I quickly stuck my hand into the scanner, but it seemed to do nothing. My hand was not bathed in royal blue light.
“You obviously don’t have your permanent ID yet. Where’s your bracelet?” the guy asked, looking closely at my hand.
“Umm…I left it at home?” I said weakly.
“That’s a pretty careless thing to do. How about you? Did you leave yours at home, too?” he asked, turning to Desiree.
“I lost mine?” She shrugged.
The barista lowered his eyes and shook his head. “Sorry guys, there’s nothing I can do.”
“Do you two need some assistance?” A tall man in a gray pinstriped suit stepped up from behind us. “I couldn’t help but overhear that you both have forgotten your bracelets.”
“Yes, and we’re incredibly embarrassed by our forgetfulness. How could we have left the house without them?” Desiree said solemnly.
The man produced a radiant smile and placed his hand on my shoulder. “I believe I can help,” he said and turned to the barista. “I’ll take care of whatever these youngsters have ordered. It’ll be my good deed for the day.” The man took his right hand off my shoulder and adjusted the cuffs of his sleeves.
I saw the edge of a tattoo on his right hand peeking out through his dress shirt sleeve, and before he finished adjusting his cuffs, I realized what it was. The wolf-head tattoo. This man was a Lorne!
“Yes sir, Mr. Lorne. They are all taken care of. What may I get for you?” the barista asked.
“Thank you so much,” Desiree said as she picked up her butterscotch javatwist. “We didn’t get your name?”
The man looked taken aback and eyed the barista, who promptly looked nervously down at the counter. He then brought his attention back to us.
“Lazarus,” he said and extended his hand for us both to shake. His grip was extraordinarily tight for me, so I didn’t know how Desiree didn’t look hurt. “Lazarus Lorne.”
“Desiree Behring.”
“Oliver L—Grain,” I stuttered.
“Nice to meet you, Oliver Legrain,” Lazarus said as he released my hand from his iron grip. He then grabbed his drink and a small bag from the barista, wishing us a good day before exiting the café.
Desiree and I looked at each other in disbelief after the interaction we’d just had. That man, Lazarus, could probably take me to my father. Or have me killed depending on who he served. I had firsthand experience in how powerful and perfidious the Lorne family was. I knew I had to be careful, but I was so anxious to find my father. I quickly grabbed my plain, ol’ coffee and we left the line.
We claimed a table outside by the street, under an umbrella-like overhang.
Desiree took a sip from her butterscotch coffee drink and squealed with excitement. “This is totally exos!”
We both laughed and drank and ate our bizarre pastries. We mock-clinked our paper cups to our big city adventure.
“That’s not something you see every day,” a voice said from behind me. The guy who had given Desiree her drink recommendation was sitting a table over.
“What isn’t?” Desiree asked.
“Lazarus Lorne buying a couple of kids coffee. To actually see him in person is one thing, but to see an interaction like that is something else.”
“Who is he?”
“Tell me you’ve heard of the Lornes before.”
“Of course,” I said.
“Good. Lazarus and his sister own hospitals all over the country. He is credited as the father of energy healing. He created most of the healing practices in the last thirty years responsible for nullifying almost any disease.”
“Thirty years? He didn’t look that old,” Desiree said.
“I know, right? He looks exos for his age. Oh, sorry, I forgot you’re not up on the lingo.”
“We’ve got it now, thanks,” I said, fully turning around in my chair. This kid wore a glossy black jacket with shoulder straps and snap pockets on each sleeve, a silver V-neck shirt, and designer jeans. “I didn’t get your name.”
“Darius Fitz,” he said, extending a hand. His jacket made a crinkling sound as he moved.
We finished our formal introductions and joined him at his table. I kept looking over at the passing hover cars. It wasn’t yet commonplace for me; it still felt like a dream that Desiree and I were even here. I thought I could still see the back of Lazarus Lorne as he blended more and more into the crowd down the sidewalk.
I tuned back into the conversation with our new friend as Darius was looking over one of Desiree’s $20 bills.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said, placing it face up on the table. He began typing feverously onto the screen of his tablet computer, tapping and dragging different windows along the screen.
“I’ve typed everything about this bill into here and nothing. There is nothing about it on the interlanet. Where did you say you got it from?” Darius picked up the bill again and examined both sides. “There is no ancient money that I’ve ever seen that looks like this.”
“I got it from back home,” Desiree said.
I suddenly got nervous at where this conversation was going. He thought we were out-of-towners. But Desiree might convince him that we’re crazy. Insane asylum, crackpot nuts crazy.
“Los Angeles,” Desiree said, almost as a question.
Darius typed that into his tablet. “There is no Los Angeles. What are you guys trying to pull anyway? Forget it. Maybe I should get going.”
“No, don’t go,” Desiree protested. “There is a Los Angeles. It just isn’t here.”
“What are you talking about?”
I eyed Desiree skeptically. We shouldn’t be doing this. She looked hesitant to continue, but did nonetheless.
“How can I put this?” she said. “We’re from an…alternate universe.”
“No we’re not. She’s just teasing. We’re just from out of town like you said.” I couldn’t believe Desiree was telling Darius this information.
“Look us up in your computer. We probably don’t exist either.”
“All right,” Darius said, suddenly sounding intrigued. “What’s your ID number?”
“Social Security number?”
“What’s a Social Security number?”
We were getting nowhere, and Darius looked like he was about to leave again.
“I swear I’m telling you the truth,” Desiree said. “We’re just interested in learning more about your city. We’re not dangerous—”
“Or aliens,” I said. “We’ve just traveled from another plane of awareness.”
“Another plane of awareness? Sounds like you’ve been reading Commodore Chaos’s blog.”
“Commodore who?” Desiree asked.
“Or what he’s been writing about is true…” Darius stared out into the distance. Something was obviously plaguing him.
“What is this Commodore Chaos writing about?” I asked.
“I’ve followed his blog for a few years. He’s been writing about the Lorne family, saying they aren’t who everyone thinks they are; that they’re extremely dangerous. His sites get shut down regularly. But another one pops up under a new domain name. His entire blog gets reposted and the entries are always signed the same. I don’t know how he’s never been found because the Lornes have their hands in everything. They’ve done so many great things, like with Lazarus, but he claims that they’re all self-serving and evil.”
Neither Desiree nor I even flinched at Darius’s description of the Lorne family. This Commodore Chaos seemed to know what he was talking about.
“And he talked about the existence of different planes of awareness. So is that really true?”
Desiree and I shared another glance. Darius’s demeanor had completely changed, but I still didn’t know how far was too far. I telepathically begged Desiree to proceed with caution. She smiled at me, took a final sip from her javatwist, and turned back to Darius. We were definitely not on the same page.
“It’s absolut
ely true. We’re from the plane below,” Desiree said.
“He never mentioned a plane below this one, only above. Let me look at something.” Darius searched through screens on his tablet. “Here’s his new site, int.againstthegrain.dom. It just launched a few days ago. What did you say your name was again?” He looked up at me inquisitively.
“Oliver…”
“Oliver what?”
“Grain.”
Darius looked back down at his tablet and then slid it across the table. “Take a look at the latest post. Commodore Chaos mentions you.”
3
House of Mirrors
I gazed down at Darius’s tablet in disbelief, but I should have taken a hint from the domain name. How did this Lorne-conspiracy blogger know who I was? And better yet, who was he? This guy was putting a red target on my back. Luckily, he didn’t include a picture.
“Let me see that.” Desiree pulled the tablet closer to see for herself. She read the mention of me, as well as Cias and the Lorne Royal Guard. Apparently, from this blogger’s research, the surname Grain came from a family close to the Lornes in their home region of Acanombia, in the Great Provence of Er.
“I’ve never met this guy in my life! Where’s he getting his information? How can you trust any of his stuff is true?” I asked, leaning back in my chair. Perhaps some of the information in the article was true, but the stuff about me surely wasn’t. It was hard to trust any of it.
“How do I know what you guys are telling me is true?” Darius replied, and he had a point. “I was introduced to Commodore Chaos’s blog a few years ago by a friend of mine who was certain he was onto something. My friend soon became paranoid he was being watched and followed by the Lorne Royal Guard and then suddenly disappeared. I haven’t seen or heard from him since.”
“I’m sorry about your friend and all, but that doesn’t prove anything.”
Desiree continued flipping through screens on the tablet, and then she took a sip from my coffee without warning. Actually, she finished it.
Darius continued. “One of his current theories is that the Lorne family is on the lookout for people who learn about the other planes of awareness—like that’s the key to their power. They’re enlightened and want to keep everyone else in the dark. These other people who learn of the planes then simply disappear.”
“And that’s what you believe happened to your friend?” Desiree asked.
“Yeah. Only a few weeks after we started talking about this stuff, he disappeared. He’d talked about an asylum being used as a kind of prison—SUSY Asylum.” Darius looked nervously around, and then snatched back his tablet. “You have been forthcoming with me and I have reciprocated, but I think our conversation is venturing into dangerous territory. Lazarus was just here. Who knows who else is nearby or listening in. As it said in the post, they have agents and spies working on their behalf beyond the guard.”
“Like Cias,” I said. “Okay, so we’re not in a good setting for this subject matter. I am not some kind of secret agent for the Lorne family. Look at me; I’d make a terrible spy.” I attempted to look weak and pitiful, which wasn’t much of a stretch.
“You believe us now, right?” Desiree asked.
“You were mentioned in the blog.” Darius was looking at me, obviously still skeptical.
“That’s true and I can’t explain that one. I swear to you that we are not with this Lorne conspiracy plot. But with what you said about your friend—if it’s true that it’s dangerous for people who know about the other planes—then help us blend in better.”
“Why are you even here?” Darius’s eyes toggled between Desiree and me.
“Look around; this place is amazing! You get to live here all the time, but for us, this is, well, exos,” Desiree declared. “What’s your favorite thing to do here?” She crossed her legs and clasped her hands on the table. She gave him her sad puppy-dog eyes, which came so naturally to her. And they were deadly.
Darius seemed to lighten up a little. “The hottest club in town is Level Seven, but you’ve got to be sixteen to get in. I’m a month shy. My buddy and I tried creating fake perms—”
“Fake what?” I asked.
“Fake permanent IDs.”
“Is that what the other people were putting through the scanners?”
“Precisely. See, I’ve got a minor ID bracelet,” Darius said and held out his left arm with the green bracelet. He spun it around his wrist until its circular symbol was showing, which was a circle with thousands of curved intersecting lines within. It looked like an elaborate circular maze. “The coding has all of my information and is linked to my parents’ financial accounts.”
“You can go out and spend all your parents’ money?” Desiree asked.
“Not exactly. Parents set the parameters. I’m capped pretty low. And they’re alerted to all my transactions.”
“Oh, that actually kinda sucks.”
“But when I turn sixteen, I get my perm and my own private accounts and everything. I can’t wait.”
“What happened with the fake ID you tried to make?” I asked, thinking we could use something like that.
“It’s really complicated. We had to essentially create new people because we are already in the Greater Meric government files, which is practically impossible to hack into. So we had to create new identities, new accounts, and unique ID codes. I don’t know if you saw one up close, but they look similar to the code that I have, except that it’s a specialized tattoo called a DNA Brand. The ink is interlaced with your DNA for authenticity, which is picked up by the scanners. There are generator programs on the interlanet to help build a unique code, but getting the DNA percentage exact in the ink is not so easy.”
“It didn’t work, I take it.” I knew it was too good to be true.
Darius shrugged. “No. But I guess the bright side is I’ve only got a month to go.”
“What can we actually do here?” Desiree asked, kicking her foot impatiently. There was nothing left for her to eat or drink.
Darius leaned back with an elbow up on the table, twisting a small clump of his hair together, making it stand on end. “I got it! How about the P.C. Fair? If this is your first time in the city, you’ve got to check it out. It’ll be brilliant.”
“Is it anything like the O.C. Fair?” Desiree asked.
“Yes?” Darius obviously had no frame of reference to honestly answer her question.
“Are you coming with us?” She sure was cute when she got excited.
“I better. I don’t think you could survive in the city without me.” Darius grinned wide, flashing perfectly straight and white teeth. “Let’s head out before it gets too late.” He grabbed his tablet, fastened it somehow to the inside of his jacket, and hopped over the small railing.
Desiree giggled as we followed suit, and the three of us charged down the sidewalk.
Darius hailed down a taxi and we were swiftly swept away to the Provex City Fair. Desiree was easily coaxed into the center seat, with all of us pushed shoulder-to-shoulder and thigh-to-thigh.
“I don’t know how we’re gonna be able to pay you back,” I said as we glided through the narrow, one-way streets.
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll work something out,” Darius said looking a little too comfortable next to Desiree.
In fact, I seemed to be the only one a little uncomfortable. But Darius had a calming demeanor about him. I couldn’t help but like him.
It took about twenty minutes to get there. I had expected the fair to be on the outskirts of the city, but instead, it was in the thick of it somewhere. I had no idea how far we were from the monorail station now. But as we arrived at the gate, it didn’t matter.
Desiree gasped as we stepped out of the taxi, and though I probably wouldn’t admit it aloud, I let a tiny gasp escape myself. The fair hid behind a rod iron fence and a gate at least fifty feet high, like they were holding back King Kong or something. A canvas banner stretched across the top of the gate, flut
tering in the steady breeze. It had electronic words streaming across with exploding fireworks behind the writing, welcoming us to the greatest fair on Earth.
“This is one place where they’re not tracking entrants,” Darius said as we walked up to the gate. A small booth sat off to the edge, with a man with a long white beard stuffed inside. He provided Darius with one of the circular scanners, and we were allowed through the magnificent gates.
An extraordinarily tall man with a colorful top hat passed in front of us with a white tiger on a chain. He tipped his hat and the tiger roared as they continued on their way into the crowd. Desiree grabbed my arm and burrowed into my side, releasing a nervous laugh.
“Nothing here will hurt you. It’s all a show,” Darius said, seeing Desiree’s obvious trepidation.
This was more than a fair. It was a fair, theme park, and circus all rolled into one—and then shot full of steroids.
“Where do we start?” Desiree asked, still clinging to me.
“Wherever you want. We can do it all,” Darius said, raising his hands up and performing a dramatic turn as we followed the flow of people deeper into the park, leaving the security of the gate behind. “Actually we can’t. There’s too much. But we can do whatever strikes you, and a few things that just shouldn’t be missed…especially for you two.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“There’s some stuff that will be eye-opening for people who’ve never been to the city before, and you guys have obviously come from much farther than everyone else.”
We passed booths with games, food, and souvenirs. There were animals in chains, in cages, and roaming free.
I felt a tug at my pant leg and looked down to see a small monkey looking up curiously at me. I extended my hand and arm to remove his grip and keep him at bay, but he reached for my hand as I extended it and adeptly climbed up my arm. He perched his limber body on my shoulder.
Desiree dropped my arm and stepped closer to Darius.
“I think he likes you,” Darius chuckled.
The monkey cried and pointed ahead, burning a hole through the crowd with his lanky finger. A man with a pencil-thin moustache and long goatee twisted into two separate appendages crouched by the entrance of a purple tent. He whistled and the monkey jumped up and down on my shoulder, and proceeded to point and cry louder.
SUSY Asylum Page 3
