Maybe it was supposed to be that way.
Maybe — if reincarnation was the real state of things. Or some kind of more sciency-term, something like Phoebe and the others had whispered about: a Matrix-sort of reality where life was more like a game where we kept downloading into different simulations — or times and scenarios, later events in the same world… and got to experience different things. In some, pain and disease, loss, poverty and sickness; while in others we got freedom, health and love and family, nice homes and coasted luckily through life.
She shrugged. It made wonderful, symmetrical sense to her, but now wasn’t time to dwell on anything like that. It didn’t matter anyway. Not like she could just turn off the game and start over. It didn’t work that way, even if that was the way of things. She wouldn’t remember the last go-around, right? And it would all just start again, and maybe she would again have these same questions along the way.
Pastor Frank met her in the hallway. The holy man looked shaken but not overly so. She had been with him when ‘It’ struck, and he’d been toppled, and at first, she thought it was a seizure, but quickly dismissed that notion when others came into the chapel crying for help. That was what forced Pastor Frank to overcome his own anguish: the compulsion to help others. He put it out of his mind and worked to calm the suffering of those seeking some sort of mystical cause to their visions; some thought it was the Second Coming, others were convinced it was penance for their sins.
“How are you faring?” she asked, but he waved her question aside. He held an envelope in his hand, and she knew, before he even said anything…
“It’s from the Morpheus team.”
He handed it to her. “A man just dropped it off. Very special agenty-looking. Said it was urgent; he was suffering. He’s still upstairs, and I’m helping calm him and a few others in a prayer reading. Incense and repetition of Bible verses seems to distract the mind.”
Victoria grinned. “Always did for me, back when I was a devout Sunday-goer.”
“Come back anytime.”
“I may never leave,” she said, taking the envelope and heading for the basement stairs. “Good luck, keep them sane a little longer.”
“You’re working on this, right?” He said it with more than touch of doubt.
“I hope so.” She ripped open the envelope and headed downstairs.
“A new objective,” she told the group.
“Of course,” said Curt, rubbing the back of his large, sweaty neck. “You know, yesterday I would have cried bullshit and asked to get the hell out of here.”
“We know,” said Marla. She adjusted her seat and fidgeted with an empty cup that had held coffee. How many she’d had today was anyone’s guess.
Victoria stood and looked over the table. “I know some of you tried to contact your family, your friends. If you were lucky enough to have service. Told them to come here if they can or stay inside. My mother is hunkered down. She must have some… immunity and seems to be fine.”
“Makes sense,” Jack said from the corner where he poked at a box of old donuts. “Like us. Already got this ‘gift,” and we’re spared from what’s happening out there.”
“Like chicken pox,” said the guy who looked like Gandalf the wizard and she still didn’t learn his name. He stared at the bottom of his own coffee mug. They’d have to make a food run soon — or see what else the rectory had left. Victoria hated to keep relying on the church’s generosity, but she didn’t want to risk going out even the couple blocks to a deli or grocer. Sounded like a war zone out there.
“So. What’s the target this time?” Marla asked. “And how’d the last one turn out? The island vacation spot and the green tablet thing? Anyone get an update?”
Curt coughed. “Or should we RV it?”
“Not now,” Victoria snapped. “Need to focus. On… this.” She held up the paper. “I’m not sure what exactly it means, but the others said it’s crucial.”
The faces turned to her somberly. They were ready. They trusted her; somehow, by showing she was one of them, by admitting her failures and doubts and weaknesses, she had got them to band together. Still surprised and waiting for an inevitable coup from someone, maybe Jack, who seemed to want a more forceful leader or direct role, she pressed on.
“A prescription bottle. Medicine that people are taking, and it may either make them immune, or something else.” She shrugged and held up the paper. “That’s all they gave me. I have a bad feeling it’s too damn vague.”
“Or too specific,” Marla said. “Don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve never been able to zero in on letters or names or anything like that in my goddamned visions.”
“Church,” Jack scolded.
Marla frowned at her. “Shit, I’m sorry, but you know…”
“I know,” Victoria said. “Let’s just try our best. Think of prescriptions and this psychic event and try to visualize what people might be taking. Those that aren’t affected. It sounds like something already on the market, and maybe it’s dulling the senses or the brain areas that respond to our psychic aspect. Maybe it’s a lucky coincidence, maybe not.”
She sighed. “That’s all I’ve got.”
They took up their pencils and passed around pads of paper. Someone turned on classical music, and someone else dimmed the lights. And they all got to work.
Less than an hour later, her little group had experienced their share of blocks, quiet time and productive time. She wanted to give them some more room and wasn’t about to disrupt the process while a few were still scribbling away; Curt had been laying on his back, twirling his pencil over his eyes and staring at the lead tip while the others were busy drawing or deep in their trances.
Victoria herself had stepped away and had to conceal her emotions from the others. After Marla had mentioned the island and their previous objective, her mind had gone into the RV mode, and she’d been seeing in her periphery, visions of seaside ruins. Structures carefully stacked up like Lincoln Logs, withstanding fierce winds as jet skis whirled about mangrove-infested canals…
She stumbled to the door, but checked herself, trying to appear strong and in control, just as another vision slammed into her mind.
Two kids, surrounded by bat-like fish with stingers: a sea of mantas. Their flashlight beams encounter undersea towers and arches, bridges and temple-like constructions. So far down… even as men with spear guns close in on the pair…
Another flash and a chamber, somber and lit by feeble flashlight beams, and there are the young forms, so insignificant compared to the pair of colossal statues flanking them in some kind of ancient tomb, with a pair of elaborate stone coffins in the center…
“Trapped,” Victoria mumbled. “They’re trapped. And…”
Another flash—
And the shiny box they had seen under some tunnel and in a cavernous underwater area…
“Shit.” She said it louder than she had planned, and the room went quiet, turning to her.
Marla stood, coffee mug in hand. “What? See something?”
“It’s empty.”
Marla held up the cup, turned it upside down. “Yup. I can confirm that.”
Shivering, Victoria left it at that, although the others looked at her strangely as Marla went for a refill.
Have to get word to them, she thought. ASAP. Most phones weren’t working but maybe they could get a satellite communication into Nan Madol. Before it was too late — if it wasn’t already.