John Gone (42 page)

“That’s horrible,” John said, turning back to
her.

“Yes, it is. And I worked for them. I met a
young scientist here years before Felix came. He was the one
initially brought in to make the device. I had no idea what the
company was doing at the time. When his contract was up, they
explained everything to me, justifying and simplifying it down to
where it was almost unrecognizable as the heinous act that it was.
I was the one to push the button sparking the explosion in the cave
leading to his lab. He’s probably still in there. I’m only glad
that he never knew I was the one who did it. That’s why I deserve
to be down here. I deserve the same fate I gave him.”

“That’s crazy,” John said. “Go to him; save
him if he’s still there. How long has he been down here now? Why
did you come to me?”

“Because I don’t know how the hands work.
Only Felix and the company know that. Even if I did, I doubt there
would be a code to take me somewhere so precise. There are almost
two hundred bathrooms down here within a one-mile radius. It’s just
not going to happen. This lab is the only exception to that. Felix
programmed a special code just for here. I’ll write it down for
you.”

Karen took a sheet of paper from a stack in
the corner and jotted down the numbers with John’s dying pencil.
She slid it to him.

“Go,” she said. “It’s why I came here.”

“I don’t care what you did,” John argued.
“You’re obviously sorry about it. I can’t let you give the watch
back to me.”

“Please,” she said, “don’t carry this
decision on your shoulders. I’m not doing it for you.”

John looked at the device in her hand, lying
defeated by the small tool next to it. He looked at Karen’s face
and realized that he understood none of it, not who she was, what
had happened, who was guilty, and who wasn’t. He had some of the
facts, but not all of them, and the decisions being made outside of
his control were complex beyond measure. It was pointless to argue
further.

“Alright,” John said, accepting the watch.
“If you’re sure this is what you want.”

“I am.”

“Will you help me?” he asked. “It’s a little
difficult for me.” John nodded at his right hand, dark and
stiff.

“Of course,” she said, latching the band to
his left wrist. “What happened to you anyway?”

“Advocates,” John replied. “One named
Cornelius Black.”

Karen shuddered at the thought. “One told you
his name?”

“It’s a long story,” John said.

“Maybe you’ll tell me next time you
visit.”

John smiled at the comment and looked down at
the watch, back on his arm after so much time. He saw Karen’s
saddened eyes in the reflection of its glass.

“Do you love him?” he asked.

“Felix?”

“Yes. Do you love him?”

Karen looked away from him. “Honestly? I
don’t know. But he’s earned it from me, if that’s what he wants. I
owe him everything.”

“That’s not how it’s supposed to work,” John
answered. “Not that I’m some expert. My longest relationship with
someone was three weeks. Then I got dumped.”

Karen smiled and turned back. “Maybe you’re
right nonetheless.”

John eyed the Diaspora. “I never thought I’d
be happy to see this thing again,” he said.

“Here,” Karen said, “take off this silly
coat.” She lifted it from him and placed the removal tool in the
front pocket of his jeans. “Don’t lose that,” she said.

“Oh, I won’t,” he answered, smiling. “If
there is one thing I will never let out of my sight, it’s that
thing.” He laughed. “By the way, the 3:14 thing is fixed, right? I
assume Felix fixed it, but I just want to be sure.”

“The what?” she asked.

“Every day at 3:14 A.M. and P.M., the watch
teleported me on its own. I didn’t have any control over it.”

“I’m sure that he fixed it. Anyway, I doubt
he would let himself bounce around like that every day.”

“And the biometric signature thing on the
tool to take the watch off? He said it had to be calibrated.”

Karen laughed. “It does. Just hold it in your
hand for a few minutes before using it, and never have anyone else
do it for you.”

“That’s it?”

She laughed. “Not everything is
complicated.”

“So how do I make this work then?”

“Just put your thumb ... ” She stopped and
looked at his right hand again. “It might be a bit of a problem for
you actually. I’ll do it this time.”

“Where will it take me?” he asked.

“Like I said before,” Karen replied, “I don’t
know how the coordinates work. You could wind up anywhere. I’m
sorry about that.”

She pulled the knob on the watch’s side
outward and spun it. The hands of the watch circled rapidly and
stopped as she did, landing in a random position.

“Are you going to be okay?” she asked.

“It’s alright,” John said. “I’ve done it
before. It’s just one more adventure. One more chance to get
home.”

Karen nodded. “Are you ready?”

“Last chance to keep it,” John said.

Karen shook her head no.

“I’m ready,” John said.

Karen placed her thumb down on the glass and
held it there.

“Don’t forget to turn on the hologram thing.
It’s the two buttons on the camera over there.”

“Okay,” she said.

“I’ll be back. You know, to visit. Until we
find a way to get you out of here.”

“I know you will.”

The room began to fill with bright blue
light. Karen stood, watching him leave, unaffected by it.

“I hate this part,” John said as he
disappeared.

“Me, too,” she replied.

The bright blue light rolled into a small
sphere and disappeared from the room completely. John was gone.

FIVE MONTHS LATER:

John sat on the shore amidst the seashells,
watching the waves lift and lower, form, and break against his
feet. The moon above him shone brightly in the sky, reflecting the
sunlight from a distant side of the world. There was a time when he
may have wondered its origin, but no longer. He was happy to be
home.

“You’re going to get sand in the joints,”
Ronika complained into his left ear, resting her head on his
shoulder. The fur from her orange ears blew against the sea’s
breeze and tickled the side of his face.

“Didn’t you make it sand-proof?” he replied.
John smiled, raised his right hand from the sand behind him, and
brought it to his front. He shook the small grains out from the
robotic joints augmenting the glove that covered his hand and
flexed his fingers.

“Hey, man, don’t come crying to me when the
thing borks out on you,” she said.

John raised his other hand and put it around
Ronika’s body, resting it around her side.

“I’m so glad you’re back,” she said.

“Me, too.”

“Though, you never told me how you made it
back here from Japan with no money,” she said.

“I will,” he answered. “Another time,
though.”

A faint blue light sparkled across a wave in
front of them.

“Did you see that?” Ronika asked.

“Amazing,” John said.

“It’s just luciferin,” Karen interjected,
appearing on the watch between them. “All you’re looking at is a
little photoprotein and an overcharged ion. Nothing to write home
about.”

“Um, Karen?”

“Sorry.”

John leaned back into the sand behind him and
stretched his arms out to his sides. Ronika followed him down,
keeping her head against his shoulder.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” she said suddenly.

“What?” John asked.

Ronika reached into her front pocket and
removed a small disposable camera. She lifted it above them and
snapped a photograph.

THE END

John and Ronika return in MISSING
SIGNALS,

book two of The Diaspora Trilogy

Felix snapped himself awake as his left hand
began to slip from the roof rack. It had been five hours now; they
had to be getting closer. Losing his grip now would mean losing the
van and probably worse, his life.

The vehicle ran across another bump in the
road and Felix’s hands tightened. He pulled himself forward against
the sixty-miles-per-hour wind and leaned his ear against the metal
below him. The voice he heard was muffled, but some of the words
came through clear: dead, teeth, don’t panic.

It wasn’t supposed to have been like this.
That’s why he’d brought the ratchet straps and carabineers. He was
supposed to be safely hooked in place, not clutching the roof
rack’s sun-hot metal with bare, tiring hands. But the straps he’d
purchased had torn almost the moment the van first accelerated, of
course, only minutes after that poor sixteen-year-old had been
blindfolded and led inside.

The van drove over a large hole in the road
and Felix’s body raised into the air before thumping back down
against the vehicle’s top. He stabilized himself and listened
through the roof again, hoping the noise he’d made had gone without
raising suspicion. He pressed his ear against the metal. The voices
had stopped speaking, and soon, he felt the van do the same.

Passenger or driver
, Felix thought
quickly.
Right or left?

Felix began to roll left just as he heard the
creak of the driver’s side door. Shifting quickly, he spun his body
to the right edge of the roof and hung it there, as far off the
side as he could. He heard the driver’s footsteps connect with the
ground outside of the van.

Just tug at the rack
, Felix thought,
holding his breath.
That’s what made the noise. Take a quick
look, and get back in the car.

Felix didn’t need the driver not to look at
the roof, just not to look very hard. If he could stay perfectly
still, there was a good chance of going unnoticed. Worried, and a
bit paranoid, he looked to the sleeve of his suit, the only part of
him visible to the driver. His arm looked like the dirty,
rain-spotted van beneath it.
Good.

He’d found the chameleon suit hanging in
Harvard’s Engineering and Applied Sciences lab when he’d broken in
a month ago. He’d been searching for anything that might have
helped him with today’s plans, and finding such a convenient
invention had been even more than he’d hoped.

Unlike the invisibility prototypes Felix had
seen in the 70s, this one didn’t rely on cellular mutation or a
composite metamaterial to refract photons. The suit he’d found was
just a network of gyroscopic, pinpoint cameras displaying the world
behind him in front of him and vice versa; a simple concept
perhaps, but an astounding feat of precision craftsmanship and
engineering nonetheless.

The final effect was impressive--even to
Felix who’d seen all nature of things--but not perfect. The edges
of his body’s form showed a slight curvature, and the material
could bunch if its wearer wasn’t careful.

It had been difficult taking the suit from
Harvard; Felix knew these things were generally the children of
poorly paid scientists, birthed over countless years of tireless
research. Still, his guilt had been the hardest part of taking it.
The lab’s security code generators operated from the same algorithm
they’d used when he’d still been a student, and the man caught on
the university’s security tapes was technically dead, sure to
provide no match against a current police database.

The driver’s footsteps paced in the dirt
alongside the van. Felix imagined the person was busy looking up at
the roof, wondering what had bumped against it. Hopefully, the
reality was much too farfetched for he or she to suspect. Much to
Felix’s relief, the driver reentered the vehicle a few moments
later satisfied, perhaps, that nothing was amiss.

The van jerked forward suddenly, nearly
knocking Felix to the ground. His fingers were already sore against
the center bar of the roof rack, but still managed to silently pull
him back above the vehicle where he did his best to remain stiff
and still.

Forty-six minutes passed, and the van finally
slowed to a halt, kicking a cloud of brown dirt around its tires as
it wheeled to a stop. Felix raised his head and peered out at the
barren countryside they’d parked in, similar in climate and flora
to where he’d been taken at the beginning of his own time with the
Company.

He scanned the horizon for the large silo he
remembered housing the lab’s elevator, but failed to find it. There
was, however, an old farmhouse nearby, and a slight, blonde-haired
woman with a white lab coat standing dutifully in front of it.

The side door of the van pushed open and
Felix moved quickly to the center of the roof. Footsteps landed
against the ground below. He raised his head an inch and craned it
forward, just enough to see a blindfolded teen being led out of the
van by a shorthaired man in a bright red t-shirt.

“Dean,” the man said, removing the wide,
black blindfold from the boy’s face, “I’m going to leave you with
Jennifer now. You’re in good hands.”

“Hello, Dean!” the blonde-haired woman
exclaimed in an chipper voice. “We’re so excited to have you with
us. I’m sure you must be just bursting with questions, and that’s
what I’m here for: to help you out with anything you need!”

“I could use some sunglasses,” the boy said,
shielding his eyes from the burning afternoon light.

“Here,” said the man in the red shirt. “You
can take mine.” After handing his glasses to the boy, he shot him a
loose, playful salute and climbed back into the van.

Felix slowly crawled to the opposite side of
the roof and lowered his body halfway down its side, waiting for
the last possible moment to drop. If this woman, Jennifer, was
still facing the van by the time it left, he’d be easily noticed
and all of his plans would be for naught. For now, his fate rested
with fortune.