by Vern Buzarde
For reasons she didn’t understand, she decided not to mention the dream about the art gallery. The one that had been the most lucid dream she’d ever known, even though it had been her main reason for stopping the medication. She couldn’t get the image of the painting out of her mind. She could still see it clearly, as if it hung in her consciousness.
“In our last session, we started to talk about your father. You were resistant, but if you’re okay with it, I’d like to go back to where we left off. Are you agreeable?”
“I suppose,” Tess said. “But I really don’t think there’s much there.”
Karen got up and sat in the chair next to Tess. “I’d like to get a handle on your past. Mainly your father disappearing while you were a teenager.”
“There’s really not much more to tell,” Tess said. “I’m completely at peace with all of it.”
“You’re completely at peace with the fact that he abandoned you? That your only living relative left you to fend for yourself?
“I was sixteen, already at MIT. Pretty much on my own anyway. He got me that far. Really, Karen. He was a sweet man. I think there were just too many numbers dancing inside his head. I believe he was just trying to hold everything together as long as he could.”
“Was he stable?” Karen asked.
“Stable? Yes. But eccentric. He kept a large chalkboard on wheels in our kitchen. He was always writing on it, sometimes while we ate. But once the sun set, he’d stop, go outside, and stare at the stars. We lived in a small town in the Nevada desert. He always talked about how much he loved it there. Something about the light. The light during the day and the stars at night. He was a mechanic.”
“You don’t think that’s kind of… different? I mean, the chalkboard in the kitchen?”
“Of course. But I accept he was quirky. So am I.”
“Do you have anything to remind you of him? Pictures? Letters?”
Tess touched his silver Zippo lighter through her pants pocket. “No, not really. For some reason, we never took pictures. I’m not sure he even had a camera. But he gave me a knack for math and taught me early on how to develop it. We were doing integral calculus when I was twelve. If I did well, we got to shoot the guns. That’s pretty much how I grew up. As a result, well, you know.” Tess half smiled, raised her palms, and sang, “Ta-dah!”
Karen returned the smile. “So, again, you don’t think that’s kind of different? Never mind. I’ll take your word for it. You’re okay with all things Dad.” She tapped the iPad. What was his name? For some reason it’s not in your file.”
“Harlan. Harlan Carrillo. And for the record, he seemed like a movie star to me. God, that cigarette hanging out of his mouth, his head buried under the hood of an old Chevy. Really, you should have seen him.”
“It sounds like that’s where you got your looks. And your brains. A handsome math geek, I’m guessing possibly a math genius, like you, working as a car mechanic. Did you ever ask yourself why?”
“I didn’t have to. He was totally up front. He said it relaxed him. He liked it. And he could work on equations in his head while he turned a wrench. Well, equations, plural, isn’t quite right. There was one equation he was obsessed with. He would juggle it in his mind all day at work, then head straight for the chalkboard when he got home, like he couldn’t hold it in anymore. Sometimes the numbers were indecipherable because his hands couldn’t keep up with the flow. He was almost in a trance. After every inch of the board was filled, he’d tell me to stare at it.”
“Why a chalkboard? It sounds so… retro… Einsteinish. And why did he want you to look at it? Was it a test? Something he wanted you to solve?”
“Not sure. The chalkboard seemed to help him focus. Maybe he needed a large space to capture everything in one frame. The way he saw it mentally. I think somehow that was his release. Like the numbers just kept propagating in his head to the point he had to exorcise them. And no. It wasn’t that he was testing me or trying to get me to come up with some solution. He wanted me to remember it, memorize what I saw. Almost like he was afraid he’d forget.
“Sometimes I almost think he was composing some subliminal mathematical message. But it changed daily. Every time I thought maybe I had it memorized, he’d come running through the front door after work the next day, and whole sections would change again.” Tess cracked a smile. “Yes, I know. I just described one of the most eccentric men who ever lived.”
“And this went on until…?”
“Until I left for MIT. When I was sixteen.”
“Scholarship?”
“Yes, full ride. Otherwise there would have been no way. I remember looking at it one last time before I left. They were different. He was working in octonions, eight dimensional numbers. Their multiplication rules are encoded into a triangular pattern. The numbers at the end, in the lower-right corner, were pressed in so tightly I could barely see them. I remember staring for several minutes, feeling as though the equation was pulling me in. Then I left. It was the last thing I saw before he took me to catch the Greyhound bus.”
Karen stared deeply into Tess’s almond-shaped eyes, seemingly contemplating her next words carefully, then said, “And you never saw him again?”
“Nope. Like he fell off the face of the earth. Maybe he did. I doubt he’s alive.”
“Well, that’s a lot to digest,” Karen said. “Do you want to keep going or should we break for today?”
Tess smiled. “I’m okay to keep going. I like it here.”
“Then shall we talk about the Essex? About Ryan? Are you up to it?”
Tess had suspected it was coming. That was the main reason she had agreed to continue the session. She felt the need to discuss it all now and understood bringing up her AWOL father had been Karen’s attempt to assess her mental state in order to see if she was ready. Apparently, Tess had passed the test. It had been weeks since they addressed any of the specifics of that day.
“Yes. Let’s discuss the Essex. Let’s talk about Ryan. I’m ready. Let’s move forward.”
Karen smiled. Tess thought her precisely leveled rope-silk hair seemed so elegant. She looked like the inspiration for some perfect porcelain doll.
“When you find yourself thinking about it—”
“I’m always thinking about it,” Tess said.
“Can you summarize your overall feelings at this point? If you were writing a synopsis of Tess Carrillo’s emotional condition, how would you start?”
Tess took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Obviously there’s a lot there. It’s difficult to articulate, so as I try, please remember that putting it in words, for me, is a bit like drawing pictures on a dark cave wall with a can of spray paint. I’ll try, but ultimately, it’s simply not possible.”
“I understand,” Karen said. “Let me help you find the words. The more you’re able to put into words what’s happening inside, the closer you’ll get to moving forward.”
Tess nodded. “Deep inside, there is a part of me that believes it wasn’t real. A play or game or a training exercise. Something in me is convinced all I have to do is solve a puzzle or write a new algorithm, and the whole thing will go away. I am completely aware of how insane that sounds. Fully understand how…” She stared back toward the peach tree and whispered, “That time delay…”
Karen put the iPad down on her lap. “Tess, I’m sure you’re aware that’s because subconsciously you haven’t really acknowledged it yet. You saw it with your own eyes, but the event was too horrific for you to accept. Your mind is attempting to compensate, utilizing its strengths, the areas where it’s superior. An effort to deflect reality. Solving puzzles, creating algorithms, these are all your mind’s superpowers. Tess’s superpowers. But the problem is unsolvable because it doesn’t exist. It’s a false dilemma. There is no puzzle to solve. This will continue until you are able to totally embrace what actual
ly happened. Otherwise, you can’t move on.”
Tess continued to stare out the window. “Maybe. I realize that makes perfect sense. But, for me… in my mind, there’s something else. Maybe it’s just the way it all happened. The surreal nature of the circumstances. But I just have this overwhelming sense that it wasn’t so much an accident or sabotage. More a mistake of fate, and alterable. Doesn’t feel like my mind playing tricks. For me, it feels like a puzzle that’s invisible to everyone else. But it’s impossible to communicate precisely. Even as I hear these words coming out of my mouth, I realize… words can’t…”
“Is there any pattern to your thoughts and emotions about the Essex? About Ryan?” Karen asked. “Any sequence? Can you walk me through the typical thought process?”
Tess looked at the painting of the Hong Kong harbor. She concentrated on a tiny sailboat and again imagined it was Ryan’s, both of them safely asleep inside. In another reality, maybe we are. Right then and there she named it Soul Harbor. She didn’t want to know the real name.
“Sequence?” Tess said. “I’ve never really noticed, but yes, maybe there is a recurring pattern. More like an order of magnitude. I suppose there are certain aspects I can never turn off that play constantly in my mind.”
She paused, scrutinizing her next words, wanting to proceed carefully as she walked the emotional tightrope. “I wonder exactly how it ended for them. If they suffocated first or froze to death. If one is better than the other. How much they suffered. How slowly they died.” She blinked, a large, rare tear sliding gently down her left cheek. “I think about the fact that Ryan was seventy eight million miles away, knowing he was about to die with no time to prepare. The sense of hopelessness he must have felt.”
Karen stared, her gaze warm. “Tell me if this is too much.”
Tess took a sip of tea from a small porcelain cup, noticing the simple wedding band on Karen’s finger. So understated. So elegant. Like mine might have been. “The man I used to call the most human of the human race has been denied even the right to return to the earth he loved for a proper burial. As if his punishment of death wasn’t enough, he’s been cursed with a kind of eternal banishment. Not even allowed the decency of a—” She sat silently, attempting to connect the emotions and thoughts with the words as accurately as possible, but they were diverging.
“His remains, nothing of him is left. Yes, there’s a memorial, but it’s meaningless. I haven’t even seen it. I didn’t go to the service. The whole idea seemed tainted, unseemly. A soulless formality. Like a cheap carnival ride in the parking lot of a strip mall.”
“But, Tess,” Karen said, “that might be a way to connect with your grief. Allow for some psychological resolution. Don’t you think you should visit the memorial? What could it hurt? Obviously part of the problem you’re facing is that you’ve found no formal closure. Funerals are an important part of the mourning process. They’re more than some social construct, excuses for sad family reunions. A funeral is a mechanism for letting go psychologically.”
Tess’s eyes narrowed. “A funeral without anything of him is an abomination to me. I want a real grave I can visit and feel close to something that was him. There’s no place here, on Earth, to honor anything physically remaining of him… I don’t know why, but I just can’t—” She caught herself.
Karen was silent for several seconds, then said, “So we both understand there is really nothing anyone can do about a proper grave. We’ll have to work on ways to find resolution. This is a good start. Identifying these things is the first step.”
“I can’t. Will never… Thinking about the fact that Ryan, Don, their bodies… They’re moving farther and farther away. No end. No finish line. A doomed marathon that will likely continue for thousands of years. Maybe forever, whatever that is. They will race through space, a dead ship encountering things no one will ever see. There’ll be no record of their journey. Nothing to document their endless voyage. No memories of things encountered. They’ll simply float in a silent black void, at an increasingly incomprehensible distance from us. A ghost ship carrying what’s left of two bodies. Knowing that.” Tess looked toward Karen, and they locked eyes. “That’s just the loneliest thought I’ll ever know.”
“I understand,” Karen said. “That’s profound. I’m so sorry, Tess. I really am.”
“I keep thinking about how things like this don’t happen to people like him. It had to be some sort of cosmic mistake. If something like this can happen to him, there is simply no order to the universe. It’s all so impermanent. Just a confused ball of chaos.”
“And you think that you should have rescued him. That you could have saved him. Am I right?”
“Yes, of course. It doesn’t help we don’t understand how the hack happened. Actually, I’d better stop there. The NSA made it clear I can’t talk about any of the specifics of the investigation. That’s really my full-time job now. But yes. I’m constantly searching for an answer. Something I could have done. Realized what was happening sooner.”
“But you never find it,” Karen said. “A way you could have saved him. It doesn’t exist. Am I right?”
Tess nodded, avoiding Karen’s eyes. “Not yet.”
“And now,” Karen said, “after everything that’s happened. Your future. What do you see?”
“The thing that keeps me going? Finding who’s responsible.”
“And then what?”
Tess decided then that this would be her last session. She glanced once more at Soul Harbor and understood, despite Karen’s efforts, it was the main thing she’d take from all this. The painting was part of her. An image she could hold on to. Even though it would only exist in her mind from here on out, it was hers now.
Hers to keep forever.
5
Milo Ackerman stopped and surveyed the barren Montana landscape from an elevated volcanic ridge. He had hiked for over two days and knew the cabin was near. He’d elected to navigate with an old crinkled paper map and a compass. A GPS would have made the trip easier, but getting back to basics was part of the appeal.
He retrieved a pair of scarred binoculars from his pack and looked out over the valley. He had, at most, a little over a mile left. Ten months had passed since he had last been here, and he took comfort that the only change was the green of the wild beardless rye grass, indicating heavy snow from the previous winter. The grass danced in the breeze, folding over like a green ocean wave as a passing cloud spilled sunlight across the valley.
Milo peeled off his tan T-shirt, which blended perfectly with the scrubby weeds, dirt, and rocks. The warm spring breeze cooled the beads of sweat on his back as he savored the beauty of the pristine valley below. He soaked it in, once again in awe of the powerful elegance of this place. The stern, proud mountains to the west had begun to cast long shadows over the tops of the ponderosa pines.
Daniel Fillmore caught up to Milo. He was breathing hard and his face was flushed. “Finally. I could use a break.”
“Not much farther now. We’ll be there within the hour.”
This land had been Milo’s first major purchase after the sale of Ackerman Digital, one of his many successful business ventures. He never got used to the enormity of the place, a perfect, undisturbed masterpiece of nature. There were no roads for thirty miles, and although Milo could have made the trip by helicopter in under thirty minutes, he preferred the two-and-a-half-day hike over rugged terrain, reveling in the serenity, the uncontaminated air recharging him with every breath.
A small herd of elk grazed several hundred yards away, and he wondered how long it would take them to notice his presence. They began to move away, as if something whispered, nudging them. A red-tailed hawk hunted high above, watching for any movement. Milo sat on a rounded boulder and rubbed his thighs; the hike had caused a level of fatigue he didn’t remember from previous trips.
The hawk’s concentric circles tigh
tened, forming a narrowing annulus. Then it dove. In less than ten seconds, it was three feet above and parallel to the ground. A large jackrabbit’s head bobbed above the grass, suddenly in a race for its life. The rabbit zigged and zagged and kicked with everything nature had given it to survive, but there was no outrunning the predator—it adjusted effortlessly. The hawk dove, hitting the rabbit midstride, knocking it over. The rabbit somehow found its footing, leapt high into the air, and continued its desperate flight. It emerged with a fifteen-foot lead and looked as if it would make it to the tree line thirty yards away. The hawk was closing, but the rabbit reversed direction faster than the hawk could, then turned again, bolting for safety in the trees. The hawk corrected, pumped its powerful wings faster, and struck again, this time sinking its talons deep into the rabbit’s back and holding on. The rabbit bucked and leapt in one last, futile attempt, then went limp, either too exhausted to continue or in a state of shock.
Milo contemplated nature’s small drama; it resonated on so many levels. Predators and prey, the way the world had always been. Death in order to afford life. Sacrifice for sustenance. The order of the food chain defined and unchangeable. At least not yet.
Twenty minutes later, they made their way down the ridge and into the valley, and the cabin appeared, tucked into the thick trees next to a small stream. The tiny A-frame didn’t look like much, but Milo beamed at the sight of it. He scanned the exterior, looking for anything out of place, any evidence of intrusion by either people or animals. Everything appeared to be as he’d left it. The windows were shuttered, and grass poked through the six wooden steps leading to the elevated door.
Milo surveyed the solar panels a short distance away in an open area exposed to the sun most of the day, then proceeded to the battery shed. He flipped the switch on the control box and checked the charge—full. He retrieved a small case containing the MCD-4899 auto-pointing satellite-internet terminal, carried it out to the clearing twenty-five yards from the cabin, and placed it on a flat rock.
