Arc of the Dream

by A. A. Attanasio

  They would have died there, all of them, killed by their own pain. But Insideout couldn’t let that happen. They provided its only path out of this mad world. It needed them more at this point than it needed its own consciousness. So the alien gave them all that it had left. It pushed the limits of its human bond, and in doing so, its painbuffers collapsed, and it smothered in a blat of suffering.

  The remorseless agony stripped the alien’s sentience to one electrified nerve, vivid with all the colors of pain. It became suffering’s sorcery, endlessly damaged. Its shattered mindforce zigzagged among the four, charging them with the binding energy that had held its consciousness together. A squall of whale chimes and dolphin music rushed into them, and Insideout was no more. The alien went on as an electrical pattern in the titanohematite brain of the arc. But its mind had shattered.

  Reena tolled with the inrush of the alien’s force. Lightning strength burst from her, and the orc’s tentacle shriveled away. A scream like an incoming rocket ripped from Tony Robello, and he charged at her in a blur of clawing ferocity. Reena didn’t budge. She connected with the killer’s mind and let it penetrate her. The orc’s fury blurred past the clarity Insideout had given her and plunged into the blackness of her schizophrenia. The orc’s violence had nowhere to go but back on the bodies that it possessed. Tony’s aura bruised red, and the charging man lifted into the air. He whirled crazily, a swastika of arms and legs. The red light about him imploded, stabbing inward in scarlet needle-spikes, and his body burst like a blood bag, scattering viscera and bone chunks in lathed chips.

  The other gang members also twisted into the air and blasted to blood meal, one after the other, in an explosive wave that swept the warehouse as the alien’s sentience parsed among Jiang, Dirk, and Howard. Jiang witnessed the grisly phantoms of his family vapor into the emptiness that permeates all things, and the ectoplasmic spear in his heart became a cable conducting the alien’s power back to the orc.

  Dirk’s father also whispered away, and his last words flew from him toward the orc like knives: You’ve done me proud, son. Howard rose from his knees toward the whirlpool that had transfixed him. The Yakuza had fallen in, and the vortex collapsed around him. White blindness relented as the maelstrom shattered, and the radiance quelled to a web-glisteny timeline, a Cubist fracturing of vision that led in the direction of the sun-filled doorway.

  A quag of blood and minced body parts showered the warehouse, and everyone crouched beneath this wet thunder of bursting bodies. Hot liquid splattered, bone bits pelted, and stillness lurched back into place. The four looked at one another garmented in blood and groaned with disgust. A fecal stench polluted the air. Across the slick floor, they slid toward one another like the raw remnants of apocalypse. Sirens cried from the street and several police cars pulled up to the crashed-in door, blue lights whirling.

  Reena, Jiang, Dirk, and Howard, holding on to one another, gaped at the police jumping from their cars. And the cops goggled back at the four figures shawled in gore. None of the Yakuza had survived. The police approached in slow motion, shocked at the carnage around them.

  Dirk bolted first. “Come on!” he called, gliding over the pooled blood, and the others followed, sliding across the warehouse to a narrow back door. Jiang knocked it open with a push of empty space, and they hurried into sunlight. Two cops who had circled around to the back spotted them and gave chase. Reena stopped and, when they drew close enough, told them, “Go back and forget you’ve seen us.” They obeyed.

  Several blocks later, Jiang stopped before a fire hydrant and pointed at it. The valves spun free, and a geyser fountained over them. After they had washed the bloody swarf from their bodies, Jiang tightened up the hydrant. He imagined his power enveloping his body close to the skin and, with a vigor not strong enough to rip fabric, rushing off in all directions. The water and bloodstains soaking him shot away from his body and clothes in sun-glinting spray, leaving him perfectly dry. He grinned. One by one, he stroked his hands over the spaces around the bodies of the others, and the drenching water jumped away from them, too.

  Clean and dry, they looked at one another with stricken bafflement. Men had died. Sanity had been breached. And they were not yet done.

  “Insideout’s dead,” Reena announced. Jiang’s cleansing had scattered her long hair and veiled her face, making her pronouncement truly grim.

  “I don’t believe that,” Jiang said, flexing his hands before him in graceful circles. “We have our powers.”

  “Sure,” Howard agreed. “I’m still seeing timelines.” The timelines now looked like the transparent contours of a streambed, carving space in flowcurves toward the highway.

  “Reena’s right,” Dirk said. “The arc is still real, and it’s powering us. But Insideout’s dead. Its voice is gone.”

  “All that’s left of it is pain,” Reena said in a drained voice. She had pulled her hair back from her face, and her eyes looked cloudy.

  “Then it’s over,” Howard responded. He stared at Jiang and Reena, seeing them clearly for the first time in real space. They both looked small, and when their lips moved they spoke different words than he heard. Jiang looked more frail than he had in timelight. Reena appeared prettier.

  “Insideout is gone,” Dirk said. “But the arc is still bound to hyperspace. If we don’t return it to its exit point in time, we’re fallout.”

  “How much time is left?” Jiang asked.

  “Three hours,” Dirk answered after listening for an answer. “A little more.”

  “The Big Island is over two hundred miles away,” Howard quailed. “We better use every minute. Come on. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

  “Rein it in, big guy.” Dirk put a hand on Howard’s shoulder. “We don’t have the arc anymore.”

  Howard gave him a hard stare.

  “It was stolen,” Jiang said. “But Reena knows where it is.”

  “The demon has it,” Reena whispered. She looked to Dirk, nervously.

  “The orc is using it to lure us,” Dirk picked up. “It doesn’t care about the arc. It only wants to destroy what Insideout created. Us.”

  ***

  Cora stood on the lanai of her hotel suite, staring down through palm crowns of nodding fronds at lavish pools, colorfully clad people, and lustrous sunlight bounding off everything. The brilliance of the scene fit poorly with her dark mood, which was good, for it reminded her that the world went on despite her suspension. If she had been home in Peoria when this terrible thing had happened, she would have been bedridden with helplessness. Here the surf sounds of laughter, music, and the pools’ splashy swimmers made it impossible to cower under her sheets. The tropical sunlight inspired her to put on white shorts and an airy, yellow blouse. And the sea-spiced breezes gentled the hysteria that endlessly renewed itself and piled through her in waves.

  The dropoff of money for Howard’s kidnappers would take place this morning, and she prayed that the FBI would not get her husband killed. A harpy of doubt gnawed her with the fear that she had been wrong to call the police. To dispel it, she had wanted to find a church and light a candle for Howie’s well-being, but the federal agents had recommended that she stay in her suite until after the drop. She didn’t like the agents. They were efficient, courteous, and sympathetic, and she feared their own strength might betray them. None of them had flashed even the strap of a gun holster in her presence. Were they wicked enough to face down the hurtful minds holding Howie?

  The agent assigned to her, who had slept in the extra bedroom last night, did little to assuage her uncertainty. A large, freckle-splattered redhead named Charlotte Traherne, she had a prizefighter’s brow, neckless torso, and calves like bowling pins, but she acted as gentle and caring as a sister. She had comforted Cora last night with assuring tales of the agency’s successes, and her hopeful attitude had eased Cora’s fears enough for her to get a few hours of sleep and dream a very curious dream.

  A knock sounded at the door, and Charlotte entered
. “I have some news.”

  Cora scurried in from the lanai and met the agent at the rattan sofa. “Was the drop made?”

  “There won’t be a drop now.” They sat down. “The Yakuza aren’t holding him anymore.”

  “He’s free?”

  “I don’t know. The police called us in on our way to deliver the money. Howard escaped from the Yakuza. He was seen running away with three other people, apparently of his own will. They eluded the police.”

  “You mean Howie ran away from the police?”

  “It looked that way. But the report isn’t clear. The situation was a very grotesque one.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All of Howard’s captors were murdered.”

  Cora groped for an explanation with grum sincerity. “A rival gang?”

  “No evidence for that.” She gave her head a bewildered shake. “The whole report is very strange.”

  “Who killed the kidnappers?”

  “Everybody wants to know that. But so far not a clue. It’s a sickening mess over there. The sight of the slaughter broke down a local hitman that the police found asleep— you won’t believe this—in a squad car two blocks from the murder scene. He gave us the names of the four Yakuza and the mob man. It was Tony Robello.”

  Cora felt like weeping at the sound of that name. “What can we do now?”

  “We’re going to find the people Howard’s with. We have leads. Have you ever seen this man before?” She opened the manila folder and showed Cora a black-and-white school photo of a youth with Arctic wolf eyes and pug nose.

  “That’s the boy Howard said he’d hired as a bodyguard. He said he knew his father when they were in the Philippines. His name is Dirk.”

  “Dirk Heiser’s father was in Vietnam six years after Howard left the Philippines. They couldn’t have met.”

  “Who is he then?”

  “Says here he’s a ward of the state. He ran away from one of the state homes just before he met you at the airport. He’s a problem kid, with a sociopath’s reputation at the Home. A real defect case. Dead father, prostitute mother. The police picked him up when he was six-years-old for selling dope to prostitutes in Waikiki.”

  “You’re kidding I hope.”

  “The case gets weirder. Dirk disappeared from police custody just before Howard was freed. Passersby saw him near the police station with two other people. One is a woman who matches the photos sent from Interpol of a runaway mental patient. A phone call from her to her doctor was traced to O’ahu earlier today. The photos were telexed in an hour ago. Two witnesses spotted her with Dirk and an unidentified man.”

  “Who?”

  “We’re not sure. He’s an elderly Chinese man, and he fits the description of an illegal alien who eluded police earlier today. If that’s him, he was a stowaway found aboard a luxury liner. He signed his name in the captain’s log in Chinese. Jiang Cheng-yu. There’s no record on him we can find. Ring any bells?”

  “No. What does all this mean? What’s happened to Howard?”

  “We have no idea. I’m sorry, Cora. The police claim that he ran off with these three on his own. There were no visible weapons or coercion. What do you make of it?”

  “I don’t know. That’s not like Howard. Now I just don’t know.”

  “Think about it for a while. Did Howard get any mail from France, from anywhere overseas?”

  “No.” Cora tilted her head with the remembrance of something queer.

  “If anything comes to mind, silly as it may seem, I want you to tell me.”

  “There is something. I hadn’t thought much of it until now. I thought maybe it was only something my anxiety needed. It’s certainly odd.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I had a dream about Howard last night.”

  The wattage of Charlotte’s attentiveness dimmed.

  “No. I don’t usually even remember my dreams. I’m not saying I’m psychic or anything. But last night I saw Howard as clearly as I’m seeing you now. He was covered with something like cobwebs, silvery, shiny veils. But his face was clear. It was him. And over his shoulder, in the foggy spiderwebs I saw you and me driving a green Toyota—which I remember because it had a big dent in the roof of all places.”

  Charlotte kept the surprise from her face when she heard about the Toyota. That was the coconut-dented car she had been assigned, parked now in the underground garage. Who could have told her about it?

  “We passed sea cliffs and golf courses and came to a huge volcanic crater filled with cactus and brush. I saw a sign for Koko Head Botanical Gardens, then I was looking at Howard again. His mouth was open and his eyelids just barely shut and twitching, the way he gets when he’s half asleep watching TV. Then I woke up.”

  Charlotte nodded politely. Perhaps she had seen her car from the window—a stretch of street was visible, though not the street that she drove to and from the garage. “What do you think it means, Cora?”

  “I think it means we should go to that crater. Right now.”

  “Now you’re kidding.”

  “I’m not. I’m a religious woman, and I think God sometimes uses dreams to tell us things. Besides, there’s nothing for us to do here but wait.”

  “Whatever news there is you’ll find out here first.”

  “Don’t you have a police radio in your car? In the dream it was built right into the glove compartment.”

  Charlotte turned her head and gave her a sidelong stare. “Who told you about my car?”

  “It’s really green? With a dented roof?”

  “And a police radio in the glove compartment.” Charlotte nodded and plucked at her lower lip contemplatively. What did it matter how Cora had learned about her car? That was no secret, and though an unlikely topic of conversation, she might have overheard an agent joking about it. No matter. The incident would make her work easier. Charlotte had been assigned to keep Cora calm and out of the way. A serene ride through a volcano park seemed an appealing way to kill a morning. And though Koko Head was within two miles of the Home where Dirk roomed, that was probably one of the safest parts of the island for Cora. Police there were looking for Dirk and anybody suspicious. She smiled, and the blueness of her eyes brightened. “Let’s go for a little spin.”

  ***

  Reena stopped a maroon, air-conditioned Mercedes on Nimitz Highway, leaving the driver in her designer dress and fire-points of gems with the dictate, “This is the happiest day of your life. Go ahead and share your happiness with others.” Howard took the wheel. As they drove off, they looked back at the driver grinning beatifically in the diesel wake of the highway, her thumb stuck out.

  Reena believed she had accomplished some small good with her power, and she was pleased. That woman they had left behind had been inconvenienced, yet how many lives would she enliven today – if they returned the arc in time? “Do You realize what we could do if we had more time?” she asked the others. “We could change the whole world.”

  “Whoever touches is touched,” Dirk replied from beside her. He sat in the back with Reena, and to make his point, he put his hand on hers. She didn’t object, and clarity sang in him like the smooth glide of the car.

  “That’s where the orc gets its power. From us. Whenever we use the alien’s strength—even now as these thoughts broadcast words from the verbal field—the orc is strengthened. So let’s face it. We’re never going to change anything.”

  “Only we are changed,” Jiang said. He played with the electric window switch in the passenger seat next to Howard and gazed out the window at blue-white clouds musing overhead. With his body comfortably bucketed in the deep upholstery of the car, his restless vitality churned in him. He wanted to fly again. He hadn’t dared since his power had returned to him on the luxury liner, because the demon’s purpose clearly belonged here with the others. He couldn’t articulate what had to be done the way Dirk could, but he could feel truth in his actions. The demon guided him. And in a few hours, his work would be
done.

  “Dirk,” Jiang spoke and turned to see the young man’s face. “Your gift is to understand. Can you tell me what becomes of the dead?”

  “Oh, Lord,” Howard groaned. “I’m trying to concentrate on keeping us alive and you want to talk about the dead?”

  “Hush.” Reena pierced the back of Howard’s head with her stare. “Jiang’s lost his whole family.”

  “Insideout would say they weren’t really lost,” Dirk answered. “Nothing is really lost in this universe.”

  “Then where are my wife and children?”

  “Their bodies are gone,” Dirk said, “but their lifeforce goes on in the form of light.”

  “Goes on where?” Jiang pressed.

  “All around us,” Dirk answered. “In the emptiness that backdrops everything, even time. Insideout calls it the vacuum field. It even said that there are tiny antennae in human eggs that can receive these lifewaves just like a radio picking music out of the air.”

  “Reincarnation,” Reena culled the word from Dirk’s mind.

  “Reality turns out to be a lot like a movie,” Dirk continued. “It’s projected onto a screen made up of infinite energy. That screen is the vacuum field. The movie is us and everything in the universe from atoms to galaxies. We’re just flickers of energy in the vacuum field. And, exactly like a reel of film, reality is made up of frames—space-time frames, very, very small. Yeah. It’s all we know of reality—these individually unique spacetime frames recurring so rapidly we don’t see the vacuum field between the frames. We can’t see it, because it’s outside of time. But it’s really there.”

  “Ghosts,” Howard said from the passenger seat beside Dirk. “That’s what we’re going to be if we don’t pull this off.” He leaned forward on the wheel, following the clearest timeline through the weave of traffic. “We’ve got to get the arc back—before we go nuts or die with this damned alien. Listen to me.” His eyes narrowed, peering into the sun’s weight and seeing the silence of the future shifting its shapes. The rims of his sight rippled like the hair-thread legs of a microscopic creature. The highway, the palm trees, and the verdant valleys sprawling with houses dissolved to a wraith. Only the highway directly before him ran clear. Far ahead, the arc blazed at the core of Howard’s vision, its rainbows tangling in the air with monstrous, fanged faces. The latticework of possible futures crowded with abhorrent scenes of large pincers and insect mandibles ripping flesh from Reena’s maimed body, snagging ropes of viscera from under Jiang’s blood-drained face, severing Dirk’s head. And there he was, his chest caved in and writhing with voracious monster grubs. One timehole floated among the bloodsmoke and the grimaces of their screaming faces—one sun-coin—one fiery aperture narrowing even as he watched, garroting the luminant scene of the four of them on a field of black, knife-pointed lava rock.