Sleepwalker

by Michael Laimo

  Pyramid

  He felt someone shoving him. Then, a voice.

  “Richard...wake up.”

  Am I dreaming? Mother is that you?

  He fluttered his eyes open, found himself caught in sunlight. The ground was warm, textured with nature: leaves, soil, dried grass. He looked up, remembered tripping into the blue light, and realized at once that wherever he was now, it would be acceptable as long as the man in black wasn’t with him.

  He’s dead, Richard. Remember? Killed by your very own hand.

  For an alarming moment Richard felt plagued by imminent danger, that no matter what happened, where he went or was ultimately taken, someone would come for him, either lead him away to some promising haven, or simply try to kill him. Pam had made both those points obvious as they spoke in the motel room, so anything was possible.

  He twisted his head, saw Pam kneeling next to him, her face tinged red, a sourness commanding her features.

  “Richard...we need to get out of here. Can you walk?”

  Despite feeling utterly fatigued, he was able to climb to his feet and gaze around. They stood about ten feet deep into a wooded area. Once the trees broke, a finely manicured lawn spread out like a soccer field leading up toward an impressive silver-structured building with a plethora of mirrored windows. The windows climbed ten stories high before giving way to a penthouse of sorts, a pyramid-shaped framework running an additional fifty feet to its apex.

  “Come,” she said. “To the building. We will be safe once inside.”

  Richard gazed at the building with the same fascination of a U.F.O. enthusiast making his first sighting after a lifetime of searching. He stepped forward to the perimeter of the woods, realizing without doubt that once inside the building he would uncover the answers to all his questions--here he would discover exactly who he was.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said, entering the sunlight. It stung his irritated skin. “And familiar. I feel as if I’ve been here before.”

  “You have,” she replied, sidling up beside him.

  “What is it?”

  “Quantugen Industries.”

  Quantugen... “I don’t know what it is, or what it means...but somehow I know the name.”

  “That’s because it’s something you created, Richard. This is your building. Quantugen is your company.”

  “My God...”

  She grabbed him by the hand. “We need to go there so we can talk about everything. If we stay out here too long, they’ll eventually see us and become suspicious.”

  Richard nodded. “Where exactly are we, Pam?”

  She hesitated, then said, “Fairview, Richard. We’re in Fairview.”

  Mess

  There was no one home. That much he expected. Janice worked at the florist in Milleridge every other day--he couldn’t for the life of him remember what day of the week it was--and Greg was in school until three. He peered at the clock in the kitchen. Ten-thirty, it read. He stepped away, then shot a glance back at it.

  Different. Janice must’ve bought a new one. Strange because she wouldn’t have put it up there herself. Unless Greg did it, but between school and baseball, the kid was out of the house more often than not and the last thing he wanted to do was little jobs like this, especially at the end of the day when dinner and homework rode high up on his list of priorities.

  Then he noticed the sink. Piled high with dirty dishes. Jesus. Janice would’ve had his head if he left even one dish in the sink like this. And Greg knew better than to disrespect his mother’s neat and clean habits.

  Something was wrong.

  Leonard went to the bathroom, gazed at his face in the toothpaste-spotted mirror. Red like his hands, his skin looked as if it’d gone a few hours under the sun. Gingerly he washed his hands and face with cool water, then relieved himself before going into the bedroom.

  The bed was unmade, another detail neat-freak Janice would never let sit. Actually, the whole bedroom was in shambles. Drawers open, clothing and towels littering the floor. Many of Janice’s trinkets were hidden beneath piles of tee-shirts and stacks of magazines. If it weren’t for the jewelry and money left out on the nightstand, Leonard would have believed the house had been robbed.

  He lay down on the bed, caught some foreign odors in the sheets--nothing repulsive, just different, as if the bed had played host to a variety of people. A woman’s perfume, a man’s cologne, a sachet of lavender, a trace of musk, all coated with a layer of stale body odor. Even the faint smell of sauce with garlic, something Janice never cooked, lay nestled in the fabric.

  In moments sleep began to whisk him away, and in the back of his mind he made a pact with himself. That he, Leonard Moldofsky, would become the family man he’d neglected Janice and Greg of for so long. As long as she agreed to clean the goddamned house. And explain why it had become so filthy.

  Building

  They approached the building with caution, Pam’s eyes darting about, peering up at the overhead security cameras panning the outside environment. Hanging from eaves fifteen feet high, there were enough, so it seemed, to capture every length of space at any moment. When one slid out of view, its neighbor would trap the scene left behind.

  “Keep your head down,” she said. “Security doesn’t pay too much attention to details, and they won’t question me. At least, I don’t think they will. But if they see you...”

  Richard kept his silence, following her like a nervous child accompanying a parent to work for the very first time. She reached a sidewalk that circumnavigated the building and walked along it in the opposite direction of a huge parking lot filled with cars. They took it to the end and turned the corner where a steel door sat, impervious in the brick facing. Pam reached into her pocket, removed the billfold that Richard had rifled through earlier when questioning her identity, and removed a keycard. She slid it through a slot next to the door. A tiny green light flashed and they went inside.

  The door slammed shut behind them. Cool air washed over Richard’s face, temporarily easing the discomfort of his sore skin. The hall was empty, a service conduit with water and gas pipes snaking across the ceiling behind the cloak of hanging fluorescent lights. The walls were institutional, cinderblocks painted steel gray. A fire extinguisher was attached to the wall near the door.

  “Looks like a prison,” Richard said.

  “Acts like one too. C’mon.”

  They continued down the hall, Richard following Pam close behind. He began to feel suspicious of her, his earlier apprehensions returning and reminding him that even though her intentions seemed trustworthy at the moment, he shouldn’t exclude the possibility of her actions being solely self-serving, and that she might be deceitfully leading him into her web, as opposed to the fail-safe sanctuary she promised.

  Regardless of her intent, Richard saw no alternative but to follow her. She appeared to be ‘in the know’ regarding his life, his intimate torments. She was the only one available to trust. A guardian by default.

  They made a few turns, each bend taking them deeper into the bowels of the building. The roar of generators grew louder until they eventually descended a set of stairs into a large boiler room. Pam wound her way around two large generators to a steel door set back into a small alcove. She swiped her card and opened the door, holding it open for him to follow her. He stopped, looked into her eyes, which widened with impatience, and went inside.

  Different

  He dreamed of lights. Blue lights. Not the dazzling illumination that filled the motel room earlier, but smaller, subtler beacons floating orb-like in the air above him. They flickered, each carrying its own pulse. Only one at a time, each similarly taking its turn with unmistakable intentions. Morse code, Leonard knew, recalling the days during basic training when flashlights sent mock signals of distress from hidden drill zones, he, the interpreter from afar, challenged to decipher their message. These blue lights asserted their significance over and over again.

  Go home...go home...go home...r />
  I am home, he called out to the dream lights. I am home...

  Then, a voice. Calling his name.

  “Leonard!”

  The lights dispersed in an outward burst, like fish avoiding a thrown stone. His mind at once erased the dream-world, whisking him back to the reality he left behind some indeterminate time ago. In the pallid real-world a figure loomed above, the outline unfamiliar, but…her features, they were recognizable.

  Janice. His wife. Here. Now.

  Different.

  Then his sights cleared and he had a truly difficult time believing what his eyes were showing him. She’d undergone an obscene and seemingly impossible transformation. In just one day Janice Moldofsky had gained at least fifty pounds…but this extra weight was the least shocking part of her physical reversal. Her hair, always set to perfection, was horribly scraggled, dyed bright orange, a thick zipper-strip of gray racing across her scalp at the roots. Her skin was riddled with pimples, the arms victims of some bacterial disease that left them raw and crusty. Her clothes were disheveled and stained. She looked at him with clear disdain, perhaps repulsion, her hatred for him unmistakable. And when she spoke, Leonard saw that her voice and personality had become victim of some disturbing mutation as well.

  “What the hell you doing home already, you bastard?”

  In a panic, he wriggled up on his elbows, back against the wall (the headboard is gone) feeling the comforting bulge of his gun against his waist and wondering what kind of evil had taken over his wife in the last twenty four hours. She’d become a fucking monster. Yes, a fucking monster.

  She yanked the covers off the bed in one quick jerking motion, sending them against the siding closet door which, Leonard now realized, was off its hinges. “If you’re gonna be home today, then no use laying around. Git busy, you lazy fuck. Clean the damn kitchen.”

  He tried to speak, but the words couldn’t wrestle their way past the sudden lump in his throat. He held his hands up in defense as her unending barrage of curses and insults slammed into him like pelting raindrops. After she seemed to tire, she stormed out of the room, screaming crazily, banging pots and pans in the kitchen.

  Leonard staggered from the bed, trying to make sense of the situation, but finding no possible way to do so in his frazzled state of mind. Sure, he could sit here and think and think until his brain was burnt to a crisp, but he’d still have no plausible answer to this current state of events. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any more confusing.

  He came to a quick assumption that something horribly metaphysical had taken place, that after tripping into the blue light, he’d ended up back in Fairview in Hemmingway Park, and that somehow things had changed, that the life he once knew no longer existed.

  Last night George found traces of a blue-colored residue on both Delaney’s and Samantha’s clothing. He took samples, ran them through the computer and found them to be identical in nature. An odd and unique mixture of chemicals. He mentioned a few materials, uranium, xenon, some others. Those are nuclear elements.

  He peered at the clock. It read eleven-fifteen. He’d slept for only forty-five minutes.

  Can’t be...can’t possibly be.

  Somehow that boring life you once knew, Len, doesn’t seem so bad. Does it?

  He jumped from the bed, trying to ignore Janice’s tantrum, and lurched into the study. His books were gone. All of them. Even the bookshelf that once lined the entire far wall. It had been removed, jagged holes in the wall where it had once been bolted. No more Arthur C. Clarke (he’d collected every damn first edition), no more Robert Heinlen, no more Edgar Rice Burroughs. They were all gone.

  A tear came to his eye and he raced into the kitchen where Janice leaned against the counter eating beef ravioli out of the can. She looked at him, her eyes wild, yet hesitant, as if she could see the flames of ire burning in his own eyes. Breathing rapidly, he said, “Janice...where are my books?”

  “Books? What books? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “My science fiction collection. There used to be a bookshelf in the study, remember?”

  She looked at him oddly, head cocked, then answered, “You got rid of them about five years ago. At the garage sale.”

  Even though this was the first thing she’d said in a calm tone of voice, it was perhaps the most horribly instigating thing anyone had ever uttered to him in his forty-seven years. He pulled his gun, placed it against her neck. “I said where the fuck are my books?” Emphasis on the word fuck. So she’d understand.

  Tears sprang from her eyes like raindrops. Leonard didn’t think she was capable of crying. “I told you...” she stammered.

  That was when Greg walked in. His son.

  The high schooler had gone from studious jock to full-fledged dirtbag in his transformation. Earrings, long hair, worn jeans and Iron Maiden tee-shirt, a cigarette dangling from a pierced lip. A real looker. He took a step back when he saw the gun.

  “What the fuck, Dad?” Greg said.

  “Jesus Christ!” Leonard yelled. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “What are you doing?” Greg took a step closer. Leonard could see the potential for conflict brewing in the kid’s eyes. Still has his mother’s eyes, Leonard thought. Just like in the real world. Only here their eyes are absurdly maniacal. If this were the real world I’d have these two locked up.

  Leonard pulled the gun away from Janice and pointed it at Greg. His ‘son’ raised his hands up in a defensive posture, a too-cool move that exhibited prior practice; Leonard figured this wasn’t his only brush with the law, with or without his father’s awareness.

  “You,” he said. “Get over there with your mother.”

  Greg stepped over to her, nudging up against her. Janice yelled, “Have you lost your fucking mind? Have you?”

  “Yo dad, you could lose your job, you know.”

  Leonard opened the back door, and very calmly stepped out onto the porch. Peering in through the torn screen, he shook his head at the mess that had become of his family, then said with no rationality, “Fuck you all.”

  Gun still in hand, he ran back into the neighborhood he lived in for twenty-three years, down Gaston street and far away from the house he hoped he’d never have to return to again.

  And all the while he wondered if he was losing his mind.

  Exist

  “I use this room as a safe haven of sorts, when I need to be alone. I’ve set the keyless entry so that only my card will work. Of course if someone really wanted to get in, they could reprogram the lock from any terminal, but half the building doesn’t even know this room is here, and the other half doesn’t really care. The only one we have to watch out for is Brutus. For now, though, I think we’re safe.”

  “Who’s Brutus?”

  “Head of security. He’s the boss’s right-hand man. He runs all of the computers in the building, and pretty much does whatever the boss says.”

  “The boss? I thought you said I owned this place. Wouldn’t that make me the boss?” Richard’s attempt at sarcasm showed through, and Pam responded with a frown.

  “I think it’s time we talk.”

  “I think that’s a good idea.”

  She motioned towards a small leather sofa against the back wall. “Come here,” she said, then sat down next to him, placing her elbows on her knees. She looked like a passenger waiting for a flight to be announced. “I always do my best thinking in this room. It’s one of the only places here that you’ll find no cameras.”

  Richard settled into the smooth upholstery. It felt really good, his muscles and bones graciously coming to rest. Pam jumped up and retrieved a bottle of water from a small refrigerator by the door, walked back over and handed it to him, which he downed in a few gulps. After a minute, and another half bottle of water, he asked, “So what is this company, Quant--”

  “Quantugen.” She sat back down on the couch.

  “Quantugen. I don’t like the sound of it already.”


  “They do some pretty interesting things here.”

  “And it all has to do with me?”

  Pam leaned back against the white cloth pillow on the arm of the sofa, making herself comfortable, Richard assumed, for the long talk ahead of them. “Are you familiar with the term ‘Quantum Physics’?”

  Richard searched his mind for answers, thousands of voices suddenly waking up to yell out answers, as if they were all contestants on a game show. Somewhere inside his head he heard the phrase ‘time travel’.

  “Time travel?”

  She grinned. “Yes, that’s correct. Time travel plays a major role here. But it isn’t our primary concern.”

  “Okay...so what is?”

  “I want you to realize and understand everything that’s been happening, and in order to do so, you need to know everything from the beginning. So...you ready?”

  Richard nodded.

  “Okay. The lights, the dreams you’ve been having for about two years...”

  “Yes...”

  “Well...they materialized because of a breakthrough in quantum physics research that occurred exactly three years ago.”

  “Three years ago...” He paused, startled, then asked, “Does this time travel you speak of have anything to do with my dreams?”

  “Directly, nothing at all. But your dreams did begin as a result of an all-out effort to assess the still fully developmental science. Let me give you a bit of a primer. Even with all our research, human time travel, as much as we understand of it, to this day remains a physical impossibility. This is because of two reasons. One, no one can ever travel back in time. It can’t be done. Science--and nature--won’t allow it. Secondly, time travel into the future, although plausible, is still in its very early trial and error stages. It does have its possibilities, but as of this time, these possibilities exist only in theory.”