Copyright © 2018 by Dominick S. Gerard
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created in the United States of America
First Edition, 2018
[email protected]
TheHarmonyDivide.com
Acknowledgments
It's only possible to do something like this when your family allows you to place it ahead of them for a while. Time is the most precious resource one has and the time lost while writing will never be recovered. It takes special people to smile in the face of this loss and nod in encouragement while time slips away. Such is the support I've received from my wife, Karen, and our two children, Ava and Nora. A luckier person doesn't exist on this planet or any story told. Karen will always be my first reader and the one who had the most to sacrifice the most.
Here's to hoping it was all worth it.
Thank you to all who helped along the way:
My mom, Linda, and my sister, Gina, were some of the first readers and helped tremendously. My uncle Chris, Kim, Carrie and Brenda. All my beta readers who were so helpful. I'll be forever grateful for everybody who helped.
A very special thanks to the best editor I could ever ask for. Madi Jeffery took a good story and made it a readable book. She got "it" from the very beginning and helped me more than I can say. Thank you.
Never Alone
Dominick S Gerard
Table of Contents
Never Alone
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Epilogue
She woke, vision blurry. Alone.
All she could make out were cloudy, shifting sources of light that pulsed in sync with the beating of her heart. She blinked several times and, after a few seconds, the details of a room began to solidify.
Her mind was frayed, leaving her unable to grasp the shifting threads of images, voices and memories trapped inside her. A loud, yet muffled boom jolted through her bones, making her whole body jerk. The sound quickly faded and moments later she had put it out of her mind. The sound wasn’t important to her. Instead, she chose to focus on the sound of her own breathing and smiled. She didn’t know why.
She laid on her back in a large room with white walls and a grey cement floor. She stared at the ceiling with its exposed pipes and conduits for utilities, all painted black in contrast to the light-grey surface above them. Around her, lights flashed on control panels throughout the room. Those weren’t important to her, either.
Two metal tables and chairs lay toppled in a heap a few feet to her left. The light fixtures were suspended from the ceiling with small metal chains. She only noticed one hallway ahead of her in the otherwise sparse and silent room.
“Did you hear that noise, Charles?” she whispered. “Will you go downstairs and see if the cats got into anything?” The cats were devious creatures, in her opinion. She enjoyed their company, but they were always looking for some sort of trouble to get into.
No answer came. She wasn’t surprised. She pushed herself over on her side with a grunt and admired a beautiful white wall a few feet from where she lay. She absolutely loved that wall. The pure whiteness of it amazed her. The way the edges met and formed a perfectly symmetrical wall. It was glorious. She stared in delight until a thought came to her mind- the wall still needs… something.
She managed to slowly push herself up to her feet. Dizziness overcame her and she tumbled back down. She remained motionless for a few moments after the fall, breathing hard.
“I wish we had carpet in this room. It would be much softer,” she whispered.
She thought trying to stand again was probably a bad idea, so she crawled over to the beautiful white wall instead. She needed something to write with. She grabbed at her lab coat pocket and felt two different pens inside. One of the pens leaked all over the front of her white lab coat, staining it a shocking red. She pulled out the other pen and tried it.
“Yes… it works!” She laughed.
She laid back down on her side as the dizziness returned. With the pen, she started drawing markings on the beautiful white wall. A few minutes passed as she drew. Her hand began to tire.
She jerked and covered her head when another loud boom came from the hallway ahead. She slowly rose to investigate the noise. She paused several times to steady herself.
“Charles? Was that you?” Thinking of Charles made her happy. Oh, what was that man up to?
She shuffled her feet unsteadily toward the source of the noise, using the wall to steady herself. Another boom. She jumped. A bright flash of light briefly illuminated the hallway ahead of her. As the flash faded, leaving behind a soft shifting glow.
She found herself moving down the hallway. Her right leg gave out a little, so she collapsed against the wall and stopped. After a few moments, she decided to stay pressed against the wall and use it for support as she crept to the end of the hall.
If the cats broke my favorite lamp there was going to be trouble. She rounded the corner and found the source of the odd noises and flashing lights.
The room before her was cut, nearly in half, by a bright, shimmering wall of light. Brilliant white, red and purple colors swirled and mixed as they flowed along the surface of the barrier. The ceiling, walls, and floors were cut clean through where the light extended through them. Another muffled boom sounded with a bright flash. The brilliant wall of light thinned slightly in a circle a few feet wide. The edge of the circle crackled and sparked.
The woman smiled. I love fireworks.
Through the thinner part of the wall, she saw a few dark figures moving around. The circle quickly filled in and she saw them no more.
“This all looks lovely, but please try to be more quiet. You’ll wake the baby!” She waved a finger in their direction, scolding them. Some people never learned. Never wake a sleeping baby.
Terrible pain shot through her temple. She fell to her knees, clutching her head in her hands. The light wall became a blur as her eyes lost focus. Her vision went dark and she fell to the floor in a motionless heap.
Jenn
In the young woman’s unconscious mind, Jenn constructed a dream.
A group of children were playing on a playground. It was an unusually warm fall afternoon in a small town outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The trees had started dropping their leaves, blanketing the ground in a mat of honey and crimson. The tall grass in the adjacent large field swayed in waves with the light breeze. The leaves rustled and dripped water from a morning rain. A few loose leaves fell to the ground as the breeze touched the branches.
Children swung on monkey bars and raced down slides, peals of laughter escaping their lips as they ran about. They were happy to be outside as the first freeze of the season had already occurred. The unusually warm day was a welcome luxury.
Jen
n knew none of it was physically real, but the setting was so well constructed. It felt real to her.
“It was real.” she whispered.
Jenn sat on the ground against the red brick wall of a school building with a book in her hands, reading intently. The school was fairly small compared to those in larger cities. That was part of its appeal for Jenn. She chose this location, at her old school, as a setting because it had many positive memories. Not to mention, her nine-year-old self wouldn’t be intimidating to her guest, who would be arriving any minute.
Jenn was waiting for a young woman who was frightened, confused, and alone. Despite the situation which set this all in motion, Jenn had no choice but to execute her plan - no matter the risks. If she didn’t succeed they would both be doomed. She was troubled and apprehensive. This young woman was going to experience things Jenn had never shared with another living person; including a secret she had guarded more fiercely than anything in her life. The intimacy sharing that secret would create unnerved her. She tried to focus again on preparing for the young woman’s arrival to distract herself.
The other children were oblivious to what was happening, of course, because they weren’t real. They were memory projections from her school days from long ago, and didn’t need to be here, but she thought it may make the young woman she was waiting for feel more comfortable. It just made sense to have more than one child in a playground on a school day, so she let them stay. The children acted as she remembered them. Some would look over, whisper to their friends, and snicker at her. They thought it was strange that somebody would want to read a book during recess. Jenn rolled her eyes at them. Even projections gave her a hard time about reading so often. She sighed and ignored them.
Jenn turned her attention back to her book. She enjoyed almost every book, but this one was special. It dealt with the human mind, and how memories were formed, retained, and accessed. She needed to further study a few topics for the coming events. Of course reading an actual book in a dream wasn’t possible. It wasn’t really a book at all. It was simply her way of organizing and representing what was already in her mind. During her free time growing up she was always reading a book, so it felt natural to her.
Memories, and the mind in general, had always fascinated her. The human mind was capable of such amazing things made possible because of the brain’s capability to store vast amounts of data as memories, and process them. No decision could be made, no reaction could happen, no words could be said without those memories. Without memories, everything a person sees is a collection of meaningless photons bouncing around. No words or songs. Just invisible waves riding on pockets of air. Memories quite literally gave everything meaning and context. Memories were what people took for granted the most, she thought.
Brows furrowed in concentration on the book in her lap, she reached to the ground and drew two short, parallel lines in the dirt. She rubbed the space between the two lines with the palm of her hand, as if coloring it in. It was happening very soon, she thought.
The young woman was already here, she just didn’t realize it yet. Her mind was still coping with trauma, so it would be difficult for her to focus or think clearly right now. Jenn thought of the things the young woman had been through. She shuddered, pushing those memories aside and focusing again on the book.
A soccer ball came at her like a rocket, but was stopped by a girl standing next to her who seemed to have appeared out of thin air. Jenn looked at her and smiled. “Hi! I’m Jenn. How are you feeling?”
“I… I don’t know. I can’t… think. My head hurts. What is this place?” The figure crouched down and sat next to Jenn.
Confusion and fear clouded the young woman’s soft features. Jenn, again, thought of the woman’s memories. Seeing her like this made Jenn want nothing more than to reach over and hug her, but she knew she couldn’t. It would ruin everything. If she made too much physical contact, she would no longer be in control of the woman’s unconscious. There was much to see and learn before her mind was ready to control itself.
“What is this place?” She echoed the woman’s question and closed her book. “What is this place, indeed.” She tapped her lips in thought.
She was careful with her answer to the young woman’s question. She wished she could tell her everything, but information was a precious thing to a traumatized mind, and Jenn had to be cautious.
The young woman’s own subconscious mind had isolated her memories. Stowed them away in a locked up box where she wouldn’t be hurt by them again. Jenn wasn’t sure how much of her own memories the young woman could access. There would likely be times the young woman would remember things from Jenn’s past, but have no context to make sense of it.
Jenn’s plan was in motion. Her mind- the collection of complex electrical signals comprising her consciousness- resided physically in the young woman’s head. She must push forward with her plan and see what the young woman could handle for both their sakes.
“You see those children playing over there?” Jenn pointed toward a small group of children laughing and running around, wide smiles on their faces. “They’re pretending the pretty tall girl is a princess and she has the power to order the others around. The others have accepted this because that’s just the way things go. The pretty one is always the princess and the others follow. You see the one with the short blonde hair? Yeah, she’s terribly jealous of the princess. She thinks she could do a better job ordering the others around. She’s actually been the princess’s best friend for years. They share all their secrets and will be close their entire lives, yet she is jealous of a made-up title her pretty friend was given by the group.”
The woman grimaced. “I don’t understand. Charles—”
Jenn cut her off. “I’m guessing you’re wondering if this is all real. Ask yourself this - what is real? If a group of people can have a pretend princess which they willingly follow, and one of them can take it so seriously she becomes extremely jealous, then does that make the princess real - even for just a few moments? I think if enough people - or even one person - believes something, it doesn’t matter if it’s actually real or not. If it causes people to react differently than they otherwise would, it’s real to them. Do you understand, dear?”
The newcomer ran her hand through her short red hair then rubbed her deep blue eyes. It was a combination Jenn knew was extremely rare. The woman looked down and reached out with a trembling hand to touch the dirt on the ground. She drew two parallel lines and a curved one connecting each line together. She looked back at Jenn, her eyes puzzled. Jenn looked at the drawing and placed her hand over her mouth to hide her smile.
The young woman reached out and pinched a piece of Jenn’s long blonde hair between her fingers. She closed her eyes as strange images flashed in both the women’s minds: the underside of a car moving down a road. A frightened woman in a white lab coat. A hanging ceiling light swinging wildly back and forth. Puddles of blood.
Jenn jerked away, pulling her hair from the woman’s grip. “It’s not the right time for that! It’s too soon!”
The young woman closed her eyes and swayed where she sat. Everything distorted and blurred for Jenn, but snapped back into focus as the woman opened her eyes again.
Jenn smiled, shaking her head. “Okay, maybe that little bit of contact will help you concentrate enough for me to have a more productive conversation with you, but we must be careful with that kind of thing. You’re just not ready. You have to trust me: don’t touch me unless I ask you to.”
The young woman blinked and shook her head, her blazing red hair flying in every direction. Her eyes cleared and she looked around the playground with a sharpness that wasn’t there before, as if seeing things for the first time.
She looked Jenn up and down. “What’s going on? Who are you? What… what is this? It feels strange.”
Jenn nodded. “You’re in a dream. My dream, but we’re in your head. I’m Jenn and that strangeness you feel is likely the hole in your min
d where your memories should be. I assure you, your memories are just fine, but you can’t access them right now. Do you believe in magic?” Jenn watched the young woman’s reaction. She wanted to get her secret out in the open. She knew there was only one chance to get out of this situation and the young woman had to know about it. Jenn’s heart pounded - so to speak - in anticipation.
“What? What kind of question is that? What do you mean I can’t get to my memories right now?” The young woman was becoming agitated and Jenn understood her reaction. She couldn’t imagine waking up without her memories.
“Your mind is damaged and I’m trying to help you fix it. Please, let me help you.” She lifted a hand to pat the woman’s shoulder, but frowned and dropped it back into her lap. “Now, it’s not truly magic, it’s being able to do things that can’t be explained with current scientific knowledge.”
The woman raised an eyebrow. “You don’t make any sense at all. Why am I talking to a five-year-old about magic?”
“I’m 9, but not really. Back to my point. ‘Magic's just science that we don't understand yet’. Do you think a tribe from the middle of the jungle who’s never seen technology would think a cell phone playing cat videos was magic or science?” The woman shrugged. “Now, let me show you something, and your reaction will be your answer to my previous question.”
Jenn directed her attention to a teacher standing by the playground gate. Her face went blank when she noticed the young boy standing beside him, as if she was lost in another world. After a moment, she looked back at the woman, smiling. “Watch the teacher closely.”
As they both turned their attention to the teacher, something… happened. A cell phone lurched out of the teacher’s back pocket and floated toward them. The teacher didn’t appear to notice, nor any of the students. The phone drifted in a small arch over a set of swings, and came to rest in front of Jenn. It hovered a foot or so from her face for a few seconds, until the screen lit up and a video started playing. The video showed cats playing with a brown paper bag.
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