“Alan!” The last person she’d expected.
He looked dirty with his clothes and hands torn, but there was a new peace in his expression. He had fought his demons alone—and how much had that tendency to retreat within himself left Lillian alone in life to fight her own battles? Lillian had never been able to count on Alan to be there for her.
It was something Charley had to remember. Before Eric’s death, before she’d lost her hand, she’d been an open person. Communicating with Ambrose, that openness was returning, but she had to be brave and give it to Jack, too. Hiding from him and from life would destroy them both.
“Hello, Charley.” Alan’s eyes widened and he stopped just inside the door to the lab. “Words,” he said softly. He walked closer to the culture dishes of QNA and gave a little laugh. “So you’re Ambrose, now.”
He was silent then for several minutes before he turned and walked out of the room.
“Ambrose?” Charley asked anxiously.
“We were saying good-bye.”
“Oh.” She abandoned the QNA and chased after Alan. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.” He pushed open the side door and stepped out into the sunshine. A cool wind was blowing in from the ocean and he breathed deeply, almost sighing. “The QNA has changed. It’s more…definite.”
“A personality.”
“Mmm.” He smiled at her. “You were good to it. Encouraged it, challenged it, where I never did.” He tilted his head back and watched the clouds overhead sweeping ahead of the wind. “I just liked the QNA as background company. Our communication wasn’t so much interaction as awareness of each other.”
He looked back at her. “I developed a theory about the QNA in the cave, a possible explanation of why human reception of QNA communication is rare. It has to do with grief.”
She waited.
“I’ve been grieving for my parents and the life I was living for a long time. You were grieving for your husband. I don’t think we were depressed, Charley, but we didn’t move beyond our grief, and grief lowers certain neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and norepinephrine. Perhaps that lowered level of neurotransmitters made it easier for the QNA to touch our minds energetically, or to be more precise, the effect of the touch of their energy on our minds was less diluted by the activity of our own neurotransmitters. And if communication with the QNA is a question of neurohormone levels, then they could be altered.”
For all his gentle manner, Charley was struck by the essential ruthlessness of research science. Altering levels of neurochemicals could, would, have effects beyond possible receptivity to QNA communication. Fortunately, there was an obvious flaw in his hypothesis. “A lot of New Hope’s clients come here grieving, wouldn’t the QNA have touched them, too?”
Alan shook his head. “Mostly when people are grieving, they shut in on themselves. They don’t listen. The QNA wouldn’t have been able to get past that psychological block. But you and I, Charley, we’re used to listening.”
It was possible. At the least, it was a starting point to understand the QNA’s energetic communication. “Will you study it?” she asked. “If not at this lab, then somewhere else?”
“No. I said good-bye to the QNA, to Ambrose,” he corrected himself with a smile that faded. “I’m returning to Vietnam. I should have gone a long time ago. They need doctors over there, and I need to find healing where the nightmares started.”
He shoved his hands deep in his pockets. “The QNA told me what it is Solomon fears.” He didn’t pass on the information. “Regardless of the justice system, I could have revenge for Lillian’s death.”
Charley waited.
“I can’t do it. I just want to put all this behind me and start again.”
“I hope you can,” she said, somberly.
“I will.” He touched her face, lightly; almost but not quite, impersonally. “Take care.”
Ted found her standing there, and spoke abruptly. “You were right. My boss is a classic passive-aggressive, but I never guessed how it affected his work. Maybe I wanted to believe him. It’s kind of scary, being so different. It’s like we’ll be the modern world’s freak show. I think that’s why we were so willing to believe the need to retreat to India. We wanted to stay in Australia, but we didn’t want to face up to being ourselves, our new selves, in public.”
She shook off her own preoccupations. “You don’t have to go public. At least, not right away.”
“Soon, though. It’s okay.” Ted smiled at her worried frown. “We’re tough. We’ll survive.” His smile widened into a grin. “And if you stay here with John, you can mother hen us.”
“Bite your tongue. I’m not that old.” But she smiled.
Across the courtyard, Staci Weiss was walking with two other regeneration clients, her crutches moving almost as fast as her mouth. She saw Charley and broke off her conversation a moment to wave.
Charley waved back.
The sight of the toddler-sized leg growing so weirdly on Staci no longer repulsed Charley. It was a sign of life, and of Staci’s eager embrace of life.
Jack had named New Hope well. His clients were chasing new hope, a new future. They weren’t settling for sad, backward-looking second chances.
Not regeneration, but renewal.
“Charley.” For the first time, Ted sounded hesitant. “About the creatures I see…”
“I’d forgotten.” She stared at him. In the urgency of protecting Jack’s work and the QNA, she’d ignored Ted’s reference to creatures existing beyond ordinary sight. “What are they like?”
“They’re not sentient, or at least, I don’t think so. They act purposeful but more like cats than humans. They ignore me, just like they ignore all humans.”
“Do they see us? I mean, if most humans don’t see them, do these creatures operate in a different spectrum where they can’t see us?”
He shook his head. “They avoid our clumsy movements, so they have some awareness of us. There aren’t that many of them.”
“What do they look like?”
“Ah, I think they might be the origin of stories about fairies and gnomes and such like. Even with my enhanced vision, their faces and body shape are blurred. Humans born with the freak ability to see these creatures would probably interpret the sight of them as miniature humans.”
She stared at him, watching the unfocussed look to his eyes. “Why mention the little people now? and why to me?”
“There were more in the QNA lab than I’ve ever seen anywhere else.”
“Oh?” She tried to grapple with the implications.
But Ted forced the major one on her. “I’m wondering if the QNA can communicate with them. Or if the QNA’s gotten to the stage of controlling them.”
She gulped at the idea of Ambrose in control of creatures humans couldn’t see. Well, the QNA had been concerned about balancing out its dependence on humans. She laughed. The world was crazy-chaos. “I’ll talk to Ambrose. But perhaps you’d better be there when I do, so you can see how the little people behave.”
“You can count on it.” Ted smiled his singularly sweet smile. “I’m glad you’re staying.”
“Not as much as I am.” Jack walked up to them.
For Charley, the world faded away at the expression in his eyes. It was love, real, passionate and forever. No games, no reservations, just a man offering her his heart, trusting her with it. Her own love broke free of fear. “I love you, Jack.”
He smiled bright, even as tears glistened in his eyes. Then he buried his face against her hair.
“I love you,” she repeated, stroking his back.
He held her closer, tighter; kissed her. “Tell me often,” he whispered.
She nodded. Neither of them would take love for granted.
Two days later, Charley closed the Jabberwocky website on her phone, and slipped the phone into her pocket as she stared at the creek, a smile curving her mouth. Michael was cleverer, more subtle and, perhaps, more optimistic than she’d g
iven him credit for being. The Jabberwocky Centre hadn’t been named for a dreadful monster of the imagination. It had been named to recall a greater truth.
“Our fear may create the monster—fear of technology, of each other, of change—but then our knowledge and determination, our faith and hope in a better future, slays the monster.” She’d written something like that, a less poetic version, as the ending for her article on sensory bio-enhancement, the article she’d just posted to the Jabberwocky website.
It was true. Humans created monsters from their fears, but they also had the power to kill those monsters.
She would accept Jack’s offer of a regenerated arm.
She breathed deeply of the eucalypt-scented air. It was getting cooler now, with evening drawing in. She was glad to have the opportunity, and the re-found courage, to be part of slaying these particular monsters. She had a new job as Jabberwocky’s semi-resident public relations specialist, shaping public perceptions and expectations of bio-enhancement, and later, of the QNA, humanity’s new sentient neighbor. She smiled. The trio at Jabberwocky, young, good-looking and articulate, would be their own best ambassadors.
“Happy?” Jack had crept up on her again.
One day she’d have to ask him whether, in adopting cat’s claws, he’d gained any other feline characteristics—but not today. She turned for his kiss, moving eagerly into his embrace. “Happy beyond imagining.”
Note From The Author
I’m an avid reader, turned enthusiastic author, and I write as widely as I read. I’ve written in genres from science fiction to Regency romance, from steampunk to contemporary romance set on the coast and in small town America. The only thing I insist on is a happy ending.
If you’d like to learn more about my books, please visit my website (I have all my social media links and VIP newsletter sign-up there) or follow my Amazon Author Profile to have Amazon alert you to my new releases.
Happy reading!
Jenny
http://authorjennyschwartz.com/
P.S. Thank you for your reviews. They are the “social proof” that coaxes Amazon to show my books to readers like you who’ll also enjoy them. Thank you!
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