My visual fields distorted, ballooning outwards, and the hurricanes and reporters shredded into each other. Kesselring’s shocked face watched me blink suddenly out of his reality.
I abruptly collapsed into a deathly quiet, single subjective point of view. Exactly where or why, I had no idea.
Marie, my proxxi, was standing over me, staring into my eyes. Everything was perfectly still. An impossibly long, incredibly thin rope stretched from the infinite blue void above to wrap itself tightly around my waist. I was suspended above a yawning black pit, set in the middle of an endless green field, all under a flawless sky.
“The news isn’t good I’m afraid,” Marie informed me, shaking her head.
Tell me something I didn’t know.
The rope tightened around my waist, slowly choking out my lifeblood. I could feel the tigers charging across the sky towards me, their silent roars ringing in my deaf ears.
Fascinated, I watched as busy and purposeful nanobots ate away at the thin cord holding me suspended in space. Below me, in the blackness of the pit, an unseen monster grunted and slobbered. This can’t last forever, I thought to myself as I drifted in and out of consciousness.
I can’t last forever.
15
Identity: Jimmy Jones
“I heard that Kesselring put you in charge of Infinixx?”
“Just temporarily,” I sighed to Commander Rick Strong, shaking my head, “someone has to hold down the fort.”
Rick winced. “Sorry, I didn’t mean…I mean, how is Patricia doing?”
After the Infinixx mess, Patricia had suffered some kind of stroke. Not really a stroke. There hadn’t been any physical brain damage, but it had been more of an overload of her pssi system. She was recovering, but they were keeping under surveillance and isolated for the moment.
“She’ll be fine,” I said after a pause. “I spoke to her this morning. She said she’ll be back in the office by tomorrow.”
We both returned our attention to the presentation going on explaining ways someone could be directing the storms.
“There is something very unnatural going on here,” explained our mandroid guest to the assembled Command team. With that statement, she reached down with one slender metallic arm to adjust the jumpsuit hugging her thin, metallic legs. “These storms are definitely being driven by some artificial means.”
It was early Saturday morning, but we’d all been called into Command to review scenarios around the growing threat of the hurricanes that were beginning to pin Atopia against the coast of America.
“So you think the Terra Novans are involved?” asked Commander Strong. He’d been drinking again. Things were going badly with his wife.
“We’re not sure,” responded the mandroid.
“So then where is this coming from?” Rick demanded impatiently, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He looked like he had a headache.
“We can’t say for certain yet,” she repeated, “but there’s something too perfect about these storms.”
“Jimmy, do you think you could look into this more?” asked Rick, looking away from the mandroid and towards me. “I need to go and see Cindy.”
“No problem,” I replied. He was about to flit off when I remembered something. “Oh, yeah, I have that date tonight, if you remember.”
Rick looked up towards the ceiling. “Susie, right? That’s going well, huh?”
He smiled. I shrugged.
“I can cancel if you want.”
“No, no, keep the date. You can’t let stuff like this stop you from living life,” he sighed. “Anyway, I know you’ll keep a few splinters around if I need you. I’ll be back later.”
With that he flitted off, and I returned my focus to the storms and our mandroid guest. More than one thing wasn’t right here.
It was my third date with Susie, and for this one, I’d received an invitation to meet in her own private world. It was a sensual, mystical place where the sun was eternally setting. She wanted to go for a walk outside her enclave, to chat, and so I found myself walking through a valley of knotted oaks and blossoming cherry trees that offered hidden glimpses of fantastical canyon walls beyond them. Waterfalls spilled into clouds of mist from high, craggy cliffs, and everything twinkled in shades of silver and gold.
As we walked, she gently brushed aside a patch of yellow orchids that she stepped through as tenderly if they were children at play. The woody atmosphere was perfect and synthetically warm, but slightly cloying under an indistinct vanilla sky. Her long flaxen hair spilled down her back, held in place by a garland of white flowers, and a flowing translucent gown revealing hints of her tiny body beneath.
The breeze swept waves of glittering cherry blossoms and silvery oak leaves around us like a snowstorm, and fireflies sparkled in our wake while we walked through the gathering dusk.
“How is Patricia?” she asked. It was common knowledge we were close.
“She’ll be fine,” I replied with a smile. “She’s very old, these things happen. The doctors say she’ll be back good as new tomorrow, or the next day.”
“Good.” She smiled warmly, but then her eyes clouded over. “And these storms, we’re not in any danger are we? I guess it can’t be that serious if you’re here.” Her smile returned.
“Don’t worry about the storms,” I assured her. “I wouldn’t advise going topside when they get here, but we’ll be fine.”
“Double good,” she laughed. Then she flinched, her side spasming.
It was some event out in the world, some type of disaster that had sparked into her body. She had such an exquisitely tuned neural pain network; it was what had attracted me to her. She smiled at me as the spasm subsided.
“It’s nothing,” she smiled. “I have this…”
“I know,” I interrupted gently. “No need to explain.”
I reached down to hold her hand, and she smiled, watching me.
“So, Mr. Jimmy Jones, my friend Willy speaks very highly of you,” Susie laughed.
I walked with my hands behind my back, formal, slightly stiff, and was wearing my ADF Whites. There could have hardly been a starker contract between the two of us.
She laughed, and spun out in front of me, reaching up to snatch a blossom out of the air. She stopped in front of me, curtsied, and offered me the blossom. Her eyes were full of mischievousness.
“So what would an ADF officer want with me?” she laughed.
“I need your help. It’s hard to explain.”
“Need my help?” she giggled. “I thought this was a date?” She pouted playfully.
“It is.” I looked down and away, trying to appear embarrassed. “I mean, I feel like you’re someone who could be really special to me.”
She danced away from me, trailing her hands through the flowers.
“Oh I’ve looked you up, Jim-bob Jonesee...that incident with the bugs...” she laughed, and then stopped to turn to look at me. “That was a bit odd, don’t you think?”
I winced.
“I was just a kid. I was a kid trying to find a way to deal with my pain,” I tried to explain. “You wouldn’t understand, nobody does...how could you, you grew up with such love.”
She considered me for a moment. “What do you mean?”
I was silent.
“Jimmy?” she asked again, softer this time.
My face reflected sorrowful pain. “My friends call me James.”
She nodded. “Okay then, what is it, James?”
“I’ve never shared this with anyone, Susie. I don’t know why I feel like I can share this with you. Can we make this private?”