The Traveler's Companion (18 page)

When he opened the guestroom door, he was initially shocked by how crowded the room looked. And there was Beth, on a hospital bed that barely fit in the room with the other furniture. She lay in a coma, her frail body covered by a yellow hospital blanket.

With a thought, he was able to clear out some of the furniture in the room. He pushed the hospital bed against the wall.

He put his ear to her chest. He could hear the beating of her heart. He could feel the rhythm of life within her. With the power the Zone had given him, he could now wake her up. He could save her from her coma the way he had spent his life wishing he could. He could wake her up with a thought, but if he brought her out of the coma how would he handle two Beths?

He made her as comfortable as he could and then he manifested a chair in the corner of the room and sat down to watch her.

Something about being with this Beth made him fell calm. He reveled in the feeling for a while before questioning it. Healthy Beth filled him with nervousness, scared him. This Beth had the opposite effect; in fact, sitting with her now was the best he had felt since entering the Zone, maybe the best he had felt in years. A part of him had always believed he had abandoned her after she had slipped into a coma. The guilt had slowly eaten away at him over the years. After she had died, he knew the attempt to cure her was an excuse to run from the helplessness he had felt. He should have stayed. Now he could.

* * * * *

Feeling refreshed and centered, Iverson brought up the sun. He left the guestroom, locking the door behind him, and went to check on Beth in the master bedroom. She was out on the deck drinking coffee.

“How’d you sleep?” she asked.

“I didn’t,” he said.

“Surprised I’m still here?” she asked.

“A little.”

She winked at him. “So, what’s on the agenda for today?”

“I should probably go see the director and apprise him of the situation. That I—we have a thing with Mister Go,” he said.

“Is that tonight?”

“Yes,” he said.

“You’re not going to take my advice, are you?”

“What advice is that?” he asked.

She smiled while taking a sip of coffee.

“I’m going to take a shower and then I’ll be off,” he said.

“What should I do about a dress for this evening?”

“I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that.”

She sighed, “Excuse me, but I’m not leaving it up to you to pick something out for me. I’m not fond of having to ask for a line of credit, but it’s better than relying on your fashion sense.”

He reached for his back pocket, but remembered his wallet had been stolen.

He shut his eyes, and after a moment’s concentration, he handed her a briefcase.

She put it on her lap and flipped open the latches. Inside were neat rows of hundred dollar bills. She looked up from it and said, “Ryan, someone’s going to think I robbed a bank.”

“I’ll manifest you a good lawyer.”

“Fine,” she said. “Today, I’ll be shopping. Would you make sure there’s a sale at Macy’s? I hate paying full price.”

“Of course. I should also think you’ll require a driver to take you to the salon and to the spa.”

She sighed and said, “So much to do today.”

CHAPTER 12

Teleportation had its perils. Iverson arrived in what looked like an airplane hangar, amid the sound of gunshots. He quickly ducked behind a nearby tank. Another bang. He went to all fours like a dog and crawled toward the front of the tank to get a look around. There were three submarines, a stealth bomber, and rows of nuclear warheads that went on for miles.

“Show yourself, you bastard!” Gibbons’s words echoed through the hangar, followed by an absurd succession of automatic gunfire.

“Mark!” Iverson shouted.

A ceasefire.

“Iverson, is that you?”

“Yes, damn it! What’s going on?”

“Be careful! Bin Laden’s in here somewhere!”

“The real one?”

“No, no. I manifested the fucker. Don’t worry, I don’t think he’s armed.”

Iverson was worried. He had been mugged by his own manifestation and he wasn’t about to underestimate a re-creation of the world’s most wanted terrorist.

A few feet away, Iverson spotted a man sprawled out on the floor. He was wearing military patent leather black boots with khaki pants tucked inside them and a red armband with a Nazi swastika on it. It was Adolf Hitler. Gibbons had laid him out. Was Mussolini also stretched out somewhere, or was he still alive, hiding behind one of Saddam Hussein’s Scud missiles?

“Get rid of him!” Iverson shouted.

“Damn it, I wanted to put a round between his eyes!” Gibbons said.

“You might hit me!”

“All right, all right!”

An arm suddenly wrapped around Iverson’s neck and he was yanked up to his feet. Something sharp was pressed against his throat.

“Don’t move,” a voice said into his ear.

Had Iverson’s mind not gone blank from fear, he could have easily manifested his way out of the situation.

Gibbons appeared from behind a tank, a 9mm pistol aimed at them. “Stay calm, Ryan.”

Iverson couldn’t stay calm. He could only hope Gibbons wasn’t seriously considering taking the shot.

“Just stay still, Ryan,” Gibbons said, closing one eye.

“No, don’t shoot!” Iverson pleaded.

“Get back or he dies!” Bin Laden said.

“Don’t worry, Ryan! All he has is a broken computer board,” Gibbons shouted.

“He has it against my jugular vein!”

A shot rang out. Iverson didn’t feel any pain at first, but there was some pressure in his right shoulder and a total loss of power to the right side of his body. Gibbons had shot him. Had Bin Laden not been holding him up, Iverson would have collapsed to the floor.

“Bastard!” Bin Laden shouted. He dragged the plastic computer board across Iverson’s neck and let him drop to the floor.

Several shots rang out. Bin Laden fell to the floor next to Iverson, his eyes open but lifeless.

Iverson’s mind was a scrambled mess. Although he applied as much pressure as he could to his neck, nothing would stop the bleeding.

“Don’t worry, Ryan. I gotcha.”

* * * * *

Gibbons’s young face, with smears of black paint on his cheeks and forehead, was peering down at Iverson. He adjusted the strap of the MP5 over his shoulder and said in a barely recognizable youthful voice, “Cleaned you up good, Ryan. Good as new.”

Iverson no longer felt any pain. He sat up, rubbing his neck. His skin was dry.

“In real life you would’ve been dead,” Gibbons said, extending a hand to help his friend up.

Iverson rejected the assistance. He wasn’t ready to stand up just yet. He wrapped his arms around his shins and took in some deep breaths. Physically, he felt fine. If anything his senses had been heightened by the near-death experience, but he needed a minute to collect himself.

Gibbons asked him, “So how do you like the place?”

Iverson stood up and brushed himself off. Luckily, Gibbons had cleaned up all the blood. “I fail to see the gamesmanship in hunting unarmed enemies of America in a stockpile of nuclear missiles.”

“This is all real, Ryan. The missiles, the tanks, the stealth bomber. One hundred percent organic. Up until now, Russia has had a hard time managing the arsenal of their previous government. Over 40,000 tons of chemical weapons, 6,681 nuclear warheads, 12 submarines with 609 warheads, and 237 bombers with 884 cruise missiles. I figured it was time to rid the world of the constant threat,” Gibbons said.

“These are real?!”

“Of course. Why would I manifest warheads?” Gibbons asked.

“What do you think is going to happen when it gets out that these weapons are missing? It’s going to create a global panic!”

“I’m the Director of National Intelligence, Iverson. People panic when I tell them to panic.”

Iverson was panicking anyway.

“At the very least I thought you’d be happy,” Gibbons said. “You’re the one who hates death so much. With these missiles out of circulation, we don’t have to worry about our enemies getting a hold of them.”

“And you think manifesting Osama Bin Laden in a hangar full of real weapons is a good idea?”

“For fuck’s sake, Iverson, it wasn’t the real Bin Laden. He couldn’t take the missiles back with him.”

“What if he sets one of them off here?”

Gibbons seemed to casually consider the idea before saying, “He’d need the codes. You don’t just push play on a nuclear missile.”

Iverson shook his head. He had anticipated these types of problems. If and when the Zone reached the public, who could keep track of who had what?

They threaded their way between two trident missiles en route to a staircase that led underground.

“My lair,” Gibbons said. “There’s something I want to show you. Sort of the
coup de grace
.”

“Can’t wait,” Iverson said, terrified.

They descended the metal spiral staircase and arrived in an underground command center. A wall contained a dozen dimensional rifts the size and shape of common flat screen monitors, each of which had a view into reality. There were views inside homes and apartments, Middle Eastern terrorist training camps, and various offices inside a Chinese government building. All of them violated international laws and treaties.

“From the Zone, I can probe a communist’s colon,” Gibbons said.

If anything, this reinforced Iverson’s belief that peace could never exist without respect for privacy. The Zone had to be shut down.

Angela entered the room, scantily clad. She was wearing a black leather miniskirt, fishnet stockings, and a top that offered less concealment than a bra. She was holding an opened manila folder.

“What are you doing here, Angela?” Iverson asked her.

She smiled at him, but didn’t respond.

“That’s not Angela,” Gibbons said. “An ephemera.”

“This is highly irregular, Director. What if C.C. Go sees this? He could get the wrong idea. This could jeopardize the mission,” Iverson said.

“She’s my secretary. Who else could handle all the red tape? I’m starting a new branch of intelligence gathering. This is DIS, the Department of Inter-dimensional Security. Our goal is to eradicate potential threats to the United States and its allies, both extra-dimensional and domestic.”

“Director Gibbons, I need your signature,” Angela said.

The director signed without looking at the document. Angela turned and left without saying goodbye. When she opened the door, another Angela was in the next room typing at a desk. An Angela was passing out interoffice memos.

“Great thing about the Zone,” Gibbons said, “No labor costs. Workforce dissolves after an eight hour shift. Taxpayers are going to love that. The office supplies are real, though. Can’t have documents disappearing. That reminds me.” He turned to the Angelas. “Angela, make sure to send Office Mart payment for the supplies. Bill it to the CIA account.”

“Yes, sir,” they said.

“You can manifest any secretary you want, Mark. I think in the interests of this mission, it might be better—”

“Don’t nag, Iverson. She’s fine. We’ve got bigger fish to fry, anyway. I need your help with something. Come with me.”

Gibbons led him to a twenty-four-inch-thick steel door. To open it, Gibbons provided a retinal scan, EEG scan, and voice recognition.

“These can all be circumvented in the Zone,” Iverson said.

“That’s why I put in this last security measure,” Gibbons said. They entered the vault, but nothing was inside.

“This is your security measure? Having nothing in here?” Iverson asked.

“Oh, there’s something in here. You just can’t see it. Try and find it,” Gibbons said.

Iverson walked around the room and felt along the walls, but he couldn’t find anything. “Okay, I’m stumped. Where is it?”

Gibbons placed his hands on the wall and leaned in to whisper to it. A secret compartment reacted to his command and a drawer came out from the wall. Inside was a spherical object about the size of a basketball. Affixed to one side was a keypad with two LED lights, one red and one green. The green one was lit. Gibbons took it out and tossed it to Iverson.

“Think fast,” Gibbons said.

Iverson caught it as carefully as he could. He manifested a table to put it on. As he examined it, he could hear Gibbons smiling.

“Since you probably won’t ask for another hour or so, I’ll just tell you what it is. I found it while snooping around a weapons research lab in China. According to the data I retrieved from their computers, it’s what they’re calling a proton bomb.”

Iverson’s head turned so fast it nearly gave him whiplash. “Proton bomb!”

“According to their data, it’s potentially powerful enough to make the planet look like Fidel Castro’s face. There’s also a chapter on black hole physics I didn’t totally understand, but I think it was a lot of nonsense about the explosion creating a black hole that grows and grows until it devours the entire solar system. Bullshit, really. They thought the same thing about the atomic bomb.”

Iverson was too shocked to speak. He manifested a chair and sat in it. Part of him was glad the Chinese no longer had the bomb, but if they had devised the technology once, they could probably do it again. The world was going to be a different place now. Humankind could not only destroy their own planet, they could annihilate the entire solar system.

Gibbons took the bomb off the table and put it back in the drawer.

“It’s a good thing I got it out of the hands of the Chinese. We’d be fucked otherwise. This is why DIS has to continue. This is why the Zone has to remain exclusively in the hands of America. Democracy must prevail,” Gibbons said.

“Democracy? When the Zone gets out, which it inevitably will, you can forget about government altogether. Forget about science, politics, medicine—it’ll all be gone. The Zone will be an extinction-level event, erasing life as we know it in the blink of an eye.”

“Come on, Iverson. They said the same thing about the Internet. We survived it, we’ll survive this. It just makes the game that much more interesting.” Gibbons’s smile made him look like the Cheshire Cat.

“The Zone is not an example of technological evolution. The Zone will make technology obsolete. Innovation and advancements in technology allow society to grow its infrastructure, but the Zone will make commerce unnecessary. How will we have an economy if all of man’s needs are met with a mere thought?”

“For now we’ll still need food and shelter because nothing lasts here. But I bet, sooner or later, someone will come up with a solution for that problem. We’ll have a world without hunger, disease, or boredom. Doesn’t sound like such a bad thing to me.”

“The Zone isn’t stable. As human beings, we need stability.”

“You’re threatened by the Zone, aren’t you? That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why you’re so negative. Is it because you don’t think science will be necessary anymore? Don’t worry. I’m sure there’s a place for science in all this . . . somewhere.”

Iverson hid his shock and suppressed the desire to argue. It wouldn’t help. Why would Gibbons give up being the most powerful man in the universe just because of a few technical details?

“Come check out my office,” Gibbons said.

A hidden staircase went down to another level. This room had cathedral ceilings, a wooden desk, and a spectacular view. Outside a viewport was Earth, looking as if it were floating on a black canvas. Pictures of it hadn’t done it justice. It was breathtaking. Now nighttime in Europe, Italy looked like an electric boot. He wanted to be in Naples, drinking wine on a moonlit beach and watching the sea wash into the natural grottoes.

“That’s the real Earth,” Gibbons said.

“The real Earth? You mean on the other side of that window is space?”

Was DIS a space station?

“That’s right. Oh, don’t worry,” Gibbons said crossing over to the window. He began pounding on it with his fist. “Strong as steel. Manifested it myself.”

“What happens when it degrades?”

“Well, I won’t be sucked out into space, Iverson, that’s for sure. Come on. You know that reality can’t come into the Zone. For fuck’s sake, man, have you been paying attention this whole time or what?” he said, chuckling. “I’d have to walk through the rift. But that would be a pretty stupid thing to do, now wouldn’t it? Well, I guess I could find a space suit in reality . . . could be fun . . . ah, maybe latter,” he said, finally dismissing the idea. “Well, what do you think?”