The Perfect Moment in Peril

by Kenneth Preston

  “I know.”

  He stepped back, tenderly placing his hands on her cheeks. “Shall we?”

  With a nod and a sigh, she said, “It's now or never.”

  “Come hold me tight,” Sebastian sang.

  Emily chuckled. “You're as corny as ever.”

  “Just like old times.”

  They boarded the elevator. Two of the luminous beings stood on either side of them like a couple of matching bookends. It gave Emily the creeps.

  She gave her statue a passing glance as she and her three escorts made their way across the lobby. It was a not-so-subtle reminder of just how much was expected of her, of just how much pressure she was under.

  She was expected to be their savior. She wasn't even sure if she could save herself. She was at a crossroads, lost somewhere between community and individuality.

  They stopped at the light of the tower's entrance.

  “This is where I bid you goodbye,” Sebastian informed her. He bent down and planted a kiss on her cheek. “And good luck.”

  Emily was taken aback. “I'm on my own?”

  “Our luminous friends will escort you back to the shuttle. After that, you'll be on your own.”

  She took his hand, silently urging him to come along.

  He lifted her hand and kissed it. “This is your journey, and you must make it alone.”

  She furrowed her brow slightly, remembering that just moments earlier, he had suggested that she take David along.

  She was disappointed, holding his gaze for a moment longer than she needed to before turning toward the light and stepping through. She didn't look back. There was no reason to. She wouldn't be able to see her father through the luminous entrance if she wanted to.

  She kept her eyes down most of the way, down across the bridge, down through the city with only the occasional passing glance at the crumbling infrastructure. It all seemed so artificial now, not nearly as interesting as she found it on the way in.

  There was only one point of interest, one direction: the shuttle. She would get in the shuttle, fly off to the other land mass, and if everything went according to plan, she would fulfill her end of the bargain, come back for David, get the missing DNA data and head back to Encounter.

  Of course, there was a big if in there, an if that could go any number of ways. She was heading into a vacuum. She knew what she had been told, but she didn't know what to expect.

  She had misled David, given him the impression that he would never see her again. She had misled him for a very good reason: She wasn't sure if he would ever see her again. And if everything didn't go according to plan, if she were indeed walking into some kind of trap, she didn't want him waiting around for a reunion that would never take place. More importantly, she didn't want to take him down with her.

  She didn't bother to ask herself why she was doing it; she knew why she was doing it. She was doing it for herself. On the surface, it seemed selfish, but she knew better. She was doing it for herself, but she wasn't only doing it for herself. If the steps she was about to take were to benefit her and her alone, she wouldn't bother. But she was a cog in a much larger, an astronomically larger, machine. The path she would take would affect her and spread like a virus. What form that virus would take was dependent on what would happen to her in the next few hours.

  The shuttle's engine hummed to life. She had never had any reason to doubt that it would be fixed. They wanted her to make this trip every bit as much she was beginning to wish she weren't.

  She gave her escorts a nod through the windshield and lifted the shuttle from the beach.

  The coordinates had been set for her. She was well on her way. The trip wouldn't have been any easier if they had beamed her over. And that's what frightened her...that and the fact that she didn't know what she was getting herself into.

  What the hell was she getting herself into?! She didn't need her non-corporeal intuition to tell her that there was something fishy about all of this. She just needed her basic human intuition. And her basic human intuition was nagging her, telling her that she was perched headlong on the edge of disaster.

  So why was she still flying toward the island of doom and gloom? She could turn the shuttle around, head back, grab David and get the hell out of Dodge. But something told her it wouldn't be that easy; something told her that they were holding David, despite her father's suggestion that she take David along. It was a phony suggestion to put her at ease. They wouldn't allow David to come along. He was their insurance policy. If she hadn't told David to stay, they would have made him stay.

  She still had a bit of that non-corporeal intuition after all. It was buried in her head, scratching at the back of her semi-phased brain. She didn't always recognize the signs as they were being sent to her, but she recognized them after the fact.

  Her destination loomed in the distance, as dark and bleak as her expectations.

  What to expect when she arrived? She had been told what to expect, but she didn't have much faith in what she had been told. The source of the information she had been given didn't matter at that point.

  She took notice of her semi-phased heart pumping away in her semi-phased chest. Her semi-phased hands trembled over the shuttle's controls. It seemed that being stuck halfway between here and there did little to calm her nerves. But really, why would it? She experienced fear in the Great Community. Why wouldn't she experience it out here?

  She was able to make out a series of low-level structures a few miles inland as she brought the shuttle over the beach and descended vertically. She cut the engine when the shuttle's landing gears settled into the sand.

  Propping her elbow on the control panel and nestling her chin in the palm of her hand, she peered through the windshield at the tree line in the distance. It was like a wall separating the beach from the city beyond, a line in the sand, a warning―cross at your own risk. Her eyes couldn't penetrate the tree line, and the low city skyline wasn't visible from the ground.

  She hesitated, but she knew that hesitation was nothing more than procrastination. She was just putting off the inevitable. She was doing this. She knew she was doing this.

  No time like the present.

  She tapped the control panel, and the pilot side shuttle door slid quietly open. Another moment's hesitation before she slid from the shuttle and planted her boots in the sand. She tapped the exterior control panel to close the shuttle door.

  She crossed her arms and massaged her bare skin to keep the chill at bay. It wasn't cold; quite the contrary; it was every bit as balmy as it was across the ocean. She didn't feel the chill across the ocean, but she felt it here. It was a chill born of emotion, born of fear.

  She hadn't felt this human since taking that final step from Encounter into the radiance of the Great Community on Eden all those years ago. Like all emotions, fear existed in the Great Community, but its effects were magnified when it penetrated the flesh. There was nothing like fear in the flesh to make one feel more human.

  She let it all in, every ounce of fear, gave it a few moments and began walking across the beach. Her surroundings were still, silent. Each footstep in the sand was amplified by the absence of all other sound.

  Déjà vu.

  She had made a similar observation in the computer-generated dorm room of her virtual world so many years ago.

  Once again, she had to at least entertain the possibility that she was in another virtual world, but she would only entertain it for a moment. It was wishful thinking. It was a possibility for others but not for her. Her mind had rejected the virtual world program, wouldn't allow it to exist for her. She had subconsciously willed herself out of the program and into the real world. There was no reason to believe that another attempt to place her into a virtual world program would be successful.

  Unless...she had never broken free of that program, to begin with. Everything that had transpired from the moment she became aware was all part of the same program.

  She doubled over
with laughter, nearly losing her balance and falling into the sand.

  When she was done laughing, she frowned. She wanted it to be true. She didn't want to be in the impossible position that she was in. She wanted to break free of this situation the way she broke free of her virtual world. But there was just no getting around it, no breaking free of the world she was in. She had a mission to accomplish, and it was no ordinary mission; it was personal. She couldn't fail.

  She pressed ahead in spite of the fear pushing back at her. She didn't have a choice; the moment she found out, she never had a choice. Fear was a powerful deterrent, but under the circumstances, it wasn't powerful enough, not even close. The fear of failing the mission was far more powerful than the fear of facing whatever it was that was beyond that tree line waiting for her.

  She was two-thirds of the way toward the tree line when she noticed the footprints off to her left, a series of footprints overlapping one another, the toes pointing to and away from the treeline. She paused to study them. The nature of the footprints hinted at chaos. They were deep, the strides wide...as if the people that left the prints had been running. It would make perfect sense based on what she'd been told.

  She looked toward the beach where the tracks ended abruptly. There was nothing she could do about it now.

  She turned and began to close the short distance between herself and the tree line.

  The silence was broken by the sound of her pounding heart. Could she hear it, or was it just her imagination? She focused and quickly concluded that she could indeed hear it. Her terror-stricken heart was reverberating through her body, right into her ears.

  She could hear herself breathing. There was no doubt about that. She was panting, each breath quick and stunted, on the verge of hyperventilating.

  She would not allow that to happen. She would not allow herself to panic.

  In through your nose, Emily. Expand that belly. Take a step. Out through your mouth. Take a step.

  Each step was slow and cautious.

  She neared the tree line and waited for it, like a child waiting for the boogeyman to jump out at her.

  The trees towered before her. She stopped a few steps from the tree line and peered into the darkness, looking for them. But she couldn't see them. It was too dark. She couldn't even see the city beyond. But they were in there somewhere. In the trees or in the city, they were in there. Waiting for her.

  She didn't want to face them but knew that she had to. She didn't have a choice. She would have to face them to accomplish her mission. Everything depended on it. Her family depended on it.

  She closed the gap and stepped into the darkness.

  Then she heard the whispers.

  Chapter 32

  David sat hunched over on the sofa, elbows planted on his thighs, face in his hands, silently admonishing himself for being the coward that he believed himself to be. He couldn't believe he had allowed her to do it; he had actually allowed Emily to go off on her own. Sure, it was her choice; sure, she had insisted on going it alone; but he should have insisted on accompanying her. Hindsight is twenty-twenty. If he could have had that moment back, he would have put his foot down.

  Story of his life. He was always making those big, brave decisions in retrospect, in his imagination where he was the courageous man he wished he could be.

  He slapped his thighs in frustration and stood. He paced the room, his blood boiling. He had no reason to be angry at anybody but himself. If only he could have had that moment back, that moment along with every other moment in his life when he had chickened out. But he couldn't have that moment back. Like all the other moments, it was gone, filed away with all those other cowardly moments. He could only move forward. It might not be too late to do...something. But what?

  Pacing. Brainstorming. Combing the recesses of his imagination for a strategy to get himself out of this cowardly hole he had, once again, dug himself into.

  He had dug himself into. Was it all about him? Was his own self-worth, how he would feel about himself if he didn't do something to help Emily, his only concern?

  Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!

  He slapped himself on the side of the head and continued pacing. It wasn't about him―well, not all about him anyway. Motives are rarely, if ever, one hundred percent selfless. His self-worth was important to him, as was his love for Emily. The two were not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, they went hand-in-hand. She gave him his sense of worth. She was his reason for being. Loving relationships are a two-way street, giving and receiving. He gave as good as he got, he reminded himself. He was just a bit lacking in the courage department.

  No, not this again. Stop beating yourself up!

  He continued pacing, and when he was done pacing, he paced some more. He paced himself silly. He paced until he began to sweat. He paced until he thought he would wear a path in the carpet.

  He was hungry, but he didn't eat, despite the tray of pastries resting on the table. He was thirsty, but he didn't drink, despite the pitcher of water beckoning him from the same table. He refused to eat the food and drink the water because they weren't real. He couldn't get that part out of his head. It was all an illusion, and he refused to give into the illusion regardless of how tempting the illusion was.

  He began to wonder when reality ended and the illusion began. What made the illusion all the more confounding was that reality was intertwined with the illusion. Sebastian, the tower, the food on the table were illusory. Who or what was creating the illusions wasn't clear, but the fact that they were illusions was obvious. What wasn't quite as obvious were the elements that seemed to be a part of this world. What if they weren't? What if they weren't the truths between the lies to make the lies seem more truthful? What if the whole damn thing was a lie? If that were the case, where the hell were they? Were they even on this planet? Were they, once again, floating around in space in the cryotubes?

  He stopped pacing. He had had an epiphany. That was it! That had to be it! That was the only explanation that made sense of the craziness. Richard would be proud of him. He probably had it all figured out himself.

  “Can we talk?” came Sebastian's voice, breaking into David's thoughts. He was standing just outside the sliding door as if waiting to be invited into a room in his own home. The question was rhetorical, as he walked in before David had a chance to respond, the door sliding shut behind him. “Emily's on her way.”

  David didn't know how to respond. He shrugged as if to say, Is that supposed to mean something to me?

  “She wanted me to speak to you after she left. She has a message for you. Well, more importantly, she has a task for you.”

  The words fell on deaf ears. He was fed up with the charade. The only response he was capable of at the moment was, “Who the hell are you?”

  Sebastian sighed and smiled knowingly. “That's an understandable question...and one I expected. In fact, I'm surprised it took you so long to ask me. You don't believe I'm the man I claim to be. My answer may not surprise you, and you may not believe me; in fact, I'm almost certain you won't believe me. But the truth is I am Sebastian Díaz, father of Emily Díaz.”

  “I suppose there's little point in trying to get you to tell me who you really are.”

  “Well, no. That would be redundant. I've already told you who I really am.”

  “That's what I thought.”

  “Now, back to the task at hand.”

  David furrowed his brow. “What task would that be?”

  “I was getting to that before you asked me who I am. Emily has an important task for you. Are you ready to hear what it is?”

  David shrugged. “I suppose. You're gonna tell me whether I'm ready or not.”

  “No, I'm only going to tell you if you're ready,” Sebastian corrected. “This is a very important task, one that requires your undivided attention.”

  David mockingly stood at attention and saluted Sebastian. “You have my undivided attention. Lay it on me.”

  “This is
n't a laughing matter.”

  “Who's laughing? Tell me already.”

  “Okay, David. Here it is. Emily wants you to contact the Great Community.”

  David threw his hands up and shrugged. “And how exactly am I supposed to do that? We're light years away from Earth. If you have a phone with a direct line to Great Community headquarters, I'd be happy to make the call.”

  “Despite your sarcastic offer, you're not that far off the mark. You do indeed have a direct line to the Great Community.” Sebastian tapped David's forehead with his index finger. “Up here.”

  A subtle shrug. “What? Telepathy?”

  “The Great Community is a community comprised of beings of pure consciousness. Consciousness, unencumbered by the filter of the flesh, is not limited by space and time.”

  David smiled faintly. “You sound like Emily.”

  “She is my daughter.”

  “So you've said. But I have a bit of a newsflash for ya: I'm not a being of pure consciousness. My consciousness is limited by space and time. And Emily is asking me to contact the Great Community, not vice versa.”

  “As Emily said, 'We are here. You are here. We will work together. We will be together.' You just need a little help.”

  David was taken aback. If he wasn't mistaken, Sebastian had just quoted Emily on the night of their reunion on Earth verbatim.

  He shook his head in disbelief. “How did you...? You weren't even there?”

  “Another story for another time. You need help; I'm here to help you.”

  “Why didn't Emily ask me to do this herself?”

  “She did.” Sebastian reached toward David. “Take my hand.”

  “No, she didn't.”

  “Take my hand.”

  David looked tentatively at Sebastian's outstretched hand. It was perfectly steady in contrast to the hands trembling at his sides. There was something calm and reassuring about that outstretched hand, something that made him want to reach for it despite his doubts about Sebastian's identity.