“At some point, I realized I had missed the end of the game, and somehow I convinced myself that if the Phillies had won, you kids were alive. I can’t explain it. It just made perfect sense in the moment. I’m sure the blood loss had gone to my head. So I started praying, ‘Dear God, let the Phillies win.’ Not ‘Dear God, save us’ or ‘Dear God, please don’t let my kids be hurt.’ The Phillies were our ticket out of there.
“The pain grew unbearable—the physical, the psychological, worrying about the two of you. I remember seeing a light coming through the trees. At first, I thought it was our rescue party, but the light kept getting brighter. It wasn’t a solitary beam or even a collection of them, but all-encompassing. It intensified until everything—the car, the trees—was bathed in a blinding white radiance. My pain vanished, and everything I am—my consciousness, the unbreakable essence you would think of as a soul—was taken.”
A long, breathless beat of silence.
The fire had burned itself out—the blackened log venting smoke up the chimney and the early morning cold flooding in, driving out what little warmth the flames had given.
“At first, I thought I had died. My spirit cut loose, adrift in the emptiness of space. But then …” he drew a trembling breath, “… those first moments. The stars moving. Inconceivable velocity. The knowledge that I wasn’t alone.
“They took me through the pinnacle of a young nebula whose light won’t touch earth for another million years. A spire of dust and hydrogen gas four light years tall.
“We traveled, my guides intent on my reaction to things. To understanding my attachments—the constraints of emotion—which they perceived as weakness. Barriers to advancement. These beings were pure mind, stripped of emotion, evolved beyond the need to wrap themselves in matter. They were benevolent, but their intelligence was terrifying. They exist outside the jurisdiction of space and time.
“I saw stars born. I watched them die. I saw things that will never have names in our lifetimes. That Shakespeare and Van Gogh couldn’t have begun to do justice. Sun-sized worlds patchworked with bioelectric grids more intricate than the human eye. I witnessed the shockwave from a supernova destroy a solar system, and then stood on the surface of what was left—a neutron star no bigger than Manhattan. They took me to the brink of an event horizon, let me gaze into the abyss while it devoured a sun. Even as I say the words, your mind attempts to draw a picture, but it can’t. Whatever you imagine fails.
“They wanted to purge my humanity with the sheer grandeur of things, but it persisted. The resilience of my hope and love and fear fascinated them. They asked what I most wanted to experience. I told them …” here, his voice broke, “… my wife. They took me to a place where your mother never died. Where we never went off the side of a mountain. Where we never knew separation. You both brought your children to this cabin. I chased them through the meadow. We swam in the pond. I got drunk with your wife, Grant. And with your husband, Paige. We all sat on the front porch of a summer evening and filled this clearing with our laughter. I was holding Julia’s hand. To breathe the air of a world where our family thrived, where we were happy … it was something … and I could have stayed, I could’ve stayed forever … but it wasn’t mine.
“No matter where they took me, no matter what I saw, my heart was here. This cabin. This world. This reality. The two of you. They couldn’t grasp it. They’d chosen me for this revelation. The universe unveiled. They had undocked my mind from this frail shell so I could become like them—pure conscious energy—and I wanted to come back.”
“Why?” Grant asked.
“Why.” His father laughed. “‘Why?’ asks a man who has never had a child. Because I’m tethered to you. To both of you, as you exist right here. You’re the only thing that’s real to me. That gives my existence meaning.”
Grant motioned toward the bedroom.
“What’s in there?”
“Nothing now. I absorbed it.”
“What was in there?”
“Returning, inhabiting my physical form—” Jim opened his hands and stared at them “—this antiquated piece of engineering … was an uncertain proposition. It’s not as simple as just plugging back into my old body. That thing in there was created to serve as a conduit, a flash drive for lack of a better analogy. But it needed to make physical contact with my body to effect the download.”
“What if you’d been killed in the wreck?”
“They would have taken me just the same. I just wouldn’t have been able to come back and make contact with the two of you.” He turned to Paige and patted her knee. “My darling, you wore that same look on your face when you were five. I see you’ve not let it gather dust.”
“What look, Daddy?”
“Like I’m bullshitting you.”
“You’re saying that was you under my bed?”
“Something went wrong on my return. It was my fault. I let myself get drawn to your energy instead of my shell at the hospital. I came to consciousness in your backyard. That thing is barely mobile, ill-equipped for earth’s gravitational and atmospheric demands. It was all I could do to crawl up the steps of your brownstone. I hid under your bed while you slept. The weeks I spent there, I was slowly dying. Desperate to find some way to reunite with my earth form.”
“I thought you were a ghost. Or a demon. Do you have any idea of the hell you put us through?”
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to cause you pain. I couldn’t communicate with you, Paige. At least not like this.”
“But you had this incredible power. There were times you were in my head. In my dreams. I couldn’t leave the house.”
“I was trying to talk to you. I couldn’t let you leave. I needed you. I reached out to you the only way I could, but it was awkward—like riding a bicycle backward and blindfolded. In that form, the one Grant carried in here, I was so weak, so vulnerable, and running out of time.”
“What did you do to those men?” she asked.
“Think of it as installing a program. You see why I needed them.”
“Will they have any memory of this?”
“I imagine their experience will be similar to Grant’s.” Jim glanced at his son.
“Like waking after a dream,” Grant said.
“Exactly. And as time passes, the memory of it will fade away.”
“You had them break into a hospital,” Paige said. “There will be—”
“Consequences?” He smiled. “Are you really going to ask me if I’m concerned that four men who have been using my little girl will have some explaining to do? I would’ve done anything to be with the two of you again.”
“A good man died,” Grant said. “Don.”
“I know, and I’m sick about it. The others were vulnerable. Their guards were down when I broke inside their minds.”
“What do you mean?”
“The region of the brain behind the left eye—the lateral orbitofrontal cortex—shuts down during orgasm. This is our center for reason and behavioral control. It gave me an opening.”
Paige blushed deeply and stared at the floor.
Jim’s eyes darkened. “I don’t know what happened with your friend. He was suddenly in the room. He saw me. I tried to make him leave, but I could barely get inside. It was just a handhold, but it devastated him. None of this has been easy or gone like I’d hoped. But we’re here now, aren’t we? Together again.”
“You still have this power?” Grant asked.
“Only to an extent. I’m still adjusting to life back in this skin. It’s awkward.”
Paige held her head in her hands.
Still staring at the floor.
“But how do we know?” she asked.
“Know what?”
“That this is really you? Our father. We’ve been through hell the last two days. For me, it’s been even longer. Scared out of my mind. Thinking I’m going crazy. And then suddenly this?”
“I know it’s difficult, sweetheart. I’m so sorry. But you know it’s me, don’t you? Can’t you feel it? Haven’t you, in some way that maybe you only now recognize, known it all along?”