What a beautiful way to end the day.
After I’d been staring at the waves for a few minutes, Bob appeared from the forest to my left, his projection walking along the beach, alone, deep in thought. He nearly went right past before he spotted me and stopped.
“Jimmy. Unbelievable. You saved us—maybe you saved the whole world.”
Bob reached out to shake my hand, and I took his in mine and held it.
“Wasn’t Susie just up here with you?” he asked, looking around.
“She was, but she had to go somewhere.”
Bob smiled. He looked into the sunset, watching a few pelicans as they used their ground-effect aerodynamics to sweep in ahead of the waves, unseen forces propelling them effortlessly through space.
“Bob, I’ve got a slightly oddball question for you.”
“Shoot.”
“If you had to sacrifice your soul to save someone or something, what would that be for you?”
Bob looked at me quizzically. “Well, for love—for Nancy, I guess.”
“That’s what I thought… well, anyway, that’s nice to hear.”
“Still going to take me up on that surfing lesson, big shot that you are now?”
“Sure, maybe we’ll do a lesson soon.” I let go of his hand. “See you later.”
32
Identity: Bobby Baxter
“See you later, Jimmy.”
I stood fixed, still feeling the warmth of Jimmy’s hand as I watched him step away, but he stopped and turned to look at me. Something was weighing on his mind.
“You were the only person who was ever nice to me,” he said after a pause. “I really appreciated that.”
“I love you, Jim,” I said simply. “We’re brothers, aren’t we? I’ll always stick up for you, no matter what.”
“You really mean that?” Jimmy looked like he was about to cry.
“Of course.”
He looked uncertain. “I think you and your friends should leave Atopia.”
In my whole life nobody had ever mentioned leaving Atopia for anything. Now two people on the same day? A sense of dread filled me.
“Why?”
Jimmy pressed his lips tightly together. “I’m just saying, I think it might be a good idea, and the sooner, the better.”
With that, he turned away and walked into the darkness.
33
Identity: Jimmy Scadden
As I walked away from Bob and into the dark underbrush, I became aware of someone walking beside me, someone new, but someone at the same time intimately familiar.
“Why did you do that?” the apparition asked.
“Do what?” I didn’t even think to ask who had appeared beside me.
“Why did you warn Bob,” it responded. “I think we need to have a talk, you and I.”
The undergrowth around me gave way to a voluminous, brightly lit corridor. No, more than a corridor. It was a long set of huge rooms connected by large, square archways, and I was sitting in the middle room with the rest stretching off to both sides in the distance.
I was perched on a white wooden chair.
Intricate, sky-blue frescos of angels and cherubs adorned the twenty-foot ceilings that were bordered by elaborate gold carvings. Ornate, richly decorated furniture was strewn about topsy-turvy, and everywhere was littered with broken bottles, golden goblets, and inert bodies.
Dark-framed oil paintings of uniformed men on horseback directing battles hung across one set of walls; the other featured floor-to-ceiling leaded-glass windows that looked out onto an endless manicured garden beyond. The garden was situated around a long reflecting pool. Sunlight streamed in through the windows from between heavy purple velvet drapes tied back with gold sashes.
The place stank of urine, and, as if on cue, one of the slumberers came to life, stumbled to his feet, and shuffled to the nearest corner,, where he began pissing over one of his fellow revelers. “Sorry for the mess,” said my apparition, now in solid form, as he stretched out before me on a chaise lounge. “We had a bit of a party here today.”
He adjusted the frilly white cuffs of his tunic and then his blond wig, which fell in tight curls to frame his white-painted face and bright, red-painted lips. Leaning forward, he smoothed out a wrinkle in his tight black britches and looked up to smile at me self-consciously.
His heavy eyeliner had smudged, making him look comical in a threatening sort of way, and his eyes shone brightly—my eyes.
“Come now, this isn’t that much of a surprise is it?”
I felt uneasy. Was this some splinter or sub-proxxi gone wrong? The party guest finished pissing and turned toward us, blearily rubbing his eyes, which then widened.
“The dauphin!” he said, barely audibly. He was clearly excited, looking at me.
“What do you want?” I asked. This was all more familiar than I cared to admit.
“Ahh,” said my doppelganger, “it is not what I want, brother, but, rather, what we want. You and I, Jimmy. And by the way, call me James.”
He affected a tiny bow for my benefit. Several of the guests began to rouse themselves, encouraged by the first, who was whispering at them urgently. The air filled with the sounds of quiet sounds of clinking bottles and shifting bodies.
“Come now, Jimmy,” scolded James, his brow furrowing. “Do you really think your rise through the ranks to a position of such power so quickly was all just a happy coincidence?”
He smiled widely, revealing a mouthful of yellowing teeth and large, sharp canines below his glittering black eyes. The waxy makeup on his face cracked as he smiled, and he cocked his head playfully.
“The time for hiding is finished,” he continued, shaking his head and sighing. “We are not children, not anymore. The world needs us now.”
Several of the guests were sitting and watching us hungrily from nearby. Samson was here now, watching me from a corner in the distance. I began to recognize some of the faces around me, the childhood playmates I had invented to keep me safe, to keep me company, hidden away in my secret spaces when I was a child.
“You always knew I was in here, Jimmy,” he said looking toward Samson, who acknowledged him with a small nod. “Most people with our, ah, condition, don’t get to meet their other selves—just one more of the wonders of pssi.”
James smiled again. “We’ve been protecting you for a long time now.” He extended a hand to sweep past the assembled, misshapen guests. They were all wide awake and encircling us ever closer. “Your children await you.”
They were near now, and James reached out to touch one of them who had sat down next to him, affectionately placing a hand on its head.
“Has your mind been clear lately?” questioned James, smiling as he ruffled the hair of his favorite before looking back to me expectantly.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” I had to admit, feeling the hot breath of the creatures behind me. “Over the past few years, my mind has been gaining a certain clarity that.… ”
“That what? That escaped you before? The mind is cleansed with pain, isn’t that right, Jimmy?”
As he said this, the eyes of the assembled flashed, and they leaned in even closer.
James splintered us off into a sensory imprint of the private world that I’d burned so long ago, after Nancy’s birthday party. He was feeding the pain of the writhing creatures pinned to the walls—my pleasure centers.
I shivered and gasped.
“Nice, isn’t it?” said James, smiling. “But we aren’t children anymore.”
Another splinter overlaid a new scene, a man we once knew growing up, Steve. He’d worked in the aquaponics group with my dad. An image flickered through my memory of him playing privately with proxxids together with my dad after work.