasn’t going to amount to anything. His acts of cruelty had no purpose. They were just what he did, for no real reason. He was an animal and he knew it. Harold knew it. The whole stupid world knew it.

  So why not make Harold pay for the whole world to see?

  “Your crazy parents ain’t home,” he said. “They don’t give a damn, either. They won’t care if I knock all your teeth out. They can’t stand you, that’s why. That’s why you don’t live at home, why you get sent to your crazy grandparents. You know why they can’t stand you?”

  “Because I’m so smart?”

  “Because you’re scared, that’s why. And the only way you can get back at what scares you is to hide in the bushes with a gun. To run away and hide and hope no one catches you. Right?”

  Harold’s reply stuck in his throat, the words wedging in a swollen ball that bobbed up and down. On cue, the clapping of the pellet gun snapped in steady beats from behind the neighbor’s house. At first, he thought it was some phantom sound that would haunt him like Edgar Allen Poe’s beating heart. It was followed by a dull explosion. And more clapping.

  This lit the short fuse in John’s memory.

  That was the sound he heard just before the blinding pain. That was the gun that shot him. Maybe he was just guessing before that, but not anymore.

  He cha
rged Harold with a major-league ass-whipping in his hands.

  Harold could’ve yelled for the neighbor, but the words were clogging his throat. He sprinted down the driveway, praying the back door would be unlocked. Blake or John caught him by the book bag halfway down the driveway, but Harold shimmied out of the straps. The heavy book bag fell and tangled their feet. A crash ensued.

  Harold didn’t look back.

  He swung up the back steps, nearly pulling the handrail over. The knob slipped from his fingers. He tried again, felt sobs oozing from the knot in his throat, and resisted the temptation to pound on the door and call out for his mom.

  The door opened.

  Harold slammed it shut without looking for fingers that might be lopped off in the doorjamb. He slid to the floor, back against the door. A heap of quivering panic.

  This had never happened before.

  This was real.

  He was scared. That future convict wasn’t going to quit. He would get retribution for his eye. If not for his eye, then for fun. And there were more like him. The kid at the bus stop was just one of them. They’d be lined up to take their shots all through middle school and high school. And Harold was alone. There’d be no one to help him.

  His parents would be in the basement.

  He wanted to let it all out right there on the floor. Just become a blubbering mess, cry like a little baby left all alone. He couldn’t remember the last time he cried. As an infant, sure. But after that, he had no memory of grieving. For anything. This was something new.

  The tears would’ve come right then had there not been a sound on the porch. He reached up for the deadbolt, just to be sure, but realized he’d mistaken the direction of the sound. It wasn’t out back.

  Someone was at the front door.

  Through the kitchen and down the hall, he could see the doorknob slowly turning. The latch released in the doorjamb. The weather stripping made a sucking sound as it broke open, light streaming around the perimeter.

  John poked his head inside. “Mom?” he shouted. “Dad? You home?”

  Long pause.

  He stepped inside and closed the door.

  Blake knocked on the back door.

  The psychos knew his parents wouldn’t be there. They’d tried the front door on a guess it would be unlocked. And they guessed right.

  Harold slipped on the floor. He wobbled on newborn legs, reached the kitchen table and began pushing it down the hallway, the chairs falling over, the edge of the table scraping the wall. John watched him barrel the table like a battering ram, the legs scratching the floor. He even grinned. It was as stupid as it was comical. He’d wait until Harold reached him then beat him with a table leg.

  But Harold didn’t plan on going that far.

  He just needed to get past the basement door. When he did, he didn’t bother trying to open it, just leaned his shoulder into it. The flimsy deadbolt cracked from the doorframe, screws pinging down the steps.

  Harold stepped into the dark.

  11.

  The old steps were steep.

  Harold caught the creaky railing attached to the wall, but he couldn’t see the stairwell. Halfway to the bottom, he began missing steps. Hands out, he fell forward, the air rushing past him, the edges of the wooden steps biting his ribs and elbows.

  He met the concrete floor and slid to a stop, his wrist twisting the wrong direction.

  It had been years since he’d been down there. Once dank and moldy, humming dehumidifiers turned the air clean and dry and something else. Like an open wound.

  Harold scuttled away from the stairwell with his wounded hand to his chest. His head hit the wall and soon he was tucked into the corner. The sharp square of light beaming from upstairs overwhelmed the dark corners of the basement, but he could see the tiny green and red lights of instrumentation. In a few minutes, his eyes would adjust and he would see the rest.

  A dark form filled the basement doorway.

  “Come out, come out,” sang John. “Ollie, ollie in come free.”

  His boot hammered the first step. Blake fell in behind him. The darkness seeded them with caution, their hands tracing the rickety bannister. Harold hoped they wouldn’t see him—despite the fiery pain in his wrist, he had become inanimate—but the light from upstairs fell on him like a moonbeam.

  John locked on.

  Harold wondered if John felt the crosshairs just before he pulled the trigger, if there was a quiver of prescience that something was about to change his life. Because at that moment, Harold felt it.

  His life was about to change.

  John was midway down the steps when something moved. It was a wet smack, the sound of a gummy tongue on dry lips. He stopped. Looked right.

  Harold followed his dead gaze.

  Bathed in the green and red glow of electronics, there were two tables pushed together, their stainless steel frames reflecting points of light that Harold had mistaken for actual computers. Sunk halfway on top, the curving forms of bodies took shape. Thick cables lay across their midsections and snaked around their necks.

  It was still so dark, the details so murky, but Harold could swear the largest electronic artery was plugged in near the top of the head.

  A swish of fabric.

  A hand began to rise as if floating on a cloud of helium, a hesitant quiver from a puppeteer. It went up to the head and appeared to rest at the root of that thick cable.

  A wet slurp licked the room.

  The cable pulled free.

  A stampede of boots pummeled the basement steps. Blake and John didn’t bother closing the doors on their way out of the house. Later, when the story would break, a neighbor would report seeing them leap the front steps and sprint down the street.

  The body sat up and leaked a long, painful sigh. He swung his legs over the edge. The lights sensed his waking, dispelling much of the darkness.

  “Come, son,” his father’s voice called. “It’s time.”

  \\\\\\\\\\////////////////////

  It’s time.

  His father’s voice always sent a wave a panic through Harold. It carried a rich, stern power that could crush his confidence with a single word or a grunt. This time it was coupled with the cryptic message.

  It’s time for what?

  “I think I broke my arm,” Harold said.

  That, he reasoned, might sway his father to ease up on the punishment for nearly smashing the basement door off its hinges. He was already hurt, wasn’t that enough? Besides, it wasn’t his fault. John chased him into the house. What choice did he have after shooting the kid in the eye?

  It took a long minute for his father to stand up, and another minute to let go of the bed. He walked with the shuffle of the undead, teetering when he stopped at the bottom of the steps. In the eerie light, greasy gel reflected from the middle of his forehead.

  “You hurt your arm, mmm? Your mother has endured so much more and you hurt your arm. Don’t make me come for you, Harold. You must come out on your own.”

  He swayed a bit longer. When Harold didn’t move, he went to a work space near the foot of the beds and sat down. From Harold’s vantage point, he could barely see his mom. But the walls were in plain view. They were lined with shelves that contained glass boxes and wire cages, the kind that would contain pet snakes or parrots.

  But nothing moved inside them.

  “Take it in, son. This is your inheritance.”

  Harold still feared his dad, but it was that moment he sensed something warm in his voice. It was as close to fatherly as it had ever been.

  Your inheritance.

  “What are you doing?” Harold asked.

  “All of this, son, will change the world. It will change our concept of reality. It will unlock the doors behind which God hides. And it will all be yours.”

  He paused for effect, letting the words sink their teeth into Harold. A smile appeared to soften his face. He popped open a tube and massaged his forehead with a new layer of gel.
<
br />   “What… what did you do to Mom?”

  “Don’t cry, son.”

  “I’m not crying. What’s wrong with her?”

  “This is all her vision. She discovered the true human potential. Now come here.”

  The words dragged him from the corner. Harold’s arm was numb. He stood in front of his father like a specimen. Mom lay so still that he couldn’t be sure she was alive. He didn’t notice if her chest was rising and falling because there was something attached to her forehead. The cable seemed to be glued to it.

  Her hand lay on the empty bed next to hers where his dad had risen, as if they were holding hands in their sleep. On a wrinkled sheet lay another cable, the one his father had removed from his head. It wasn’t magnetic or glued. The end of it was long and wet and pointed.

  A needle.

  He looked back to his father, to the gel on his forehead. There it was, the puffy red flesh surrounding a thick, black hole.

  Harold’s entire body went as numb as his arm.

  “Look around you,” his father whispered.

  The cages were not empty after all. There were animals inside, as flat and still as his mom. Wires and cable were strung to the wall. Each cage had at least one wire dropping inside it, hooked between the eyes of frogs and squirrels, rats and rabbits. And those wires fed into a bank of servers arranged on steel racks.

  Computers. Were they powering the computers? Controlling them?

  “Our separateness is an illusion,” his father said in his cryptic voice again. “We are all energy, son, caught in the self-centered dream of our desires and instincts. But your mother and I have seen through the barrier, we have torn down the wall of delusion. And we have seen beyond.”

  Connected.

  The animals were networked, their brains connected through the cables. The computers were facilitating the communications; they were the conduit for the brains to meet each other face to face.

  The organic computers.

  “We are much greater together than we are apart,” his father said. “We are all God.”

  “But… you never went to church.”

  His father slapped him. Harold’s cheek stung, white hot.