The Shakespeare Incident

by Jonathan Miller

  “You’ve seen these records?” she said.

  “I have.”

  The judge looked up. “Can someone see what’s happening on the roof? Maybe put the tarp back up?”

  Caliban the bailiff hurried outside.

  “So based on your experiences, was my client ever violent in these experiments?”

  “He was not.”

  Time to take a leap of faith. “So what is the only thing that can make him violent?”

  “The presence of extraterrestrials.” Hikaru paused. “Well the presence of what he perceives as extraterrestrials.”

  Hikaru’s phone rang, loud enough to be heard over the buzzing outside. That couldn’t be good.

  The judge said, “Didn’t you say your phone was off?”

  “I’m sorry, your honor, but my boss, well my ex-boss keeps calling me and she can override my phone in an emergency.”

  “Who is your ex-boss?” Denise asked.

  Hikaru paused. He didn’t want to give up the information, but he looked at Denise. Denise nodded at him. He looked up at the skylight shading his eyes.

  “He’s gonna say the name,” the sheriff said, clearly agitated. “Plan B! Plan B!”

  Hikaru took a deep breath. He was ready for Plan B, whatever it was. “My superior was Colonel Regan Herring, United States Air Force, (retired),” he said. “But you know her as Big Red.”

  Without missing a beat, Denny called out, “Regan was the daughter in King Lear, just like Cordelia.”

  Denise looked back at Rayne and Rita. Rayne looked genuinely shocked as if she had no idea of her mother’s involvement. Rita nodded. “Duh,” she said.

  Rita looked out the window and put her hand over her eyes to cover the glare. Something was out there. Something was up there.

  And then, Denise heard it. The hive sound above grew worse. No, it wasn’t the roofers above who were causing it. Were they jumping off the roof?

  “Auntie Denise!” Rita yelled. “You’ve got to save him! They’re here, they’re really here!”

  Before Denise could figure out what was going on, Hikaru’s phone let out a sudden pulse, like a shock wave. Denise fell over from the impact of this invisible force.

  It was still the middle of the day, but the room went dark for a moment as if there was a total eclipse.

  “Grab my hand,” Denny said. “We’re safe together, I just know it.”

  She grabbed his hand. Rita and Rayne hurried over and formed a protective circle. “We’re not going anywhere,” Denise said.

  Rita and Rayne joined in. “We’re not going anywhere.”

  “Hikaru!” Denise yelled, but he was too far away. He was stuck in the witness chair directly under the open air. Now she knew why she wanted the tarp to stay up there. She couldn’t see him, and then there was a flash of lightning that came right through the skylight.

  Everything went black again. Were they under attack? Somehow their circle of protective spark worked—it was like a forcefield against this tornado. Through the darkness, Denise swore that she saw Hikaru being lifted up through the skylight. But that was impossible, wasn’t it?

  Denise lost consciousness.

  When she woke up, it was daylight in the courtroom again. She had no recollection of anything. Not again!

  Where was Hikaru?

  The courtroom benches were overturned. A baby cried. During the commotion, Jane Dark had given birth and was holding her newborn.

  “It’s a miracle,” Jane Dark said.

  The judge looked at Denise and then over at Jane Dark.

  “We seem to be all right,” Jane Dark said. “Somebody get an ambulance!”

  “What just happened?” the judge asked. “I have no recollection.”

  It was all fuzzy for Denise too. What had happened?

  “Where’s Hikaru?” Denise asked. The witness chair was empty. The skylight was still open.

  “Should we come back?” Jane Dark asked.

  “Finish up right now,” the judge said. “Closing arguments?”

  “Your honor,” Denise said, standing up, but too much in shock to go up to the podium. “I think you’ve seen how these incidents can affect people. They are unpredictable. I think we have no choice but to release my client and dismiss the case.”

  Jane Dark was looking at her little miracle. Denny’s case no longer mattered to her. “You’re going to be a great lawyer someday, Jean Dark, Jean Dark.”

  “Counsel?” the judge said, looking wonderingly at the newborn in Jane Dark’s arms. “Ms. Dark?

  Jane Dark didn’t look up, didn’t really care anymore. “I’ll defer to the court.”

  The judge looked down at her phone. “I’m going to take this under advisement and email you my decision later in the day. I might have to send it to you from Santa Fe.”

  Rita dragged her mother out the door. “We got to see what’s happening outside.”

  The guards started to take Denny away. “Thank you,” Denise said to him.

  “Thank you,” he said. “No matter what happens, you’re a great lawyer and a great sister.”

  * * *

  The door closed behind him.

  Denise walked out of the courtroom feeling triumphant, she was cautiously optimistic that Denny would soon be free. Yet, there was something about the air outside. It smelled terrible.

  It smelled like charred flesh. It smelled like death.

  There in front of the courthouse, she noticed a crowd surrounding a body on the ground. She pushed her way through and gasped.

  Sure enough, it was Hikaru. He was a bloody mess, as if he’d been dropped from the sky.

  “Is he dead?” Denise asked.

  Denise felt like the sky had dropped on her. Hikaru, her great love Hikaru, was dead. A line from Shakespeare floated through her cloud-filled mind: “To die, to sleep; To sleep perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come…”

  She felt a pulling on her sleeve and looked down to see Rita. “My grandma did this. I just know it.”

  “I won’t let her get away with it,” Denise said. But what could she do?

  PART V

  LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST

  Chapter 59

  It was almost an anti-climax when the judge emailed Denise moments later. She must have been texting and driving on the freeway as it took a few tries. But finally, Denise could ascertain from the texts that Denny Song’s case would be dismissed with prejudice, and that Denny would be released forthwith.

  Forthwith…

  Still in shock, Denise had to look the word up again to understand that her brother would get out immediately.

  Then again, it might take an hour or so to “process” his release. It always did. Despite all the effort and emotion she’d put into the case, Denny could wait. Denise stood in the parking lot until the EMTs took Hikaru’s body away on a stretcher, his head covered.

  Denise considered the thermos in her car. She knew that the Holloman lake water could save some people, but Hikaru’s charred body was too far gone for that. Dead was dead sometimes.

  She walked over to the rear of the ambulance and waved good-bye to the body. The EMT gave her a moment to look at the body, then slammed the doors forever shut. She gave herself a moment to cry.

  She could have loved him. Hell, she did love him. He was her one great forever love. Kinda.

  She went back inside the courthouse and threw up in the bathroom toilet, and then threw up again. When she emerged into the daylight a few minutes later, her phone rang. It was Denny calling from jail. “Can you pick me up?”

  “Hikaru’s dead,” she said.

  “You never talked about him, but I could sense that he meant a lot to you. I’m sorry for your loss. I know he did a lot to help my case. So, I feel it too.
”

  “Thank you,” she said. The fact that her brother expressed concern made her cry even more.

  “I can get Cordelia to pick me up,” he said. “If you need some time, I understand.”

  “I’ll pick you up,” she said. “It’s my case. You are my client. You are my brother.”

  Rayne, Dew and Rita stood by where the body had been, staring down as if Hikaru was still there. Denise took their hands. “Team Turquoise,” she said.

  “Team Turquoise,” they replied. Did she hear Hikaru’s baritone in the mix?

  Rayne and Rita got in Rayne’s car and drove off. Dew gave Denise a hug. “I’m so sorry, he may have been a wierdo, but he was your weirdo,” Dew said. “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’m going to pick up my brother,” Denise said.

  “I’m going home,” Dew said. “I probably should go back to rehab, but I need to do some drugs first.”

  Dew got into her own car and drove away.

  Denise now drove over to the detention center. Cordelia was waiting at the prisoner release door. When Denny emerged, he looked back and forth between the two women as if this was the finale of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Was she the good or the bad? Neither woman said a word, it was his choice.

  There was something different about her brother. She had expected him to be jittery with excitement, but he was calm—as if he expected this all along.

  “Take me to see our mom,” he said to Denise. “Is she in the hospice yet?”

  “If she was, they would have told me, right?”

  * * *

  On the drive to Las Cruces, Denny stayed quiet. Inside the automatic hospital doors, the ancient concierge stopped them before they were past the welcome mat. She summoned Piranha the security guard and then paged Dr. Patel.

  “Make sure they don’t go anywhere,” the concierge said to Piranha.

  “I’m free!” Denny said. “I want to see my mom now!”

  Piranha didn’t budge until Dr. Patel came down to greet them.

  “Can we see her?” Denise asked. “This might be our last chance.”

  Dr. Patel checked something on her tablet and frowned. “Take a minute with your mother, and then come up to my office, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  “Thank you,” Denise said. “We won’t do anything to upset her, will we Denny?”

  “I’m all good,” he said. Piranha followed them up, just to make sure they didn’t cause a scene.

  Inside the hospital room, Jen Song looked even more skeletal. Piranha nodded at Denny. “I guess it doesn’t matter now,” he said. “She’s as good as dead.”

  “Why don’t you give us a minute?” Denise said to Piranha. “Like you said, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “Why are you such a dick to us?” Denny asked.

  “Because every time you come here things get out of control,” he said. “And my job is about controlling the hospital, so the doctors can save lives.”

  Denise was able to gain insight from Piranha’s red face. She could literally read him like a book with his glare. Patients had indeed died here in the hospital—stabbings, shootings even—that were an extension of border gang wars and what not. With his law enforcement and military background, she sensed that he was brought on board to lay down the law. That didn’t make her like him any better.

  Denny went to the bedside and took Jen’s hand. “I’m going to make you so proud of me,” Denny said.

  The skeleton didn’t move.

  “What do you want us to do?” Denise asked. “How can we save you?”

  The beeping from their mother’s machines increased. Hopefully, that was a good thing. Jen’s eyes were moving rapidly under the lids.

  “What are you saying, mom?” Denise asked. “Do you know what happened today? Does it have something to do with that?”

  Jen blinked her eyes again, one time. Without any prompting on Denise’s part, her phone switched to a Wikipedia entry on Colonel Regan “Big Red” Herring. The colonel was indeed the CEO of an American affiliate of Cygnus Moon and thus Hikaru’s boss. Was Big Red ultimately responsible for killing Hikaru? Was Big Red the key to saving Jen?

  Or both?

  “Why is the colonel so important, Mom?” Denise asked.

  Jen’s body shook as if even the effort of thinking about Big Red strained every muscle in her body, every muscle in her soul. And then it hit Denise. She remembered that she hadn’t been able to unlock the center square of the interface she’d received from the Alpha grail. Hikaru had said she wouldn’t be able to retrieve it until he was dead.

  “Denny take my hand,” she said. “There’s something you need to see.”

  He looked both ways in the hallway. Piranha must be making his rounds somewhere else in the building. Dr. Patel was waiting for them in her office. Dr. Schwartz was probably cramming for finals somewhere. Denny shut the hospital room door.

  “Why are you doing that?” Denise asked.

  “Shouldn’t she be a part of this?” Denny asked, pointing to their mother.

  Denise was hesitant, but what could it hurt? She and Denny both touched their mother’s hand at the same time and closed their eyes.

  With her mind’s eye, Denise could see the tic-tac-toe board and a black box in the center square. There was a lock on the box. Did she need a password?

  “Hikaru,” she said out loud. “I love you.”

  The lock disappeared. The box opened. Everything went black…

  Chapter 60

  “This isn’t a dream,” Denise said to Denny as they opened their eyes. “This is real.”

  It was strange, but Denise, Denny and their mother were still in her hospital room, but they were also present (in spirit?) at New Shakespeare Ranch, as if they were looking into the opened box. Jen Song was still lying in the bed, but she had lifted her head up, fully conscious.

  “Can you talk, mom?” Denise asked.

  Jen blinked twice. There was a mist on the top of the box. Denise sensed that Hikaru’s consciousness was literally in the air. Somehow, he was helping them to access whatever was going on at the ranch.

  Denise recognized some of the dozen or so people in the crowd below. The Groundlings, including Fally, were there. They now sported white tank-tops, displaying their tattoos of monsters and aliens. Some of those tattoos were writhing around the body parts. They stood around a campfire on a crisp desert night.

  “We’re to remain here pending further orders,” a voice said. Denise knew that voice from somewhere. “Let me see if they are sending further instructions.”

  On the other side of the fire, Denise recognized Colonel Regan “Big Red” Herring, United States Air Force (retired), Board of Directors in Cygnus Moon Inc, CEO of Helmsman Inc, Candidate 3rd Congressional District (Independent). The colonel was addressing the campfire crowd, her hand holding the handle of the Omega Grail which stood on the boulder.

  Their focus inside the box grew sharper as if Hikaru was helping them to get better reception until there was an extreme close-up on the colonel.

  “I can read her,” Denise directed a thought at Denny.

  “We can read her,” Denny thought back at her.

  Jen, still in her bed, blinked once.

  “Let’s focus,” Denise said. “Look directly at the colonel.”

  “Won’t she notice?” Denny asked.

  “I hope not.”

  By focusing on the colonel’s forehead, they received a burst of information. The colonel was one of the last of the original settlers who came here to the New Shakespeare Ranch in 1947, the same year as the Roswell incident. The colonel was human, but it was unclear whether she was originally cloned, genetically engineered or any of that. Even the colonel didn’t know.

  There were only two of the pure bloods left from the
Lordsburg incident in 1947: the colonel and the sheriff. After landing and finding out that they were near a place called Shakespeare, New Mexico, the “settlers” had received orders to take Shakespearean names as a “way of blending in.”

  From the Colonel’s disdain etched across her face, it was clear these orders from afar didn’t always make sense. The colonel was over a hundred years old, but she was not immortal. The third remaining original settler, Cordelia’s dad, Dogberry Dunsinane, had died recently of “natural causes.” Time was becoming an enemy in the settlers’ master plan.

  Denise looked out at the Groundlings on the other side of the bonfire. Apparently, the original settlers couldn’t reproduce amongst themselves, but they could “mate” with humans. So, this bunch were the second generation. Some were even from the third. Unfortunately, the latter generations were all too human; they had a weakness for alcohol and drugs among other human vices.

  She recognized Hotspur, the guard from the cemetery. He was one of them. So was Caliban the bailiff from the courthouse and desk clerk at the Holiday Comfort, and his counterpart Titus from the Last Palm. She recognized a few others from around town, even the cops that Denny had shot who looked surprised to be there. Was everybody in the town in on it and didn’t know it till now?

  It was as if Big Red’s feelings had seeped out of the box and into the hospital room. Denise sensed the colonel’s existential angst, her disappointment in the subsequent generations, and almost felt sorry for the woman. Big Red alone among the group touched the grail and received the vision messages. Big Red alone had to interpret the cryptic messages from the great beyond. Because of the vast interstellar distance, she was never sure of exactly what was wanted.

  “Still waiting,” the colonel said out loud to the Groundlings and the others. “I’m giving them another minute.”

  “We’re always waiting,” Fally said. “And half the time the message doesn’t make sense.”

  Denise, Denny and Jen Song kept staring down through the box on the scene as if watching a chess match, but these pieces were alive and moving.

  “I’m getting something,” Big Red said. “We can use lethal force if they come here. The Song twins were an experiment that is coming to an end. They will be coming here to get the grail.”