by Aaron Bunce
Jacoby threw his arms around Alexandria, grounding himself to the only thing that made sense in that strange, chaotic little world. She didn’t fight or push back either, but wrapped her arms around him and squeezed.
It didn’t matter that her hair didn’t look right, or her clothes, she felt and smelled like her. He even felt the brush of her long, red hair on his neck. It was real, the ghostly version of her. He just had to focus on making that his reality. Somehow…if that made sense.
“What does all of that mean? Where doesn’t he want to go? What happened here…to me? How do we get out of here?” Jacoby whispered.
“The Betty? It was software Anna didn’t know about. It took over the computers, and when Lana tried to stop it, it fired the engine. Almost tore the ship apart. It threw all of us around pretty bad,” Alexandria whispered back.
“What in the hell is wrong with him?” Erik asked, as the group finally stopped shouting.
“What do you think we should do? Titan is the only option, right?” Shane chimed in.
Jacoby didn’t know what he meant by “Titan”, but pushed Alexandria back, fighting to gain some distance from the others. He looked around the dark, seemingly dismantled room, his eyes searching every strange doorway and feature, struggling to identify an exit. The group was crazy, a powder keg ready to explode. And Jacoby didn’t want any part of it.
“He can’t remember,” Anna said, finally able to gain a foothold within the conversation.
Can’t remember what?
“Shit, that’s not ideal,” Lana breathed.
Erik started to laugh–a biting, cynical sound that silenced everyone else. “You’re telling me he’s been out this whole time. What, ten days or more? And you’ve been saying things like ‘just wait until Jacoby wakes up, he’ll know what to do’ or ‘Jacoby will have an idea…he’ll save us’. So, we all waited and waited and argued…but held off on making any concrete plans because we couldn’t freaking agree and you thought he would just magically wake up and poof, make everything good. Well, shit. Now he’s awake and ironically, can’t remember anything. Cause that’s just fucking great. Yeah, I’ll tell you what, screw the voting thing. Let’s just give him control and he can just save the day, cause that would make perfect sense. We’re screwed, man. F’ing screwed.”
“Put me in charge of what?” Jacoby asked, daring to speak out.
“Erik, stop! That kind of talk doesn’t help anyone.”
He laughed, but there was no humor in the sound.
Jacoby clung to Alexandria like a life raft, afraid of what might happen if he let go. And thankfully, she didn’t push him away. But she did resist as he tried to push her further away from the group.
“Ten days? I want to help, but…”
“We were all on Hyde, an asteroid mining station bridging the lane between Mars and Jupiter, Jacoby. Something happened…an outbreak. We escaped on this ship, the Betty. She’s a tugboat. Ten days ago, we had an accident, a program malfunctioned, and the ship’s engine fired when it wasn’t supposed to. The thrust knocked us all around pretty bad, you especially. You cracked your head open on a seat frame,” Anna said, although the rest of the group inched in closer around them, waiting, the palpable tension rising. It felt like they were waiting for her to continue or maybe expand on something, except she didn’t. Maybe they were waiting to see how he would respond, as if hearing the truth would jar everything loose in his head.
“I was asleep for ten days? We’re on a spaceship, by Jupiter or Mars?” Jacoby said, and before he could stop himself, laughed. “That doesn’t make any sense. How did I…? How could I…? I’d remember something.”
But the group crowded in closer. He tried to move back, to gain more space, but his heels hit a wall. Jacoby turned to Alexandria, her strong grip on his arms loosening. She looked in his eyes and then to the back of his head. He watched as concern tightened her lips, narrowed her remarkable green eyes, and turned, only to find the same expression on all the others.
It wasn’t just her, he realized. They were all disappointed, frustrated, and angry. But not just about the things they’d been fighting about just moments before, but him. He felt it–all the hopes and expectation, riding on what he’d say or do.
“Stop…this isn’t funny,” he said, but they moved in closer still, each touching shoulder to shoulder. Jacoby’s gaze snapped from Anna’s face to Lana, and then Emiko. The strange ghostly outlines moved over and around them now, brighter and more distinct with every step forward. Small bits of walls or furniture appeared only to blur and disappear back into the ether, but it didn’t stop there. He could hear them, too, talking, laughing, and singing, the background chatter rising like an approaching ocean wave.
A twinge bit into his head as Anna moved forward, centrally located and right behind his eyes. He reached up and cradled his face, that throbbing pain burning slowly from the front to the back. As it did, the crowds’ ghostly outlines gained weight and mass, the air moving into and back out of his lungs perfumed by myriad smells.
“We–” a voice said, but he couldn’t tell who it was or where they were speaking from. A weird buzzing, bubbly sensation formed inside his brain.
“Just–” Another voice.
“Want–”
“To–”
“Help–”
“You,” they said together, resonating in his ears and inside his mind. It wasn’t Anna or any of the others. Their mouths were moving, but not in time with the voices. But who…?
Jacoby’s knees went weak, the overlapping sights and sounds piling onto him at once. It was weight…a back-breaking load, and yet none at all. All the light of a bright cloudless day, and yet the darkest sky of a moonless night. The roar of a raging thunderstorm cut by the silence of a windless, foggy morning.
Alexandria tried to brace his weight but ended up easing to her knees next to him.
“Too many…too much,” he grunted, swallowing back a wave of nausea. “How can…help me?”
A slimy, alien pressure moved in his head then, the voices merging until they weren’t talking over one another, but together. It was inaudible, congested before–too many words mashed together. But in unison, he heard it clear. It was his name.
Jacoby peeled his eyes open and realized the transparent people were all moving, pointing animatedly at the ground. His gaze dropped just as a hand appeared, pounding on the floor before him as if it were glass–pounding from the underside…upside down.
“What the…?
The hand punched through suddenly, its form melting as it hit the air—solid fingers dissolving into colorless liquid, only to reform and melt all over again.
The hand waved at him, gesturing wildly, just as a strong compulsion set in. Before Jacoby knew what he was doing, he leaned forward. The floor moved and shifted, the transparent, glowing lines of narrow plank hardwood flooring appearing. He saw the others, too, the transparent overlays of the people standing around him. Only they weren’t transparent, barely recognizable figures there, but fully formed people. He saw Alexandria, Anna, Emiko, and Lana, all the same, but all different from the flesh and blood people around him. They moved, gesturing, and yelling without sound, and pointed to a figure before them. The one with his hand stuck through the barrier separating them. Someone was trapped, reaching for him. No, not someone. It was him…surely. He saw his face, stubbly beard growth, and his messy brown hair.
How does this make sense! I’m mad. Mad!
“There is…someone trapped in there,” he yelled and lurched forward. He did and didn’t really know the people around him, or the chaos that seemed to have them so embroiled, but he also didn’t know how to tell them that he somehow saw himself trapped beneath a second, transparent floor, and believed he needed to pull him out. That everything counted on it. It was all feelings, impressions, and sensations he couldn’t translate into words–not in the moment, not fast enough. So Jacoby simply acted.
Alexandria cried out in surprise, t
he others scrabbling in a moment later. Someone asked him what he was talking about, while others yelled or cautioned for him to stop. But at least two pairs of hands latched onto his suit and arms.
Jacoby swiped at the hand sticking out of the ground. And stranger yet, met solid, warm, and very real contact.
“Coby, stop! What are you doing?” Anna yelled.
“Get him up. He’s obviously not right. Emiko, help!” Alexandria yelled.
“Not right? He’s off his damn rocker. Tie him up before he pops an airlock seal and kills us all!”
More of the group started to shout, their hands scooping or grabbing, their feet tromping the ground around him. The strength combined, Jacoby felt his bulk pulled off the ground, but he refused to let go. The hand lifted out of the ground, exposing an arm, and then a shoulder.
“Why is he so heavy? Shane, are you even helping? Damn, dude, pull!”
“No. My head’s turning beet-red for nothing!”
They heaved, the force almost tearing Jacoby’s hand free, but he felt the pressure in his head. A line of heat split his brain in two, the tension physically crossing his eyes. He caught sight of a head pull free from the ground, just as the face turned up and pulled into an exaggerated smile and threw him a wink. He caught and hovered there, hanging between a half dozen people trying to pull him back, and an invisible version of him seemingly stuck half in and half out of the ground. Although it lasted only a moment, it felt like a lifetime. The contact in his palm, the fire burning in his head, and the weight of countless dream-like realities pressed together around him. He felt, smelled, and tasted them all–New York, Taiwan, Chicago, Iowa, Bodega Bay. They were all him, and he them.
Then Anna yelled. The group surged, and the whole of their bulk went up and over in a pile on the ground.
Jacoby’s head exploded inside–a shower of bright stars, concussive pops, and finally, an electric spasm that shot from his head down his spine, through his balls, and finally to his feet, where every toe curled and popped.
Several heartbeats passed before he could open his eyes. He turned to find Lex next to him, pushing up onto her knees. Her name was there, in the forefront of his mind.
“Lex are you okay?” he asked. She flinched and cocked her head to the side, studying him for a moment.
“You called me ‘Lex’.”
Anna was next to her, Shane laying across her legs. Her head snapped around to Jacoby with so much force that half of her hair ended up in her face. He nodded. But it was deeper than just remembering. He remembered every-fucking-thing—his life with Anna, their ordeal on Hyde, their escape, and seemingly every detail before and after that.
But there was so much more. Every dream he’d lived since passing Poole’s microbes on to help the others was there, too. They all were, each as vivid and real as the last, somehow stacked in and around the moments of his life. They formed a densely packed matrix of sights, sounds, pleasure and pain, joy, and sadness.
Someone pulled on his arm, the strength lifting him easily off the ground. Jacoby fumbled his feet under him and turned, only to find Poole standing like his perfect mirror, their hands still locked together.
“And…I’m back!”
0001 Hours
“You’re back? Back from where?”
“You were gone?” Lana asked.
“No respect. No love. Unbelievable,” Poole said, shaking his head.
“It’s not like that…”
“I can remember, Poole. But why? How? What happened?” Jacoby asked, before the rest of the group could hijack the moment and start their argument anew.
“In a word, catastrophe, or medically speaking—an acute, spiraling, oneirological event. Damaged and hemorrhaging brain tissue, dead nerves, dark neurons…the whole shebang. Kind of like this–your brain was in a car, headed to a renaissance festival, or maybe, a comic book convention, traveling at a high rate of speed. Then you hit a patch of ice, lost control, and hit every vehicle and barrier around you for ten straight miles. The only difference was, in that scenario, it wouldn’t have been me scraping your brain matter off the inside of your skull, it would have been some, poor underpaid firefighter or paramedic.”
“So, it was worse than you led on?”
“Of course, it was. It always is, but I’m always there, inside, to compensate or fix it…” Poole snapped and then in an uncharacteristic move, slumped against his knees. “I thought I could handle it, juggle all the needs. But it became clear immediately after you passed the microbes off that I was not myself. I too was…injured, or damaged in the accident. I honestly don’t know which descriptor is more apt in this situation.”
“What?”
“Okay,” Poole straightened. “I was aware that I was compromised but shrugged it off due to the abysmal state of your head. Normally, you’re the one slowing us both down. But that wasn’t it. Not all, at least. I was damaged physically, but I couldn’t tell. It turns out, unlike you, I don’t have pain receptors. Who’d have thought!”
“We need to…” Jacoby started to speak.
“So as tuned in to everything going on inside your body, and hers, and hers, and theirs, I am equally blind to my own. Strange. Bloody strange. But hey, as they say, that is how the cookie crumbles.”
“I don’t think that adage works here,” Emiko said, quietly.
“…why?”
“That is to say, ‘as the cookie crumbles’ is to accept the way things are after something bad has happened.”
“I’m sorry, but it means exactly what I want it to, that a cookie is crumbling. Stop with all your metaphors, similes, and hyperbole. Language is stupid, especially the one that Jacoby speaks in his head.”
“It’s gotten us this far, Poole,” Jacoby said, cutting in.”
“Yes. And a grand place it is! I speak the language of change, not the verbal grunts and clicks of viral meat sacks.”
“Are you going to be okay? Or do you need a snack and nap?”
Poole waved him off and blew a quiet raspberry.
“Right as the rain. In time…I hope. But let me just say, I am super glad we pulled back together there, because I was really starting to think I would be trapped inside the dark service corridors of your mind, for like, ever! That would suck! The elevator musak in your head is all the B-side non-hits from the nineteen eighties and nineties. Just thinking about it now gives me full body shivers. Well, I can’t actually get those, but you know what I mean.”
“What do you…” Jacoby started to ask, only to have everyone else start to speak at once.
“You said it was ‘no big deal’. Why did you lie?”
“Could he really not remember anything, or were you just trolling us?”
“That wasn’t funny if that was the case. Not funny at all.”
“Are we going to talk about this, cause we need to, like right now! We’re tumbling towards zero hour!”
Jacoby looked from Poole to the others, but he quickly lost track of who said what. They stood, looking to each other, to him, and back again. They moved in, shouting over one another, pushing and jostling, a chaotic swarm of movement and noise.
“Okay, stop, I can only make sense of one person at a time,” he argued and covered his eyes. His stomach was already turning.
They didn’t relent.
“Shane…Lana, hold on…”
A piercing, shrill whistle cut through the wall of noise, just before an arm cut between Shane and Lana, Lex pushing to guide them out of the way. She hooked a hand under Jacoby’s arm and pulled him forward. They were halfway across the galley, then in a doorway, where she pushed him through. Lex planted herself in the doorway then, bracing against the frame to bar any entry.
Jacoby blinked, relieved that the room wasn’t spinning quite so violently. His stomach calmed, too. “Thanks for that!”
“No problem.”
“Okay, before anything else, are you okay? You look like you kind of want to throw up.”
Jacoby no
dded, paused, started to nod again and burped, and remembered the ghostly versions of them that refused to go away. Perhaps honesty was more important. “Okay? I don’t think so. At least I don’t have anything in my stomach right now.”
The thought stuck in his head and before something else could sweep it away, he pushed the issue towards Poole.
“You kind of freaked me out back there. Do you remember calling me ‘Alexandria’? I think maybe I mentioned it to Anna, um, maybe Soraya, but I don’t think it ever came up between us. It’s just a little strange that you woke up, couldn’t remember anything, and immediately called me by my full name. Plus, you kind of grabbed onto me like a life raft back there, it felt like you were afraid of drowning.”
“I think in a way, I was.” Jacoby studied her then, the bristly hair on the sides of her head having grown out, giving her severe haircut a slightly less intimidating, softened appearance. And yet, the other her was there, too—long, auburn locks, pearl necklace, and blue dress. The ghostly version bent forward and threw her arms around him in a hug, while the more tangible, bad ass he knew stood sentry duty in the doorway.
In some small way, Jacoby felt the embrace, but only just. As if she were made up of a warm breeze. Was it possible that two separate portions of him was trying to reconcile two different realities at the same time? Was he seeing what Lex wanted to do, even if she didn’t act on the impulse?
Poole, where did you go? Why am I seeing double of everyone?
“So…” Lex started and paused, half-turning her head to consider the impatient, milling people in the other room. Alexandria did not turn as Lex did. Her focus remained forward on him. Was she crying? Could he touch her if he tried?
Jacoby felt a longing for her—that simple, quiet, and reassuring life, free of gruesome monsters, life and death decisions, and the demands of a damaged spaceship. He felt guilty for wanting it, too–the simplicity of meals around a small table, dancing to an old-fashioned record player, the love of a good woman, and the promise of a family. There was something so attractive about its simplicity. The warmth and ease of it. Plus, he needed to know what surprise she had in store for him. That nagging thought felt like enough to drive him mad.
