The Traveler's Companion (13 page)

Iverson used the other hand to stop cars coming from the other direction, getting much the same reaction from drivers. He didn’t care.

“Hey!” Iverson shouted.

The attackers scattered.

The homeless man was sprawled out on the sidewalk, a bloody mess. Iverson went to one knee next him. The man was barely conscious, mumbling to himself. Blood dripped from gashes in his lip and brow. His left eye was already swelling shut.

Iverson mentally conjured up an image of a man with a face free of cuts and bruises. He cured the mental psychosis, as well. Iverson knew the brain; he had seen his share of scans. This man would get a healthy brain.

The man opened his eyes and looked up at Iverson. He was a little confused, but free of injury.

“What happened?” the man asked.

Iverson sat back smiling. What a rush. But it didn’t feel quite like he had thought it would. Rather than feeling like he had cured a man, he felt as if he had created a work of some type. Did creative people always feel this way?

“Are you okay?” Iverson asked him.

Slowly the man sat up. “I think so. What happened?”

“Looked like you were getting roughed up by a street gang.”

“Damn,” he said, taking a deep breath. “I remember that part. But I feel different now.”

“That’s called normal. Don’t let it bother you.”

Iverson helped the man stand up.

“I’ve never felt like this before.”

“Do you have any idea who you are?” Iverson asked him. “Do you have family in town?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” he said, dusting himself off. It was like he was trying to adjust to his new sober and mentally healthy self.

“How did you end up on the street?”

“I’ve always been here.”

“You don’t have a past?”

“Past? I woke up here this morning.”

The idea that he was born from parents, grew up, and suffered some type of trauma or mental disorder that had put him on the street made no sense to the man. This was the first day of his life.

Iverson extended a hand to shake. “Well, it was nice meeting you. Good luck.”

The man shook his hand, but didn’t want to let go. “What do I do now?”

“Whatever you want. Life is short. Enjoy yourself.”

“Enjoy myself?” he asked. “How?”

“I don’t know, but you probably have a day or so to figure it out. Need some money? Check your pockets.”

The man reached into his pockets and found a wad of several one hundred dollar bills.

“The first thing you’ll probably want to do is take a shower. Check into a nice hotel. Buy some clothes. Get a massage. Whatever you want.”

Over the man’s shoulder, Iverson saw Gibbons running down the sidewalk, calling out for him. “Iverson! Iverson!”

“Excuse me,” Iverson said to the homeless man.

It was definitely Gibbons, but with more hair and a slightly more youthful appearance.

“Is that you, Mark?”

“Damn it, Iverson, where have you been?”

“I’ve been here.”

“Who the fuck is this?” Gibbons asked.

“This is a friend of mine,” Iverson said with a smirk.

“Looks like a bum to me,” Gibbons said. He turned to him and said, “Get the hell out of here!”

“There’s no need for that,” Iverson said, getting in between them. He escorted the man away from Gibbons. “You’ll have to excuse us. We have some business to take care of. Go enjoy your day,” Iverson said. He put out a hand as if hailing a cab. A limousine came out of thin air and quickly pulled up to the curb next to them. A uniformed driver got out, opened the passenger door, and waited at attention. Iverson helped the man into the car.

“But what do I do?” he asked.

“I already told you. Enjoy yourself.”

Although somewhat confused, the man got into the limo.

“Are you done?” Gibbons said. “We have a crisis and you’re playing games with the locals.”

“What’s the situation?” Iverson asked.

“Angela. The bitch froze up.”

CHAPTER 8

Gibbons manifested a door on Van Ness Avenue, on the sidewalk, opened it, and went into his hotel room in Bali. “She’s in the bedroom,” Gibbons said.

Iverson quickly went into the bedroom. Angela lay on her back on the bed under the comforter. Her bare arms were outside the comforter at her sides. Her eyes were closed and she was snoring.

“Is she just asleep?” Gibbons asked. “Because I tried to wake her. She’s been like this for a few hours.”

Iverson sat on the bed next to her. With a finger and thumb, he pried open one of her eyelids. “She’s not asleep. Not exactly. She shut down. Her system must have overloaded.”

“Overloaded? All that research funding and she overloads? Are you using Windows for her or what?”

“She wasn’t designed for this type of environment. There’s no way I could have prepared her for this.”

“Will she wake up eventually?”

“No. I need to take her back to the lab.”

“We can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’s having dinner with Mister Go in about an hour. She’s supposed to be getting ready right now.”

Iverson pulled back the comforter. “Why is she naked?”

“Her bathing suit dissolved. Don’t blame me, Go manifested it for her. I found her out by the pool like that. I thought she was doing some type of European thing, but then I realized she had fallen asleep. I couldn’t wake her, so I brought her in here before Go found her.”

Iverson covered her with the comforter. “I need my laptop.”

“We can get the laptop. It’s back in HQ, right?”

“Yes. In my office.”

“Okay,” Gibbons said, taking a few deep breaths. He waved his hands in the air and a door appeared. “Your office is on the other side.”

“Okay,” Iverson said, holding her wrist and checking his watch. “The backup life support system is functioning perfectly. That’s the good news. I designed it to be independent of the brain cell technology.”

“Great. Let’s get it going, Ryan.”

Iverson stood up from the bed and went over to the door. When he opened it, he saw his office. “You’ve gotten pretty good at this.”

“It’s not difficult. Now come on. The door won’t stay around forever.”

When Iverson stepped into reality, he immediately felt ill. His stomach twisted into knots. Every muscle in his body began to spasm. He doubled over.

“What’s wrong with you?” Gibbons asked.

Quickly, Iverson grabbed his laptop off the desk, but he realized he had to unplug it from the wall. He wasn’t sure he could stay conscious much longer. He went to his knees and crawled over to the wall outlet.

“Are you all right? What the hell are you doing?” Gibbons asked.

“I don’t feel right,” Iverson said, trying to stand. He needed to use the desk to pull himself up to his feet.

“Hurry!” Gibbons said.

Iverson tossed the power plug onto the keyboard and gently folded the screen over it. He barely made it back through the rift and into the Zone. Slightly disoriented, he walked a zigzag path over to the bed and sat on the opposite side of Angela. He set the computer next to him and buried his face in his hands.

“What’s wrong with you?” Gibbons asked.

“When I crossed over, I felt nauseated.”

“What could cause that?”

“My first guess is radiation poisoning. Give me a minute.” Iverson closed his eyes and imagined himself completely healthy. It wasn’t easy; the pain had begun to take over. Any longer and it would have been difficult to be creative.

“I guess we need to be careful going back,” Gibbons said.

“We’ll need a radiation bath at the very least. We’ll have to contact a HAZMAT team.”

“Damn it. How does Go do it? He’s been going in and out and he looks fine.”

“He must have a place he exits where there’s a team standing by to clean him up. It’s probably at his laboratory.”

“So we need to find out where he exits,” Gibbons said.

 “Yes. Don’t worry, we’ll find it,” Iverson said, feeling the pain melting away.

“But why weren’t we nauseous when we went into China?”

“I don’t know. But looking back, I did feel a little fuzzy mentally.”

Iverson, feeling better, looked for a plug for the computer behind the bedside table.

“Will that plug work?” Gibbons asked.

“Hopefully. After the reboot she automatically performs a system diagnostic, which takes a lot of power.”

“How long does that take?”

“About twenty minutes,” Iverson said.

“We’re pushing it.”

“Go can wait a few minutes.”

The laptop linked remotely with Angela and began the rebooting process.

“I need a drink,” Gibbons said, going into the living room. He came back with a scotch on the rocks. He took a generous swig and said, “Lucky I found her. Go might have thought she was dead.”

“She has a pulse.”

“Yeah, but she already had a seizure in front of him. Now she has narcolepsy, too? He’d think she was medical mess.”

“When she shuts down, it’s made to look like she’s taking a nap. In reality a signal would have been sent via satellite and a team would have shown up to reboot her.”

“That could be weird. She falls asleep while on a date and out of nowhere a team shows up to service her?”

“It would be done remotely. From a van across the street, an adjoining room, a hallway outside an apartment. She’d wake up and apologize for dozing off, claiming she hadn’t gotten enough sleep the night before.”

“Nice,” Gibbons said, taking another drink.

“She should be operational in about fifteen minutes.”

“What do we do then? She’s supposed to be getting ready for a date. There isn’t exactly a Niemen Marcus around here.”

“We’ll have to manifest something for her.”

“We’re seamstresses now? Jesus, Iverson. You’ve been spending too much time in San Francisco. You’re scaring me.”

“She’ll tell us what she wants, and we’ll manifest it for her. Don’t worry. She knows exactly what to wear.”

“How much longer can we keep this up? I can’t be her chaperone forever. It’s starting to get awkward.”

“I know. I would be happy to trade places with you, but Mister Go insisted I create that city. Believe me. I don’t want to be there.”

“Then what do we do?”

“At some point we’re going to have to trust her to do her job.”

“Trust a computer?” he asked with a mouthful of scotch.

“Artificial intelligence. She was designed to be autonomous.”

“So far, that doesn’t seem to be working very well.”

“Once she reboots, I can check her database. We’ll see how Go’s brain scans are looking. I’ll bet you anything he’s fallen head over heels.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. He seems cool as a cucumber to me. Bastard’s probably gay.”

“They’re going on a date tonight, aren’t they?”

“Damn right they are. And we’re going to make her look fabulous,” Gibbons said, now drunk.

They both laughed.

“I better get the Congressional Medal of Honor for this one,” Gibbons said.

“Or a photo op in Vogue.”

They laughed even harder.

“This is ridiculous!”

There was a knock at the front door.

“Oh, shit,” Gibbons said. “He’s here.”

“Why is he here? Doesn’t Angela have her own room?”

“He must have gone there already.”

“Go tell him she’s not here.”

“Where is she?”

“Tell him she went somewhere to get ready.”

“Where?”

“Just tell him she’s not here. There’s still another ten minutes before the computer initiates the reboot.”

“Damn it, Iverson!”

Gibbons went to answer the door. Iverson could hear Go’s voice. It sounded as if he were inside the hotel room. Did Gibbons invite him in?

Gibbons came storming back into the bedroom. “Go insisted on coming in.”

“What for?”

“He wants to know if I want to join him and Angela for dinner.”

“Tell him no and be done with it.”

“He says he wants to discuss national security with regards to the Zone’s release.”

“The Zone cannot be safely released to the public.”

“He won’t listen to that, Iverson. He thinks he’s the fucking king of the Zone or something. He’s not going to surrender.”

The computer beeped. A message read: Scan Complete. Reboot Initiated.

Angela sighed, but her eyes remained closed.

“What happened?” Gibbons asked.

“It didn’t work.”

“Shit! Now what?”

“I’ll have to do it again,” Iverson said.

“There’s no time for that!” Gibbons went over to Angela, grabbed her by her shoulders, and sat her up. The comforter fell off her chest, exposing her breasts. Her head fell lazily to one side.

“What are you doing?” Iverson asked, trying to push him aside.

Gibbons backhanded her across the face. “Wake up you artificial slut!”

“You idiot!”

Just then her eyes opened. She yawned widely and stretched her arms above her head. “I’m sorry. I must have dozed off. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

There was a knock at the bedroom door, “Everything all right, Director?” Go asked.

“Fine! Just looking for my glasses.”

“You don’t need glasses in the Zone, Director. One of the amazing things about this place.”

“I’ll be right there,” Gibbons said.

“I should really see if Angela is back. Did you want to join us?” Go asked.

Iverson shook his head at Gibbons.

“No. You two go ahead. We’ll talk later,” Gibbons said.

“Sounds good. I’ll see you soon,” Go said.

Gibbons and Iverson waited for the sound of the door closing before they exhaled.