My whole body tingled. “Yeah, I thought…still think about you a lot. Knowing how tough everything was, I was worried about you. Every step I thought, ‘How will Helen handle this?’ Then I would remember how much of a badass you are and that always made me feel better. And seeing you standing next to me now…is just…” I noticed that she was hanging on my every word, staring intently at my mouth, my lips.
“You were saying?” She leaned in.
I was nervous, but slowly moved toward her. I had never kissed a girl, let alone an amazing woman like Helen, and so all I could do was draw from books I had read and movies I had seen. She closed her eyes and puckered up, and I followed suit. The glorious meeting of our two sets of lips was about to happen, and it would be the most glorious thing to happen since getting legs.
“Ryan, honey, the next bullet-train to the city is leaving in ten minutes!”
Thanks, Mom.
Helen quickly pulled back and gathered herself. “Yeah, we better get going, Ry.”
Disappointed, I muttered, “Oh, sure.”
I tapped off my netphone, shoved it into my pocket, and we were off. We spent the entire walk to the bus stop avoiding what had nearly happened in my room, though, other than the first time in the elevator with her, I had never felt very awkward around Helen—at least, no more awkward than usual. This time was no different. The bullet arrived and we boarded, then chose to stand the whole time to take advantage of our new bodies. In no time, the bus came to its abrupt halt, and we exited toward the ADG facilities.
“It looks different,” Helen said.
“Yeah, it kind of does. I think we held the place in such high regard for so long because it held the key to us walking. Now it doesn’t have anything else to offer us but the painful memories of the migration.”
“I was talking about the new paint job of the west wing, but I get what you’re saying.”
Classic Helen and Ryan. Me overanalyzing and her cracking dry, silly jokes.
“Oh, yeah. That too.”
We strolled by the Garden of Gods and Titans, passing small crowds of other speech-goers as we made our way down to Hawkins Hall. Helen and I furnished our tickets at the box office, went through the weapon detectors, and headed down the auditorium walkway to the front row. We found our seats and settled in just as the announcer gave the introduction.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you all for attending tonight’s speech by the world-famous Cameron Walsh. As the first human to successfully complete a mind migration, he has a unique perspective into the early days of the procedure. He is also its biggest advocate. Please give a warm welcome and a round of applause for our fine guest!”
The packed hall was roaring as energetic entrance music played over the speakers. A simple light show contrasted by party fog drew our attention to the right side of the stage. I was more than happy to stand up and clap as loudly as I could. Helen wasn’t as excited, but playfully joined in. And then, there he was.
For a man of medium stature, he had incredible posture. There was also a genuine essence about him that said, “I’m an important person, but I’m no different than anyone of you.” He waved at the right side of the crowd and then the left. Each side responded by making more noise as if on cue. He nodded in acknowledgment, all the while looking slightly embarrassed by the attention. If it was an act, he deserved an award. Finally, he settled into the center of the stage.
“Thank you. Thank you all.”
The crowd died down, and we all took our seats.
“Greetings, and again, thanks for making this speech a possibility. Your continued interest in mind migrations is what makes the procedure possible—a procedure that is getting better and better each day!”
Intermittent cheering and applause followed, and he waited for a break to continue.
“Today marks the tenth anniversary of when I learned that gas-powered motorcycles are dangerous.”
Guilty laughter rolled throughout the room.
“Today also marks the tenth anniversary of when the fine folks at Atlas Digenetics started the process to save my life.”
Whistling and more applause followed, but Cameron put his hand up.
“They were attempting something that, to that point, was only science fiction. Their competitors had tried and failed. The public was in an uproar at how inhumane the process was. ‘Let him die in peace,’ they said. ‘Let his soul rest!’ And in the face of all that adversity, they persevered. Instead of letting a life go, the fine folks at ADG chose a different path. They tried to save a life in the only way they knew how. I will forever be grateful for the gamble they took on me all those years ago. It has allowed me to live a fully productive life after a horrendous accident nearly took it all away.”
He paused for effect, clearly well-practiced at making these speeches.
“I know many of you have had accidents in your lives. Many of you have even made mistakes that you regret. Hell, maybe you even had your fair share of bad luck. If you’re like me, and I bet many of you are, you firmly believe in second chances. You want another crack at the thing called life. Especially when it didn’t pan out for you the first time. That’s one of the big reasons why my number one goal since getting my second chance is to spread the word. That word is miracle, and it’s the only way I know how to describe the live-saving procedure known as mind migration.”
Applause filled the room again, and this time Cameron let it go on for a moment. It eventually died down, and he spoke in segments to emphasize his words.
“To that end, I travel the globe, celebrating that miracle and letting others in the scientific community know the facts:
“Mind migrations are safe.
“Mind migrations are necessary.
“Mind migrations are the next best thing to the miracle of life itself.”
More explosive applause.
“For these reasons, we must all do our part to protect God’s original miracles by preserving them through the use of mind migrations. And yet, understandably so, there are still doubters.”
He turned to my direction, and had I not known any better, I would have thought he was looking dead at me. I was so focused on the speech that I hadn’t noticed Helen had reached over to hold my hand.
“Ten years ago, I was a shell of a person on the brink of death. They told me about the procedure, and I was initially skeptical, even with the few choices that I did have. Then they showed me my host—the body that I’ve called home for the last decade—and there was an instant connection at that moment, one that lives on to this day.”
Cameron’s words about a connection with his host made my mind swirl like just after my migration. Something strange was happening, and I was helpless to stop it. Thoughts began to overload my brain and chaos ensued as my mind tried to process what was happening to no avail. There was no pain like before, but Hawkins Hall was quickly fading to nothingness. Cameron, the crowd…it was all going away. My hand went limp in Helen’s as everything was disappearing in front of me, and then, silence.
I blinked.
It was all gone. I was in a vast black abyss.
I blinked again to be sure, and instead of being in Hawkins Hall, saw only endless space that was entirely black except for me. Strangely enough, I was sitting in Auto.
“Hello?” My voice echoed hard in the expanse.
As I had done thousands of times, I engaged Auto to spin me around in a circle. I was hoping someone—anyone—was there to help me figure out what was happening. But there was no one. I spun back around, and suddenly, I saw something. Something in the distance. It was a blurry white figure.
“Hello!”
The echo was so loud that it nearly hurt my ears.
Startling me, a raspy whisper hissed back, “Ryan.”
“Yes?”
“Ryan.”
&n
bsp; “Yes? Who are you?”
The voice wheezed back at me, “You have to save me.”
“What? Who are you? Save you from what?”
It was difficult to speak with the echoing making each word that followed harder to hear and say.
“Save me, Ryan.”
“Save you from what!”
“Ryan, you have to save me!”
“I don’t know who you are, and I can’t help you if you don’t explain yourself.”
“Ryan.”
“Yes?”
A painful silence filled the void.
“Save me from myself!”
The echo was so loud that blood poured from my ears and eyes, and I was certain that was the end for me. The deafening voice was about to put me out of my misery when a familiar voice broke through the insanity.
“Ryan! Ryan! Are you okay?”
I opened my eyes to Helen, frantically shaking me in my seat at Cameron Walsh’s speech. Rapidly fluttering my eyes to make sure it was real, I gathered myself and sat up. Suddenly I knew exactly what I had to do.
I looked Helen dead in the eye. “I have to get out of here right now!” I popped up and darted in front of her, toward the exit.
“Are you okay? What happened, Ryan?”
I tried to respond, but Cameron had said something that got the crowd excited again, which drowned out my words. I didn’t have time to say it again. Instead, I bolted for the doors before Helen could even get out of the front row. While racing up the aisle, I could hear the speech coming to an end.
“Thank you all again. And remember…”
As I pushed open the doors to the lobby, I caught Cameron’s final words.
“…never give up hope.”
Chapter 15:
Hope’s Funeral
“Never give up hope.”
That was what I always told myself. But it was a funny thing, hope. It could keep you focused even during the worst of times. It could move mountains. It could change the course of history. It could keep you chasing a dream that was unattainable. Hope was amazing, but as strong as it was, its absence was just as powerful.
When I went to third grade at a new school, I had hope. A lot of it. My third-grade teacher, Mrs. Whittaker, asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Had she asked me that question even six months before, I wouldn’t have had a good answer. But then, I had taken a liking to one particular career.
As certain as a ten-year-old could be, I responded, “Firefighter.”
Firefighters not only got to wear cool equipment and train to be big and strong, but they got to help people—people who were in need, people who were desperate. A job with decent pay and benefits, a job with respect from most people was the most a kid with a rough home life could ask for. While the hours would be tough, I could get used to it.
As I got older and learned more, I realized that it didn’t matter what I wanted out of a career. Teachers only asked questions like that to keep you dreaming. Even counselors with the best of intentions were only there to distract me from the real social problems that became obvious when, at fifteen, I visited a local fire station. I asked the fire chief what it would take to become a firefighter. Even then, I expected the work-hard speech, saying that anything was possible. But I must have caught the chief on a particularly honest day.
“Son, is your dad or mom a firefighter?”
“No.”
“Do you have an uncle or other close relative who’s a firefighter?”
“I don’t know any other relatives.”
“Look, you don’t just become a firefighter these days. You really have to know someone. Someone’s gotta know you.”
I was crushed to say the least. I looked up and down in the hiring manual on the net, but nowhere did it say you had to be a family member of a current firefighter to apply. As depression set in, something completely different dawned on me, and I actually learned a valuable lesson from the experience.
Everything was political.
Turned out that the corrupt city government had implemented an under-the-table nepotistic hiring policy that ensured only good ol’ boys and their sons and daughters got to fight fires in the city. Ever since it became national law to privatize police and fire, they got away with pretty much anything they wanted.
In that sense, they had a lot in common with the Padre: operate with impunity. I was sure he’d killed my family. Last I spoke with them was the night before I was arrested, and when I tried to implement Plan B, I never got confirmation that it went through. I tried dialing our apartment with my weekly call for two months, but it went right to voicemail. Hearing Sarah’s recorded voice hurt more and more each time. Then, a week ago, someone finally answered.
“Hello.”
The man’s voice shocked me, but I was just relieved to be talking to someone.
“Hello! I need to speak to Sarah. Are my kids all right?”
“Who is this? If you’re talking about the family who lived here before, they disappeared. Don’t bother calling here again.” Click.
“Shit!”
The Padre’s goons were likely all around me, and it was only a matter of time before I’d take a shiv to the gut. It had been a year since I was railroaded in court, and I hadn’t even been sentenced yet. Hell, I hadn’t heard from my public defender in ten months, which was why I was shocked when a private lawyer showed up the other week. Before he would likely dangle hope in my face, I figured I’d have a little fun.
“I was found guilty.”
“Uh, hi, Mr. R—”
“The name’s Charlie. I was found guilty. Case closed.”
“Okay, Charlie, do you mind if we talk about the details around it?”
“Yes, I do mind.”
“You were convicted of five felonies: driving a car with the VIN removed, redirecting your vehicle’s GPS coordinates, reckless manual driving, two counts of injuring another as a result of reckless manual driving, and vehicular homicide. Each of those could be fifteen to twenty-five years behind bars by the time you get to sentencing. The prosecution also wants to add criminal conspiracy, given the nature of your vehicle. Add to that the dozen misdemeanors and a couple pages of citations, and you’d be lucky to get life. They may even request the death penalty.”
“Guilty.”
“I specifically asked to meet in the visitors’ trailer for a reason. I’m not a normal lawyer, you see. I’m actually part of a legal task force that is trying to nail down who we believe to be your employer. Mr. Ernesto Guerrero. You probably know him as the Padre.”
“Guilty, I said!”
“Hear me out, Charlie. In exchange for your cooperation, we would be able to get the prosecution to set your sentence down to time served. But we need concrete information that would lead us to the Padre’s whereabouts and the activities in which he is involved. You could be a free man in a couple years after the case against Mr. Guerrero has concluded.”
A free man? What the hell did he know? I would never be free again. You didn’t mess with the Padre and live to brag about it, and neither did anyone you loved. Regardless, I was once again in a similar position as the one Mrs. Whittaker put me in, in third grade, and a thought summarizing that feeling popped into my head.
What do you want to be when you grow up? Alone and dead in prison? Or alone and dead on the streets?
Since the man in the suit was the first person to speak with me in weeks, I decided to play his game and see what he had to offer.
“What about my family?”
“Yes, I was afraid you would ask about them. They disappeared around the time of your arrest, and in spite of our efforts to contact them, they seem to be off the grid.”
“You mean dead!”
“No, Charlie, we don’t have any leads, but the local police also haven’t found any…
bodies either. Do you have any idea where they might be?”
“Ah, what the hell.”
“I beg your pardon, Charlie?”
“I’ll do it.”
“Do what?”
“I’ll tell you everything I know.”
His face lit up. “That’s great news, Charlie! I guarantee you won’t regret this. Now, we’ll want to get you transferred downstate where the Padre won’t have such easy access to you.”
“Don’t worry about a transfer. I just want to tell my story.”
“All right, when do you think you could provide your official deposition on the matter?”
“How about right now?”
Shock came across his face as he scrambled to grab his briefcase and fumbled around in it to get his netphone to record me. I told him everything. Every last damn detail that I had ever known about the Padre. The jobs we did. The locations. Rough amounts of money exchanged. The product I had seen on the one job. I was like a faucet of truth spewing every last ounce until the well went dry.
“This will be very helpful in the case against the Padre.”
“I hope so.”
“And that’s why you must die.”
Before he could grab the gun in his briefcase, I was able to punch him in the neck to stun him, and then I slammed his head onto the table to knock him out cold. I’d known what the meeting had been all along. I had known he was asking about my family to give me a false sense of hope. I had known the transfer was a way to separate me from the rest of the pack and execute me out in a field somewhere. I had known he worked for the Padre like so many around me likely did. But it had been worth it to get a rise out of him, and it had been probably the last bit of payback I would get to the man who had put the finishing touches on ruining my life.
After thirty minutes, the guards discovered me lying face down on the trailer floor next to the unconscious lawyer. They still roughed me up a bit, but I had gotten plenty worse beatings in my life. They took me to solitary, and I just laid there. For a whole week, I laid there thinking about life, thinking about what could have been. My mind was still busy replaying all of my memories for the thousandth time when they finally came to take me back to a holding cell. It didn’t help anything. When put into a no-win situation like I was, you may try to rationalize it by choosing the lesser of the two evils. But when the stakes are high, making those decisions changes you.
Between Two Minds: Awakening Page 17
