by Sean Platt
He told her about his big plan, and that he had excellent news for her.
Chapter 7
They walked for hours.
Leah didn’t have a Beam ID, but the system seemed to know who she was anyway. Every few blocks, she’d press her hand to a wall or a glass window, and it would light up and register her as anonymous. Then she’d tap around on the Beam window for a while (verbal never worked quite right in public and made you look like a tourist) and the system would soon act like it knew who she was anyway. It always took a minute or two, as if there was something in the area — possibly at her last access point — that needed time to sniff her out. But then the window would begin to shift in barely perceptible ways. She’d do a search and find that it auto-completed from a list of recent searches made from her earlier access points. The few times she visited retail pages then re-visited later, items she’d recently looked at would appear, as if cookied. She’d find the keypad set to her most natural, preferred position. Search results would end up strangely tailored to someone her age, gender, and level of enhancement.
Block by block, entirely on foot, they spent the day wandering from Soho’s burned out studios and shops all the way into one of Manhattan’s most upscale neighborhoods. As the sun set, they found themselves in a trendy section of Harlem. They both felt underdressed. Harlem wasn’t exactly snobby, but it was affluent and not modest in the least. Most of the men wore suits and expensive band ties, and the women wore long, flowing dresses. There weren’t many jeans, headbands, gray braids, pink dreadlocks, or rainbow sarongs at all.
As uncomfortable as Leo had been when he’d met Leah in the cafe, Harlem seemed to press the boot heel harder against his back. Leah found the old man’s discomfort cute, despite feeling slightly out of skin herself. Leo talked all the time about the need to follow your internal compass and not care what others thought, but he clearly had a bit of self-consciousness and peer-think in him after all.
Finally, to Leo’s sighing relief, Leah slapped the wall of a large gray building. It looked as out of place as Leah and Leo, but for different reasons. While the rest of the buildings were glass-and-concrete spires or high-end apartments, the building Leah indicated had a large wooden arch across its front that was surrounded by abstract stained glass accents. The area beneath the wooden arch was chrome broken by two enormous windows. Or at least, they looked like windows, but they weren’t. They showed clouds in a blue sky instead of the building’s interior, which meant they were Beam displays, and as soon as Leo and Leah walked under the arch, they saw that the clouds protruded from the building’s front as 3-D holos. The holos were barely visible from the street, but once under the arch they seemed almost real. Leah felt like she was hiking through the sky, with concrete steps underfoot.
Leo glanced up at the floating clouds. “This looks like a church,” he said. Then he walked over to a small plaque, read it, and returned to Leah.
“Is it a church?” Leah asked.
“It’s a school. A school for gifted children. Why is Crumb at a school?” He paused. “No, wait. Why did a school steal Crumb from his hospital room and then erase all trace that he’d ever been there?”
“I don’t know.”
Leo looked at the building, the clouds, and Leah. Finally he looked out into Harlem, seemingly at the long and winding route they’d taken to get here.
“You’re sure about this?” he asked.
“No,” said Leah.
Leo chuckled. “Good enough.”
The school’s lobby was as odd as its outside. The cloud motif was repeated, and Leah found herself waist-deep in a small cumulus as she approached a reception desk. At least, that’s what she assumed it was. The desk was the most intricately carved thing Leah had ever seen. It was all waves and whorls, its surface rippled like whipped cream. It was roughly desk-shaped — but only roughly, and its surface breathed with a Beam projection of rippling water. The wave projection tumbling across the curved surface made Leah dizzy, and she had to look away as she approached it.
The attendant was as odd as the desk. He was a boy of maybe eight, with thick, messy brown hair. He had large ears and a charming smile and seemed unable to sit still. He stayed behind the desk, but the area behind it was wide and long enough for him to pace. He did so the entire time he was talking, making gestures with his hands.
Leah realized she didn’t know what to say. Why would a school have taken in a strange, sick vagrant? Would the kid know about any of it? And if he did, would he know Crumb as “Crumb,” or “Stephen York?” Or neither? And if the place did have Crumb, would his presence here be a secret? Would Leah and Leo need to connive their way in? The notion, as she considered it, seemed absurd. Something in the school (or perhaps the school itself) had been drawing Leah toward it all the way from lower Manhattan like a dog on a leash. Whatever that something was, it wanted her here. It almost felt like it needed her here. To Leah, the force felt almost magnetic. As odd as it was and as impossible as it would have been to describe, she almost felt like she was on both sides of that magnetism, simultaneously being drawn toward the school and doing the summoning herself. She hadn’t even really felt the mechanics of their journey. Aside from stopping occasionally to access The Beam, the walk here had felt almost like sleepwalking.
“She’s been waiting for you,” said the kid, pacing, barely looking up. His fingers traced the interior edge of the liquid desk, following its contours.
“Who?” said Leo.
The kid gave Leo a brief look. It wasn’t impolite or unwelcoming, but it wasn’t like the look he’d already given Leah. She was supposed to be here. Leo, on the other hand, was tagging along.
“The headmistress,” said the kid, speaking to Leah.
“What is this place?” Leah asked.
“It’s a school.”
“What do you do here?”
The kid shrugged. “Learn about the world.”
“The world?”
The kid nodded.
“Like what about the world?”
“The way the world is. Where to go. How to use it.”
“How to use the world?”
“How to travel the world. How to make the world,” said the kid. Then, without slowing his pacing, the lobby’s floating clouds winked out of existence. The strange, fluid reception desk seemed to vanish as it blended into the walls and floors. The entirety of the lobby’s surfaces became moving images of a beach. Waves seemed to crash from one side as a hologram plugged the doorway through which Leo and Leah had entered. Leah felt a breeze touch her bare shoulders and looked out at the surf, her senses already buying that it was real surf rather than projection. Out in the surf, enormous rocks jutted up from the breakers like fingers jabbed at the sky. Leah looked down and saw sand. She was wearing sandals and standing still, but the reality was so complete that Leah felt certain that if she slipped off her sandals, she’d find herself standing in actual sand. So she did. She slipped off a sandal, stepped down, and felt sand.
“We’re in a simulator?” Leah asked the kid.
“No,” said the kid. “We’re in the world.”
“But we’re in a simulator in the world,” Leah clarified.
The kid stopped pacing and looked at Leah, earnest and confused at the same time. “We’re at a beach in the world,” he said.
Leah watched Leo trying to get his bearings, amused by his wonder. Leo knew simulators existed, of course, but he’d probably never experienced one this good, or this fully.
“No,” Leo said to the kid. “She means this room. This school lobby. We’re still in the lobby. The lobby is a simulator, and it’s simulating a beach.”
“We’re at a beach,” said the kid.
“A beach that was made by a simulator.”
The kid scrunched up his face. Leah saw his innocence, and felt vulnerable in its glare. “What’s a simulator?”
Rather than stretching the argument, Leah let it go. She sighed, closed her eyes, and accepte
d the breeze on her skin. She listened to the breakers. She smelled the air. It was an astonishing simulation, and an astonishing simulator.
“Whatever it is, it’s beautiful,” she said. “I almost feel like I could throw a rock into those waves.”
So the kid, because he was a kid, picked up a rock and threw it. The rock whistled and skipped, plunking into the surf twenty or thirty yards away. Leah felt like she’d been punched. Something in the world had just gone very wrong, but it took her mind a few seconds to realize what it was. Then it came to her: the rock hadn’t hit the real walls of the school’s lobby as it should have.
“What is this place?” she whispered.
“It’s the world,” said the kid. Then the beach faded and the lobby reappeared around them, the kid back behind the liquid-looking reception desk. That was another thing; he’d never come out from behind the desk. Yet a moment ago, she’d been standing beside him and had seen his whole body.
Leah didn’t know what to say. So after an odd moment, the kid finally came out from behind the desk, then took Leah’s hand as if she were the child and began to lead her down a long hallway.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
The kid said, “Somewhere else.”
At the end of the corridor was a door, and behind the door was another corridor. They walked it for a long time, passing rooms that were bright and sun-filled despite the fact that they were clearly at the building’s interior. The suites were filled with children and looked like sparsely furnished classrooms. The hallway itself was spotless and reminded Leah of the secret Quest lab in Chinatown, but she wasn’t sure if the surfaces were Beam surfaces or not. Nothing seemed to be responding, but everything was familiar. Yet Leah knew her past well enough to know she’d never been there.
“You’re intuitives,” said Leah.
“We’re kids,” said the boy, still holding her hand.
“You’re anthroposophists. You walk The Beam.”
“We learn about the world,” said the kid.
“By using The Beam.”
“Well,” said the kid, “what do you use?”
“I don’t know. Eyes. Ears. Hands.”
“The native five,” said the kid.
“Excuse me?”
“You just use your first five senses. It’s cool. Most people do. The others are better.”
Leah felt lost. “What do you mean, ‘others’?”
“The other senses,” the kid replied, seemingly unable to accept Leah’s naiveté.
“The Beam isn’t a sense,” she said. “You’re learning technology, not reality.” But then she thought about the rock, falling into the surf thirty yards away.
“What’s the difference?” he said.
They’d reached a wide set of double doors. The kid let go of her hand.
“Just wait in here,” he said, smiling. “The headmistress will be here soon.”
He pushed the doors open, then nodded at Leah and Leo to enter. Leo looked at Leah. Leah looked at Leo. She wanted Leo to see trust in her eyes, but she couldn’t summon the feeling herself. They settled on mutual uncertainty. Leah looked at the kid. He looked back at her, placid.
Both Leo and Leah turned to look into the room. There, in a large chrome-framed bed with bright white sheets and a heavy comforter, was Crumb.
They entered as the double doors slowly closed behind them. The room was large and stark, with windows every few feet. Outside the windows was a bucolic meadow with a red barn in the distance. The red barn had white trim and an arm mounted above the loft door, swaying slightly in a breeze that made the grass puff and dance. The room’s interior was simple; other than Crumb sleeping in the large bed, there were only a few chairs and a small endtable with four glasses on top. Beside the glasses was a clear glass pitcher, empty.
Behind them, the kid had vanished. Neither had heard him go. The room itself was quiet. The corridor hadn’t been loud, but kids’ laughter had rumbled through the air like a machine’s constant hum. But inside the room — which almost looked like a lush hospital suite, minus the machines — the silence was absolute. Leah could hear her sandals squeak as her body shifted and balanced.
Leo turned to Leah.
“I’m tripping, right? We did a lot of moondust.”
Leah knew Leo was kidding. Moondust didn’t work like that. It enhanced sight on The Beam and made you mellow, but didn’t make you see things.
“A hell of a lot,” said Leah, smiling.
“I guess I believe you,” said Leo. “About that crazy shit with Crumb and The Beam. Because here we are. And there he is.”
They walked forward. Crumb seemed to be asleep, his breathing low and regular. Leah wasn’t sure how she knew, but she was sure it was sleep that had him, not coma. Whatever damage she’d done to his brain back in Bontauk was healed. Leo looked at him closely, then at Leah. Crumb shifted in his sleep, rolling onto his side.
They backed up, speaking in half-whispers.
Leo said, “He’s better.”
“I know.”
“They cleaned him up. I think his hair and beard have been trimmed,” Leo added.
“I don’t see shit in his beard. No crumbs for Crumb.” Leah laughed, but the sound was hollow in the big white room, and made her want to look around self-consciously.
“I don’t want to be here,” said Leo.
“We need to be here.”
Leo swallowed. “I still don’t want to be.”
“You think we’re in danger? That he’s in danger?”
Leo looked at the endtable. “I want a drink of water.”
Leah didn’t know what to say, so she told him to go ahead. But of course, the pitcher was empty.
“We passed a bathroom on the way down,” said Leo. “At least I think it was a bathroom. I intuited that it was a bathroom using my native five senses. But it’s cool. Most people do that.”
“Maybe it’s a beach,” said Leah.
Leo told Leah that he was going to fill the pitcher. He said it with a swallow, as if announcing he was about to cross a minefield. Leah told him to go ahead. It sounded odd, her giving him permission, but he seemed to be asking. So Leah gave her blessing. And after Leo had taken the pitcher and ducked out (strangely, the sound of kids from the hallway didn’t enter the silent room even while the door was open), Leah approached Crumb. She resisted the urge to pet his hair. It seemed like a cliche, and no matter what she’d learned about Stephen York, he was still mostly Crumb to her, and touching Crumb was gross.
Leah had put him here. But of course, she also hadn’t. He wasn’t Crumb and never had been. This was Stephen York, one of the The Beam’s fathers. All of those deep thoughts in the leather journal stashed in Leah’s backpack had come from this man’s mind. It was impossible to believe. Crumb spoke about squirrels, and conspiracies, and squirrel conspiracies. How could he have thought all of the things in the journal? He’d accomplished unparalleled feats. He’d changed the world and then fretted about the implications of changing the world, asking the question so few people asked: Sure, we CAN do this. But SHOULD we? Some would say that what this man had done had resulted in a kind of utopia. Others would say he’d just forged another set of chains, given the masses another pill to pop.
“Where is Noah West now, Crumb?” Leah whispered.
“I wish we knew,” said a voice behind her.
Leah jumped. Then she turned, finding a girl of maybe eighteen or nineteen standing just three feet to her rear. The room was tomb quiet, like outer space, and still the girl had managed to sneak up on her.
“Hi,” said Leah.
“Hello, Leah,” said the woman. She was wearing a long blue dress and had pale skin sprayed with freckles. Her hair was red and silky smooth, a trim under shoulder length, flowing around her narrow, face like the sun’s corona. She was young, but somehow she projected a much older aura. Her manner was upright and confident, infused with authority.
“How do you know who I am?” L
eah asked.
“We called you,” the girl replied.
Leah wanted to protest that the girl hadn’t called her at all, but knew it was wasted breath. She knew what the the girl meant, even if she didn’t understand it… or who “they” were.
“Who are you?” she asked instead.
“My name is SerenityBlue.” The girl extended a pale hand for Leah to take briefly, but not shake. “One word. Two capitals. I know, I know. But it’s the name I was created with.”
“Created?”
“We were all created,” said SerenityBlue. She walked to Crumb and fluffed his pillow. Leah followed the girl with her eyes. She was rail-thin and looked almost insubstantial. When she stood between Leah and one of the false windows, her arms nearly vanished as the bright sun tried to wrap around and swallow them. “You came for Crumb.”
“You know his name?”
“It’s the name you registered him with at the hospital. It’s the name he calls himself.”
“But he has another name,” said Leah. She thought about holding back, but going too far was no longer possible. “It’s Stephen York.”
Serenity closed her eyes briefly, then opened them and said, “Yes. It is. Thank you.”
Leah felt like she were dreaming. There was nothing unreal about the girl or the room, but the elements within it were like a dream. Everything seemed to crawl. The girl’s voice was hypnotic, her movements ethereal and otherworldly. The room was too clean and too sparse. It looked like a vision of a bedroom created by a person who’d never had one. The bed wasn’t against one wall; it was in the middle, like a showpiece. It wasn’t the way anyone would design a real bedroom, a real sick room, a real classroom… whatever this was.
“You took him from the hospital,” said Leah.
“Yes. We needed him more than they did.”
“For what?”
“I’m not sure. None of us are.”
“But that didn’t stop you. That didn’t stop you from breaking into a hospital, unhooking a man from support he may have needed, and leaving no trace for people who might have been looking for him. It didn’t stop you from erasing records or wiping memories.”
