Pulse

by Patrick Carman

  “Dylan!” Faith yelled. The nightmare was going deeper inside her, and for a flash of a second she saw bodies flying into lockers in the abandoned high school building—a flashback of a lost memory with Wade—and then it was gone. She was going crazy; that’s what it was. She felt this with more certainty when Dylan’s voice rose up from behind her.

  “I don’t think you’re going to believe me, are you?” he said.

  She wheeled around, putting her hands against the low wall around the roof.

  “Please, Dylan. Just take me home. You’re really scaring me.”

  Dylan looked visibly wounded, like he’d made a horrible mistake he wished he could take back.

  “You’re special, Faith,” he said. “And important. More important than you know.”

  “Stop lying to me!”

  Faith climbed up onto the ledge and carefully stood up. There was a breeze that made her wobble, and Dylan reached his hand out toward her.

  “If you jump, I’ll make sure you don’t land badly. You can count on it.”

  She wasn’t thinking about leaping off a building; she’d only wanted to get as far away from Dylan as she could. She wanted to run away, but couldn’t. Looking back and forth as her hair tangled in the breeze, she began to cry. Glancing down, Faith realized she wasn’t standing over the ladder, which would have put her fall only ten feet away to the first landing on the fire escape. What she saw instead was a long drop into darkness. The wind kicked up without warning, and she leaned in toward it, losing her balance as she tried to correct.

  “I wish you hadn’t done that,” Dylan said as he watched her arms flail, and she disappeared over the edge, screaming her head off. He closed his eyes and lowered his head, then he returned to the table and sat down. He could hear her screaming as she rose up in the air, far over his head. Faith flew across the expanse of the building some twenty feet up into the darkness, then she stopped directly over her chair and hung in the air.

  “Let me know when you’re ready to come down,” Dylan said.

  Faith kicked and screamed in the air, which made her flip and pitch in different directions. When she finally stopped, she was breathing heavily, a soft wind blowing through her blond hair. She looked like a ghost.

  “I’m going to lower you slowly now. If you start kicking you might hurt yourself, so please, stay calm until you’re sitting again. You can still run away if you want to.”

  Faith didn’t move a muscle or say a word. She was still afraid, but she was starting to feel Dylan’s calm confidence in the air all around her. She felt, in a strange way, as if he was holding her in the air, like he had his arms wrapped around her. “Dylan,” she said as she slowly lowered toward the chair she’d sat in.

  “Yeah?”

  Faith didn’t speak again until her feet were on the ground and she was sitting in the chair. She breathed a sigh of relief at not being dead, then looked directly into Dylan’s eyes.

  “I believe you. Now tell me what the hell is going on.”

  Dylan couldn’t help but smile at her. Faith’s hair was all over the place, and her shirt had twisted around just enough to look like she’d been sleeping in it all night. Faith reached across the table and took his hand. She wanted to be sure this wasn’t a dream or a nightmare she was trapped in; and feeling the soft skin of his palm, she felt a little bit more certain that it was all going to be okay.

  “Promise not to freak out anymore?” Dylan asked.

  “I do. Or I mean I’ll try. Let’s not have me flying around anymore. That’ll help.”

  “Done,” Dylan said.

  And then he told her some, but not nearly all, of what she needed to know.

  Chapter 13

  Hotspur Chance

  Once Dylan had established the minimum-required trust, he told Faith the first of many secrets.

  “You can move things with your mind. Not with any kind of precision or skill, but you can do it.”

  Dylan let this information sink in while he tried to fashion a way in which to explain everything to her. He’d thought about this moment through long, endless nights standing outside her room in the cold, but somehow the words were harder to find than he’d expected. Behind the bedroom window she’d always looked so soft and warm, all limbs and wild hair, a sleeping beauty waiting to be woken up. But now she was awake and turning out to be more complicated then he’d imagined.

  Faith stared at her fork, her brow narrowing and her full lips tightening as she concentrated.

  “Make sure you know where you’re sending that thing before you think too much about it,” Dylan said, intuitively sensing what she was up to. “You don’t want to find that thing sticking out of your forehead. Or mine.”

  Faith didn’t heed his warning, and the fork was gone from the table in a flash, over the side of the roof and off to places unknown.

  “Headed for Wade’s ass,” she said.

  Dylan laughed softly. “You’d have to run that errand the old-fashioned way. If you don’t know where he is, it’s not going to know where to go.”

  “So where did the fork go?”

  Dylan shrugged. “It’ll stop when it hits something, which could be another human being. Better call it back.”

  Dylan made a slight motion with his hand, and a moment later the fork was on the table. The tongs were bent backward.

  “Guess it hit something hard,” Dylan said. “Bummer.”

  “I didn’t know you were so fond of forks.”

  “You’re funny when you’re not screaming.”

  Faith was starting to settle down. She ran her fingers through her tangled hair, trying to tame it as best she could, then gave up and put it in a loose ponytail that wouldn’t reveal her two small tattoos. She looked at the broken glass on the roof of the Nordstrom building.

  “You do realize this is completely ridiculous,” Faith said.

  Dylan nodded, gathered his thoughts, and tried to explain.

  “Do you remember the lessons about the early stages of the States? You learn that stuff pretty young, like second grade.”

  “And they keep teaching it,” Faith added. “Not that you’d know. It doesn’t seem like you’re really into taking classes on your Tablet.”

  “I’m flattered you noticed. Humor me and tell me what you learned in school all these years.”

  “What does any of that have to do with the fact that I just made a fork fly off the edge of a building with my mind?”

  “So you don’t remember anything about history? I guess the rumors are false. I heard you were pretty smart.”

  “Better watch it. I can put a fork in your eye without even moving my hand.”

  “No, you can’t. But that’s not important at the moment. Tell me what they’ve been teaching you. Best to start with what you think you know.”

  Faith was annoyed with Dylan’s confidence, but he knew a lot more than she did. She was smart enough to play along, at least for the moment.

  “In 2025 the California coast slid into the ocean, killing three million people. That about where you want me to start?”

  “It’s the right marker, yeah. Let’s take it from there.”

  Faith leaned back in her chair and put her arms across her chest, looking at Dylan like he were a substitute teacher.

  “You already know all this stuff. Why do I have to repeat it?”

  Dylan was silent. He picked up his glass of water and took a drink, waiting patiently.

  “Hotspur Chance,” Faith said, nodding to Dylan as if to say Why would I go into detail about this guy? You know this already.

  “What about him?” Dylan asked.

  That was it for Faith. She decided to get it all out in one long explanation instead of waiting any longer for Dylan to let her off the hook.

  “California slides into the ocean, setting off alarm bells all over the world about global warming. So they get the smartest people they can find from all over the place and stick them all in the same building for three ye
ars. No one talks to them; no one hears from them. They’re just working in isolation like they’re on the moon or something. When they come out, they’ve appointed a leader, Hotspur Chance, a scientist from Oklahoma, of all places. Guy isn’t autistic, but he’s got some personality issues, so he doesn’t talk much. What he does do is prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that the world is totally screwed, and it’s going to happen way faster than anyone would have imagined. There are a lot of charts and computer simulations that ninety-five percent of the scientists worldwide agree with. The five percent who don’t are idiots, which apparently means that five times out of a hundred even dumb people can attain a degree in the sciences. Not long after Hotspur Chance shares the findings, New Orleans is gone and so are another million people. That pretty much shut the last five percent up.”

  “Then what?” Dylan asked. He’d turned attentive instead of condescending. He was looking at her with those big, dark eyes, hanging on every word.

  “Uh . . . ,” she stammered, looking down at the table and spinning her plate in little turns with her fingers. “Hotspur Chance and the rest of the group went back underground or whatever. They’d proved that global warming was going to destroy vast areas of the world in under a hundred years. That was the big news. A couple of coastlines were one thing; but according to Hotspur Chance’s report, it was going to get a lot worse, and fast. There would be no way to stop it entirely—the world was going to get tougher to live in no matter what—but there was a way, if we were fast enough, to stop the damage.”

  “How?” Dylan asked. “How did he propose we do this?”

  “States. That was the short answer.”

  “But why States, what was his reasoning?”

  “They all agreed on building States—every country, every scientist—for a lot of reasons. Getting everyone into small spaces would open up vast portions of land. They estimated that the North American landmass would need to be eighty-three percent empty, seventeen percent full in order to survive. That’s not including agriculture, just humans. Everyone had to populate in the same places, huge places. And those places had to be created from scratch as clean, modern, perfect atmospheres for living. No more gasoline-fueled cars; those would fall under a worldwide fossil fuel ban. Using gasoline or oil would have to land you in jail or worse; that was critical.”

  “And people really bought into this?”

  “Not at first, no. But then there was the global drought, followed by sections of Japan and China going under sea level. And the 2029 quake—that was what really did it. The earthquake really woke a lot of people up.”

  “So far you’re doing great. What happened next?”

  “Well, that’s when Hotspur Chance and all the other scientists went back to work. Only this time they invited the smartest engineers, planners, and architects to join them. There were thousands of people working in relative secrecy for a while. I mean, people knew what they were doing, but they lived on a closed campus and didn’t release reports or news very often. The world kept falling apart while they worked.”

  “How many of the thousands of people who went in came out at the end?”

  Faith thought this was a weird question.

  “I guess I don’t know what you mean. A lot of them never did come out; they just kept working. Hotspur Chance was the only person the public saw very much of.”

  Dylan nodded like he understood and motioned for Faith to go on.

  “The first States were started in 2032, and people began moving in a few years later. The States were designed to grow outward as more people arrived, but I don’t know too much about what they’re like on the inside. You know, since I’ve never been in one.”

  “And what percentage of the world population now lives in a State?”

  “More than ninety percent. It’s shocking, really. Just twenty years, and the world is nearly empty. Crazy, right?”

  “It shows what we can do when we put our mind to it, but, yeah, it’s a lot of people.”

  Faith shrugged. “I don’t know; I guess it’s perfect and clean and fabulous inside. My parents are so headstrong about it. They’ll never go inside the State. I think that part of them may have rubbed off on me.”

  “It’s not a crime, living inside a State.”

  “Might as well be. Can’t drive, can’t burn wood, no pets, can’t go wandering off into the middle of nowhere in search of some peace and quiet.”

  Faith was always bothered by the conformist aspect of the States. It wasn’t in her nature to walk in the same direction everyone else was walking.

  “Freedom is pricey, no doubt,” Dylan said, then he turned his head sideways slightly and looked at Faith like he were trying to read her mind. “Did you ever hear anything about the intelligence movement?”

  “The what?”

  Dylan nodded perceptively, like Faith’s ignorance was the only answer he needed.

  “Another time,” Dylan said. “I understand what you know.”

  “How’d I do? A-plus, right?” Faith said.

  “You’re about half right. And the half you got wrong has a lot to do with why you can pick up a glass with your mind and shatter it on the ground.”

  “Sorry about that, by the way. Was it expensive?”

  Dylan smiled and shook his head. “No, not expensive. I found them in the back room of the Target just down the street.”

  Dylan put his hand out across the table, reaching toward her.

  “Can I touch your wrist? It will help me explain.”

  “We’re all done with the history lesson, and now you want to hold hands with the teacher?”

  “My turn to teach you, if you’ll trust me.”

  Faith’s heart danced nervously inside her chest. There was something mystifying and dark about Dylan that made him very attractive. But the mysterious, good-looking type had been recently banned from Faith’s life. Wade had set her on edge, and she wasn’t going to let another jerk get under her skin.

  Faith looked at her spoon, which hadn’t been used, and thought about having it do something other than sit there. The spoon moved slowly up in the air, then settled in Dylan’s hand.

  “So no hand, just a spoon?” Dylan asked. He didn’t get an answer, just another shrug of Faith’s shoulders.

  “I have trust issues.”

  Dylan looked off toward the Western State glowing in the distance.

  “A lot more happened in those years behind closed doors than Hotspur Chance let on. I’m not going to tell you everything right now; it’s not my place to do that. But I can tell you a little. Hopefully it will be enough, for now.”

  “Sounds fair,” Faith said. Faith felt herself gently moving. It started in her feet, which lifted off the roof as light as a feather. She felt weightless and soft, but an energy was building deep inside her. It was a feeling she’d never had before, and something about it made her grab hold of the chair she sat in.

  “What’s happening? What are you doing to me?”

  “Better if you don’t hold on to anything,” Dylan said. He backed away from the table and stood up. “You’ll have to drop it eventually.”

  The feeling inside Faith’s body magnified like a ripple on the water, growing larger and larger, until Dylan gave her a funny look and her whole world changed in an instant. Like a rocket, she shot straight up in the air, taking on speed as she went. She forced her eyes open and saw that Dylan was right in front of her, rising up in the air as she was. It was dark and cold; and looking down, Faith realized she was sitting in the chair, her white knuckles a grip of steel around the bottom edge.

  “You really should let that thing go,” Dylan said as they came to a stop.

  Faith was so terrified she couldn’t speak. Her breath kept catching in her throat as she alternately glanced down and shut her eyes in terror. If she could have seen herself, she might have laughed at the silliness of a girl who was floating a few hundred feet off the roof of a building holding on to a chair.

  “T
his will all get easier, I promise,” Dylan said. He reached down and touched the back of her hand, and she flinched, letting one side of the chair slip from her fingers. She tried to hold on with her other hand but couldn’t, and a second later the chair fell out of the sky. There had been something about sitting in a chair that had felt safe, like she wasn’t really this far off the ground with nothing to hold her up. As she heard the chair smash into pieces below, Faith finally lost it. She grabbed for Dylan, turning him around like they were floating in water, then she pulled him close and wrapped her arms and legs around his broad back. He didn’t say a word, just let her calm down and hold him that way as he stared off into the distance. He put his hands on hers where they were gripping his T-shirt in two fists.

  “You’re not doing this; I am,” he said. “And I’m really good at it. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Faith whispered. She was still shaking—maybe he’d gone too fast.

  “I’m just going to start talking,” Dylan said. “You don’t have to do anything. Don’t think about where we are or what we’re doing. I’ve got you, and I’m not going to let you fall. It took me a long time to find you, much longer than I thought it would. Like I said before, you’re a special person. I’m guessing that’s obvious by now.”

  Dylan felt Faith let out a small laugh.

  “I don’t know if I can deal with this.”

  “You’re strong. You’ll be fine.”

  Faith loosened her grip slightly, felt the same weightlessness she’d felt on the ground.

  “I’m still scared,” she said.

  “Do me a favor and keep your eyes open,” Dylan said. “I want you to see something.”

  Faith lifted her head off Dylan’s back and peeked over his shoulder as he turned in the air. They had been facing away from the Western State, but now they could see it full-on. It was more beautiful than she’d expected: a vast city at night, like a whole universe sitting alone in the blackness of space. The wall, which wasn’t really a wall at all, glowed soft and yellow. It looked like a wall of fog caught in a perfect beam of moonlight.