Parallax (William Hawk)

by William Hawk

  “Sure,” he said.

  Jeremy unfolded a third chair, and William sat down on it. Jeremy handed him the folded script. William began to read it. Then he stopped. He found himself possessed by an idea so powerful that he couldn’t let go of the thought.

  He handed the script back to Jeremy and stood up. “You know what, I just remembered, there’s something else I have to do. Right now.”

  “But . . . ”

  William was already out the door and down the corridor. There is nothing as powerful as an idea whose time has come.

  CHAPTER 14

  HE NEXT MORNING, WILLIAM ARRIVED AT breakfast in the galley with an unusual bounce in his step. He was whistling a tune on his lips. Under his arm was a sheaf of neatly stapled papers.

  “Well, hello,” said Trina.

  He nodded at her, tipping an imaginary cap. He knew full well that he was stimulating interest by appearing to carry a secret.

  “What are you so happy for?” said Hunter. It came out like a snarl.

  William decided to reveal that secret. “Jeremy and Grace gave me a great idea last night,” he said. “Would you like to hear it?”

  “Sure,” said Trina.

  “I have decided that in order to build our sense of empathy, we’re going to put on a stage play.”

  “A stage play?” said Trina.

  “Yes,” said William.

  “We don’t have an audience,” said Hunter.

  “It doesn’t matter if we don’t have an audience,” he replied. “That’s not the point.” He nodded toward Jeremy and Grace. “They were practicing a scene last night.”

  Trina looked at Jeremy. “Really? You’re making plays together? Weren’t you going to invite anybody else?”

  “It was Proof’s suggestion,” Jeremy said.

  “He told me that it builds empathy,” added Grace.

  “So, after I left their room last night,” said William, “I was thinking that performing a play, something where we have to be somebody different from ourselves, and listen to one another, well, it would be an excellent team-building exercise.”

  “It would be a good break from all these snaps,” said Trina.

  “Acting is harder than a snap,” said Grace, “because you have to really put effort into the empathy. In a snap, you just ride the host’s emotions.” She looked up at William. “I think it’s a great idea.”

  He smiled. “Thank you.” Then he walked around the table, passing out the booklets to each of the team members. He’d stayed up late last night making them.

  “So what play is it?” asked Trina, as she accepted the booklet. She read the title out loud. “Oedipus Rex. I don’t know this one.”

  “Yeah, you do,” said Jeremy. “It’s the one where the guy kills his father and marries his mother, but he doesn’t know it’s her.”

  “Gross,” said Trina.

  “I don’t want to do this,” said Hunter, tossing the script on the table.

  “Why not?” said Grace. “This could help us advance to CA3.”

  “It’s, it’s just . . . a stupid idea.” Words evidently failed Hunter, and his face grew dark. He waved everything off.

  A voice from the doorway sounded loudly, so loudly that they all jumped in their seats. “Hunter, why don’t you explain your position.”

  William turned around. It was Proof, standing there, leaning casually against the doorframe. Everybody was a bit alarmed now; he had never come into the galley before, at least not while they were there. He was the coach and kept his distance, staying in his own quarters behind a sealed door at the far end of the hall, just beyond the pod tank.

  Hunter threw down his fork. It clattered on the table. He searched for a response. “I just don’t think . . . it would help . . . the team . . . to advance,” he finally said, nearly spitting out each phrase.

  “But it might help you,” said Proof, entering the galley, circling the table. William sat down with a heavy lump in his throat. He hadn’t spoken to Proof, hadn’t revealed his plan. Proof must’ve been monitoring him, perhaps all of them. William wondered how long he’d been doing that.

  “It definitely could,” said Jeremy. “Just acting that one scene last night, with Grace, made me feel different.”

  Hunter’s face contorted as he wrestled with something deep inside. Proof stood over him, like a scientist pinning down a wriggling insect. “Look, if it’s the consensus of the team, I’ll go along with it, okay? Whatever the team wants.”

  “But is it something you want?” asked Proof.

  William held his breath, waiting for his response. He’d never before seen Proof so directly confront a member of the team. He wondered if their coach knew something that they didn’t.

  “What does that mean?” said Hunter.

  Proof turned to the other members of the team. “Everybody, follow me. I want to show you something.”

  William and Grace exchanged looks as they stood up. This could be going anywhere. Proof seemed to read their minds. “You’re not going to want to miss this.”

  

  Proof led the group down the hall to the debriefing room. Shana was already there, sitting in a chair along the wall. She had a small device in her hand. William felt the tiniest stirrings of misgivings, and for a moment, he even wondered if he could trust Proof.

  “Hello, team,” she said. “Please have a seat.”

  The five members of the team, on edge, took their customary seats. Proof walked in and surveyed the group.

  “See, this is the first of your problems. You’re all stuck in the same mental rut.” He tapped a chair and made a swirling shape with his finger. “Everybody, get up and change seats.”

  “Why?” asked Trina.

  “To get out of your comfort zone,” he said.

  None of the five moved at first. Then Proof clapped his hands. “Come on, people.” They couldn’t look at each other. Jeremy was the first to stand up, albeit reluctantly. Grace was next, then William, then Trina.

  Hunter didn’t move. His arms were crossed.

  “Let’s go, Hunter,” said Jeremy.

  “Shut up,” he snarled, then slowly drew himself out of the chair.

  Slowly, the five members of the team changed their seats. William chose one on the other side of the room and settled in. He understood why Proof was doing this. They’d been in this Change Agent program for a while now, and though their experiences in the snaps were fascinating, even revelatory, they’d all grown a little too comfortable here in their regular bodies and their regular patterns.

  “Now,” said Proof, “do you know where you all have come from?”

  Nobody spoke. William had little memory of where exactly he’d been plucked from before arriving at this base. Just a vague impression of a large box, though he might’ve imagined that, too. Sometimes he thought he had memories from his life, but they turned out to be stories other people told him. He wondered if he was the only person who experienced this.

  “It’s a place called Menoram,” said Proof. “Do you remember what your life was like there?”

  Nobody spoke. William had been told that Menoram was a warehouse of sorts, a spiritual waiting room, but he drew a blank when he thought of it.

  “I don’t think we remember anything,” said Grace.

  “You don’t,” said Proof, “because you did not accumulate any memories prior to coming to the parallax. Did you know that?”

  The group slowly shook their heads.

  “Now, I’m going to show you something that you will never forget, just so you can see what’s at stake for you on this team.”

  He nodded to Shana. She pressed a button on the device. The entire wall of the debriefing room lit up. It was a seemingly endless collection of compartments, a dihedral superplex. The sky was a bright unearthly orange, and little slivers of light pulsed between each of the compartments.

  “That’s Menoram,” said Proof, “and those are the spirit chambers. Each one contains a d
ifferent spirit. Raise the perspective, Shana.”

  Shana touched the device, and the point of view on the wall began to lift up and pull back. William could see that this field was not small. Menoram was in fact a vast field of spirit chambers, containing thousands, millions, perhaps even billions.

  William watched the scene, stupefied.

  “You have been selected from that group,” said Proof. “Out of billions of spirits, yours have been identified as the most likely to progress. In fact, it’s from spirits such as yours that the human race will improve itself.”

  The others had fallen silent. Finally Jeremy said, “Are we supposed to say thank you?”

  That broke the heaviness of the moment. He could always be counted on for a good punchline at a crucial moment. Trina laughed out loud, Grace smiled silently, and William stretched his arms over his head and exhaled. Hunter just sat there, sullen, arms crossed, silent.

  “Thank the Ancient Engineer!” said Proof.

  Hunter lifted a questioning finger. “So why are you showing us all of this?”

  Proof answered immediately. “For one reason: if this team doesn’t progress to CA3, all of you will return to Menoram. And you won’t have this opportunity again. You’ll be back in the cycle of ordinary spirits, for the rest of eternity.” He looked at the members of the team. “So here’s what I want. Right now, I want your verbal commitment that you are going to help every member of this team succeed. I’ll start with Grace.” He turned to her. “Do you promise to help this team succeed?”

  She nodded. “I promise.”

  Proof turned to Jeremy. “Jeremy?”

  “I promise.”

  “Trina?”

  “Yes.”

  “William?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Then Proof turned toward the fifth member of the team. He’d intentionally saved Hunter for last. “And you?”

  Hunter smiled, revealing two rows of sharp white teeth. It was a guilty smile, a false smile, a smile that told everybody the words coming out of his mouth would be pretty little lies.

  “I want everyone on this team to succeed,” he said.

  “Good,” said Proof. He produced the copy of the play from his desk and handed it back to Hunter. “To make that happen, we all have to work as a team. Okay?”

  “You bet,” said Hunter, giving Proof a thumbs-up.

  Proof looked at him for a minute, trying to gauge if he was serious or mocking. His tone was impossible to tell. Then he turned to the group. “You’re free to return to the galley and finish your breakfast. Shana will see you in the pod tank in twenty minutes.”

  Then he left the debriefing room. The others, who had barely dared to breathe during the confrontation, now exhaled.

  “Wow,” said Jeremy. “We just saw heaven. That was the afterlife.”

  Trina turned to Shana. “Can you show us that again?”

  Shana nodded. “Sure, but it never changes.” The image appeared on screen once again, and the team stared at the vast field of spirit chambers. Then Shana added, “Also, you have one thing wrong. You’re not looking at the afterlife. It’s the before life.”

  A movement caught William’s eye, and he turned his head.

  Hunter’s seat was empty. He’d left the room.

  CHAPTER 15

  OUR HOURS LATER, DURING THE PLAY rehearsal, William clutched the hair on the sides of his head, wondering why he’d ever had this stupid idea.

  The play rehearsal hadn’t gone as smoothly as planned. True, the team had gathered in the common area. True, the team members were sitting in a tight circle, holding the printed sides. True, they’d at least made it partway through a rehearsal for a play that would be performed for nobody, but themselves. But they’d been arguing a bit more than usual.

  “Start from the top,” said Jeremy. “Trina, you begin.”

  She spoke in an exaggerated dramatic voice. “My king, I swear I’m not the murderer. I cannot point him out. As for the search, Apollo forced us to do it. He should name the killer!”

  Hunter stifled a laugh. Trina stopped and glared at him. “What is so funny?”

  “You’re a really bad actress,” he said.

  “Let’s hear you read the line, smart-ass.”

  Hunter smirked. “No.”

  William stepped in. “Hunter, this isn’t about the quality of the acting. It’s about getting into the spirit of the character.” He wanted to say a lot more but held his tongue. “Okay, let’s skip ahead to where Tiresias is confronting Oedipus.”

  “What are they fighting about?” asked Jeremy.

  Grace said, “Tiresias is an old blind prophet. Oedipus asks him to identify who killed Laius, but Tiresias says he won’t do it. So Oedipus gets furious and accuses him of doing the murder.”

  “What a loser,” said Trina.

  “I’ll play Tiresias,” said William, “and Hunter, you play Oedipus.”

  Hunter sighed in exaggerated frustration. “I want Grace to start.”

  “Fine,” said William. “But Hunter, you take over at line three seventy-six.”

  Grace cleared her throat and began to read in a clear, noble voice. “The crown the city gave me—I never wanted it. They put it in my hands . . . ”

  William listened to her as she continued. Grace was a natural-born actor, not in mimicry, but in finding the emotional center of a character. And none of them had had much time to read the sides, mark them up, or practice. This was her first time through the scene, and she’d understood the character quickly, without much effort. It was a gift.

  He listened as she finished the monologue. “Rescue yourself. Rescue your city. Rescue me. Rescue everything touched by the dead. We’re in your hands, Tiresias. Helping others with all his gifts and strength is the most noble thing a man can do.”

  When she finished, Trina and Grace broke out into small excited applause.

  “That’s great,” said William, “and now let’s have Hunter pick up with the Oedipus part.”

  “What line again?”

  “Three seventy-six. This is where Oedipus starts to get angry at the blind man because he’s not cooperating.”

  Hunter drew himself up in his chair. William watched him try to inhabit another person. He read in an artificially loud and angry voice. “Tiresias! You know the identity of the murderer and you won’t tell me? Do you want to destroy Thebes? Do you want to destroy me?”

  William noted that the last sentence wasn’t in the script. Hunter had improvised that personal injury. William answered with the blind prophet’s line. “I don’t want to cause pain for either of us. So why this interrogation? You can’t get anything from me.”

  Hunter grew enraged. “I can’t get anything from you! You’re scum! You would make a stone furious! You don’t want to talk? Spit it out!”

  As Tiresias, William remained calm. “Don’t criticize my temper, because the one you have to live with is apparently even worse.”

  Hunter was now authentically angry. The other team members were shrinking back from him. William understood what was happening: Hunter couldn’t emotionally differentiate between the character’s words and his own self.

  “Who wouldn’t lose his temper talking to you? You want this city to burn!”

  William crossed his legs in his chair, like a Zen master. “What will come, will come.”

  “If you know what will come, you must tell me. Don’t deny me!”

  His anger was palpable. William admitted to himself that pretending to be an egotist who wouldn’t be satisfied came naturally to Hunter.

  “I won’t say any more. Do whatever you want, build your anger, raise your rage.”

  Hunter shot to his feet and flipped over his chair. Trina screamed, then clapped a hand over her mouth. He continued: “Oh, I’ll let it all out. I have such incredible fury. I can see it all. You hatched the plot. You did this. You arranged the murder— and I’d bet that if you had eyes, you’d even killed him yourself!”

  �
��No,” said William, “I say that you are the murderer. The one you are pretending to look for.”

  Hunter looked at him with enraged eyes. William sensed that they’d crossed some kind of line, the one that had been drawn between reality and make-believe.

  They held the silence for a few awkward seconds. Grace was the first to break in. “Maybe that’s enough for right now?”

  Hunter threw his paper into the middle of the group and stormed out of the living area. He stopped at the door and turned around and hurled an accusatory finger at William. “I didn’t kill him. You did, William. You did.”

  William froze. Trina’s eyes grew wide, and Grace’s face turned white. William realized that Hunter had gone off the deep end.

  Finally Jeremy cleared his throat and played peacemaker. “It’s just a play, bro. Why don’t you go settle down?”

  “I’ll do whatever the hell I want!” Hunter screamed. He threw the palm of his hand against the door, rattling it in its frame. He disappeared, and the other four team members listened to his ranting grow fainter as he moved down the corridor.

  Grace turned to William. “Maybe we shouldn’t perform this play after all.”

  William’s hands found their way back to the hair at the side of his head. “Yeah, that’s probably for the best.”

  CHAPTER 16

  ATE THAT NIGHT, WILLIAM LAY IN HIS bed, a heavy book on his lap. He’d always been a big reader, particularly novels in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and even horror. Since joining this team, however, he found himself reading even deeper stuff, particularly philosophy and historical fiction and nonfiction. The small library in the galley provided some challenges in those areas. So far, he’d plowed through Being and Time by Martin Heidegger, made it through half of War and Peace by Tolstoy, and skipped Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

  At the moment he was paging through Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, deciding if it was worth a deeper read, when a pair of voices in the hallway caught his ear. It was pretty late for anyone to be awake, let alone having a conversation.