Girl with all the Pain

by Michael Herman

  The event is a wakeup call that snaps her out of her panic. Rather than run away blindly, it dawns on her to plot a course of action. Where and who and what? Her mind spins like a roulette wheel and quickly stops on her tall, dark friend. To go to him, she needs the subway. She is adept at using it and, more importantly, it will be the fastest way back to where she last saw him.

  The man bends to help her, smiling in embarrassment as he extends his hand.

  “The subway entrance?” she asks in Spanish when she stands.

  “You’re okay?” he replies, not really registering her question, and more concerned for her wellbeing.

  She turns her hands palms up and looks at them, then checks her feet and brushes herself off nervously. Finally, she meets his gaze and says quickly, “Yes, yes. The subway entrance?”

  He turns, points and says, “The University entrance on Avenue Libertador Bernardo O’Higgins is only a couple of blocks from here.”

  Instantly, she is off in that direction, once again at ten-year-old breakneck speed, flying down the tree-lined Paseo Peatonal Ahumada mallway that is closed to vehicular traffic. She dodges a shoe shine vendor with portable stand, ignores two guitar-playing street musicians, catches (out of the corner of her eye) an upside-down street performer balancing a large ball in the air with his feet, and cuts a wide swath around two helmeted police mounted on horseback at the end of the Paseo.

  At Av Libertador Bernardo O’Higgins, she crosses the ten lanes of vehicular traffic at the pedestrian intersection and then races over to the low concrete wall that surrounds the opening down underground to the subway. Taking the steps with catlike agility, she quickly arrives at a crowd gathered at the entry turnstiles.

  Here she stops and bends over, panting, trying to catch her breath and resting her hands on her knees. Carefully, she surveys the crowd as she always does when getting into the subway system without a pass. When she spies a thin woman in the throng of people, she moves into the crowd and squeezes in next to her, to follow closely as the woman moves towards the turnstile. Keeping a wary eye on the guard overseeing the turnstiles, Isabel makes herself as thin as possible and becomes the woman’s shadow. She matches the woman’s movements, move for move, and they both pass through the turnstile together with the woman unaware of the misdeed. Fortunately for Isabel, the guard that could catch her defeating the fare requirement is focused on a voluptuous woman with sultry dark features only two turnstiles from him.

  Once through the turnstile, she sees the train that is pulling into the station is the one that will take her to her friend. Quickly, she weaves around people, walks to the yellow line at the tracks and then waits. As soon as it comes to a complete stop and the doors open, she moves inside and sits down on a seat facing the door, watching to see if anyone has followed her. No one looks at her, at least not the guard. She has become the black cat shadow; blending in, unobtrusive, cautious and nearly invisible.

  As the train pulls away from the station, her thoughts go back to the event and the loss of her beloved Sister Mary. Tears pool in her eyes and her lower lip quivers. Her head lowers and she covers her anguish with both her hands.

  Why Sister Mary? Why, oh why? She was such a good person. Why did her guardian angel take her from her? Was her guardian angel no angel at all, but really a demon tormenting her?

  By the time she arrives at the Baquedano stop she needs to exit from, she is of the mind that the angel is both evil and callous. Certainly, it saved her from her attackers, but the method was mean and indiscriminate. Why couldn’t her guardian angel distinguish who was harmful to her and who wasn’t? Was her guardian angel just a stupid beast? Lost in mental deliberations over her guardian angel’s actions, she almost misses her exit and, when she realizes where she is, just barely scoots through the doors as they close.

  Up on street level, she begins the little-over-one-kilometer walk to the neighborhood where Sister Mary lives, and where she saw her big friend at the thrift store.

  At the thrift store, when she finds no sign of her tall friend, she worries. What if she can’t find him before nightfall? Where will she sleep? The place he found for her in the building where the boy choked her is out of the question. Sister Mary’s place is no good. She doesn’t have a key to it and worries about going back there without her.

  Her only sanctuary at the moment is the church where she knows she can pretend to be praying just like she has in the past. With that directive, she heads for the sanctity of Iglesia Santa Filomena in the Barrio Patronato district, where she encountered Sister Mary yesterday. Once there, she finds it mostly unoccupied with only a small gathering of people queueing up near the confessional. She takes a place in the back of the pews and sits unobtrusively with her head bowed and her hands folded.

  Chapter 22

  Day 2

  Santiago, Chile

  Father Donovan’s cell phone vibrates in his hip pocket, interrupting his conversation with one of his church lay people. Frowning, he says in Spanish, “Excuse me a moment, Jorge.” Once he has the phone to his ear, he announces, “Father Donovan here.”

  “Father Donovan, where are you? Do you have access to a TV?”

  “What? Why?”

  “It’s Sister Mary. She’s on TV. I just saw her on a newsbreak. They were carrying her out of the Stadium on a stretcher!”

  “What? What Channel?”

  “TVN. Right now. There are many people injured, some killed. It’s terrible. They say it may have been a bomb. It’s an awful scene.”

  Father Donovan thanks the caller, excuses himself and rushes off to his apartment, where he flips on the TV and switches to the state-owned channel TVN. In a matter of moments, he is riveted by the coverage as the camera pans over the National Stadium sports field littered with bodies and vehicles. Multiple ambulances are parked on the field. Sirens in the background of the female news reporter indicate more on the way. As he watches, he looks anxiously for Sister Mary, but the cameras have focused on a vehicle that is sticking out of the ground as if someone pulled a prank. The front end is buried up to the windshield and the rest of the car is angled up in the air, with the rear tires about four feet from the ground. Then the camera switches to two bloody young men sitting on the ground. One is showing off his broken arm while the other is shaking in pain.

  Something happens to the transmission and he realizes he is now being shown earlier footage where gurneys with people are being carried from the field. The news reporter has singled out one of the gurneys to interview its occupant. When the camera zooms in, Father Donovan gasps when he sees Sister Mary’s bloody and disheveled face, barely cognizant of the reporter asking her questions.

  Then the feed is back to live transmission of the news reporter, who is saying that the victims of the bombing are being taken to the nearest hospital, the Instituto de Salud Publica. The speaker moves on to report on the conditions of the victims.

  Father Donovan tunes the reporter out and pulls out his cell phone to call the Instituto de Salud Publica, where the victims are being taken, but gets put on hold when it rings through.

  “Mierda!” he yells in frustration, shuts off his phone, and digs into his pants to find his keys. Before he leaves, he backtracks to his bedroom, grabs his wallet and then marches out the door, not bothering to lock it. Moments later, he is in his car and headed for the Instituto de Salud Publica.

  “What the hell happened?” he wonders. “What was she doing at the stadium? The newscaster had mentioned the student protests. Was she involved in that? It would be unlike her. She was not involved politically in anything at all. What was going on at the stadium that would prompt a bombing?”

  When he almost sideswipes a car cutting in front of him, it snaps him out of his distressed reverie, forcing him to concentrate on driving. He’d be no help to Sister Mary if he got in an accident on the way there. “Calm down and focus,” he tells himself.

  By the time he arrives at the Instituto de Salud Publica hospital, he is
a nervous wreck. Never able to calm down, the thought of Sister Mary being critically injured or worse has gnawed on him all the way there. He races to the emergency room, where he is told to wait with everyone else. Undeterred, he plays the priest card and says that people need his priestly services, especially Sister Mary, wherever she is. In less than five minutes, he is beside Sister Mary, who is lying on a gurney alone and unattended and apparently unconscious. Chaos reigns around him as more and more people are brought in to the emergency room that is being bogged down under the weight of so many injured people.

  Suddenly, a male nurse is at his side. “Father, you are friends with the Sister?”

  “Yes. I’m the parish priest. She is with our church.”

  “Father, we’ve done a cursory check on her and she appears to be just bruised, cut and disoriented. She also had a concussion. Nothing critical. I would recommend a physician going over her more fully, but we are inundated here with much more critically injured people from the bombing at the stadium. Is there another hospital we can send her to where she could get better care? Perhaps Clinica Universidad Catolica? They have an ambulance right outside that can ferry her there. You may be able to ride there with her if you feel the need. I can ask them.”

  “Yes, yes. Of course. Someone will be attending her in the ambulance?”

  “Of course. They can take care of her on the way over. I’ll get them right now.” He rushes away and returns shortly with two men and a gurney. Father Donovan steps aside as they transfer her to the other gurney, and then he follows as they push her towards the exit. When they get to the ambulance, he is there beside her when she suddenly opens her eyes, focuses on him, grabs his hand and exclaims, “Isabel! Where is Isabel?”

  He is stunned. He had completely forgotten about the child.

  “She was with you?” he asks.

  “Yes. Where is she? What’s happened to her? Find her. See to her.”

  Before he can answer, her gurney is pulled up into the ambulance and the doors are shut. As the ambulance drives away, he pulls out his cell phone and phones ahead to the Clinica Universidad Catolica where he has friends and close ties in the medical community. When he makes contact, he prepares them for the arrival of Sister Mary and is assured that she will be given the best care. Satisfied she is in good hands, he goes back into the hospital to find Isabel.

  Chapter 23

  Day 2

  Santiago, Chile

  “What the hell are we dealing with here?” Forbes asks. “Kids fused into a mountainside. Kids fused into a car. People fused and dropped into a stadium? It’s like some wild rampaging mutant madman on the loose.”

  He takes a long pull from his chilled imported Arrogant Bastard ale and then sets it gingerly on the table top. Seated at the table, Sonnet, Zed, Twizzle, and Rafa all look to the twin, who is pacing back and forth in front of the window overlooking the city. She is mumbling to herself and glancing over at them every now and then. Their table is filled with room service food and drinks that Rafa ordered when they all came out of avatar mode. Zed picks up his Pisco Sour, finishes it in one big gulp and says, “The fused part of all of this is the worst. I can’t imagine the trauma experienced by the kids at the moment of fusion. What must that be like?”

  The twin stops, looks over to Zed and says, “Instant confusion, then death.”

  “You’re familiar with this? You’ve seen this before? Where? Is it common?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure what created this. It may be a possible breach in multiverse separations.”

  “Multiverse? That stuff exists?”

  “WMAP,” Twizzle says. “Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. In 2010 Stephen Feeney analyzed the probe data and found evidence that our universe collided with other parallel universes in the past. But a more thorough analysis of the data and the data from the Planck satellite didn’t uncover any statistically significant data that would indicate such a bubble collision. Bottom line, no one knows for sure.”

  “Multiverse exists as quilted multiverse,” the twin says. “Universe is infinite. With an infinite amount of space, every possible event will occur an infinite number of times. Speed of light prevents you from being aware of the other identical areas.”

  “But your species is aware of it,” Zed says.

  “Yours will be aware also, eventually.”

  “As in now?” Forbes asks.

  “Too soon. Not enough data to back it up for humans. But in time.”

  “Yet, it’s a problem now,” Twizzle says.

  The twin nods and then turns back to the window. “This is unprecedented; the cloaking, the trivial use of exorbitant power, the unbridled display of horrific results. It’s juvenile and suggests an entity out of control, a being that knows not what it does.” She turns back to them and says, “The display of escalation might indicate that it’s testing its abilities. The use of humans as subjects indicates a species separation.”

  “Like humans using rats to experiment on,” Rafa says.

  “It is more powerful than you, isn’t it?” Sonnet says.

  The twin slowly bobs her head back and forth.

  “Damn!” Forbes breathes. “Damn, damn, damn.”

  “Once it detects you, it could fuse you and any other Gi, rendering you dead, correct?” Zed asks.

  “Dead and unable to help humanity,” the twin says.

  “With power like that, it could wipe out the whole human race or anything else it wanted,” Sonnet adds.

  “Possibly, or it could wither with the use of its abilities,” the twin says.

  “So you feel this is not a technological advancement, but a physical ability?” Forbes asks.

  “The signature indicates complete immersion, full body contact, like a jellyfish surrounding its prey and digesting it. It is fully animal, just as we all are.”

  “Why now? What do you think triggered it? And why was the Gi network unaware of its arrival?” Forbes asks.

  “It may have been here before us or as long as us. It’s an unknown,” the twin says.

  “If it were here before you, then its sudden appearance means it’s only now awakened, or maybe it’s only now evolved,” Forbes says.

  “Both are possibilities,” the twin responds.

  “But I ask again, why now? What triggered the sudden use of its power and why here?” Forbes asks.

  Twizzle frowns and then suddenly blurts out, “Breakthrough Starshot. It knows we are preparing to launch probes that will ultimately take us to the nearest EDEP (Entangled Dark Energy Point). If it’s using last-resort powers then one might conclude that as it uses them, it damages itself as well.”

  “The only way it could know about Breakthrough Starshot is if it is linked to humans as Gis are,” Forbes says.

  The twin whirls around and says, “Quite likely. We have sensed the presence of others for millenniums, but concentrated on those we were linked with.”

  “You knew?”

  “Humanity is filled with groups that have unconscious links to each other. Some are more aware of it than others. The human mind extends beyond the confines of the skull. You all know that,” the twin says.

  “Only because you make us aware of it,” Zed adds.

  “Of course. And your specific links are of a different sort, but the links exist and always have. Past variations of humanoids depended on it more than current species. Lower level species that humans consider fauna and flora all have linkages of some degree. It underlines all communication. The network of Gis on this planet simply enhances what already exists among humans. We did not create it, we just use it,” the twin says.

  “And the Gi that covers this planet, the Gi that our parents are now part of?” Zed asks.

  “They are a new lifeform. They are an evolved form of us, a merge of humans and my species made possible only with the help of the future Gi.”

  “They are no help to us?” Sonnet asks.

  “Their reality is in a different realm. They are inextri
cably entwined in the heliosphere. They are a different matter, different energy, and different timeframe with different priorities. You would call them cosmic children as they are still in their infancy and slowly feeling out their domain. When the moment comes, they will exercise their will and push back against what must be thwarted to prevent the scorching of the Earth. Their concern is long-term. Ours is immediate.”

  Sonnet twists her lips and nods in semi-understanding. Her parents, that are no longer her parents and no longer human, are part of the Earth’s eventual shield against the coming storm of radiation from a future supernova. Something she has contemplated only in passing and something she has never fully grasped.

  “So what do we do?” Zed asks. “Just wait for the next occurrence and hope we can pinpoint the source?”

  Suddenly, the entire room begins to sway like a ship on water. Everyone’s eyes go wide and Twizzle exclaims, “Earthquake!”

  Everyone becomes nervously silent as the rocking continues unabated for more than a minute and then finally ceases with a bump.

  Zed pulls his laptop in front of him and accesses the website that tracks earthquakes in Chile. He flips through it and grunts. “Nothing. Too soon. Have to wait for them to report where the epicenter is.”

  “Two earthquakes in two days. Is that standard?” Rafa asks.

  Forbes shakes his head and Sonnet says, “Maybe we should consider getting rooms in a building that doesn’t go so high in the sky.”

  “Like maybe a one-story building,” Twizzle suggests.

  “Like maybe bungalows on the beach,” Rafa says.