The Real

by James Cole

  “What is all of this?” he asked.

  “Open your mind and experience the real,” she replied, and with a fluttering of her angel’s wings, she flew up and away.

  She ascended toward the lighted sphere in the sky, which was larger and more distant than Jeremy initially thought. In the instant that the ball of light enveloped her, thunder clapped and white torrents of snow – not rain – spewed forth from above. Gleefully, Jeremy spun around with arms outstretched and eyes fixated on the heavens, unconcerned with the precipice beside which he danced and oblivious to the old woman still crouched at the cliff’s edge. Nothing existed, save the marvelous music, the thunder snow, and the supernatural disco ball pulsating in the sky.

  Jeremy felt as he did as a child, alive in the moment; living in a dream.

  I am alive!

  *****

  When Jeremy awoke, he was back in the confines of the tent. He felt as if he might be glowing with white light but the darkness refuted that supposition. He put his hand on Jinni’s shoulder, meaning to wake her, but thought better of it. There was no way he could put into words the feeling of the experience, which he would henceforth refer to as his vision of the real.

  Chapter 6

  Sunday, September 21

  On Sunday morning, Jinni and Jeremy slept in as late as the cacophony of bird calls would allow. Leisurely, they packed up and made their way toward the endpoint of their long weekend. The river’s current slowed considerably as they approached the lake, requiring more constant paddling. By noon, the banks of the channel opened up to the unrestrained waters of the lake. They dug in for the last five miles of their journey, working together in a concentrated synchronicity of exertion. In silence they toiled, the only sounds their rhythmic breathing and the choppy lake waters lapping like dogs at the heel of their canoe.

  The lake, like the river that fed it, was vacant except for a single speck of a boat in the distance. After twenty minutes or so they passed between it and the shoreline, close enough to identify it as a houseboat sitting still on the water. Jeremy caught sight of a sunbather on the roof. As he watched, the shapely girl sat up. Even at 500 yards Jeremy could she that she lacked any bikini top. And why not? Hers was the only boat in sight.

  “What’cha looking at, Jeremy?”

  For a moment he had forgotten about his companion in the rear seat of the canoe and the sound of her voice startled him. How long had he been staring? Caught, Jeremy tried to gloss over it by asking, “Do you realize that she is the first human we have seen since Friday?”

  “And when’s the last time you’ve seen a girl sunbathing topless?” Jinni asked accusingly.

  “Oh, is she? I hadn’t noticed,” he said, feigning innocence.

  “Yeah, right,” came Jinni’s good-humored reply.

  In not-so-good humor, Jeremy muttered, “Nobody in this canoe will show me anything, that’s for sure.”

  He didn’t bother checking to see whether Jinni heard him or not, but it didn’t matter anyway. It wasn’t the first time he had voiced similar complaints.

  At half past two they reached Sticks River Landing. Tavalin was supposed to meet them here at two o’clock but, predictably, he was nowhere in sight. They unloaded their gear onto the old rickety pier and used their last bit of energy to carry the canoe to the rack in the back of the parking lot. As instructed, Jeremy used the combination lock supplied by the outfitter to secure the canoe in the rack. Just when Jeremy was about to bad-mouth his unreliable friend, up pulled Tavalin’s little yellow Honda, tooting its Herbie horn as it approached.

  Chapter 7

  Monday, September 22

  Jeremy stared in disbelief at the digital display as he marched angrily toward the back of the lab. He opened the incubator door to find a great deal of work wasted.

  “What a piece of junk!” he exclaimed, slamming the door shut.

  “Problem?”

  Jeremy whirled around in the direction of the voice. Filling the doorway was the plump frame of Dr. Skip Sloan, Jeremy’s immediate supervisor. Dr. Sloan was not a tenured professor but rather a post-doctoral student whose job was to teach classes and to supervise a subset of graduate students that ultimately answered to Dr. Cain, the director. The grad students were supposed to refer to the post-doc supervisors formally, as in Doctor Sloan. While it was true that the post-docs had doctorate degrees, they generally only stayed for a couple of years until they accrued enough research publications with their names on them to land a real professorship. Like the grad students, the post-docs were low-paid, temporary workers that generally did not command much respect. Skip Sloan made matters worse by his sour disposition. Moody, sarcastic, and petty, his position of authority did not sit well with Jeremy, and that was putting it nicely. To his face, Jeremy honored protocol and called him “Dr. Sloan”, but behind his back Jeremy used the more demeaning moniker of “Skippy.”

  “The thermostat on our incubator locked up again,” replied Jeremy. “That’s two weeks’ work wasted.”

  “Remind me this afternoon after the group meeting and maybe I’ll help you tweak a few wires.” Dr. Sloan pinned a wooden smile on his face with his donkey teeth.

  Yeah, right, Jeremy thought to himself. Maybe you will and maybe you won’t.

  Skippy had a habit of pretending to be helpful, but when it came time to do the work, he typically conjured up some excuse as to why he couldn’t help.

  “Meanwhile, why don’t you look up the part number and order a new thermostat,” Skippy continued.

  “Will do,” Jeremy said. “Did you say ‘group meeting’? What group meeting?”

  “I told everyone else Friday,” Skippy replied in a biting tone. “You were nowhere to be found.”

  “I told you I would be out Friday,” Jeremy countered.

  “Not my fault,” Skippy said. “And, by the way,” he added, “you are slated to present your work to the group today.”

  “You’re serious? Me? Today?”

  “I didn’t stutter, did I?”

  “Couldn’t we put it off until tomorrow?” Jeremy asked, lobbying for a reprieve. “That way I could prepare some tonight.” It was tough for Jeremy to beg, but he tried anyway and offered what he hoped was a pitiful please-don’t-make-me-do-it expression.

  Skippy ignored Jeremy’s objections. “Downstairs in the auditorium, two o’clock.” He was almost out the door before mentioning in a tone that sounded almost gleeful, “Also, just to warn you, Dr. Cain is going to listen in.”

  Before Jeremy could ask why the chairman of the department would be attending their group meeting, Skippy was gone. Speaking to freshmen lab students didn’t bother Jeremy as much as it once did, but he still got anxious in front of more knowledgeable audiences and the incident involving Dr. Cain in the lobby only increased Jeremy’s apprehension.

  The balance of the morning, Jeremy spent organizing his notes and worrying. At five till two Jeremy sat on the front row thumbing through his transparencies and trying desperately to recall the words that went with each one. At least with the visual aids he could direct attention to the screen and away from himself. Sustained eye contact with members of the audience, he had discovered, tended to disrupt his train of thought, as if they were not mere humans but rather evil, alien brain-snatchers.

  Dr. Cain and a small entourage of grad students arrived a few minutes after the designated time. Even though Dr. Cain was technically Jeremy’s research advisor, Jeremy was only one of approximately forty grad students working under him. Besides an initial brief interview, Jeremy had only the rare occasion to speak to the man and then usually only in passing. Only a few of the most gifted grad students were assigned to work personally with Dr. Cain, while the vast majority, including Jeremy, were left to toil in obscurity under post-docs like Dr. Sloan.

  Dr. Sloan recognized their distinguished guests and gave a brief overview of his group’s research goals. Jeremy waited impatiently, his stomach in knots and the Sahara in his mouth. Finally, with
little ado, the floor was his. He stood and turned hesitantly toward his audience as if facing an execution squad.

  Jeremy swallowed hard and began, “The major aim of my research is to produce a viral vector potentially useful in the exciting new field of gene replacement therapy.”

  Jeremy heard his voice quiver and saw the slight shake of the pointer shadow on the projection screen as he tried, in vain at times, to remember those same canned lines he had memorized for the departmental seminar earlier in the summer.

  “The primary goal of my work is to genetically engineer a virus to insert a gene of our choosing into the host cell. There are currently more than four hundred diseases that are known to be caused by a defective gene. Viral vectors, such as the one I am attempting to assemble, are just beginning to be used as a cutting edge treatment for genetic disease. In short, the major goal of my research project is to produce a viral vector capable of adding a gene to the host DNA. Now I’ll discuss some of the methodology we employ to transform a native virus into a tool for specific genetic transfer.”

  At the conclusion of the customary question-and-answer session at the end, Jeremy exhaled a breath of relief, a little too obviously, eliciting some good-natured laughter from his fellow students. He was afraid he invoked an awful, empathetic reaction in those trying to listen, dragging them laboriously with him to hell and back. Now, he supposed, they were back and everyone could be relieved, their tours of duty complete.

  Everyone stood and Dr. Cain offered a smile and a handshake. Standing beside and slightly behind Dr. Cain was a young Asian student whom Jeremy knew to be one of the few students privileged to work as one of his personal research assistants.

  “Jeremy, do you know June?” asked Dr. Cain.

  “Yes, of course,” replied Jeremy. “How are you, June?”

  “Very well, thank you.”

  To say that they knew one another was a stretch. June Song’s lab was just down the hallway from Jeremy’s, but his only interactions with her had been brief in passing.

  Preemptively, Jeremy apologized, “Sorry for the awkwardness of my presentation. These things make me very nervous.”

  “I must say it wasn’t the most polished delivery but you’ve got plenty of time to work on that,” Dr. Cain said. “I really have only one question for you.”

  “Yes sir?”

  Dr. Cain had a suave, politician-like air about him and even Jeremy felt besieged by his deft charm, if not by his authoritative position.

  “Do you think you could take the time to work with June and walk her through the virus cultivation procedure?”

  This was strictly a perfunctory gesture since Dr. Cain was, after all, the big boss.

  “Of course.” At this point, Jeremy would have agreed to roll naked on a bed of hot coals, so relieved he was that his presentation was over.

  Dr. Sloan, who had been itching to get into the conversation, tossed in his two cents worth: “Obviously, Jeremy,” he began in his droning manner, “it will be necessary to verify whether we have successfully added a gene to our vector and since Dr. Cain is the undisputed expert on gene sequencing,” he added, as he directed a brown-nosing wink in the director’s direction, “we are very fortunate to be invited into a more direct collaboration with his group.”

  “I’d like for us to get started on this right away,” Dr. Cain continued. “June will shadow you for as long as it takes for her to learn how you do what you do.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” Jeremy turned to June who had been standing quietly by, and asked, “When would you like to start?”

  Before June could answer, Skippy, eager to reassert his presence, interrupted. “Why don’t you two work out a compatible schedule, Jeremy, and I’ll fill you in with more details later on.”

  Jeremy was happy to be dismissed from the company of the professors and extremely relieved that Dr. Cain did not mention the incident in the lobby.

  Maybe, thought Jeremy with a hidden smile, Dr. Cain is just embarrassed. Jeremy could still hear the way Dr. Cain had shrieked – like a hysterical woman – when Tavalin jumped out.

  Jeremy accompanied June upstairs to her desk, which was situated just inside the door to the main laboratory complex on the fifth floor of the Facility and just down the hallway from Jeremy’s lab.

  “How long have you been living in the States?” asked Jeremy. “Your English is very good.”

  “I’ve been here for two years,” replied June.

  “I can’t imagine having to learn all this chemistry in a non-native language. I have trouble understanding the lectures as it is.”

  June laughed. “The chemistry I understand. Learning the nuances of the English language is a great deal more difficult.”

  June explained how she had added an “e” to the end of her given name, “Jun”, so there would be no confusion as to the pronunciation of her name. Her stylish clothes and contemporary haircut were in sharp contrast to that of most of the other Chinese graduate students working in the Facility. June was an attractive young woman, but Jeremy thought that her most distinguishing characteristic was her intelligence, which seemed to radiate with a palpable energy from her coffee-brown eyes.

  “Did my talk raise any questions in your mind?” asked Jeremy. “I’m pretty sure I left out some stuff.”

  June opened her notebook, and they discussed various aspects of his project. In less than an hour, Jeremy suspected that his new coworker had a better grasp of the material than he did.

  “When would you like to start?” she asked.

  “I guess as soon as we get our incubator running again,” replied Jeremy. “The new thermostat should arrive in a few days.”

  “We have plenty of incubators here,” said June. “We can start right away, if you like.”

  Jeremy could see that June was going to work him hard and groaned inwardly. “Before we get into all that, I was thinking about getting something to eat. I skipped lunch today. Would you care to join me?” he asked.

  They shared a pleasant conversation over a mediocre meal, which they ate on the black wrought-iron tables outside the Student Union. It intrigued Jeremy to learn how life had been for June, growing up in Red China.

  Chapter 8

  Saturday, September 27

  If not for the dead space between the songs blaring in his headphones, Jeremy would not have heard the spotter’s declaration: “One minute, forty-four seconds behind the leader, three miles to finish!” he shouted as Jeremy loped by.

  Jeremy thought he must have misheard. He had always been a middle-of-the-pack racer, consistently finishing with respectable times but rarely coming close to placing in his age-group, much less in the overall.

  Though crunching numbers in his oxygen-deprived state was difficult, he reviewed his progress, starting with the swim. As always, he swam as a man unto himself, ignoring the other swimmers except when they happened to get in his way or vice versa. His swim strategy consisted of nothing more than concentrating on his technique while aiming for the next buoy. Upon his exit from the water, Jeremy had no idea if there were six or sixty racers ahead of him. He assumed the latter. As for his swim time, it did seem faster than usual but that anomaly could easily be explained away: Triathlon swim courses were notorious for their imprecise measurement. Apparently, setting up a swim course of accurate length in the open waters of a lake or ocean isn’t the simplest of tasks.

  Jeremy had been a bit surprised that no one overtook him on the bike leg, his weakest of the three disciplines. During the ride, he had assumed his handlebar-mounted computer was on the blink. He had been training for triathlons for three summers and knew the average speed it indicated to be far beyond his historic capabilities. He couldn’t understand how it could be so, but now, in light of his lofty standing in the race, Jeremy wondered if maybe it had been right all along.

  Jeremy was close enough to the leader to recognize him as last year’s winner of the Fryin’ Bacon Triathlon. The wagging of his trademark ponytail
gave him away. Amazingly and inexplicitly, Jeremy began to reel him in. Jeremy’s first thought was that Ponytail must be injured or sick and lagging because of it. With two miles to go Jeremy timed the gap that separated them at 55 seconds. At the one-mile-to-go mark Jeremy had shaved another 25 seconds off his lead. At 200 yards Jeremy moved to within ten paces. It was now or never. Ignoring the pain, he forced his legs and cardiovascular system to full exertion. With each stroke, sweat slung from his arms like rain from a windmill. Ponytail acknowledged Jeremy’s presence with a quick peek over his shoulder. Jeremy suppressed the urge to smile and instead put on his best game face. Ponytail picked up the pace slightly, but Jeremy could tell from his gait that he was already maxed out. Jeremy felt good but never better than when he pulled alongside and accelerated past, a mere 50 yards from the finish.

  “Unbelievable!” Jeremy exclaimed as he crossed the finish line to the cheers and applause from the sparse but enthusiastic crowd.

  After exchanging congratulations with the second-best man and helping himself to the complimentary refreshments table, Jeremy lollygagged back to the finish chute to wait for Jinni. He applauded politely for the other racers as one by one they filtered through but cheered wildly when Jinni appeared over the rise. As she sprinted in, she threw a broad smile Jeremy’s way.

  Jeremy caught up to her at the water coolers. “Good race,” he said. “You beat last year’s time, didn’t you?”

  “Yep – almost a minute faster.” Jinni gulped water between gulps of air. “How’d you do?” she asked.

  “I won,” he deadpanned.

  “Yeah, right,” she replied sarcastically.

  “I was the first one across the line,” he said, trying to make her believe. “I beat last year’s winner by a couple of steps and shaved 25 minutes off last year’s time.”

  Jinni could see that he was serious but could not quite grasp this unlikely result. “You’ve hardly been training,” she said.