Then, he felt a jolt of pain in his neck and cried out.
Immediately, Loving and Vengeful disentangled themselves from him. He howled again as a second jolt followed the first.
"Here." His father forced the cylindrical painkiller device into his hand. "Give yourself a shot of this."
"It'll help, sweetheart." His mother stroked his head as he writhed in agony.
Idea resisted their advice for as long as he could. He wanted to stay awake and savor the perfect parents who'd come to him here, the mother and father of his dreams.
But, finally, the repeated flashes of pain became too much. He screamed and heaved his head from side to side on the pillow. If he could have moved his legs, he would have thrashed them uncontrollably on the bed.
He squeezed the painkiller button three times. Within moments, the pain subsided, and he grew drowsy.
"Better?" Loving touched his forehead with the back of her soft hand.
He nodded and smiled weakly.
"You'll be okay," said Vengeful. When Idea turned to look at him, he had a proud, sad smile on his face. "You'll be just fine."
Slowly, a warm wave washed over Idea. He slid under the surface of it, then bobbed back up to awareness again. Apparently, some time had passed, for Vengeful was reading a newspaper at the foot of the bed, and Loving was nowhere to be seen.
Rolling his head to one side, he saw a thick paperback book on the bedside table. It was a familiar book, one he would've recognized by its thickness and battered cover even if he'd been unable to read the title on the spine.
The wave rushed over him again. The last thing he saw before closing his eyes was Fireskull's Revenant.
When next he opened his eyes, the book and the room were gone. His parents had disappeared. The hospital gown was gone, too, and he was back in his black button-down shirt and jeans.
He sat upright in a swivel chair of simulated black leather. A gray-cased computer monitor squatted on the woodgrain computer desk in front of him. The desk was chipped in just enough spots for Idea to glimpse the pale pressboard underneath the veneer.
To either side of him, scrambled piles of papers, binders, and file folders bulged over the edges of tables set at the height of the chair's armrests. A tabletop fan hummed away on a two-drawer file cabinet to the right of the desk, caressing his face with its light breeze.
The room itself was bright, with light from a ceiling fixture radiating off the white plaster walls. Apparently it was nighttime, for no daylight leaked between the warped blue slats of the cheap plastic venetian blinds on the room's two windows.
A cursor blinked on the monitor in front of him. His fingers rested lightly on the keyboard in his lap. The cursor sat at the end of the following lines of text:
A cursor blinked on the computer screen in front of Idea. His fingers rested lightly on the keyboard in his lap.
"C'MON, kid!" Donny Basquette whispered in Reacher's ear. "You're makin' me look bad here. Start singin'!" With that, Donny shoved the bulky microphone stand into his hand.
The jostling was enough to rouse Reacher from his daze. For the past few moments, as Your Favorites played the intro to "Tangerine" over and over and over again, he had stood between the big band and the audience, alternately staring at one and then the other.
He was having a hard time getting used to the fact that he had apparently traveled back in time to what looked like the 1940s. Especially since, just minutes before, he'd been dropped in the middle of a performance of his rock musical, Singularity City. And minutes before that, he'd been running and fighting for his life as Johnny Without in the orange-skied fantasy world of the novel Fireskull's Revenant.
He was having trouble keeping up.
"Sorry, folks," Donny Basquette said with a huge grin, displaying his enormous, gleaming teeth. "Young Richie here kept waitin' for the kazoo solo, only he forgot we left the kazoo player in Kalamazoo last week!" Everybody laughed. "Now that we've got that cleared up, let's welcome Richie Mirage one more time!"
As everyone in the audience clapped and cheered enthusiastically, Donny turned to the band and waved his baton to start "Tangerine" again. He flashed Reacher a bloodshot glare that said, Sing or you'll be sorry!
Reacher didn't want to do it. The same old stage fright curdled up from his belly and stuck in his throat.
He couldn't bear the thought of failing in front of the crowd. He could practically hear the catcalls now, roaring through the nightclub.
Daddy Naysayer had been right all those times he'd called him a loser. He knew it in his heart. Why even try to be something else?
Unless ... this time, it didn't matter. Because he was far away from the people who'd talked him down, in a place and time that might not even be real. If they were real, they were so far in the past that his success or failure would have no bearing on what he thought of as the present.
Whatever he did here, it wouldn't matter. So what if he sang off key? So what if people booed him off the stage? He had nothing to lose.
Except a couple teeth, maybe, if Donny punched him in the face, which was looking pretty likely. Flushed and clenched with rage, Donny shook his baton at him. He looked like he was ready to beat him over the head with it.
Shaking, Reacher took a deep breath and opened his mouth. And there it was.
His voice. Not at band practice, not in disguise, not in front of kidnappers who'd turn him in for a reward if he didn't perform. His voice, loud and clear, unencumbered by worries about failure or success.
He was actually singing along to "Tangerine," even though he didn't know more than a single word of the lyrics. He accomplished this by singing that one word the whole way through the song, bending and stretching and mumbling it to disguise it as best he could.
Apparently, he didn't screw up the song too badly. The elegant men and women in the nightclub smiled at their tables, sipping drinks and nodding in time with the band.
Before long, Reacher found himself getting into it. He swayed to the rhythm and became more animated, using gestures and facial expressions to enhance his performance.
"Tangeriiine" he sang. "Tan ... gerine gerine. Tangerine gerine ... gerine geran geriiine."
Although he was only singing one word over and over, he began to feel like young Frank Sinatra in an old movie, playing to an adoring crowd of sophisticates in an Art Deco nightclub. He combed fingers through his hair and strutted from side to side with microphone in hand, making plenty of eye contact, particularly with the women.
When the band roared into the bridge, drowning him out, he moved off to one side, clapping to draw applause for Your Favorites. As he took a good look at the musicians, he recognized several of them, including Mooney Claptrack, who had to be in his early twenties and had a monstrous black mountain of hair atop his head instead of a wispy silver comb-over. A scrawny hawk-nosed guy playing the xylophone gave Reacher a proud ecstatic grin and he knew right away that he was none other than Laszlo Taper.
When the band had finished playing the bridge, Reacher broke in again, singing as he strode back to his spot in front of Your Favorites.
"Tan-tan gerine, oh ta-an-gertan." He really belted it out. "Tingeran tan t-tangerinetin..."
"My heart belongs to Tan ... ger ... iiine!" sang everyone in the audience, joining together for the ending that they all knew by heart.
Oily black forelock jumping, Donny frantically whipped his conductor's baton back and forth. Your Favorites extended the number, pouring on a Latin rhythm that accelerated with each passing moment.
Reacher put down the microphone and danced, one hand on his stomach, the other hand up in the air, hips swaying to the feverish samba. People in the audience cheered, and his heart raced with pure joy.
In that moment, the fears that had kept him from unveiling his secret band to the world faded even further. As everyone in the audience got up and danced and applauded, he closed his eyes, blissfully drinking in the noise and excitement.
Then sudd
enly it all cut off at once.
***
He had a powerful feeling of vertigo, as if he'd lost contact with the floor and no longer knew which way was up. His stomach wrenched, and he couldn't catch his breath.
When his eyes shot open, he was lying on his side in soft pink grass under a sunny green sky. The tuxedo was gone, and he was back in his bowling shirt and jeans.
A baby crawled over the grass toward him, a smile playing over its chubby features.
A young woman's voice called out from not far away. "Reacher!" she said. "Reacher!"
Surprised, Reacher lifted his head and looked up. A beautiful woman with long red hair ran up and hoisted the baby off the lawn, curling it into her bare freckled arms.
As soon as she had the child in her arms, the woman backed away from him. She watched him cautiously, then turned her attention to the infant.
"That's right, baby boy," she said in a sweet high-pitched voice. "You're all right now."
The baby gurgled. The woman extended an index finger, and the baby reached out and grabbed hold of it.
"You're gonna be just fine," she continued. "You don't have to worry about a thing, my little Reacher."
THE title on the top sheet of the stapled stack of papers was "My Favorite Band Does Not Exist Chapter Outline."
Idea trembled as he reached for it and began to read page one.
Six paragraphs flowed down the page, each representing a different chapter. The first, under the heading "Chapter 1," started with this: Idea Deity meets Eunice Truant in Niagara Falls and runs from people who he says are agents of his parents.
The section designated "Chapter 6" included this: While camping with Eunice, Idea has an attack of Deity Syndrome (the unshakable belief that he's a character in a novel and his fate is predestined and out of his control).
Idea turned the page and read onward, stroking the three moles on his left cheek with his fingertip. The outline included more details of his recent life; everything from escaping Bulab and Scholar in the mall in Indianapolis to being held at gunpoint in a gas station men's room by Daddy Naysayer, Planter, and Lifter. The outline also described events in the lives of Reacher Mirage and Eurydice Tarantella ... as well as Lord Fireskull and Johnny Without from Fireskull's Revenant.
When he got to the part about reading the chapter outline, he stopped, afraid to go further. Afraid to find out what was going to happen next.
He held the outline in his hands, wondering what secrets it contained. Especially in Chapter 64. Somewhere in those pages, he had reason to believe, the exact moment and nature of his death were spelled out. Someone had put it there ... and put him here to find it.
He knew exactly who it must be: his old enemy, the puller-of-strings ... the one who made his heart pound and his stomach twist and waves of nausea rush through him. The cause of his Deity Syndrome.
Idea was sitting in the chair, at the desk, in the home of the mysterious being whose presence he'd always felt but never seen or heard.
He could think of no other explanation. Who else would have up-to-the-minute details of Idea's life typed in outline form? Who else would have sticky notes with messages like "Idea has what Reacher lacks & vice versa" affixed to the monitor and desk? Who else would have the power or the twisted sense of humor to bring him here in the first place?
Who else but the malevolent author of his life?
Lifting his bangs from his eyes with the edge of his hand, Idea looked around and finally caught a glimpse of the guy behind the scenes. Three framed eight-by-ten photos were arranged on the plaster wall, alongside a window in a corner of the room. Each photo centered on the same person, a guy with sandy brown hair, beard, and mustache.
The guy looked young, perhaps in his twenties. In one photo, he stood in front of the famous Big Ben clock tower in London, England. In another, he wore a tie-dyed T-shirt and stood by a city lamppost bearing street signs labeled "Haight" and "Ashbury." In the third, he stood in the prow of a boat afloat in gunmetal gray water, surrounded by milky mist.
A sticky note was attached to the frame of each photo. The note on the London photo read "Hi!" The note on the photo of the intersection of Haight and Ashbury Streets read "Make yourself at home!"
The third note, the one on the photo of the boat, was a bit wordier. "Just please, whatever you do," it said, "don't change the novel manuscript on the screen while you're here. That's all I ask."
Immediately Idea turned his attention to the words on the computer monitor. Now that the manipulator had asked him not to alter them, he could think of nothing else but doing exactly that.
He thought that maybe doing so could influence his reality. He realized, of course, that it could also be a trap of some kind. The manipulator's note had so blatantly alerted him to the manuscript's vulnerability to tampering that it had practically begged him to meddle with it.
Still, if Idea had any chance of altering the outcome of his circumstances, he had to take it. If it didn't work, what did he have to lose by trying?
He put down the outline and placed his fingers on the keyboard. The last words before the cursor on the screen were: He placed his fingers on the keyboard.
He hit the "Enter" key, and the cursor shot down to start a new paragraph. Frowning, he thought for a moment ... and then he began.
Suddenly, he typed, the walls of the room shifted from dull white to glossy red.
When he put a period at the end of the sentence, what he'd described became a reality. He blinked, and the walls were red.
He smiled and typed some more.
Then, the room was gone, and Idea was on a tropical beach. The computer was still on its desk in front of him, magically humming away though its power cords connected only to sand and thin air.
As soon as he hit the last period of the paragraph, Idea found himself in the scene he'd just described. He sat in the swivel chair on the soft white sand of a beach, facing the sparkling blue-green fringe of the ocean. The computer on the desk in front of him worked fine, even though its cords hung unconnected.
Having proven the power at his fingertips, Idea leaned back to consider his next move. He thought he should make the most of it, changing his life to the way he wanted it to be in one giant overhaul.
What better way to put Deity Syndrome behind him once and for all than to take control of the very force that had been controlling him? What better way to break free of the author than to write his own story?
His fingers rattled over the keys, and words appeared on the screen ... but he stopped suddenly. Leaning forward, he stared at the screen, mystified by what he saw there.
Idea had meant to type this: Eunice Truant appeared in Idea's arms.
Instead, these words appeared on the screen: Alone, Idea floated off into space.
Although his surroundings didn't change immediately to match the words on the screen, he began to panic. Quickly, he hammered more keys on the board, trying to undo what he feared was about to happen.
But it wasn't space at all, he thought he typed. Idea stayed right on the sunny beach, and Eunice appeared in his arms. She kissed him and told him she loved him and wanted to make love to him.
Just like the last time, what appeared on the screen had nothing to do with what he'd typed:
In ancient times, old and burdensome Eskimos were cast adrift on ice floes to die. In the far future, Idea Deity, 173-year-old burden extraordinaire, was in the same predicament.
Idea was too old to work as a space miner anymore. All he did was use precious resources that the young miners aboard the starship High Ground needed to survive. So they left him behind on an asteroid with no way to escape. And the oxygen in his breathing tank wouldn't last much longer.
"No!" he yelled, but it was too late. The computer and desk winked out of existence. The blue sky, beach sand, and ocean vanished, too.
He found himself standing on dry gray dust, surrounded by the starry blackness of outer space.
He was wearing a spa
ce suit, and it was running out of oxygen. So much for taking control of his own story.
BABY Reacher laughed in his mother's arms as the man on the ground sat up and rubbed his head.
"Are you all right, mister?" The woman looked concerned but kept her distance.
"Yeah." Reacher managed a polite smile, although his head was still spinning from his transfer to this place. "Thanks for asking."
The baby chose that moment to babble and flutter his hand, flapping his tiny fingers against his palm.
"Oh, look." The woman beamed at the child in her arms. "Reacher's waving at you. Hi-bye, baby boy! Hi-bye!"
Grown-up Reacher laughed and stared. He didn't want to put off the woman, but he couldn't help but be fascinated by her and the baby. The possibilities of who they might be and what that might mean to him were so incredible that he could hardly grasp them.
With such a unique first name in common, he found it hard to believe there was no connection between him and the infant. Further, he thought it was possible that he'd traveled through time to get here. He seemed to have done it before, to get to the Swing Room in the '40s, so why not now? The woman's clothes and hair had an unmistakable retro look, from between two and three decades ago.
As hard as it was to believe, he thought that little Reacher might actually be the infant version of himself, which meant that the baby's mother might be his own mother as a young woman.
Just the thought of it made him shiver.
"If you're sure you're all right, then," the woman said pleasantly, turning to move away.
Reacher got to his feet. "I'm good." He dusted himself off, then decided to test his theory. "I'm ... Donny," he said with a friendly nod, trying to sound casual. "What did you say your name was again?"
"Dreamer," said the woman. "Dreamer Mirage. Nice to meet you, Donny."
"It's nice to meet you, too." Reacher had a hard time keeping his excitement from showing. He'd guessed correctly about the woman's identity. Although she'd died in his early childhood, and he didn't remember her well, there could be no mistaking that name. He doubted there was another woman named Dreamer with a baby named Reacher in the entire world.
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