Vrin: Ten Mortal Gods (24 page)

Again we sat with our own thoughts as the car veered off the highway and followed a dirt road. Slowly the car turned and the tires crunched down a gravel driveway to a log cabin overlooking a quiet lake. A figure stood in the doorway. I immediately recognized her. From the distance, she appeared the same as I remembered her, as if no time had passed.

“Just take one step at a time.” Her genuine smile brought me comfort. In spite of all the years that had passed, she welcomed my return, and seemed excited at the prospect of my reconnecting with her mother.

I swung my legs out of the car and Samuel helped me up with a firm grasp. “Do you have my cane, Sam?”

“Right here.” He grabbed it from the front seat.

I gripped the handle and rested my weight on it. Annie had come down to the bottom of the cobblestone path. Her eyes spoke volumes. She was happy to see me, but the many years stood between us like a gulf. For me it was only one day, but for her-- it was a lifetime.

She hadn’t changed much. She looked considerably older, but age had done nothing to deface her beauty. Her eyes were the same brilliant sapphire, her blond hair twisted in curls to her shoulders. Pensively she stood with her arms folded over her midsection. I could tell she wanted to speak-- and yet, she remained silent.

Everything took on a new sense of realism as I stood looking at her face. It was the same feeling I’d had when I’d seen my reflection in the mirror earlier. Only this was worse. To see my beautiful bride looking so much older... How she must have suffered. And yet, in her eyes-- I actually saw a look of apology.

“It’s not
your
fault. It’s just that-- seeing you is...” She squeezed herself a little tighter. “It’s just not what I expected.”

I studied her expression. “Is that
good,
or bad?”

“Good,” she blurted. “It’s just that, it’s been so
long.
I didn’t think I would feel
anything,
and, I didn’t. ‘Til just now.”

“Yes.” She corrected herself. “A miracle.” She stepped in toward me and her eyes flickered up. “Do you
remember
us? Our life together? For me it was so long ago.”

I shook my head. “For me it was just last
week
I was dancing with you, my very pregnant wife, on our balcony overlooking the bay.”

She looked up at me and a tear trickled down her cheek. “It was so perfect I thought I had dreamed it.” Her voice became a whisper. “Were we
that
happy once?”

“If you could find it in yourself to give me a second chance, we could be happy again.” I immediately regretted the words. Talking about the past was one thing. But this was way too fast-- for someone who had lived twenty-one years since yesterday.

I started to mouth an apology. But she stopped me. “You don’t need a second chance, Thomas. You never failed me the first time.” She slid her arms under mine and hugged my chest. The smell of her hair had changed, but I was immediately satisfied by the new scent. This was not the wife of my memory, but she was still my Annie.

I looked up to see Rebecca standing by the back of the car, struggling to keep her emotions from overtaking her, and it was more than I could bear. My own tears began to flow. My baby girl... To me it was just yesterday she was strutting around the backyard in a paper crown, pretending to be a queen and giving orders to the dog. Now she was a grown woman! But she had not forgotten me. She had not stopped loving her daddy.

THE PLAN

001001011001110

Inside, the light was warm and inviting. Annie had always possessed a keen eye for interior decoration. Rectangular cedar pillars held up thick rustic beams, which crossed back and forth in the spacious ceiling above. To the left, was the kitchen, to the right, a sunken living room, and straight in front of us, stairs leading up to a loft.

I watched in silence as she pulled a cup from the cupboard. She was still very beautiful. The years had been far more gracious to her than they had been to me. Her face had thickened slightly and there was a hint of gray in her blonde hair, but other than that, she hadn’t changed much at all.

“How are you feeling?” Samuel came in and leaned against the counter.

“Better than I ever could have hoped.” I scanned the room. “This is a nice place.”

“Mom has great taste.” He smiled, but this smile was more pensive than his earlier ones. “Under better circumstances, I would bring you down and show you the lake. In the evening, it’s beautiful when the moon shines on it. And you can catch fish as big as your arm.”

“Everything. I mean... You’ve been practically dead for twenty-one years, and now out of the blue you wake up. And we’re getting mysterious calls early in the morning.” Her face tightened. “What’s going on? Becky said your
life
was in danger?”

“I don’t know. Dr. Solomon couldn’t tell me much. He said the government had stepped in, something about them wanting to undermine the project-? I asked him why but he said he didn’t know.” I paused and thought a moment. “He said they were
afraid
of what they might discover inside the minds of the patients.” I glanced up at Annie. She looked baffled.

Samuel spoke up. “Why? What’s inside the minds of the patients?”

“I don’t
know.
I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember anything?”

“No. There are feelings, but they’re faint. I don’t remember being in the coma. I remember New York, and then waking up in the lab.” I looked from Samuel to Annie. “What happened? How did I end up in a lab?”

Annie pulled out a kitchen chair, sat down, and looked thoughtful. After a moment, she spoke. “Do you remember the accident?”

“Vaguely.”

“Well, you suffered severe damage to your head and was diagnosed with terminal brain failure. So I started looking for a specialist, and I found one in Fresno. He couldn’t do much for you, but he was the one who told us about the center, and about how they were developing a way to communicate with patients like you. So I called and talked to Dr. Solomon. He didn’t promise anything, but it was the best option available.”

“Tell him about the forms,” said Sam.

“Yes. There were a
lot
of forms, stacks of them. They wanted to know
every
last detail of your life, right down to your childhood memories. It took weeks to get them all filled out
.”

“Tell him about the programmer thing.”

Annie gave Sam a look that said, I can
handle
this. He put his hands up in surrender. She looked back at me. “A friend of mine told me about a man she knew who was rejected because he was a programmer. And since I didn’t want there to be any chance of you being rejected too, especially after filling out all of those papers...” She gave a sheepish look. “I lied on the forms. I told them you were a fireman who had inherited a hefty trust fund.” She gave a wan smile.

“Oh.” She chuckled. “Well, I wanted to make sure you got in. And you did.” She smiled. “So apparently they didn’t have a problem with firefighters. --Anyway, I couldn’t be there when you were admitted because I was in labor with Sam...”

There were no emotions in the subtle lines of her face, only reflection. Apparently she had long since come to terms with the trauma.

“But when he was three weeks old I went to see you. That’s when I learned they were going to try a new technique to see if they could talk
directly
to your brain.”

“Yes. Solomon spoke of that. Sounds like something straight out of a sci-fi movie.”

“I know. Exactly. But they were serious, and they seemed confident that it could be done. So, every month for the last twenty-one years, I’ve received a report from the center, detailed reports with graphs and statistics.” She shrugged. “Most of it I don’t understand. But there was never anything to make me suspicious about what was going on.”

“Not even when the government took over?”

Her eyebrows lifted. “No. They had always provided the best care possible, and I saw no reason to worry. Solomon told me of the government’s interest in the project, and that they were offering to reduce our cost. That was fine with me.

She rubbed her palms across the table. “On one of my visits, I overheard two men talking about Father Wentworth, one of the other patients. Solomon always referred to him fondly as, ‘the religious component.’ He said all the patients added something to the world you were creating together, and that his contribution was religion. Anyway, Father Wentworth...”

“W-wait a minute, sorry to interrupt, but, did you say, ‘the world
we
were creating’?”

She shrugged. “I still don’t really understand it. But Solomon said the virtual world he had created was changing on its own. The data indicated that you and the other patients were adding to it and changing it, and that it was hardly the same thing anymore.” She shrugged again. “That’s what they told me.”

I squinted at her, then shook my head. “O-
kay.
--So, what about the priest?”

“Well I guess he didn’t take to the computer very well, and these two men were discussing whether or not he was even
in
the system. See, each of you had an activity monitor above your bed, and every time your mind told the computer to do something, it would appear on the monitor as a blip. --I used to stare at yours for hours.” Her eyes became distant. “I can’t begin to describe the feeling I would get when it would jump. It was like-- like you were whispering to me from the door of death, telling me you were still there, telling me everything was going to be okay.” Her voice trailed off and she stared at the table. “Anyway.” She shook her head. “Back to the priest. Father Wentworth’s monitor had a single spike, and that was all.”

“So, he wasn’t responding to the treatment,” I said. “What’s so strange about that?”

“That’s not the weird part, Thomas. The two men were talking about
extracting
him from Vrin. And the way they said it, it was like they were going to do it, from the
inside.
Like they could just go
in
and get him.”

Sam interjected. “The voice, Mom, tell him about the voice.”

“I’m getting to that, Sam.” Annie stood up and walked to the window. “It wasn’t just
what
they said, Thomas. It was how one of the men talked.” She pulled the curtain aside and looked out. “It was... I know this sounds crazy, but it was like he spoke in another language, but I understood it.” She turned back toward me. “And his
face,
his face was
perfect
, not handsome perfect, but,
flawless
perfect. --And the look he gave me... I’m telling you, Thomas, it made my knees weak. I almost dropped the coffee I was holding. I, I can’t explain it, but-- I don’t think he was of this world.”

“I wasn’t sure
what
to think, and it wasn’t like he’d done anything wrong. He didn’t say he was going to hurt the priest, just that they should
remove
him.”