Damario knew different; she likely fainted because she had dreamed of them. “Since you said you’ve never been here before, let’s go back to the events leading up to you getting here. Start with when you woke up and be as specific as you can.”
Like the past six days, Quinne had awoken completely covered in sweat. Sleeping in just a pair of black mesh shorts and a tank top did nothing to cool her off, and Troy, her cool-by-nature boyfriend, insisted on full covers. They lessened the effects of the cooling mechanism at her bedside. She told him her night sweats were from hormones or the apartment’s overactive heating system, but she secretly feared Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
“I woke up ‘bout 7:30. Turned the window tint down to get some light in the bedroom. Washed my face, threw on tights and a hoodie, grabbed my tunes and went for a run. Helps clear out my head.” Or make sense of what’s in it.
“Whereabouts?”
“East side – Lowery homes.”
When Quinne mentioned the low-income neighborhood, Harper visibly recoiled. She hated that run-down side of town.
“You always run that early?”
“Not always.” She twiddled her fingers. “Why? Does it matter? I get up early. I run early. Ain’t got no job. Might as well.”
“Rough neighborhood to be running in the dark,” muttered Harper.
“I ain’t scared. You sound like Troy. He thinks I should be scared, too. For what? You gonna stay in the house, scared all the time? Not me. I gotta Ordnance for all that. And yeah, gotta license for it, too.”
Damario mentally dissected the answers. “Right. Continue, please.”
“Ain’t much else to it but that. ‘Bout a half block from here, got a cramp. Thought you and her was better than anyone in the liquor store.”
“Have you been having dreams, Quinne?”
Gunshots fire. Troy lyin’ in black blood. His eyes stickin’ open like a deer crushed in traffic. Blackout. I scream in a hospital bed, pregnant – ‘bout five months or so. Blood. Lots of blood. “No.”
“Nothing?” Incredulous, Harper pressed. “Seriously? Both of us have.”
“I said, no!” she yelled back.
Damario knew different, but he would not push. “This Troy. . .”
“My boyfriend? Moved outta my momma’s house couple years ago and we moved in together.”
Anibel Ruiz, a Bible-thumping Catholic, did not approve of her teenager’s active sex life, so Quinne moved out. The concept of an afterlife, or a prior life, as it were, was a waste of thought to Quinne. The present – where she lived, breathed, achieved, and failed, held more importance.
“And you’ve never been in a room like this before? Officer Coley and I have, and we both possess these dream-like memories of all three of us being here. . .in a round room.
“You were sitting here,” Harper said, pointing out a specific chair, “between us. Another woman beside you, and, we think, someone else on the end. It could’ve been my husband, Micah. He’s been missing for about a week.”
Damario stepped forward. “My dreams are much less conclusive, but I am in one of these chairs, strapped down, with a tube in my mouth. Had the same dream over and over. Keeps me awake at night. You don’t remember anyone? A name, or anything?”
Quinne put a hand to her lips. Her memories were reminiscent of Damario’s and Harper’s, and while she did not remember encountering them before, she did not completely doubt it. With folded arms, she divulged her dream – from murdered boyfriend to pregnancy gone wrong.
“If what we’re describing are dreams,” Damario said aloud, “it makes sense why we only remember bits and pieces, doesn’t it?”
The women agreed. “But it doesn’t make sense that you were here, totally conscious, or why we all see different versions of the same things. All this started happening for us over the past couple days. What about you Quinne?”
She shook her head. “Four days.”
“Detective?”
“Same.”
“Why ain’t your boys handlin’ all this and figurin’ it out?”
“They’ve been here, Quinne,” he corrected. “The machines are all gone.”
“Great.” Harper sighed. That technology might have provided a clue to Micah’s whereabouts. “So, what do we do now?”
“We leave,” he said with certainty.
“Wait, to go where?” She limped in Damario’s direction. “The two of you ain’t gonna just show up, throw my life around, and go about your business. I ain‘t goin’ nowhere ‘til I get some more answers.”
“Nobody’s saying we step out into the hallway and forget.” Damario’s temperature rose. “But sitting around in an empty room, trying to remember isn’t going to help, either. You don‘t solve a puzzle by looking at the shapes of the pieces you don‘t have. You look what you do have and how the missing pieces fit the spaces.” He pointed at the room’s front. “Five chairs: you, me, plus Harper then Micah, I’m guessing, that’s four.”
Harper thought the policeman had a valid point. “And the fifth person?”
“Teanna Kirkwood,” Quinne blurted without thinking. “Her name is Teanna Kirkwood.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
January 28, 2050
Harried by the delayed red-eye flight, Teanna ordered alcohol, starting off with a Fuzzy Navel on the rocks. The event called for a celebration. After a month away from the west coast, the trip demanded she let loose. Teanna wore her best business suit, designer heels, and a Zara Hristoff clutch with no practical use.
A tumbler ascended from her first-class armrest. Shaking the ice cubes back and forth until her palm cooled down, Teanna sipped, her lips filtering the liquid from the ice. Exactly what I needed. Soon, her stilettos found their way to the storage area beneath her seat. The passenger sitting next to her – an impeccably-groomed Asian in his mid-30’s, smiled at her. She hoped his warmth originated from mutual attraction and not an alcohol-fueled illusion.
“Hi,” she laughed with a tipsy lilt.
“Hello,” he responded, with a slight Korean drawl. He had been too busy manipulating his computer display to speak. The man rested his chin on his left hand, which bore an expensive-looking band on his ring finger. That did not deter Teanna, who had fooled around with a married man before. The risk of getting caught jumpstarted her heartbeat. She had a thing for Asian men.
“Teanna Kirkwood.” She extended a hand, which he tenderly accepted.
“I know who you are, Teanna.” His throaty baritone plucked her strings. “I saw you at the police precinct, by the tree.”
“Oh yeah?” She volleyed more flirtation his way. “We’ve met? I don’t think so ‘cause I would’ve remembered you.”
He flashed a winsome smile. “You don’t remember me?”
“Really don’t.” She swallowed the last hint of her drink. “You a cop?”
“No, I’m not. Why do you ask?”
“Met this guy, right? Boxes like Pacquiao, but he ain’t a good boyfriend. Go out of town for the real estate conference I just came from, he follows me, makes a scene.” She stifled a belch. “That’s when they got him. They prolly want me to press charges.”
“You're a chatty one, aren’t you?”
Teanna adored the way his lips formed words underneath a trimmed mustache and chin goatee. “Yup. Guess I am, mister. . .?”
“Chu,” he answered. “Miles Chu.”
“Miles Chu. You were at the police precinct? What for?”
“Mistaken identity. You can imagine the amount of problems that can cause.”
“Wow!” Her response rang with fake amazement. “What do you do. . .Mister Chu?”
“I’m a scientist.” He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a vintage red die – the kind used in Vegas gambling – and placed it on her tray table. “I’ve been studying a complex mathematical theory, but I’ll give you the short version, if you like. Pick a number, from one to six.”
Teanna blinked her eyes. “Hol’ up.
I need a drink ‘fore all that.” She disposed of her empty glass inside the automated tray table and summoned another Fuzzy Navel. After sipping it, she waved her hand for Chu to start. “Why six?”
“It’s complicated. Pick a number, from one to six.”
“You pick one.”
“Alright, I’ll pick the number five. No matter how many times you roll this six-sided die, it has a one-in-six chance of falling on the number five.”
Teanna made sense of what he said, even while weary, with impaired faculties and an empty stomach. “Okay, I’m with you.”
“If I fix the die on one side, the odds increase that you will get that five.”
“I’m not a bettin’ girl, but I’d take a fixed bet.”
“Of course.” Again, he grinned. “Who wouldn’t?”
“Wait. You an odds maker? That sounds borin‘.”
“Let me finish. Apply that concept to a person’s life. Everyone has regrets; things they want to change about the past. Given the opportunity to go back and fix a bad decision, would you do it?”
Besides her ex-boyfriend, the heavyweight, no regrets immediately popped into her head. “No doubt.”
“Not if your second chance had an 83 percent chance of going wrong.”
The explanation caught on. “Fix the odds ‘fore you choose?”
He nodded. “Essentially.”
She realized he was not finished. “So, what’s the problem?”
“The impossibility of time travel and, as with all gambles, your win is another’s loss. The house would not exist, if it lost more than it won. What would the betting world be without it?”
Now, the man did not make sense. “Not followin’.”
“Ecology, economics, politics, sociological studies – the change or unsettling of one unchecked factor could throw the entire system into anarchy.”
Like that, the stranger had drained all of the joviality and flirtation from their conversation and reduced it to a diatribe on consequences. It killed Teanna’s percolating libido which, prior to this conversation, had been humming along like an engine needing spot tuning.
“Somethin’ changes and destroys whatever – so what?” She snatched the die into her palm. The alcohol plus hunger made her flippant. “However the odds change, no one will ever know they caused it, will they?”
“If you can figure that part out, use this.” He handed her a thumb segment-sized gold disk with Exodus Foundation printed on it and returned to his reading.
She did not continue the discussion. His theory interested her in the silence of her thoughts. Teanna examined the die. He fired her up over the potential of a wild hypothesis and now it bothered her without further explanation. Chu left his seat for the bathroom.
Teanna crossed her arms and flicked on the in-seat HTV to a documentary about President Ramsey Mateo’s rise to power and recent inauguration. Mateo’s parents were native Mexicans, who fled to the US in 2009 as illegal immigrants. But, Mateo’s birth occurred on US soil and, by all rights, it enabled him to run for president. During the feature on his brief background as a grassroots representative in the House, Teanna dozed off.
She dreamt of a dark-skinned man, who said little but irritated her with his presence. Next to him stood an exotic beauty whose face blurred and phased into different forms. The ingénue asked for Teanna’s hand. Suddenly, the woman morphed into a drooling beast with jagged white teeth that repeatedly stabbed Teanna in the limbs with knives. Body rigid with fear, her eyes shot open with Chu’s disk and die still in her hand. She would look him up when she settled in at home. The disk felt rough on an edge. Is it broken?
Over breakfast and for the remainder of the flight, she thought about her foreign companion, his rather wild musings on probability, and where he could have gone. They were in first class. Could he have relocated to bother someone else? She wondered, though, about the theory of six and pondered it all the way to the stop on the landing strip.
Still searching for Chu, she waited until most of the passengers exited the plane. Then, a stocky, chocolate man emerged from the rear of the plane with a container of garbage. Catering to commercial flight passengers was one job that still relied on human beings.
“Ready to go?” One of the plane’s stewards, Theodore Mitchell was pleasantly handsome to boot.
“Sure, Ted.” The redheaded stewardess attending the flight loitered at the front row of first class next to Teanna. She made eyes toward Ted, who indicated with a gesture that he was talking to Teanna.
“Think so.” Teanna giggled at the woman’s lack of tact. Finally on her feet, she could manage her drunkenness. “Excuse me. . .” she looked at the stewardess’ nametag. Rhianne. Teanna produced the gold disk. “A nice man, Miles Chu, was on this flight next to me. Did he move to coach? I ain’t see him when I woke up.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” Rhianne said. “We don’t give out customer information to people who aren’t employees of the airline or next of kin. It’s a violation of privacy and protocol.”
“C’mon,” Ted argued. “It’s a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question. I’ll do it for you.”
Rhianne stepped up. “Database check passenger first class or coach, last name Charlie-Hotel-Uniform, first name Mike-India-Lima-Echo-Sierra.”
“No passenger with that name traveled on this flight,” the database reported.
Teanna scratched her head. “Could he sneak on the flight somehow?”
“With handprint tech, DNA and iris scans, not likely,” Ted said. “Even the terror networks haven’t figured out a way to crack that code yet. Let me try: visual, row 6 Alpha-Bravo-Charlie-Delta; sweep forward, high speed.” Ted’s commands brought up a holographic display of Teanna swiftly loading her bags, sitting down, and intermittently turning her head toward an empty window seat. Both Ted and Rhianne snickered.
“You were served a number of drinks, Miss Kirkwood,” she scoffed. “Couldn’t you have ‘imagined’ that you were talking to him?”
“Yes, Rhianne, I imagined him,” Teanna said sarcastically. She held the disk to the redhead’s face. “He left me an imaginary card too. See it? Naw? Guess you can’t, ‘cause it don’t exist.”
“Do you believe this, Ted? C’mon. Someone dropped that in your seat, or it fell from your folio. It‘s not the first prank to be played on someone drunk.”
Teanna reared back and removed her earrings. “Heifer, I will drop you.”
Before the confrontation became more heated, Ted stepped between them. “It’s all settled. Miss Kirkwood, it’s time for us to exit the plane.” He put a hand on Teanna’s shoulder. “You may want to get something to eat before you head home.”
“Sounds good.” Rhianne positioned herself next to the captain. “The usual at the steakhouse?”
“. . .is where I’m going.” He eased away from the stewardess. “Alone.”
Rhianne stomped up the ramp and out of the plane. A perfect gentleman, Ted allowed Teanna ahead of him. Inside, she wondered whether he did so to look at her body. She made sure her coat remained in her arms so he could get a good look.
Teanna did not particularly like steak, but she would go to the restaurant too. If it meant having male company, she would eat a 16-ounce porterhouse.
Though the two went to the same place at approximately the same time, Teanna missed the uniformed steward. She chose a stool at the bar, as waiting for a table during lunch rush would take far too long for someone who did not even like steak. The bartender droid did not give her the spiel about the hand cut beef or how good the Kobe burgers were, which she appreciated. Chicken breast in wine sauce, rice pilaf and asparagus with a glass of pinot noir would do it.
Halfway through her platter, Ted appeared, spinning a strong whiff of musk into her nostrils. “Do you mind if I have a seat next to you, Miss Kirkwood?”
“Please,” she said, mouth half full. “And it’s Teanna.”
“Teanna, nice to meet you.” He set down a monstrous plate of chicken and steak nacho
s smothered in cheese before signaling the bartender. “My friends call me Ted. My family calls me Tiny.”
“Pleasure,” she said with pomp. “Aww, why Tiny?”
“I weighed three pounds at birth,” he admitted. “Obviously, it has no bearing on where I am now. Have we met before? I think we have.”
“I know. I look familiar; must got one of them faces.”
“Bottled Yuengling? Thanks.” Ted said to the droid before finishing a few nachos. “I guess we haven’t met then,” he said, still chewing. “Sorry to talk with my mouth full, but I’m starving.”
She ate when he ate and, when he spoke, she finished chewing so that she could answer him or provide a retort. “Nice to have you join me.”
“Yours was my last flight for the week and I’m not in a rush.” He came closer to her ear. “If I’m being honest, I’m trying to avoid Rhianne, too. She’s been after me for the longest. Employees can’t date, but most do it anyway. It’s a good job with decent pay and I like the benefits. Not trying to lose my job doing something stupid. That‘s why I showered before I came down here. It’s the once place she can’t follow me.”
He showered. That’s why I ain’t find him. But he sure talks a lot.
“So, this Chu guy?” He shoved a few more nachos in his mouth – gracefully, but with obvious importance. “What’s his deal?”
Teanna retrieved the die and placed it on the table, explaining Chu’s lecture from beginning to end using the same scenario that he did; a human life. Ted listened intently to each detail, though he devoured food from his plate at the same time. She finished with her question and Chu’s dilemma. If you go back in time, change somethin’, how’ll you know you changed it?
Ted drank his beer and did not answer, but the recognition and interest in his face piqued Teanna’s interest. “You look like you know what I‘m talkin’ about.”
“Hold on a minute.” He eased back, signaled the droid and pointed to his empty bottle. The machine raised its artificial thumb and rolled to a nearby refrigerator. “Chu’s talking simple chaos theory.”
The Anarchists Page 16
