True Heroes (75 page)

              “You won’t leave? You won’t run away?”

              “I should this very second to ensure your safety, but I can’t imagine you in anymore pain. You can’t be in anymore pain.” Alice flung herself at him and attempted to kiss his empowered lips, but Caleb held back with all the strength his core could muster. “I’m sorry, Alice. I won’t do wrong by you, either.”

              She pulled back a little but stayed close enough for them to hug tightly, her skinny arms gripping around his back while his arms ever so gently attempted to pull her into his heart. “Just so you can see what I’m feeling. That I’m so true to you. That I can’t help but be. That I can never do you wrong. Just be with me then. Like always. No change. Besides the change that needs to happen.”

              “I’ll try.”

              “Do.”

              “That’s what I meant.”

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                            -                            -             

              “He’s stable, Major. The injection timeline was inconsistent, as you suspected. Doctor Ancel still insists every safety precaution was taken, but we’re having doubts now, obviously.”

              Major Howard rubbed at his eyes and turned away from the open folder in the General’s hand. “The thing we thought would be an asset is biting us in the ass. He wants that Caleb too much.”

              “Perhaps it still is an asset, sir.” The General closed the folder and walked beside him. “Ancel says there’s still another tweak or two that can increase the output of the apparatus, and we’d still have control over him with the resupplying it would need.”

              “How long do those fuel cells last?”

              “Well, sir, it’s not cells. The white-coats say it depends on his body temperature and how fast he can burn off the injections. If we boosted him to one-hundred-percent, he’ll be on empty in a few hours at most.”

              The Major looked sideways at the General. “Efficiency wasn’t on top of this highly-budgeted project’s priority list?”

              The General scoffed a little. “Well, with the military’s resources, there didn’t really seem to be a need for efficiency, Major.”

              “We’re not exactly rolling in money anymore. This country hasn’t seen an actual earnings report in almost a decade. Did you think the military had a secret bank account the government didn’t know about?”

              “No, but our country has always loved defense.”

              “Well, that’s true. Either way, our budget can barely cover another test run before we deploy this guy to the Middle-East.” They reached out and pushed open the double doors that lead to the medical ward. “How are we feeling?” The Major and the General looked on as Stephen sat with an oxygen mask secured to his clammy face, Ancel administering some shot into his arm with a clear liquid in the plunger. The Major swiveled around and stared down the General before picking up the fresh medical chart at the end of the bed. “You’re no longer clear to deploy.”

              The General stepped forward. “He’ll be fine, Major, he just needs some time.”

              Stephen ripped off the oxygen mask. “I can go now if your men are ready to deploy.”

              “Your blood pressure is through the roof and you had a heart attack that left your heart weakened,” he turned to the General, “and you lied to me. You’re relieved of duty, General.” He looked between all three men. “All three of you need to learn what’s acceptable in the human race and what isn’t. I’m not sending you to die, son.”

              The Major turned and left them alone, allowing the General to stand before both sitting men; Stephen wheezing heavily and the doctor strapping a bandage to his arm. “Would he even survive the trip back to the city?”

              Doctor Ancel looked up. “Survival of the body won’t be the problem. He’s showing signs of oxygen deprivation, which was always a risk of increasing his blood pressure. If it continues, parts of his brain could begin to die, or become integrated with the injections. Neither of which I would recommend.”

              Stephen took in a deep breath and exhaled quickly. “I’ll be fine. Let’s find him and do another test.”

              “Either way you look at it, son, this is the last test.”

              “I know.”

              “You could stop now, get better, then we could try again.”

              Stephen looked up at the General. “There is no getting better. It’s now or never. Always has been, always will be.”

              The General nodded as a bead of sweat ran down Stephen’s cheek. “Ancel, crank him up to one-hundred-percent.”

              “Everything’s already been arranged.”

              He nodded. “There’s a guard shift in a couple of hours, which gives you four minutes to get out of the compound through the back. If you push out everything, you’ll have a couple of hours to get there, get it done, and be back. The Major won’t be able to resist that kind of hard data.”

              “I’ll have to monitor him from here. Carrying me will waste precious energy, and the remote only has a four meter radius.”

              The General kneeled down on dusted knees and looked Stephen in the eye. “We’ll have to give him his own remote. When you get back, you can name your price all over again.”

              Stephen mustered the strength for a slight smile.

---

              Caleb writhed every inch of each hand within the other. His eyes took the entirety of every interconnected plank as they flicked along the floor. The curls of his brown hair hung and bounced with his breath and slight movements while happy voices sounded around him. ‘You’re not happy to see their remarkably oblivious faces?’

              ‘Can’t see them where I’m looking. Leave me be for a while.’

              “And Caleb?” He looked up and found Alice’s eyes unlocking from the back of his head, and her mumbles whispering rapidly. Her voice finally rose to complete her thought. “Do you plan on attending tonight?”

              “Attending what? Sorry.”

              Alice stared at him without mumbling and with a frown supplanting her constant smile. She slowly reached for his hand, but held it sideways instead of entwined. “The play in the park downtown tonight. Everybody said they’ll go but you. David and Mr. Dyllo included.”

              “If you’re going I am.”

              “That’s not what you said earlier. I don’t have a choice in anywhere you go now.” The look in her eyes made Caleb internally cringe. ‘Her eyes were sharp enough to cut my heart in half. I could feel her capillaries trying to swallow me whole.’ “So?”

              “I don’t know then. I suppose not.”

              A few groans sounded before Joy leaned forward. “You want to go to work instead?”

              Caleb forced a smile to burst from his face. “No, tonight’s my night off. I guess I’ll be sitting in a corner tonight.”

              Benny, Christopher and Angela laughed while Alice continued her focused stare at the side of his head. Moments and the laughs tapered off, and Alice suddenly took her hand back and leaned to the opposite side of her large chair. He watched as she crossed her arms and drew stares from anyone looking up. ‘David’s cradling her with his eyes.’

              ‘It doesn’t matter. She’s hating me with hers.’

              ‘Technically she’s hating the floor with her eyes right now.’

              “Mr. Whitmor.” Caleb looked around until Mr. Dyllo’s eye contact stopped his search. “I was wondering if you could continue your line of thought from our last meeting? It did seem so intriguing.”

              Caleb rubbed at his forehead. “I haven’t really planned to lay anymore of it out.”

              “Well, would you leave them and me to a half-explained idea?”

              “Which are you more concerned about?”

              “My own curiously takes precedence.”

              Caleb sighed and stood up. “Then I guess I’m not done yet. Everyone stand up. Let’s do the graphic example.” A few participants were eager in their standing, while David, Joy, and Dyllo were more skeptical. Alice didn’t stand at all; Caleb walked over to her quickly and held out his hand. “We can’t do this without everybody’s help. I can’t.”

              The look on her face softened slightly, but the stern dissatisfaction remained in bulk as Caleb gently pulled her to the middle of the standing group. He turned around and hung two chairs in each of his hands before walking out into the open gym, strategically placing one at a nexus, then two at another level. Soon, he had an indistinguishable diagram of chairs. ‘It needs tracing.’ “All right. Christopher, bring Angela and another chair so you both can sit here…,” Caleb moved from one point to another, short names without looks coming from him while his mind pieced carefully together his picture of the subliminal world. He finally stood in the center, where he’d placed Alice’s large recliner, and simply held out his hand. As she walked with curiosity chiseling further at her rotten expression, her right hand unfolded from her chest. He gently took it and spun her around until her butt was squarely in the chair. ‘She smiled a little.’

              ‘That’s a start. Be gentle with her.’

              ‘I always am.’

              “Ta-da. We have our structure of human nature, choice, and being itself.” He pointed towards the couple as they stood at the isolated point. “It starts there: constant intention. No matter what we are, we’re constantly intended to the point where we have, at our very base, the phenomenon of love bursting through our subconscious. I’ll get back to that in a minute.” He pointed with two fingers to Joy and the pure Lacey standing along a line a few feet in front of the couple. “Here, we have everything that is a result of constant interaction, and I mean everything. Emotions, religion, science, actions, inactions, texts; the only running characterization between all the things at this level is that they are both rational extremes within choices. This has no middle ground because at the base of everything that this rational world is perceived as holding, there is good and evil.” He speedily walked from the second level to Andrew on the far left. “These points stand to influence up to here,” he said while walking to Stewart on the far right, “And, to a much greater extent, where David is: this cross section of everything rational.” He crossed his arms while walking to stand next to David. “Notice their positions: the one all the way down there is affected less by the furthest the same way that Pluto isn’t a sunny beach resort. Along this line between Andrew and Stewart is the reaction of the basest human interaction we have with the world. Andrew represents those that itemize everything, ‘it,’ while Stewart shows us the ones that reflect upon everyone else, ‘they.’ People along this line have no inherent ability to affect those around them, or anything greater than themselves because they have no awareness of their position. I’m going to skip Alice for now.”

              She made a playful grunt. ‘Good.’

              Standing directly in front of Stewart with his feet aligned, he continued talking. “Of course, there are some people that see this basal way of life,” he began walking as if on a balance beam on an angled path, “and they became self aware,” his feet and arms began flailing as if losing his balance before he hoped to Dyllo’s slightly surprised face, causing a little more laughter, “and they gained the ability to not only affect themselves, but to affect the very concept of love; to mold it, if you will, to whatever their own nature is. Up here, we have the man that has undying ambition, an intellect that supports nothing but practical advancement, and, at his very base, is an ‘I.’” He ran quickly down to David, passing by the back of Alice’s chair and spinning her around to create more cheering laughter. “Here at the cross-section, we have the man who is eternally within a paradox, the ambition only for infinity, and has only the word ‘we’ under his belt.” He slapped David on the shoulder before quickly turning and kneeling down in front of Alice. “The epoch of human kind has never known a position more important than the one you’re sitting in right now. This is the apex: the point without which we would all fall into neat little categories and have no question of existence or genealogy; this is the person that reveals to us the unaccountable variable of humanity in the universe. This is a separate entity that sees everything, and acts only according to what is not only right, but what needs, without equivocation, to happen. This is where the entity can become everybody,” he gently touched her leg for a moment, “or nobody.”

              Dyllo stood up again. “It is a preposterous idea to think that a person would act along the same lines, as you so suggest, for the entirety of his life.”

              Caleb stood quickly with a half-smile on his face. “I never stated such with such pomposity. This model can be used for each action like…a map for destiny. It represents, in that respect, our choice extending beyond time; a choice we make now can be reputed down the line. Choice, then, becomes uber-relevant and substantially more apparent. Meaning: we always have a choice that has three options, never two.”