Search for the Shadow Key

by Wayne Thomas Batson

  “I don’t trust him,” Kara said. “It always seems like he’s hiding something.”

  Rigby laughed. “He’s no worse than Bezeal.”

  “I don’t know about that. Bezeal is cheap and tricky and annoying, but I feel like I know his ways. Frederick is a mystery. A dangerous one.”

  “Better the devil you know?” Rigby raised an eyebrow.

  “Something like that.”

  Rigby glanced at his phone. “We’re early yet. Follow me. I want to show you something.” He led a meandering course through the facility and used his key card to get through several sets of double doors.

  “Where are we headed?” Kara asked.

  “The Neural Command Center,” he said.

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “From the client side,” he said. “Not from this side.”

  The last set of doors opened with a hiss of pressurized air. Several guards waited on the other side, standing next to a heavily wired gateway.

  “Metal detector?” Kara asked. “Looks like what Homeland Security uses at airports these days.”

  “Similar,” Rigby said. “But this detects magnetism. We’ll ’ave to leave our phones in the tray.”

  “Why?”

  “The computers on this side are absolutely sensitive to magnetic fields,” Rigby explained, handing his phone to one of the guards and walking through the detector gate. “We’re monitoring each client, you know. We make sure they don’t bring things back from the Dream.”

  “How?” she asked, handing off her phone and following.

  “My uncle was the first to theorize it,” Rigby said. “But I confirmed it through trials. Anything created in the Dream that comes back gives off a subtle magnetic field. We don’t know why. We only know that it does. And we can track it with our sensors and equipment. That’s why we can’t bring anything magnetic in here.”

  “That’s bizarre,” Kara said.

  “Not bizarre,” Rigby said. “Simply unexplained. The data we get from each Lucid Walking session is incredible. We can tell exactly how self-aware each client is in the dream. If they get too close, we wake them up.”

  “Too close?”

  “You know,” Rigby said. “Dr. Gideon from London is walking in the Dream and he sees one of our other clients, say, oh, Alicia Kerr, the actress. In most cases, Dr. Gideon would simply assume she was part of his dream, maybe something he conjured up himself. But if he began to understand that Alicia was Walking as well, that they are coexisting in the Dream, then we could have trouble.”

  “I don’t see the issue.”

  “Power, Kara,” he said. “If Dr. Gideon and Alicia are both in the Dream and they both recognize that they are Lucid Walking together, they might start to combine their mental energies, and they could change things in the Dream. Worse still, they might realize how to Lucid Walk on their own. They would be out of control—Keaton had that part right, at least. Our clients are not idiots. They’ll figure it out . . . if we let them. But we won’t.”

  Rigby led Kara through the rest of the security checkpoints and they arrived at an octagonal split-window recessed into the wall. “Prepare,” he said, tapping a sequence of numbers into a colorful keypad beside the door, “to be awed.”

  There was a hiss of pressurized air and a pulsing mechanized tone, and the door slid open. Chrome gleamed, banks of servers hummed, and holographic images hovered across six identical stations. Rigby watched Kara’s eyes widen, saw the hitch in her breathing. She was awed.

  “I’ve never been in here,” she mumbled, her head turning slowly.

  People in stark white clothing, a style Rigby called “military meets scientist,” sat at colossal workstations against the far wall and hovered over tablet computers in the aisles between. The ceiling was hard to see through all the intricate ductwork: huge hanging tubes, ventilation fans the size of merry-go-rounds, and spiderlike hubs. Beneath the ducts was a network of more pipes, but these were thin and dotted with sprinkler heads.

  “What are those?” Kara asked, pointing up toward the closest corner of the room. “Those angled panels?”

  “Sound dampening,” Rigby said. He held his arms up in a Y shape and turned slowly, gesturing to the slabs that hung in every corner of the chamber. “Wouldn’t want to disturb our clients sleeping on the other side of the wall.”

  Kara nodded, her mouth still slightly open. Awe and more awe—Rigby loved it. He wanted to savor more of the moment, but he had a bit of business to attend to and led her to one of the holographic stations. “Anything come through?” Rigby asked one of the technicians.

  “Oh, Mr. Thames,” he said. “I didn’t know you were inspecting today.”

  “Not inspecting, Timothy,” Rigby said. “Just curious.”

  The technician reached up into the hologram and, like a pair of luminous anemones waving undersea, his hands manipulated the strands of data until he found what he was searching for. “A few leaves,” he said. “Pebbles, twigs—just flora and fauna. Nothing purposeful. Not since Mr. Carnegie brought back the gold coin three weeks ago.”

  “Good,” Rigby said.

  “But . . .” the technician hesitated.

  “What?”

  “There have been more of those anomalies.”

  “What anomalies?” Kara asked.

  The technician said, “Very infrequently we’ve discovered shadows in the data. Well, not shadows really, but more like digital trails moving from the Dream into real time. We call them shadows because they don’t take up space like someone bringing back a coin would. There’s no displacement value in the data.”

  “Wait,” Kara said. “You’re saying these shadow surges happen at night, after closing?”

  “If there’s no displacement,” Rigby said, “there really isn’t a problem.”

  She nodded, but her expression clouded. “If none of the clients are hooked up to the machines and dreaming, there shouldn’t be any way for anything to come out of the Dream.”

  “That’s what I’m saying, love,” Rigby explained. “There’s nothing tangible coming out of the Dream, so nothing to worry about.”

  “But,” Kara countered, “what if some ambitious billionaire dreamed up some creature, robot, or mutant virus that becomes self-aware and tries to escape?”

  “We’d catch it,” Rigby said. “We’d know right away. Monitors, sensors, all this shockingly expensive equipment. Isn’t that right, Timothy?”

  “It is true,” the technician confirmed. “We monitor everything.”

  “But what about the weird shadow anomalies?” Kara asked.

  “We won’t be afraid of shadows.” Rigby laughed. “All under control, love. No fears. And . . . we’ve got our meeting in five, so we’d better leave Timothy here to his very important work.”

  In the conference room, a balding man looked up from his tablet computer and said, “You’ll be happy to note, Mr. Thames, for the second quarter in a row we have tripled our profitability.”

  “Very happy to know,” Rigby replied, stifling a yawn. “Thank you, Harrison, for your always . . . detailed . . . report.” He saw Kara smile. They’d joked privately about how long-winded Harrison could be.

  “Well,” Rigby said, beginning to stand. “That covers security, data, R & D, and the bottom line. Thank you, all for your diligence and loyal—”

  “They’re asking again,” Frederick interrupted. He was a big man, wearing a dark suit that made his shoulders look unnaturally wide. The cut of the suit and his buzz-cut hair gave him the bearing of a military commander. He tented his fingers and leaned forward. “That kind of money leads to a lot of pressure.”

  Men and women in expensive tailored suits leaned forward as well and nodded.

  “Money isn’t a concern,” Rigby said. “We have a waiting list of investors a mile long.”

  “Political pressure is a concern,” Frederick said, washed-out blue eyes blazing. “If certain influential people get involved, permits could disappear, and pa
tents could be delayed or outright denied.”

  Rigby sneered. “If they want to play politics, fine. There’s no reason we need to base Dream Inc. in the United States. We can pull up our tent stakes and go elsewhere. But I will not put any Dream Inc. customer in control of our patented method.”

  “Why not?” Kara asked. “Some of it’s already public record.”

  Rigby’s frowning intensity deepened. “How do you know that?”

  “Chief Information Officer, remember?” She smiled sweetly. “I don’t have business cards yet, but it’s my job to know.”

  Rigby nodded. Touché. “Still, I’ve read Uncle Scoville’s articles. There’s not enough of the specifics there for just anyone to start Lucid Dreaming.”

  “Not just anyone, no,” she said. “But, like you told me before, we’re dealing with bright people. Why not let them have their fun?”

  “Fun?” Rigby blurted. “It’s not fun. It’s business.”

  “Mr. Thames is correct,” Frederick said, his voice high and thin but not thin in a brittle sense. More like a thin blade or a razor. “This is a business, and, as such, we aim to raise as much money for our shareholders as possible. The more money for our shareholders, the more money becomes available for future research and development.”

  “We weren’t going to discuss this today, Frederick,” Rigby said quietly.

  “I understand,” Frederick said. “But it bears noting to someone as highly placed as Ms. Windchil. Governments around the globe are offering staggering sums for Lucid Walking site licenses.”

  “What would governments use Lucid Walking for?” Kara asked.

  Rigby sneered. “Nothing good—”

  “Nonsense,” Frederick interrupted. “In the hands of the right agencies, Lucid Dreaming could open up new treatments to fight depression and anxiety, mental illness of all kinds—”

  “Yeah,” Rigby said, “that’s right. But it could also be used to dig deeper into people’s privacy like drones in the brain.”

  “We select who gets the licenses,” Frederick said.

  Rigby crossed his arms. “If we turn over the secrets of Dream Inc. to anyone outside of our inner circle, we’re done. We’ll no longer control the market. Dream Inc. clone companies will appear overnight. We’ll get priced out of our own industry.”

  “With all due respect, Mr. Thames,” Frederick said, sitting up painfully straight in his seat, “you’re jealous for your family’s invention. I get that. But there’s a bigger picture here that you’re not seeing because . . .”

  “Because what?” Rigby asked.

  “Because you’re young,” Frederick said. “You’re brilliant and ambitious and used to being right, but you’re young. If you cling to this thing too tightly, you’re going to regret it. Someone else will come along and discover what we’re doing. They’ll compete without us getting compensation.”

  “No, they won’t,” Rigby said. “That’s one of the things I pay you for. It’s all about control, Frederick.”

  “Of course it is,” Kara muttered.

  “What?” Rigby hissed. “What was that?”

  “Forget it,” she said, turning her back. “It’s your company.”

  “That’s right,” Rigby said. His voice dropped an octave. “It is.”

  EIGHT

  BROKEN

  THE TEARS HAD BEEN TEARS OF JOY AND RELIEF.

  In that eventual phone conversation, Archer’s father reported that Buster’s fall had been serious but far from fatal. If the remaining tests came back clear, he’d be able to bring Buster home in the morning. Exhausted and utterly relieved, Archer had dropped into an easy chair in the living room to wait.

  Some time later, during a dreamless gray sleep, Archer heard someone calling his name.

  “Archer, Archer!” It was Kaylie. She squealed and bounced at the living room window. “They’re here!”

  Archer bounded out of the recliner and raced for the door. He was outside in a flash, barefoot in the snow, but he didn’t care.

  His father was in the driveway, already walking around to the backseat door of their dented-up SUV. He opened the door.

  “Buster!” Archer shouted.

  “Dude, not so loud, ’kay?” Buster said. He wore dark sunglasses that somehow fit his beachy personality perfectly. “No loud noises or bright lights, Doc said.”

  Kaylie half ran, half skidded past Archer and hugged Buster.

  “Yo, careful, Sis,” Buster said, but he returned the embrace with gusto. Archer and his father joined in. They stood in the cold for what seemed like hours, but Archer didn’t feel cold at all. A half hour later, Archer and his family sat at the kitchen table and hovered over mugs of hot chocolate and a box of muffins.

  “Surfing down the stairs?” Archer said. “Buster, what were you thinking?”

  “Easy, bro,” Buster replied. “I’m concussed, remember?” He gave a snarky laugh.

  “A concussion is no laughing matter,” Kaylie said, looking somehow profound and absurd at the same time. “It is a traumatic brain injury that alters the way your mind functions.”

  “Well, it’s not like I think straight anyway,” Buster said.

  Archer and Kaylie couldn’t help but laugh too, but not Archer’s father. He managed a weak crooked smile. It was all he could manage, Archer knew, since his mother’s death eight years ago.

  “The doctors say Buster has to stay out of school for a couple of days,” Archer’s father said.

  Buster held up a peace sign and said, “Rock on!”

  “And, once he’s back in school,” his father explained, “he won’t be able to do gym for a while, either.”

  Archer watched the steam from his mug for a thoughtful moment. “So . . . can you tell me about what happened? Do you remember?”

  “It’s kind of a blur, but I had this killer dream, y’know?”

  Archer sat up straighter. “Like a nightmare?”

  “Nah, nah. It was a cool dream. I was in Australia at the Big Wave Championships, you know, at the Tombstones in Gnaraloo?”

  Archer shrugged. “Never heard of it.”

  “Aww, it’s such a cool place. I’ve seen it on the Surfing Channel, but this dream, it was like I was really there. I could feel things, y’know? The sand, my smooth board, the spray—it was so real.”

  Archer nodded. “I know a thing or two about dreams that feel real.”

  “So, anyway, I saw this swell rise up, and I was like, ‘Dude, I am SO catching you!’ I paddled like crazy and got up on the board, but . . . ah . . .”

  “But what?” Kaylie asked, her eyes big as saucers.

  Buster shook his head. “So the Tombstones are known for epic waves, right? But this thing, it rose up like Godzilla, and I was up there on my board, like way up there.”

  Archer asked, “Then what happened?”

  “The wave curled, and I rode it but . . .” He frowned and rubbed his temples. “All I remember is it was like the wave took me toward shore and was heading for this rocky cliff. I felt like I was falling. I heard a bang, like a gunshot. Then I woke up in the ambulance.”

  Archer’s dad took the family out for a late breakfast to celebrate Buster’s return from the hospital, but Buster lacked his usual appetite. What he did eat, he threw up an hour later at home. After his father cleaned up the mess, he disappeared to the basement. Archer helped Buster get into some new clothing and then took him to the living room couch, his new bed. No stairs for Buster for a while.

  “No more stair-surfing, okay?” Archer said, easing a chair over next to the couch.

  “Nah, broham,” Buster said, his words garbled. A second later, he was sound asleep.

  Archer watched his little brother rest. He listened to Kaylie in the next room as she narrated an adventure starring Patches the Super Scarecrow Doll. Then Archer’s eyes wandered over the long shelf above the sleeper sofa to all the framed family photographs, and his gaze lingered one photo in particular: their last family portrait. Th
ere was his mother, just a few months into her treatment, and a little gaunt but still beautiful: a kind and playful glint in her big brown eyes. Her hand rested lightly on her husband’s shoulder. He held Kaylie in his arms. Gosh, Archer thought, when was she ever that little?

  Archer thought Buster’s lopsided grin in the picture looked kind of cheesy. Then again, so did his own smile. If memory served, he’d shoved an Oreo into his mouth just before the photographer took the shot. Archer thought he could detect a little bulge in his cheek. Figures, Archer thought.

  But again and again, Archer kept returning to the image of his father. How content he’d been in that photograph. Holding his pride-and-joy daughter and his wife’s hand on his shoulder—so happy. But not for long. His mother died just over a year later. They’d never taken another family portrait, and his dad had never really recovered.

  It didn’t surprise Archer to see his father surface from the basement only to have a cigarette out on the porch. That was all he did lately: hibernate in the basement and take smoke breaks. Archer wasn’t sure what his dad did in the basement. There was a computer down there and, sometimes, he’d play online card games, like bridge or hearts. But lately, he’d been spending multiple hours down there. So what was he doing?

  Archer wasn’t about to investigate. He hated the basement for the memories it represented. It was the site of the scariest event of Archer’s life.

  Archer blinked. This is not what I need to be thinking about right now. But the memory jolted into his consciousness vividly, especially the sounds. The sounds were the worst.

  It had been right after the funeral. Archer had gone down to the basement, the side where his father kept a woodshop. Archer wanted to look at the wishing wells. In honor of his wife’s love of the family well in the backyard, Archer’s father had put his considerable skills to work, crafting all manner of replica display wells. Not working wells, of course, these were ornamental, decorative—the kind people put in their yards to give their property a little character, a little homey charm. All variations on the design of the family well—round, knobby turret, tall hooded canopy with shingles, a spool, a length of rope, a bucket, and a crank handle—they were so lovingly crafted, so intricate and beautiful, that word got out and he ended up making a tidy profit selling half a dozen of them. But not the ones his mother liked best. He never sold those.