by Laurel Dewey
“What frequencies?” Jane asked.
Monroe walked toward her and sat down. He twisted around and pointed to a spot in his neck that was red and scarred over. “See that spot right there? That’s where Gabe dug it out of me. After his five month sabbatical in the mountains, he came to see me in the flesh one more time and he told me he was going to make me free. He’d dug it out of his neck the day he took off and once he got unplugged, he said he’d been resurrected. So, I figured, why not?”
Harlan turned in his chair. “Check this out, Monroe.” He pointed to the same spot on the back of his neck. “It feels like I got something stuck under my skin.”
“Ha! That’s priceless, man! Yep, yep, yep. That’s where he had it. That’s where we all have it.”
“Have what?” Jane asked.
“The microchip. What’d you think I was talking about?”
Jane stared at him. “Please tell me this is a joke,” Jane said.
“Hell, I wish it was a joke. Did you know there are idiots out there right now who are voluntarily allowing themselves to have a microchip injected in them? And it’s all being done under the bullshit guise of ‘safety’ or ‘health protection’. Shit, they brag about the chips they put in animals and how great it is because you can just wave a wand and locate the owners. People think that’s a modern miracle of science.” He rolled his eyes. “People are fucking stupid! Modern science is so far beyond microchips, it’s not even funny. But that doesn’t stop some people from wanting to jump on the ol’ chip wagon. Let me tell you, as somebody who lived with a fucking chip inside of his body for way too many years, I can attest to the fact that it’s not cool or inventive. It’s fucking crazy! And I know that you already think I’m crazy so me saying that to you won’t have much of an effect. But I’m here to tell you that it’s fucking crazy!”
Jane recalled a comment that John Burroughs said to her. “You lost your connection?”
“Humph,” Monroe snorted. “I wouldn’t call what I had injected in me a connection! It was a leash made of steel chains. When Gabe cut that chip out of me, he helped me unhook the controlling voice in my head. That was the first step. You gotta get unhooked from the matrix. But he couldn’t hang out with me long enough for me to get straight again. Whew! I’m a mess in there!” He pointed to his head. “He said it took him a while to unhook himself after he cut it out. A lot of old memories came flowing back, he said. Stuff that he’d compartmentalized and forgotten. He had some caverns in there from his past where he didn’t like to go but he went there and came out a better man. He said he could finally think again, after getting rid of all the static in his brain. He told me it took him months to find himself. But his cell memory finally kicked in after a bit and slowly, he remembered who he was and what he came into this life to do.” He looked at the floor, somewhat saddened. “I’m still waiting for that to happen to me. And I hope I can find myself again before they kill me. But, just like you two, I don’t know how much time I got left. My future is so uncertain, I stopped buying green bananas.”
“Why haven’t they killed you yet?” Jane asked.
“When I feel them coming, I take off and ride it out until they leave. Somehow, at least up to now, I get warnings. I can’t explain except that I just know they are close by. It’s the same feeling I get that tells me Gabe is protecting me too.” He turned to Harlan. “Just like he protected you when you were in the hospital? Sitting by your bed? Yeah. He does that for me too.” He turned to the screened in front porch. “Sometimes, I think I see him standing sentry out there at night. And even if I’m just imagining it, it gives me peace. I know that as long as he’s out there, I’ll be safe. But I know he can’t do it forever.”
“So, you haven’t worked for Romulus since—”
“Since Gabe cut the chip out. That was about four years ago.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, how do you support yourself without Romulus?”
He smiled a sad smile. “The bank of Gabriel.”
“I don’t understand,” Jane said.
“I was plucked out of college by the group because of my ability to break codes and hack into any computer system and fuck it up. I got straight A’s and was on the Dean’s List,” he said proudly. “I had a full scholarship to any Master’s program I wanted in computer sciences. But Romulus offered me a shit load of money to do that first job and I was too stupid to realize it when they sucked me in. It’s like your first dose of heroin, you know? The first dose is always free. It’s all the ones after that that cost too much.” He studied the ground. “Years later, my job title changed. I was Gabe’s front man. The set up guy? I’d go ahead of Gabe and set up what he’d need to do the job. I’d hide notes, directions, money, all over hell and back. Then I’d send him coded messages to let him know where to look. When he and I agreed to get out, he told me he’d take care of me. And he meant it. He’d send me a coded message and I’d go to the location and dig a hole at the exact point and there would be a piece of PVC pipe wrapped in duct tape and inside would be separate stacks of money. Sometimes, it was thousands of dollars. And he seemed to always know when I was running low because I’d get a message and, damn, he’d save me again!”
“Bank of Gabriel,” Jane mused. “I like that. We should all be so lucky to have a friend like that.”
“He was my brother in spirit. The one I never knew I needed? He saved me from my past and gave me the feeling I could have a future that wasn’t dependent on the length of my kill sheet.” He let out a hard breath. “But I don’t think that’s going to happen now that you’ve shown up. You two being here is a sign. He came back just like he said he would. So all that’s left for me to do is to help you out and then wait.”
“Wait for them to kill you?” Jane asked. “Why would you do that?”
“It’s my destiny. I knew I wouldn’t make it to thirty. Most of us never make it to thirty. They embed a suicide switch in our programming. It usually clicks on around age twenty-seven and goes into full gear before thirty. I think Gabe felt it coming on right before he hit thirty, but he was smart enough to not flip the switch. It’s a real strong trigger for self-destruction. It’s hard to override their system. Your desire to implode is greater than your desire to live. And when it gets too much, you take care of business. One less problem they have to deal with. It’s quite efficient programming, huh? The computer destroys itself and everything in it. They don’t have to lift a finger.”
“But you cut out your chip,” Jane offered. “So, you’re not hooked in to their end game.”
“If I kill myself now,” Monroe said with authority, “it’s on my terms, not theirs.” He wiped his brow. “Damn, seriously, you don’t think it’s hot in here?”
“No, it isn’t,” Harlan said.
“Shit, I feel like I have flames dancing on my bare flesh.” He got up again and stared out the side window.
“What is it?” Jane asked.
“They’re out there.”
Jane got up and moved to Monroe’s side. She peered out the window but all she saw was acres of farm and ranch land with not a soul in sight. “Is this your paranoia talking?”
“No, ma’am. This is experience talking.” He scanned the area one more time. “Nobody’s ever met the guy at the top of the pyramid. Nobody knows the names of the few who protect him. But all I know in my heart is that he’s indestructible.”
Jane shook her head. “I don’t understand how any person or small group got this kind of supreme power that overrides everything rational.”
“It’s a good question. It didn’t happen overnight. I heard that Romulus has been hiding in plain sight for centuries. Pulling the strings and making us think we are in charge of our own future.”
“We are in charge of our own future.”
“You sure about that?” Monroe asked, with a crooked grin. “How can you be so sure that what y
ou believe and what you desire has not been programmed into you by everything you encounter on a daily basis? If every choice you are given is not a choice at all and really just a pre-digested preference that was created for you, how would you feel? We have the illusion of choice because no matter what we choose, the game never changes. The wheels always keep moving in the direction that suits the ones who are designing the wheels. If they don’t want that wheel to travel somewhere, they make damn sure it’s designed so that it doesn’t roll there.” He cocked his head to the side. “If they want you to be afraid of something that’s not even a real threat, they can do that too. Oh yeah, there’s nothin’ more compelling than a perceived threat, especially when you’re the one in control of creating that perception!” He turned to the side in contemplation. “You know, Romulus does have one downfall. They can’t generate anything on their own because they lack sanity and humanity. They don’t create anything except chaos. Everything they own, they’ve stolen. Essentially, they exist by sucking on the souls of others.”
Jane nodded, recollecting her dream. “The word ‘soul’ exists within the word ‘Romulus.’”
“You saw that too, huh?” Monroe replied with a sly grin.
“It was pointed out to me,” Jane stated.
Monroe meandered back toward them. “It ain’t a coincidence. But the joke’s on them because they have no soul. They have the heart of a lizard and the breath of a devil.”
“Fuck ‘em,” Jane stated.
Monroe glanced at her. “It’s easy to say that when you haven’t dealt with them directly.”
“I have! I’m deep in their muck right now, Monroe. They want to kill Harlan because they think he knows something.”
Monroe looked at Harlan. “He doesn’t know anything. But his heart does.”
Jane had to wrap her mind around the fact that the only person who finally understood what was going on just happened to be mentally unfit. “You said Gabe wanted to leave a legacy?” She pointed to Harlan. “That is his legacy, right there!”
Monroe moved away from Jane and plopped his skinny ass on his chair. “What are you going to do if you find out what that heart of his is trying to tell you? You going to expose it?”
“That’s what Gabe wants, isn’t it?” Jane replied.
“Why?” Monroe asked gently. “Why put your ass on the line for a dead man?”
She glanced nervously toward Harlan. “Harlan isn’t dead yet.”
“I was talking about Gabe.”
Jane considered the question. “Well, Gabe is inside of Harlan. So, I guess it’s one in the same. I save one, I save the other.”
“Why don’t you just go back to your life and forget about all this?”
“Because I don’t have a life!” Jane stated, shocked somewhat that she was admitting that to a stranger. “The only life I have is in saving other people.”
Monroe looked at her perplexed. “Really? You’re all alone?”
“No, she ain’t,” Harlan suddenly interjected.
“Shut up,” Jane whispered toward Harlan.
“Don’t tell me to shut up,” Harlan retorted. “She’s got a real nice boyfriend. She just doesn’t want to believe it.”
Jane spun toward Harlan. “That boyfriend had a 9mm pointed at your head.”
“Yeah, well, I already forgave him for that.” Harlan stated in a stern tenor. “You should too.”
Monroe popped out of his chair again. He began tapping his head with the tips of his fingers. “I’ve got places to go and people to be.”
Jane stood up. “Hey, come on! I thought you were going to help me out.” She observed him and realized he’d split and another personality took over.
“I need to do my rounds.” He picked up two rifles and shoved his .45 pistol down the front of his sagging trousers. “By myself.” His voice was strict. “You can look at or read anything you want. You can eat whatever you find. You can even play games on my computers. You’ll never get past my firewall so I’m not worried.”
“When are you coming back?” Jane asked.
“Couple hours. Maybe more.” He grabbed a clip and shoved it into his pocket.
“What if you don’t come back? We’ll be sitting ducks.”
“Gabe has watched over you two so far. Hopefully, he’s still up to the job.”
CHAPTER 20
For the first hour of Monroe’s absence, Jane sat on the screened porch and waited. Harlan, on the contrary, built himself a thick sandwich, knocked back half a dozen raw eggs, two bottles of pine needle beer and settled his ass in front of Monroe’s giant computer. He was still sitting there playing Tetris when Jane finally walked back into the house. She heated up a can of clam chowder she found on a shelf in Monroe’s sparse kitchen. Returning to the living room with the saucepan of chowder and a large spoon, she ate a few spoonfuls before setting it down and collecting the remaining four postcards Monroe retrieved from the hidden wall safe.
She cleared a space on Monroe’s cluttered desk and laid them out. Checking the back of each card, the only handwriting was Monroe’s address and a circled number in the space where the message would normally be written. The numbers began with “2” and ended with “6.” The card with “2” on the back featured what looked like a city park, with beautifully manicured lawns, playground equipment and a baseball field. Turning the card over, the imprint on the back read: “O’Rian Park in the small town of Helios, Colorado, is a popular center for family gatherings and sports activities.” Jane remembered seeing a map amidst the clutter and once she found it, she opened it up and laid it on the floor. From what she could tell, Helios was in spitting distance of Monroe’s dwelling.
Looking at the card with “3” on the back, the photograph was a family farm with rows and rows of verdant produce ready to be harvested. She turned the card over. “The Green Goodness CSA is located in the San Luis Valley, resting in the Sangre de Cristo mountains.” This was the same CSA mentioned in the Eco-Goddesses newsletter Harlan kept in his mysterious burlap bag. Jane ran out to the van and brought back the burlap bag, Harlan’s notebook and her leather satchel. Fishing out the newsletter from the bag, Jane turned the pages until she found the large black and white photo of the fifty people standing in front of a field of vegetables. The caption beneath had crammed the names of the CSA members so tightly that it was nearly impossible to discern any of them.
“You see a magnifying glass anywhere around here?” she asked Harlan.
He was deeply involved in his computer game. “Hang on. I finally got to level twenty five.”
Jane waved him off and started hunting through drawers until she uncovered a photographer’s loop. Running the loop across the caption, she read each name until she came to one that was all too familiar: Werner Haas. “Shit,” she said standing up and staring at the photo. Counting the people in the photo from left to right in that line, she held her index finger on the face. Pressing the loop against the photograph, there was Gabe. It was exactly what John Burroughs told her. He could blend in and play any part he wanted—a priest, executive…or CSA farm worker.
She snapped up the third card that had “4” circled on the back. But Jane noticed right away that there was no title or explanation of the photo as the other postcards. The scene was strange, depicting a rugged view of a mountain top meadow. To the left, was an old, rusty windmill and to the left of that was an “X” written in black permanent ink. Above the “X” were the words, “You are here.” Jane flipped the card over again, thinking maybe she missed some minute description of where this was located but there was nothing there.
Jane retrieved the fourth and last card. The number “6” was circled on the back. Where was the card with number five, she wondered? Everything she had in her hand was what Monroe removed from the hole in the wall. Figuring she’d go with what she had, Jane looked at the front photo. It was an adobe
shrine in northern New Mexico called El Santuario de Chimayo. The sloping adobe wall at the front of the sacred church opened to a modest entrance that led visitors down a weather beaten pathway and toward the shrine. On the back, it read: “The Santuario de Chimayo is a historic shrine of New Mexico that draws hundreds of pilgrims annually. It is considered a consecrated location for healing the spirit, the body and the mind.”
Jane looked at the photo again. She’d heard about Chimayo many times from her brother who was fascinated by all things “woo-woo.” He called it the “Lourdes of the Southwest” and he had good reason for it. People made pilgrimages from all over the world to walk the short distance into the chapel and then into the modest side room where a small pit in the floor, known as el pocito, holds the “holy dirt” which many believe has remarkable curative powers. Visitors return to their homes with a bag of this holy dirt and report that miracles occurred in their lives shortly thereafter. Terminal illnesses went into remission, marriages were saved, couples were able to conceive, and, yes, people could walk again. The chapel at Chimayo is filled floor to ceiling with crutches brought there by believers as evidence that a miraculous healing occurred for them.
Jane laid out the four cards and looked at them again. But the fact that the order started with “2” and not “1” bothered Jane. Spying the lone card of the farmer in overalls that resembled Harlan, she picked it up and turned it over. There was “1” on the back. Setting it down in the first position, it felt to Jane as if the cards represented a collective pathway. Why else would Gabe number them? The first card established Harlan’s arrival. To Jane, it made peculiar sense that Gabe somehow knew all of this would occur and wanted to give Harlan and her the guidance they would need to complete their journey. Accepting that theory, Jane deduced that their next stop would be locating O’Rian Park the next day. But in the meantime, she would continue to take Monroe up on his offer to read and look at anything she desired.
