Ashes of Foreverland (19 page)

He let go of her hand. And they began their walk. Her guilt for asking such a question was measured in small breaths. Dr. Ballard's steps were quiet, not once shuffling. The inmates on the track gave them a wide berth. He stopped and looked up.

“What do you see?” he asked.

“What?”

“Above us, what do you see?”

“Sky. Clouds.”

“And why is the sky blue?”

“The atmosphere scatters more blue light than red.”

“So you see blue?” Dr. Ballard smiled. “Your perception tells you that it's blue.”

“I don't understand.”

“You came here to know truth, yet our senses determine our reality. Perception is not truth, Mrs. Diosa.”

“The presence of that spectrum of light is blue whether I perceive it or not. A tree that falls in the forest makes vibrations whether I hear it or not.”

“You labeled it blue; therefore it is blue.”

“Blue is just a word.”

He raised an eyebrow. She shook her head. He was twisting words, molding facts, playing a head game, and she was losing.

Have I already lost?

“How do you feel about your son, Dr. Ballard?”

He raised a finger. “Is the sky blue?”

“Of course.”

He didn't move, only smiled with finger raised. They weren't going anywhere until she answered the question, like a Buddhist monk required to answer a koan before entering the temple.

What is blue?

Alex learned to surf when she was younger. She lived on the West Coast until she was twelve and her cousins would take her out to Hermosa Beach and connect with the spiritual nature of the wave.
The wave is the wave and we cannot change that
. It was her responsibility to ride it.

Dr. Ballard was the wave.

“Perception is not the same as truth,” she said.

“Very good.”

“Therefore our reality is not truth.”

“And why is that?”

“Because our perceptions determine our reality. And perception, by its very nature, is flawed.”

“You're saying we create our own reality?”

“
You're
saying that,” she quipped.

“Perhaps I am.” His smile brightened.

They began walking again. She had passed the koan. She was exhilarated, like a little girl receiving her father's approval. Or a dog thrown a bone.

A misty cloud filled her head. It was light and cool and intoxicating. She wanted to close her eyes and lay down on it. Somewhere in that pleasantness, she was nagged by the queer nature of this conversation, like the words she spoke didn't belong to her, as if she was cheating on an exam or being fed lines through an automated teleprompter.

What she said made sense.
But this isn't why I came here.

They stopped at a group of picnic tables and the inmates calmly left. Dr. Ballard fell on one of the benches with a satisfied groan and rested his hands on the crook of the cane. The flat ground beyond the fence was thick and grassy.

“A father,” he said, “always loves his child.”

Alex nodded, giving him plenty of space to reflect. He was answering her question from a few minutes earlier.
Or was that an hour ago?
The sun was so much lower.

“What he did with your technology, were you disappointed?”

“My son is dead, Mrs. Diosa. Dead or alive, that does not change my love for him, not one bit. He will always be my son. I will always love him.”

“But were you disappointed?”

“He did his best to understand. That's all I could ask.”

“So you approved?”

“Does it matter?”

“You knew it was possible, that Foreverland could be used to switch bodies?”

He pondered. His blue eyes seemed to glitter.
I thought his eyes were gray.

“Are we our memories?” he asked. “Or are we our body?”

“That's irrelevant.”

“You asked about switching bodies, who is switching?”

“Don't twist words, Doctor. Those boys and girls were taken against their will, forced to give up their bodies.”

“They gave up their bodies, you say? So you agree that who we are is not our bodies.”

“Who they are, Doctor, was thrown into something called the Nowhere.”

His eyebrows pitched. He threw a hard glare at the ground, squeezing the cane until his knuckles were bone white. He nodded, tipped his chin to her and winked.

“You've done your homework,” he said.

“Did you know what he was going to do?” A sudden realization trickled through her. “You wanted him to create Foreverland.”

The air around them cooled, an invisible cloud falling over them like a chilled hand. He minced unspoken words, staring into the distance.

“What if we could live without the body?” he asked.

“You mean in Foreverland?”

“If we are not this body, Mrs. Diosa, then we must be something else. Something more essential.”

“You mean a soul?”

“Perhaps.”

“And Foreverland is heaven?”

“Foreverland,” he said, grinning, “is just a word, Mrs. Diosa.”

“Foreverland was built with the
souls
of innocent boys and girls, remember. And you approved of it.”

“Lack of disapproval is not approval.”

“Then your crime is inaction.”

“I'm in prison, Mrs. Diosa.” He stood with a groan. “How could I have stopped him?”

“Did you want to stop him?”

“I believe that is irrelevant.”

The walk continued. His footsteps were still quiet and carefully measured. Occasionally, he would look up at the sky while she asked questions and he would answer distantly, as if the conversation had grown stale. The conversation was going in a circle.

Because she was chasing her tail.

They were on the far side of the yard, alone on the track. The distant shouting of a basketball game was small compared to the wind rushing through the barbed wire, blowing through the open field, carrying fragments of voices from beyond the fence. She closed her eyes, pinched her nose. When the static of voices frayed her attention, she had learned focusing quieted them.

The voices fell on her like pellets, pricking her cheeks and neck. She searched the sky.
The sky is blue.

He took her by the elbow and silence returned. The thin skin of his fingers slid the length of her forearm until he held her hand. “I need to ask a question, Alessandra.”

“How do you know my name?” She wanted to shout, but it came out as a whisper.

The words broke the downward spiral of thoughts, the eddy of confusion, and rooted her in the present moment with the wind on her face and the sky—the blue, blue sky—above and the smell of sweat and fear and suffering.

“Why do you care about Foreverland?” He waited for an answer. It was a formality, really.
He can see inside me.

“The children...”

“Yes, the children. You care about the children. You care about all people, the old and the young, the innocent and the powerful. Why do you care?” His eyelids grew heavy but unblinking. “Why?”

She shook her head.

“Because you love, Alessandra. You love deeply, truly. And you have so much to give. You love.”

She nodded.
Yes. I love.

“Are you happy?” he whispered. “With all the justice and injustice in the universe, with the lion eating the antelope, cancer ravaging bodies, black holes trapping light?”

His hand was so warm on her arm.

“God allows the good and bad, the pleasant and the suffering.”

She shook her head.

“Good and bad are just words, words that God allows. He allows it all to be as it is because He loves. And your love, Alessandra, is as big as His.”

“How do you know my name?”

“Can you be a god?”

“I don't believe...”

“Something gave rise to all of this.” He spread his arms. “Allows it all to be. Can you do that?”

The air was dense, like breathing water. The ground was soft and the sky—the blue, blue sky—was down and the mountains were up and the wind in her lungs—

A tear fell.

A raindrop smacked the dirt.

“It's the answer you came for. It's truth, Alessandra. You have truth. You can be truth. Only true love has space to allow for the saints and the sinners, the heroes and the villains. You are the truth and the reality.”

His face was blurry through brimming tears.

“You are the words.”

She was crying, but this time the tears were different. They sprang not from a mysterious emotional hole inside her, but from the wind and the sky and the gentle hands cradling hers.

And knowing that she could be all right with everything. Just as it was. She could be everything.

Everything.

The rain splattered around them. Spots darkened on the old man's shirt. A cart pulled next to them. The big guard, the man at the interview, was driving. The old man fell into the passenger seat and propped his hands on the cane. He looked straight ahead. The cart remained still. Alex felt the heat of a thousand eyes.

The inmates were staring at them.

The basketball games had stopped, the card games frozen. Their clothes were wet; the cards rain-soaked.

The cart moved forward, turning onto the track, slowly grinding its way back to the building. Alex remained at the far end of the yard, but she wasn't afraid. She wiped her eyes, sniffed a final time and walked back as they watched her. She felt their eyes, their hunger and fear.

Saints and sinners.

She could be with the saints. But the sinners...yes, she could be with them, too.

She walked to her car and drove down the road. When the hill ascended in her rearview mirror and the prison was no longer in sight, she stopped in the middle of the road and began to cry. A deluge smeared the world into blurry colors, pounding the hood, snapping on the window.

Alex cried tears of joy.

Because she loved.

ADMAX Penitentiary, Colorado

G
ramm was waiting. There were tears in his eyes.

“Temper your enthusiasm.” Tyler sat on the edge of his bed, twirling the wet needle between his fingers. His head throbbed, an electric spike pulsing through his forehead. He dared not move until his heart rate settled.

The mere thought of speaking caused it to rise. In spite of the pain, even he couldn't suppress the smile.
Alessandra is the one.

He knew what she looked like. Patricia had sent stills and video of Alessandra. He had heard her talk, saw her quickened pace when she was agitated, the furrowed brow when she concentrated, the tip of her tongue dragging over her teeth when she was curious. But to finally meet her, to be with her, all of her, was stunning.

She's beautiful.

He'd meant to calm her down, to sway her with dialog like a mythical siren. Half of what he said flowed out of him spontaneously, as if her beauty gave rise to inspiration. She was a beautifully tortured soul, full of pain and pleasure, suffering and joy. He spoke nothing but the truth—
she is love
.

And that's why they needed her.

Regardless of the disruptions, Reed couldn't stop the inevitable—Alessandra Diosa would close her eyes and dream a new reality. Humanity would join her.

Tyler and Patricia would lead the way.

He wished to immerse himself right then, to see his wife on the inside, in her mind, to meet her at the opera or walk the streets of her city, to share the good news and celebrate, but pain spread across his face.

The stent was done.

He had pulled the needle for the last time. The hole was swollen, nearly closed, like he'd used the prong of a pitchfork. Raw fingers scratched his brain. He would have to make the change; his next leap into Foreverland would be through biomites.

“Call the guards.” He couldn't feel them out there, couldn't feel Gramm in front of him. To expand his mind would exhaust what little strength he still had and ignite the brain storm that had finally passed.

The rubber wheels of a wheelchair approached. He reached up and took Melfy's hand. He wanted to sit in the yard, feel the sun on his face before the good doctor injected more biomites up his nostril.

“Sir,” Gramm said, “there's a problem.”

The yard would have to wait. It would have to wait much longer than Tyler realized.

They went straight to the basement.

——————————————

Y
ellow and red lights everywhere.

The guards dry heaved when they entered. Melfy splattered the floor before she could get out, the acrid smell of vomit steamrolled by the smell of death.

“What happened?” Tyler asked.

Gramm held a cloth over his face with one hand, spastically raking his hair with the other, hair follicles wedged between his fingers. “The health indicators,” he said, “all started dropping.”

“When?”

“When Alessandra left.”

Tyler was too weak to stand. He waved forward until Gramm pushed, pointing when to turn. Half of them were still green, the ones he deemed most important. He didn't need them all. And when Alessandra was asleep, when she gave herself to hosting Foreverland—completely and eternally—he wouldn't need any of them.

He just needed her.

Tyler covered his face and had Gramm turn right at the fourth table. He raised his hand. He grabbed the edge of the nearest table, his fingers brushing the cool flesh of its occupant—a bald white man from the Arian brotherhood, his chest a canvas of ink.

The light was red.

The occupant was fat when he first took the needle, an obese man sent to the penitentiary for double murder. Now his ribs were showing beneath olive-colored skin. Wisps of remaining hair stuck to his balding scalp, swirling around a purple birthmark distinctly shaped like the state of Florida.