Those That Wake 02: What We Become

by Jesse Karp

  Laura pulled the towel from her hair and swathed herself in it, glaring in astonishment.

  “You were looking at me from under the door,” she said.

  “No,” he said. “I was trying to determine who you were.”

  “Are you kidding me? This is my room. Who the hell else would I be?”

  “I knocked and no one answered, so, given the situation we’re in, I let myself in. When I heard noise in the bathroom, it seemed prudent to make sure it wasn’t an intruder before I announced myself.”

  Laura studied the boy with the acne and the nervous fingers.

  “You,” she said, “are completely full of shit. How did you even get in here?” She pictured him, staring down with a contemptuous smile at the cellock holding her door closed. “Forget it. Get out.”

  “Laura, it’s very important that you believe me. I think trust is of paramount—”

  “Shut it. Get out. See if you can figure out a way to see through the wall while I get dressed, why don’t you?” She put a firm hand on his shoulder and steered him out and shut the door in his scowling face.

  They drove from the motel in silence, but for Aaron’s calling directions out in monosyllables. At least, she thought, the embarrassment shut him up. There was no grumbling, no complaining, no masked pleas for assurance. Is the next one going to be it? Are we going to find something soon?

  “I want to make it clear,” he broke into the hypnotic hum of the road around them, “that I was not spying on you in the shower. You must admit it’s not unlikely that if we’re on the right track, someone might be following us.”

  “You know,” she said, not taking her eyes from the road, “you are digging yourself a deeper and deeper hole. The mature thing to do at this point would just be to admit what you did and take it like a man.”

  That was low, and she knew it, giving him trouble on the basis of his age, which he worked so hard to camouflage. Sure enough, his face reddened, and he started sputtering a diatribe about being on his own for long enough to know exactly what the hell the “mature” thing to do was and if there were anything to admit, he would have done it.

  The green and white of a passing sign snatched her attention. POPE SPRINGS—2 MILES.

  “Pope Springs,” she said quietly.

  “What?” Aaron was brought up short, still in the middle of his ridiculous, teetering defense. “Yes. That’s our next stop. A few miles on the other side of it, actually.”

  “What happened there?”

  He paused, collecting the information.

  “A house on top of a hill burned down there a little more than a year ago. An anonymous buyer had spent a great deal of money appointing it with all sorts of electronics, but then never moved in. According to the data I have, the place was empty at the time it burned down, though it was reported by the local fire department that when they arrived, a number of people were already on hand, milling about, watching the place burn.”

  Laura made no comment.

  “Why are you asking?” Aaron prodded. “Do you remember something about this?”

  Did she? Not really. Actually, it seemed like less to go on than Aaron’s usual, with just the anonymous owner filling it with tech gear to flag it. In truth, all she had really done was notice the sign.

  “No,” she said. “Just wondering.”

  “Are you sure, Laura? Because—”

  “Aaron. It’s nothing.”

  They came into Pope Springs and found it to be nearly indistinguishable from the other dwindling little towns they’d passed through over the last few days. The lonely cell and wireless store seemed to be the only functioning business on the desolate main street, which had a different name than the main street in the last town and the one before that, but the paint on the forlorn houses was peeling in the same way; the rust on the cars, the absence of visible inhabitants, all the same, another little town that was giving up on itself. Laura brought them through it and up the hill on the other side.

  “Here,” Aaron directed. She pulled off the side of the road, and they got out.

  The empty spot still resonated with the absence of a house that so clearly belonged there. The grassy plain formed a nearly perfect circle, with a patch of light forest growing along a gently sloping hill back down toward town. Set back toward the far end of the lot was a slight rise, the solid foundation of what was once a house, but now, over it, a flat bed of hard gray stones were packed down to bury the ruins of what had once stood. The field, to Laura’s eyes, was haunted by the house, which was no longer there, a view yearning for completion.

  “Well,” Aaron said, coming up beside her at the edge of the grass, “do you recognize it?”

  She took the space in with eyes desperate for something to nourish her memory.

  “No.”

  No point lying about it just to keep Aaron’s spirits up. She did have the feeling about the house, but that was just her sense of the place, not her memory of it. There was something else, though, something stirring in her belly.

  “Is there a record of ownership?” she asked, just to head off his seething response.

  “The electronic trail is like a dark alleyway leading back on itself. It’s owned by a limited liability corporation that is a subsidiary of a real estate development fund owned by another LLC, which is, in turn, owned by the first LLC.” Aaron shook his head in simultaneous frustration and admiration. “That’s one of the reasons I had it flagged in the first place. For all the good it does us,” he ended bitterly, turning back to the car, so he could slam the door hard and stew about this waste of time for the rest of the day.

  But Laura kept looking at the empty space, at nothing. The feeling she woke up with, of having lost something crucial to her, of something she needed deeply having gone from the world, was swelling in her as she looked at this lot. She didn’t recognize this place in the normal way, but it connected to something in her. Maybe that was the best she was going to get.

  “Wait,” she said. “I’ve got a feeling about this place.”

  “A feeling?” Aaron had stopped himself behind her. “What does that mean?”

  “If only there was some way to get beneath the rocks, maybe we could find something in the ruins.”

  “It’s possible to get beneath the rocks, Laura, but I’m not going to waste time and resources on a drawn-out operation just because some overwrought girl woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”

  “This spot is making me feel something that none of the others did. Maybe that’s the best we’re going to do, Mike. So instead of thinking up new ways to—”

  “Okay.” Aaron was nodding his head slowly and looking at her carefully, like she had misapplied makeup into a gross smear across her face. “I’ll get it started.”

  “What? Why did you change your mind so quickly?”

  “You just called me ‘Mike.’”

  “What? Who’s Mike?”

  “I don’t know, and I’m betting you don’t know, either.”

  “I don’t,” Laura said shakily.

  “So, something is happening in your brain. The brain doesn’t store memories in one place. There are different kinds of memory, and you don’t have a visual one of this place for some reason, but you may have an emotional one. That will have to do for now.”

  He walked out toward the bed of stones, subvocalizing on his cellpatch with God only knew who, leaving Laura alone.

  “Mike,” she said softly, trying it out on her tongue. “Mike.”

  In less than thirty minutes, a red pickup pulled up behind Laura’s car. A door with the words SLATE CONTRACTING stenciled in fading white letters opened, and a man stepped out. Thick with undefined muscle through his torso and limbs and a crew cut of ash-gray hair, he stood and took in the two figures waiting for him. Unsure of whom to address, the boy who was clearly far too young or the girl who was clearly far too much of a girl, he held his spot until Aaron addressed him.

  “Mr. Slate,” he said, offering hi
s hand, which disappeared, after an uncertain moment, into Slate’s rough paw. “I’m Aaron Argaven. We spoke on the cell.”

  “That was you. Okay. What are we looking at?”

  “As I said, I want those rocks cleared.”

  “Yeah,” Slate said. “I put those down myself. You know there’s nothing under there but charred wood. House burned down ’bout a year and a half ago.”

  “One year, four months, actually. I want it cleared. By tomorrow.”

  “By tomorrow?” Slate’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head. “That’s not going to be possible. I’d have to call in both my crews to do something like this in twenty-four hours, and we’d have to work around the clock, which we don’t do. Plus, I’ve got people on another job right now. We wouldn’t even be able to start until next week. Then there’s the matter of permits from the town.”

  “What’s your standard fee?”

  “I don’t know. I’d have to look it over. I could write you up an estimate by tomorrow.”

  “Go look it over, Mr. Slate. Decide on a fee, then multiply it by ten, and have the job done by tomorrow.”

  Slate looked up at Laura for some measure of sanity, which she couldn’t supply. Aaron’s manner was somewhat short but completely professional. If it hadn’t been coming from a fourteen-year-old, there was no doubt Slate would be jumping for joy.

  “You think maybe I should speak to your father or someone?” Slate suggested casually.

  “Is money only good if it comes from somebody’s parent?”

  “Nooo.” Slate drew the syllable out. “But that’s a steep offer you’re making, and I, ah, haven’t seen any money.”

  “Right. Give me a quote, and the money will be in your account by the time you make it back to your office to gather your men and equipment. If it isn’t, you needn’t bother returning, and you’ve lost nothing but an hour from your day.”

  Slate examined the offer hard but could not seem to find a flaw in it.

  “Twenty thousand,” he said flat, not even bothering to look at the stones, let alone go over and examine them.

  “Done,” Aaron said without skipping a beat.

  “You understand that’s—”

  “Two hundred thousand dollars. Yes. It will be in the account you give me by the time you’re back at your office.”

  Working hard to hide both doubt and excitement, Slate gave over the account number and got back into his pickup.

  “You seem to have made a real impression on him one way or another,” Laura said as the pickup disappeared down the hill.

  “No point trying to be inconspicuous. Slate’s going to tell everyone he knows about this, anyway. The work would attract plenty of attention by itself, I’m sure.”

  “Right,” she said, her head swimming at the amount. “I guess you’d better transfer the money. Easy come, easy go.” Laura had never suffered for money. Her father had worked at the same architectural firm since she was born and managed to support the family alone. Paying for college had been their greatest expenditure, and Laura was treating that with such respect, wasn’t she? But tossing off two hundred thousand dollars like that gave her a sense of the sort of consequence-free world Aaron must be used to. Consequence-free, until his father killed himself.

  “Already transferred,” Aaron said.

  “Thanks to the handy little wire in your brain, huh?”

  “‘Wire.’” He smiled condescendingly. “Right. Something like that.”

  Laura looked at the flesh-colored bump at his temple.

  “Is it true those things give you brain cancer?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What?” Her eyes widened in shock, expecting the standard denial.

  “In about forty percent of test cases, brain cancer did result. They’re first generation, you know. There’s plenty left to work out.”

  “But, then, what about the ozone satellites? They’re not responsible for it?”

  “There are no ozone satellites, Laura,” he said, becoming bored with the conversation. “They’re PR, pure spin.”

  “What’s replenishing the ozone layer, then?”

  “Wishful thinking.”

  “But . . .” She worked her jaw, trying to find words sufficient to this horror. “If the cellpatch causes brain cancer, why are you wearing it?”

  “This one is a third-generation prototype, actually. Proper shielding and less than a quarter the electromagnetic output. I’d never take a risk like that.”

  Laura stared at him but couldn’t help think of Josh, of all the kids on campus strolling about with those things drilled into their heads.

  Slate’s crew finished just after lunchtime the next day. As the dusty, exhausted figures filed back to their trucks, still surmising to each other about the mysterious circumstances of their extraordinary good fortune, Aaron hurried right to the edge of the exposed pit. Laura was slower to come over, hesitating at the idea that there might be something that would pull the plug from the dam of her memory and let it all come flooding painfully back. Or, worse, that there would be nothing of the sort.

  Slate had not been deceiving them. There was nothing in that shadowy pit but ash and torn chunks of wood and metal that still smelled of smoke. Not in the least discouraged, Aaron lowered himself down and, balancing precariously, started picking through the charcoal remains.

  Laura let herself down eventually, as well, though she had no idea what she was looking for or how to do it. There was so much of it, where did you even begin? She watched Aaron dig around for hours with a spade and a claw he had bought off one of Slate’s workmen. He was being meticulous about it, moving from what appeared to be one carefully calculated spot to another, though to Laura, she couldn’t distinguish what made one position any different from another. The one time she inquired, she received only a frustrated grunt in response.

  The wind had acquired a chilly edge and the shadows stretched long across the field when Aaron threw the shovel down with a resounding metallic echo. He seemed to be holding something in his hand, though with the sun disappearing beyond the horizon, the sunken space they were in was nearly plunged into shadow, and she couldn’t be sure.

  “Did you find something the fire didn’t ruin?” she asked, her voice coming out rough and tight. She realized she hadn’t spoken a word in several hours.

  “This wasn’t a fire,” Aaron informed her, walking carefully closer. “Something was detonated in this place.”

  “How would you know that?”

  “Just look at all the shrapnel. It’s jagged, not melted. But also because I found what I was looking for.” He held out the object in his hand for her to squint down at. A small square fit neatly in his palm. It was charred over most of its surface, but a dull metallic glint caught a bit of dying sunlight.

  “What is it?”

  “A digital core. What’s left of one would be more accurate. These things are the best-protected part of any large digital system. Everything the system does or did is stored on these, and they are, consequently, very hard to destroy. No fire would reach one of these. This was blown free from its system.” He looked back up at her. “By an explosion. One that must have been specifically calculated to damage or destroy it. Someone was looking to cover their trail.”

  “Did they?” Excitement was boiling behind Laura’s eyes.

  “If this was a year and a half ago, yes. But technological progress is measured in days. A year and four months is like a millennium of technological evolution. It had enough left in it that I could sponge it up with my lenses. Plenty is lost, I’m sure, but some of the information will be intact. If information came into or out of the system along wireless routes, those pathways should still be here. There should be enough to pick up a trail.”

  Aaron was preternaturally calm. She had never seen him like this. But he was all cerebral push, always looking for information to lock on to and extrapolate from, and now, after years, he finally had it.

  Laura, though, wa
s quickly losing her sense of calm. This was the first scratch she’d gotten for the tickle in her brain. At the end of this trail that Aaron was talking about was someone who would answer the question “What happened to Laura Westlake?” The problem was she didn’t know if she could bear the answer.

  The Neuropleth

  TIME WAS LOST TO ROSE in this forgotten park. The sounds of the outside world had become a garbled sludge in the hollow air, though she imagined she could pick out from beneath them the sound of distant, ancient screams. These would be the screams of the woman who had been beaten and stabbed here, her pleas for help, her screams of pain trapped in an echo and dying away like the park itself.

  There was no sense of seconds ticking by. Perhaps she had been here for only a day, or maybe it had been a week or a month. She wasn’t hungry; the place seemed to have emptied her out of urge, desire, even need. The only emotion she could manage to summon was an edgy panic at the idea of being trapped here, unable even to starve to death, as the park faded out of the world forever, taking her with it.

  She wasn’t tired either, exactly. But she must have slept at times, her consciousness lost in a swirl of oblivion. Or had she? Could she even differentiate between awareness and oblivion anymore?

  It was from within one of these stretches of oblivion that she started awake. A sound cut through the space and into her stupor like a razor slashing flesh. For an instant, she thought it was the screams of the woman who had died here, returning in full force to exact revenge on the only human accessible: Rose. But it was not a scream—it was a metallic shriek of rusted metal scraping against itself. Her eyes flashed back and forth, looking for the cause of the sound.

  At the far side of the park, behind one of the benches, a grating had come open. Her head quaked with the impossibility of it. She had not even known there was a grating there, its metal paled and blending with the neutral contours of the concrete around it. What could be down there, beneath a forgotten park? What could possibly be coming out of it? Was there a creature, some forgotten monstrosity that lurked through these places that Mal never even knew about?