So, just the beginnings of a new short story for you today. Nothing special, just something that came to me in the middle of a daydream whilst examining the walls in a hospital room. Perhaps this  is but a new riff on old themes, and who knows, perhaps inspired by Radiohead’s Daydreaming (from A Moon Shaped Pool), which finds mew from time to time, at least it did as I was hovering between realities in my little room. There seems to be one sort of life when a patient, and another when you are not. Maybe it was the old man across the hall passing in the middle of the night, but life seems transitory when locked away in a hospital. Fall restrictions, needing to pee and hitting the call button, and this action summoning a small platoon of nurses to hold you up while you do your duty. Nothing you want to do can be done alone – save indulge in a passing daydream. Like hopping on a cloud and going wherever the cloud decides to take you… 

Okay, so music matters? If A Moon Shaped Pool doesn’t do it for you, drift on over to Porcupine Tree and listen to Arriving Somewhere But Not Here (Deadwing, 2005) and have a cup of tea with your daydreams. Or visit with Ulrich Schnauss for a while. Listen to Never Be The Same, or Letter From Home. Or Monday. Or A Forgotten Birthday.

Now…on to the story.

+++++

A Dark Sky, Broken

Part One

November 22, 2003

Heather Valentine jumped at the sound. Distant, but at the same time almost close. It was a sharp sound, sharp like a cracking branch – yet deep, almost like thunder hidden by distance. Like a sound from some place very far away, like a secret space hidden far from the earth. She turned around, now almost scared, and looked around the front yard of their little house on Somerset Avenue. Even Sally, her best friend – though Sally was a dog – seemed upset by the sound. Sally stood and her nose pointed in the direction of the sound and then she whimpered – a sad, tiny voice, but her meaning was clear for anyone willing to stop and listen. This sound was not right. Not normal. Something bad had happened. Then Heather heard the screen door off the kitchen open and close – right down to that funny sound the spring made as the door yawned wide, followed by that sudden whooshing sound the door made just before it slapped shut. It was a scary sound because she knew that noise meant her mother was coming out to check on her, and that only happened after something bad happened. But something like this new sound didn’t count. This was different.

She heard her mother walking down the driveway towards the street; Heather turned and followed her mother’s reluctant eyes.

And then she saw her mother’s eyes – looking up, searching the skies. Her right hand shading her eyes, protecting them from the late afternoon sun. Careless spots of water on her apron – and that meant she was cooking dinner. And if she had come outside because of this sudden noise that meant something was really, really wrong.

“Heather? Did you hear something?” her mother asked. Sally whimpered and turned her head just a little and Heather’s mother turned and looked at the pup, then at the horizon. Now her eyes narrowed into razor sharp slits – concerned, protective – as her eyes locked-on to a spot on the horizon.

“Yup. Sure did,” Heather answered – though suddenly those words felt somehow unnecessary and even evasive – so maybe a little like a lie. She saw the smoke, and right then, too. Thick and black, swirling up like a tornado, only the sky was the clearest blue and there hadn’t been a cloud up there all day. “There it is,” she added, pointing at the black stain spreading across the sky.

“Sure is close,” Mr. Jenkins said. He was their next door neighbor, but he only came outside to shout at the boys racing up and down the street on Saturday nights. “Looks like it’s somewhere over by the airport.”

Heather’s father worked at the airport, up in the control tower, where he talked to pilots taking off and landing all day long. She turned and looked at the black smoke again, suddenly very scared. Then she saw orange. Hot orange. Like fire was inside the oily black cloud, burning the spiraling cloud from within.

“That sure is a big fire,” Mr. Jenkins finally said – just as sirens started blaring from several directions all at once. “Musta been a big-un.”

Heather’s mother wiped her hands on her apron and then caught her breath. “Heather? Let’s go inside now.”

Heather knew that tone. Those words. She knew better than to argue, too.

+++++

Her father came home late that night. Much later than he normally did. She heard him come in and go straight to his bedroom, then the shower came on. Her mother hadn’t said a word but pretty soon she heard her putting things away in the kitchen – and she knew her father hadn’t bothered with dinner. That wasn’t all that unusual. Some nights he ate, and some nights he was just too upset to eat. Something about his job.

Sally sat by the door, her ears perked up, her tail motionless. When she heard the shower turn on she turned and looked at Heather, then walked over and hopped up on the bed. She snuggled-in beside the little girl and pretty soon both were sound asleep.

But not for long.

She heard her father screaming, something she’d heard before – but this was different, even so. Now he was crying, too, and the sound was soul-crushing, like the cries of a wounded animal. A wolf, perhaps? Long low moans that varied a little in pitch, and intensity. Loneliness. She heard loneliness, and a solitary pain, like the pain she felt lying here in the dark when she thought of her grandmother passing away. Little pinpricks in her soul. Then she remembered how her mother hadn’t allowed her in the room after her grandmother passed – because she was too young? Too young – for what? Wasn’t the uncertainty she felt at least as bad as being shut out like that? Of not being there to hold her grandmother’s hand one last time?

Her father cried a long time – until the screams came again.

She couldn’t sleep after that, and for a long time it even seemed to hurt to breathe.

+++++

Her father tried to smile the next morning at breakfast.

But whatever it was, whatever had happened the day before, he wasn’t going to talk about it.  Maybe he couldn’t. But neither was her mother, and that did not feel right. She felt confused and alone, the way her parent’s secrets always did.

He usually dropped her off at school on his way to work, but not today. Someone from work – her mother said it was a friend – was coming to the house to pick him up and her father soon vanished behind even more opaque veils of swirling uncertainty. And so she endured the indignity of her mother driving her to school, to Mrs. Dunsmuir’s third grade class, and to a new kind of uncertainty. To a subtle, shadowy kind of hostility she had never experienced before.

Because right away she knew something was different, just as soon as she walked into the classroom. Her classmates weren’t looking her in the eye, even her two best friends, Beth and Sarah. Yet even Mrs. Dunsmuir smile was different; it was the same easy smile she usually had on hand for all her students, but it too was different. Yet Heather just smiled as she walked into the classroom, all the way to her desk. It was a lonely smile.

There was nothing unusual about the rest of that morning, nothing to let her know that what had happened the day before was an unfolding tragedy that had, in a way, marked her life in ways she would never understand. Then at lunch she sat down at the little table she usually sat at, and only Bethany came and sat across from her.

“How’s your dad?” Beth asked.

“My dad? Fine, I guess. Why?”

“That crash at the airport yesterday. My dad said your dad made a mistake and a lot of people got killed because of it. Did he say anything to you?”

“No, he didn’t. I don’t think he said much of anything. At least not to me .”

Beth nodded. “Over a hundred people. That’s hard to imagine, you know?”

“A hundred people? Is that how many died?”

Beth nodded. “I guess you didn’t watch the news last night, huh?”

Heather shook her head. “No, I went to bed early.” She felt hollow inside, and now she was scared – but for her father. Again. Never for her, always for her father. Because something inside the dream was screaming to her right now, screaming that something very bad was happening to him. Right this very minute – and she didn’t know what she could do to help him.

It was the first time she had ever felt so helpless. Or so lonely.

A Dark Sky, Broken 

Part Two

November 22, 2013

Heather Valentine maneuvered around the huge moving van and crept into the driveway of the little house on Somerset Avenue, then she set the parking brake as she looked at the mess in the yard next door. She watched men carrying boxes and furniture into Mr. Jenkins’ old house – before she turned the little Toyota’s key and killed the ignition. Her mother was walking from the garage back to the kitchen door; no doubt she’d just taken out the trash – but she too was staring at the mess in the yard next door. It was getting dark out now and it was supposed to snow overnight, and it looked like half the contents of the huge moving van had yet to be unloaded.

Then her mom saw her and smiled. “You home, or off to work again?” her mom asked.

“I’m off tonight, remember? I’ve got Friday this week.” Heather had an after school gig waiting tables at Nick’s Place, a local family-style restaurant over on Pauline Street. Friday nights were prime – because if she hustled she’d bring home a hundred dollars in tips. Not bad for a seventeen year old. At least that’s what her mom always told her.

Her mom smiled, but her’s was a smile of gratitude more than pleasure or happiness. She’d been teaching English at Winthrop High for almost 20 years, but ever since Warren, her husband – and Heather’s father – had disappeared money had always been tight. And because the courts ruled that her father had supposedly committed suicide there’d been no insurance money, nothing at all, to help during the sudden vacuum of his departure. So their life had become a series of existential struggles: making the payment for electricity was always a problem, but property taxes were killing her mother. Heather was taking care of the car payment and the insurance but the money she made never seemed to be enough.

Her mother’d had a couple of boyfriends, of course, but both turned out to be deadbeats and one an abusive drunk, and after that one she had given up on the whole love thing. She had Heather – for now – and that would have to do.

“Is Beth coming over?” her mother asked.

“Yeah. We have that big test in Mr. Jelinek’s on Friday.” Jelinek taught calculus and physics; Heather was an A student in both.

“How’s her mom doing?”

“Oh, you know. It’s her second round of chemo, but her doctors still say she’ll be alright.”

“Look at that mess, would you?” her mother sighed, nodding at the scattered piles of empty boxes gathering on the dry grass next door.

A circular saw burst into action, and a moment later they heard hammering.

“What’s going on?” Heather asked.

When her mom shrugged Heather took off across the the front yard and walked over to the side of Mr. Jenkins’ house – where a middle-aged carpenter was hastily erecting a wheelchair ramp that led into the kitchen of the old two-story house.

She turned just then and saw an old man inside the house staring out the window – at her – and she realized the man was in a wheelchair about the same time he wheeled around and disappeared. She didn’t want to be seen as nosy, but then again she was snooping around – and just then the front door to Mr. Jenkins’ house opened and the man pushed himself over the threshold and out onto the front porch.

“Can I help you?” the man growled.

“Oh. Sorry,” Heather said. “I hope I’m not bothering you, but I live next door and wondered if you needed anything.”

“Anything? Does that offer happen to include world peace?”

“Sure. Would you like that with or without fries…?”

The old man crossed his arms and nodded. “I think I’ll take the salad instead?”

She smiled. And so he smiled. Heather’s mom smiled too, as she walked across the tired grass to stand behind her daughter.

“I’m Heather, by the way, and this is my mom, Judy.”

“And I’m hungry,” the old man growled as he began turning the wheelchair, “so if you’ll excuse me I have to go find the box with my dishes.”

Judy spoke-up then. “Nonsense! You’re joining us for dinner tonight!”

The old man stopped and looked in the direction of the carpenter working on his ramp. “I don’t think so,” he shrugged. “At least not tonight.”

“Is your dining table set up yet?”

His head nodded to the house– slowly. “Looks that way, but you never can tell.”

“Then we’ll be over in an hour,” Judy said. “Oh! You’re not a vegetarian, are you?”

“No…at least I wasn’t the last time I checked.”

“Fine. We’re having pot roast and a salad!”

“Only if you’ll allow me to reciprocate,” the man said, grinning severely.

“Certainly!” Judy replied. “Looking forward to it!”

Heather watched this exchange in a state of mild disbelief. Her mother was as antisocial as anyone she’d ever met and never – not ever – invited anyone to dinner…let alone offer to carry supper over to someone else’s house…so she quite naturally wondered what the devil was going on. She got her book-bag from the back seat of the Toyota on her way inside and to the kitchen, trying not to smile as an errant thought crossed her brow.

‘Oh my God! Was she flirting with him!’ she thought as she walked into the little kitchen.

“Could you throw together one of your salads?” he mother asked as she checked the covered pot in the oven.

“Yeah, sure,” Heather said as she dumped the heavy bag on the floor. She went to the ‘fridge and got out the things she needed, then started rinsing and slicing produce in the sink. Her mother, meanwhile, retreated to her bedroom.

A half hour later her mother emerged, totally energized and now sporting full war-paint, from subtle make-up to a newer skirt that highlighted her legs. And wonder of wonders, she was even sporting heels – something she never did. Heather watched her mom get the roast ready and she seemed almost happy as she worked – which, too, was something quite out of the ordinary. Especially for a Wednesday night.

“Mom? You did notice that he’s in a wheel-chair, didn’t you?”

“What? What on earth are you talking about?”

“Make-up? Heels? What’s up with you?”

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”

“Okay. Sure. We must have lots of neighbors with a really bad impression of us.”

That earned a withering scowl.

“Is your salad ready?”

“Yes. You need me to carry the pot-roast?”

“Would you?”

Heather knew the last time her mom had worn heels Clinton had been in office, so the odds were good she’d trip and fall on her way over – and it just wouldn’t do to have pot roast all over their new neighbor’s front lawn…

+++++

His name was William Anderson, but he introduced himself using his most unusual handle. “Everyone calls me Trip,” he announced as the two girls walked through his house to the kitchen.

“Trip?” Judy Valentine asked, apparently taking the bait.

“Oh, it’s just a name I picked up in school.”

Judy nodded. “Do you have plates and things?”

“In the box on the counter. The one that says ‘plates and things.’”

Heather grinned at that and dropped off the roast on the cooktop then walked to the box of plates and flatware. She didn’t need to be asked; she just figured it needed to be done so did it. 

She’d seen this stuff before, she told herself as she unpacked the heavy dishes. It was called Fiesta Ware, and his settings were in a deep, rustic red color, while the serving bowls and platters were a soothing dark grey-green color. His flatware looked old and probably expensive, and when she turned a piece over she saw it was English – and silver, not stainless. So…Trip Anderson wasn’t the usual new neighbor that moved into the old houses in Winthrop, Massachusetts. Especially not on Somerset Avenue.

But she tossed her salad and helped her mom serve up three plates, then she carried one into the dining room and carefully placed the deep red offering in front of the old man.

“You do that like you’ve done so a few times before,” he said carefully.

“Three nights a week, as a matter of fact. For two years, too.”

Once she was sitting at the table she noticed her mom was sitting fractionally closer to Trip than she, which meant her mom had scooched over closer to him before taking her seat. Oh, this was getting so fun!

There were new appliances in the kitchen, including a dishwasher, so when they finished eating Heather cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher – leaving her mom to schmooze with Trip. Because he had remained quiet while he ate, beyond saying how nice it was to have home cooking on his first night in his new house. When she returned to the dining room Trip yawned once, then daubed his eyes with his napkin, but she saw her mother chattering away about teaching English literature to kids who couldn’t find England on a map of the world…

And he reacted to that. “Really? I’ve heard it was bad but has it really gotten that bad?”

“Oh, you have no idea,” Judy Valentine said. “The stories I could tell…”

The old man turned and looked at Heather. “So, what’s your take? Are the kids in your classes really so bad?”

Heather frowned. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s more like they’re just really not interested in anything they didn’t run across on Facebook or Instagram.”

He nodded. “I’m curious. Are there that many full time jobs available looking at social media all day?”

“There aren’t many full time jobs, period,” Heather replied.

Anderson shook his head at that. “I hear that one a lot,” he sighed.

“Oh?” Judy said, startled. “Do you deal with young people?”

“Usually, though not always.”

“And what do you do, Trip?” Judy asked. “If I’m not being too forward?”

“Oh, I’m a teacher too, or at least I was a kind of teacher.”

“And what’s your subject matter?”

“Oh, for the last five years or so I’ve been teaching at a flight academy down in Atlanta. Recurrent training on the 757, but I put in my time and someone decided that’s that. I think they call it being put out to pasture.”

Heather saw the framed diplomas hanging on the wall in the study off the living room and without asking walked off to examine them – and she found Trip’s life laid out up there for anyone willing to stop and take a look. They’d been hung low, too – like each framed memory had been carefully arranged just as someone in a wheelchair might arrange their life’s history – and then she heard him rolling into the room, then rolling up behind her.

The diploma from Annapolis. Two more from Pensacola. Two framed shots of him standing beside an A-7 Corsair, one parked on the deck of an aircraft carrier. The other had been taken in flight, but she could see it was him. Another shot, this one apparently a class of aviators in a civilian flight school, taken while the horse-playing aviators were standing beside a huge simulator, then one last image, of Trip wearing the four stripes of a captain, sitting in the left seat of an airliner. 

He’d had a blanket draped over his legs all afternoon but that was gone now, spread out behind his wheelchair on the living room floor, and when Heather turned and looked at him now she finally saw the end of his career. Both legs. Amputated a few inches above the knee. And that’s when the tumblers fell into place.

“Trip Anderson?” she stammered as she looked towards Logan – then she turned and bolted from the house.

A Dark Sky, Broken

Part Three

November 22, 2003

She rarely dreamed, or so she said. At least not so many worth remembering. But for a girl her age that hardly seemed to matter. What were dreams but little snippets of make-believe, little dramas that played out in her sleep. Dreams were probably best forgotten.

Except the one dream that seemed to matter. The dream about her father.

She was so unlike many kids her age; she actually liked school and always did her homework. Maybe because her mom was a teacher, or maybe because her father always seemed to be interested in the questions she asked. He always read to her before bedtime, too. She missed his steady voice before bedtime most of all.

But then one night he had seemed to be growing old right before her eyes. He wasn’t even thirty years old and it seemed his hair turned completely white one day. That’s what she remembered most of that day. How he told her he loved what he did: “Working as an air traffic controller is important work,” he said to her. “And I love what I do. I really do, so remember that.”

Her father dreamed a lot, and he we woke up early in the morning – screaming – a few times a week. Something about his dream. The same dream he always had, over and over. And every time he had the dream it ended the same way. He would sit up in bed soaking wet – and he’d be screaming, and very disoriented. Yet within minutes he would tell Judy that he was alright, and then he repeated that the dream meant nothing. Nothing at all.

And this morning when he woke up screaming Heather was already in the bathroom, just getting out of the shower. Even though she was used to his dreams, and his screams, there was something wrong about his scream. Something beyond frightened.

So she wrapped a towel around herself and ran to him.

He was already sitting up in bed, his lanky legs dripping wet, his feet covered with sand and seaweed. Her mom hadn’t even bothered to wake up this time so she never saw this, never understood what was tormenting her husband so profoundly. Heather was, of course, too young to fully understand the implications of such incongruous evidence – yet as she bent to clean the seaweed from his ankles questions were already forming in her mind. Regardless, she helped her father to the shower and by the time her mother started to wake up Heather had already cleaned up the mess.

“Dad? Was that ocean stuff on your legs?” she asked later that morning, before her mother drove her to school.

And Warren Valentine had simply nodded his head. He said not one word, offered no further explanation. “I love you,” he finally said, just before she left for school.

“I love you too, Daddy.”

Their words seem trapped within the infinite contradictions of a shared secret neither was willing to acknowledge. But her father knew the secret could only be revealed by Time itself, and he was bound by Lore to keep this secret.

+++++

Linton Avery walked up the airstairs and into the cabin of her five year old Beechcraft C90B, bent over a little as she walked forward to the cockpit. Putting her flight bag behind the co-pilot’s seat as she sat, she took the left seat and looked at the ground crew topping off the tanks out on the ramp. She confirmed all electrical systems were off then returned to the ramp to finish her walk-around.

Avery had grown up in Syracuse, New York, and was regarded as something of a wunderkind from her earliest moments; genius was just one word many used to describe her abilities. She had completed medical school in three years – at the age of 17, then gone on for a PhD in biochemistry, completing this 4-year program in two, while concurrently completing the requirements for her internship at Upstate University Hospital. She then entered a residency at Mass General; her chosen specialty was neuropsychiatry. Completing these requirements took a further five years, however she managed to squeeze in enough time to earn her J.D. at Harvard Law while she was so engaged. 

Now, with almost 40 years under her belt, she owned one of the largest biotechnology firms in the country, and keeping true to an oath she had made to herself before she set out on this journey, she had headquartered her growing empire in Syracuse. Still, the realities of business required that she set-up shops where the talent was, which was how Avery BioNetics came to have facilities in Boston, Palo Alto, and Tokyo. And, true to form, she had decided to learn to fly so she could move between the domestic nodes of her little empire at will.

The small King Air had always seemed perfect for the task. Strong and fast, it could fly the 240 mile segment  to Boston Logan in under an hour, and with an EFIS flight deck she could make the trip in any weather. In order to reach the Bay Area, however, she needed to stop once for fuel, yet she could land at much smaller general aviation airports in the region – such as Palo Alto Airport – where the 2400 foot runway presented no problem for her lightly loaded Beechcraft.

She walked around the King Air slowly, carefully, stopping to make sure the boy handling the fuel hose knew what he was doing. She double checked that the correct fuel had been used then signed the chit, only then grabbing the pitot covers on her way back to the cockpit. She pulled up the airstair and secured the cabin door, then made sure the little porte-potty in the aft luggage area had been emptied.

She woke up the aircraft and listened to the ATIS recording, noting once again that yes, the weather was unseasonably warm – aside from an expected line of thunderstorms expected to develop over eastern New England later that morning – but that hardly mattered. She’d filed an IFR flight plan and already had her landing slot at Logan and a reservation for ramp space at Signature Aviation, so she was set. She hand signaled the boy on the ramp to stand clear then started engine 1 and watched her temps and pressures as the turbine spooled-up. With engine 2 soon running smoothly she dialed-in Syracuse ground on 121.7:

“Uh, Syracuse ground, Beechcraft 35 Lima-Alpha-Bravo with you on twenty-one seven, have information echo and we’re ready to go at Signature.”

“35 Lima-Alpha-Bravo, altimeter two-niner-niner-eight, wind three-three-zero at ten, taxi Golf to Hotel to Yuma, then onto Mike and hold short of runway 33. You’ll be behind a National Guard C-130 from Juliet.”

“Okay, Yuma to 33 behind the 130, 35 Lima-Alpha-Bravo, and we’re ready to go.”

“35 Lima-Alpha-Bravo, ground, clear to taxi.”

She signaled the boy on the ramp then checked her flight controls, looked left then right then at the boy – who shot her a thumbs-up. She smiled and released the parking brake, then executed a smart u-turn to get to the taxiway, rarely taking her eyes off the engine instruments while they were warming up.

She saw the Hercules up ahead as it pulled out of the Air National Guard base and kept her distance; even so the turbulence generated by the military aircraft’s four huge turboprops was more than enough to jostle the King Air’s wings. She made sure her flight plan was active while she finished entering waypoints in the FMC, the Flight Management Computer, looking up from time to time to maintain her distance behind the C130. She turned on the forward a/c pack to cool down the flight deck and tightened her seat belt once again.

Five minutes later she was airborne and heading almost due east, climbing for an initial altitude of five thousand feet, then turning for airway T316 to Boston at nineteen thousand.

There were no flight attendants, of course, but then again Linton preferred it that way. She cherished the solitude of the cockpit, being alone with her thoughts – held aloft on wings she alone had earned. Without thinking she reached into her flight bag and rummaged around until she hit pay-dirt, then smiled as she pulled a single Twix bar from within.

Life was, she had realized years before, measured by the sum total of all the little pleasures you accumulated along the way, but still…there was nothing like a Twix bar. Not in her book, anyway.

+++++

Trip Anderson lifted his Ray-bans and pinched his nose, rubbing the little indents the nose-pieces left in his skin, then after he let the sunglasses fall back into place over his eyes he squinted twice – if for no other reason than habit. He looked down at the FMC on the throttle quadrant beside his right knee and punched up their current fuel burn, then looked up their next waypoint – just off St John’s, Newfoundland. They were 188 nautical miles from the waypoint and their current airspeed was 520 knots, however their ground speed was 460 so the headwind component was 60 knots. He did the numbers in his head and came up with 24 minutes and about 30 seconds – give or take, and that meant they’d begin their descent off Yarmouth in 75 minutes, which meant they’d be wheels-down about 10 minutes early. Given that it was stinky warm all over New England he was almost certain that isolated thunderstorms would be popping up over Mass Bay about that time, and with winds out of the south-southwest they’d be assigned Runway 22 Left – which was their currently active STAR, or Standard Instrument Approach, and with these waypoints entered, they were ready for the approach to that runway. So, call it two hours and change and he’d be clearing customs and on his way home.

He saw something in his peripheral vision and looked out the cockpit and saw a much faster 744 overtaking them about two thousand feet overhead and nodded when he recognized the British Airways livery. That BA ‘SpeedBird’ would beat them to Boston by 15 minutes due to their speed advantage and that meant a big line to clear customs…

“So Skipper, word is you were Navy?”

Trip rubbed his right eye, then looked at his first officer. “Yup.”

“How long you been with ATA?”

“‘Not quite a year. Why?”

“Where’d you fly before?”

“TWA.”

“Oh, bummer. But…wait…I thought American took all you guys?”

“They offered us positions but there were seniority and scheduling issues. ATA made me a decent offer so I took my retirement and haven’t looked back.”

“I bet TWA was sweet.”

“Good company, at least until Icahn came along.”

“Yeah, I heard about all that. What about all that crap around the Flight 800 shoot down…?”

“Shoot down?”

“That’s what some people call it, right?”

Trip shrugged. He wasn’t fond of conspiracy theories, or theorists, and he’d never found the so-called eyewitness accounts of a missile taking out the airplane very compelling. “It didn’t help.”

“Like Lockerbie, I guess. My dad said Pan Am never recovered from that.”

“Maybe so,” Trip said, suddenly growing tired of this conversation. “Go ahead and work up our descent profile, would you, and double check your figures against our original entries.”

“You got it, Skipper.”

It was busy-work but the rookie didn’t know that, and right now he missed the austere professionalism of the flight crews at TWA. Hell, he missed everything about TWA, but he especially missed the stewardesses. They were, if anyone had bothered to ask, the main reason he’d never married. The girls in back on this flight, however, were just not in the same league.

Probably the biggest reason he’d not taken American’s offer concerned Boston. He’d been living there for almost ten years and had a nice place off the Red Line near MIT; going with American meant relocating to Dallas – a city he’d rarely been to and had never particularly enjoyed – and once Boston was off the table his decision seemed almost moot. After starting with ATA he was soon promoted to Line Captain and then flying to Dublin two times a week. He was also flying right seat and doing two line-checks a month – with a nice bonus attached. With his retirement funds undisturbed for at least another 15 years, when he retired he’d be more than comfortable…

“Skipper?”

“Yo.”

“Looks like our headwinds are a little lighter than expected, so we’ll be about 1,800 pounds heavier than entered values. Want me to make the change?”

“I’ll do mine. Let me have your numbers.” He set about entering the adjusted fuel burn information and nodded at their revised landing weight when it popped up on the little display by his knee. He cycled through their new V-refs and guessed their landing distance would be about 200 feet longer than originally calculated – and then, as if the machine had been reading his mind the computer flashed the new value: an increase of 212 feet in their stopping distance.

He smiled, though he had to admit this new job was already beginning to feel a little stale.

+++++ 

“Boston, 35 Lima-Alpha-Bravo with you at 4000 coming up on AADMS.”

“35 Lima-Alpha-Bravo, maintain localizer and altitude, contact approach 120.6”

“Okay Boston, maintain heading and altitude, approach 20 point 6.” Linton still had the autopilot engaged but it was tracking in on the ILS for runway 1-5 Right; all she had to do was manage the power to control her rate of descent and speed on final – and the AP would handle the hard stuff. “Boston approach, 35 Lima-Alpha-Bravo with you at 4000 passing AADMS,” she said, pronouncing the waypoint as Adams – as in John Quincy. It was, after all, Boston.

“Uh, 35 Lima-Alpha-Bravo, Approach, descend and maintain 3000, report passing SWIGG. Be advised an isolated cell is over the Back Bay heading for the south end of the airport. Departing flights advise it’s a strong one.”

“Approach, 35 Lima-Alpha-Bravo, I have eyes on the storm, heavy lightning under the leading edge.”

“Approach, thanks for the PIREP.”

“35 Lima-Alpha-Bravo coming up on SWIGG and on the 105 radial off Gardner, on glide-slope.”  She pulled the power and set flaps 10 and the next thing she knew the windshield was gone and she couldn’t see anything – except feathers. The vision in her right eye was almost gone and she reached up, felt entrails all over her forehead and in her hair and was reaching for the throttles when she saw the panel was dark. As in – no radios. And no autopilot. 

‘Time to Aviate and Navigate!’ she remembered. ‘Only then can I Communicate.’

The ‘6-pack’ on the panel was still operating to she had Needle-Ball-and Airspeed, as well as a standby gyro and she saw she was in a shallow dive banking left and her airspeed had climbed from 120 to almost 140 so she pulled back on the power…and nothing happened. Or…whatever was happening was happening very slowly. She turned the yoke gently right, and hardly anything happened. Elevator was simply unresponsive so pitch was shot.

So she was in a powered dive to the left with barely responsive controls, her radios were shot and she was passing through 2400 AGL.

“Man, this sucks,” she sighed as she pulled back power on the right side and increased power on the left – and thankfully the airplane responded. Slowly. Rate of descent now 800FPS. Where’s the compass? Oh yeah, windshield, centerpost. Which was a mangled mess of feathers and guts, but she could just make out the compass: 135 degrees. So she was at least 15 degrees off course and that meant she was – probably – somewhere between Melrose and Malden. Both densely populated suburbs with no airports closer than Logan…

+++++

“Trans Air 1755, Boston approach, the leading edge of the storm is now over the threshold to Runway 14, close to the Hyatt. A Delta 764 just reported a microburst on takeoff, pushed ‘em around pretty good.”

“1755, got it,” Trip replied. “We have VOCUS at 1600.”

“1755, Boston, clear to land runway 2-2 Left,” the approach controller advised.

“1755,” he replied, then he turned to his FO. “Flaps 27 and gears down.”

“30 and down. Okay, three green.”

“Goddam! Look at that lightning…” Trip mumbled as the Boston skyline disappeared behind slate blue veils of slanting rain. The 757 shook as the wings slammed into the leading edge of the storm; he disconnected the autopilot with his thumb and concentrated on his central display, deciding to fly the last few seconds by hand.

‘Just another walk in the rain,’ he sighed as he corrected for a strong gust. He knew the bottom could fall out at any moment and kept his right hand on the throttles. His left hand and both feet were in constant motion now, correcting for every lateral gust and downdraft. He could see houses down there through the scudding clouds and he guessed they were now less than a mile out, so somewhere over Winthrop.

+++++

 The slipstream roaring through the shattered windshield made thinking almost impossible;  Linton guessed her speed was now in excess of 140 knots and while most of the damage was centered ahead of the right seat, the savage wind was knocking her around. Without a seatbelt she’d have been blown back into the passenger compartment, with consequences too dire to think about. Her eyes were watering now, yet the wind blew them clear almost before her vision degraded.

Clear enough, anyway, to see individual leaves on trees among the rooftops now just a few hundred feet below. She applied full throttle and pulled back on the yoke with all her strength, yet she soon realized the aircraft just wasn’t responding quickly enough.

+++++

“35 Lima-Alpha-Bravo, Boston Approach, check mode-c.”

The controller listened – and heard nothing.

“35 Lima-Alpha-Bravo, Boston Approach, are you with me?”

Nothing. “I need a supervisor!” the controller barked.

Warren Valentine heard that. That tone, those words. Someone on approach was in trouble and he had an Air France 747 over the numbers and an American Trans Air 757 on final; he grabbed his binoculars and leaned forward, scanned the skies over Winthrop and out over Massachusetts Bay, then turned and looked at an airliner in the rain rolling out on 1-4 Left, so that meant the light turboprop turning for the approach to 14 Left was in trouble and the traffic he was handling was not directly effected. He listened anyway, because a King Air 10 miles out had just gone dark. No transponder, no radio contact, and worse still no radar contact. Nothing. “It just disappeared!” the other approach controller cried. The supervisor got on the phone, called Rescue and as he explained the situation Warren watched the Air France heavy as it lumbered past the high-speed turn-out, and he turned to look at the ATA 757, still a couple miles out. The only thing in his area of responsibility was the 747 clearing the runway so ATA could land; he turned and saw Air France clearing the runway and nodded because 15 Right was now also clear, so got on the radio to call the 757.

““Trans Air 1755, Boston approach, you are clear to land runway 22 Left. The storm is now over the airfield, wind 1-7-0 at 2-9 knots gusting to 3-5, visibility one quarter mile…”

“Boston, Trans Air 1755 clear to land,” he heard in reply.

+++++

Judy looked down, saw water then dozens of huge white fuel tanks off to her left which she recognized as the tank farm on the north side of Chelsea Creek – then her King Air entered another wall of cloud. Rain came in through the shattered windshield and she felt herself getting slammed around again…

“Goddam, so close…just need a cue…need to see the runway…”

There! Dead ahead! Check gear down, get the flaps…

“Damn! I’m gonna make it!” She pulled back on the power, felt her aircraft wallowing as it tried to flare, then she saw the numbers. 

1-5 Left.

“One five left? That’s not right…oh shit…what the…”

+++++

The last gust had been fierce and Trip had fought the airplane for a moment, had even considered going around – until she settled into her flare and he felt the mains hit, gently, then he dialed in more right aileron to keep her level and he caught something converging from the right and then he felt a sickening yaw, the nose veering hard left with no response at all with full right rudder…

‘Oh God I’m losing her,’ he managed to say.

When the tumbling began he felt his hands ripped from the yoke. And then came the fire.

Part Four

November 24, 2003

Heather watched her father closely at dinner that evening. When her mother got home, Heather saw she was still acting as if nothing was amiss, yet the first thing her mother had done was to make sure the television set was off – and then she pointedly told Heather to leave it off. Yesterday had been bad enough but today had been ten times worse, her mother said as she stomped through the house. 

School had been bad, too. Even Beth had kept her distance.

But when her father got in she could see he was a wreck. He sat on the back porch even as a light snow fell, and when he came and sat at the little table in the kitchen she knew something was seriously wrong. Very, very wrong.

Dark circles had sprung up under his eyes and his hands had started trembling so badly he soon gave up on eating. He looked around helplessly and Heather thought he looked like a lost little boy – but then he had shrugged and hurried out the back door into what had turned into a blizzard.

And those last fleeting moments were the last time she saw him.

He simply disappeared.

By the time the police arrived his footprints in the snow were almost gone. Almost, but not quite. He had walked down the two wooden steps and onto their snow covered back yard and he had taken a few steps. And then – nothing. No more footsteps in the snow. No signs of a struggle, or indeed of anything amiss. Just…nothing.

She had watched the police as they looked around the yard, then she heard them talking as they searched the basement. She watched a policewoman go out back to the garage, saw her flashlight swinging around, errant beams of dust-filled light bouncing off boxes of Christmas lights and all the other broken dreams that had accumulated out there, and still they uncovered no signs that her father had been anywhere but in the backyard. And from there Warren Valentine had simply disappeared.

The Dream came to her that night. Again.

She was wandering around in a maze, a maze made of endless cobbled walkways that meandered through an ancient village like an aimless stream, but there were people here. Japanese people. And when they saw her they nodded perfunctorily in an offhand way that said she wasn’t the first to come this way, nor would she be the last. She came to another walkway, this one wider than the others, and she followed it toward brighter lights. The way ahead was lined with paper lanterns, round flickering orbs adorned with writing she recognized but could not understand. There were more people here, lots more, and she could smell something grilling on unseen charcoal braziers, hear people talking in an unknown language, all things she had never experienced in the dream before.

This new lane turned towards mountains in the distance and she followed this out of instinct. She walked until she grew tired – and, once again, this was something unfamiliar to her, at least in this dream.

And soon she came to stairway.

The old stone steps led up the flanks of a steep hill, and at the very top she saw a temple, what she assumed was an ancient Japanese temple. But standing up there was a man. A warrior? He was wearing armor and had a long spear in one hand, and a bizarre horned helmet. What were these men called? 

Samurai?

But as she looked up at the man she saw him turn and look at her.

No, he was staring at her. An angry stare.

Then his spear lowered until it was pointed directly at her. It wasn’t a menacing move, yet she could tell it was more than purposeful, then with his other hand he beckoned her to come up the stairs.

She felt something brush up against her right leg and looked down.

She saw a dog, a white dog. Pure white. And it was looking up at the warrior in front of the temple. The hair on the dog’s neck and back was standing on end, and she felt a low, guttural growl coming from it. She knelt beside the dog and it looked at her, then positioned itself between her and the stairs.

The dog – or was it a wolf? – turned and stared at her, then lowered it’s face until his forehead was almost resting on her’s…

And her mother was beside her, kneeling on the bed and very scared.

“Was it the dream?” she said, again and again until Heather was awake.

“What dream? Mom, what are you talking about?”

“The village. The warrior. And the white wolf. Was it the dream?”

“What? How…did…you…know?” Heather was beyond confused now. The Dream? Everything had felt so real. She sat up in bed, looked around, then pulled her legs out from under the sheets, and that was when she saw that her feet were soaking wet, and covered with leaves. Red and gold, the colors of autumn, the season of death. But also of eventual renewal.

Heather watched her mother, saw she was looking at her feet, and then she saw instant recognition, unmasked horror clear on her mother’s trembling brow – her unspoken words hanging in the air apparent.

Now stunned, she looked on helplessly as her mother passed out and dropped silently to the floor.

+++++

He was sure he was awake – but the pain had stopped and that didn’t feel right. 

When Dilaudid had failed to dent the pain his ICU nurses had shot a syringe of morphine into his IV, and only then did the pain abate. And the morphine itself? Now he understood how people grew addicted to the stuff.

When it hit, the morphine seemed to approach quietly, like a warm blanket on a cool night. The sudden rush of relaxation, then all pain in abeyance. But it was an uneasy truce. Because he intuitively understood that the morphine would wear off, and that the pain would return. Yet already he was yearning for the next injection – because that rush of warmth and the sense of well being that followed was simply overwhelming.

“Just ask for more when the pain comes back,” the nurse said knowingly. She was the cute nurse, the one with the soft blue eyes that seemed to pull him in. But – in? To where, exactly? He remembered an album by Duran Duran. The first song on Medazzaland was about dissolving into medical nothingness. About being pulled into medical nothingness.

But now here he was, deep in the clutches of Medazzaland. And now he understood what the song was all about.

But Medazzaland not only felt different, it looked different, too – even from his hospital room. He watched the nurse leave as he drifted on warm currents of ambivalence, falling into the embrace of a sleep that wasn’t like any sleep he’d ever experienced. He was a leaf, a dying leaf in autumn, letting go of his branch and falling, falling down to earth. To dissolution, within the earth. To a cold earth, cold and dark, his bare feet on wet, cold stone. A walkway paved with flat black stones, a thunderstorm in the distance, black mountains off in the clouds. He felt more than saw the amber glow of a settlement ahead, just there, through looming trees. Then he remembered his legs were gone, both amputated above the knee. His pain was anchored in that stark, new reality, so none of this could be real. But his pain was gone now, not just hiding in Medazzaland, so this place simply couldn’t be…real…

But this walkway was real, at least it felt real. As real as anything he’d ever walked upon. The cold rain from the passing storm lingered on these stones, not yet swallowed by a hungry earth, and he felt that coldness on the bottoms of his feet. Cold wind was drawing towards the storm and fingers of that wind caressed his hair, sent errant tufts breaking over his forehead to dash on the rocks of his fevered brow.

He turned around. Saw nothing but darkness. Not even the walkway, not even a trail. Nothingness. Not a tree, no clouds, just pure nothingness. Like Death, just the simple stillness of nonexistence. 

“But I’m aware, I can see and feel so I must be alive. This can’t be death.”

A flash of light. Deep rumbling thunder, deep as if it was rolling down a valley. Another frigid blast of wind, of hair rustling across his forehead. This was not any kind of wind he’d never experienced in a dream. And what had anyone ever experienced in death?

And then it hit: “Oh, God no…this has to be real. Really-really real.”

Trip turned and looked at the black stones that defined the path ahead. They were neatly laid, orderly and with an artisan’s timeless touch in their execution, yet this wasn’t a runway; there were no high intensity landing lights strobing in the distance, nothing to lead him down to the gentle safety of a sheltering earth. These were cold, wet stones, stones on a black walkway, really no more than a path through the thinning remnants of a small forest. And that village? Whatever it was, it was not home, but it was close – and the only thing he could see.

“But what about that village? Is it even…real…?”

He felt something approaching in the darkness and turned around to face the unknown.

His eyes went wide; his heart skipped a beat? ‘What’s going on? What the fuck is happening to me…?’ 

+++++

One moment there was the building shriek of turboprops spooling up, the blinding light of three handing lights flooding the cockpit, then screaming-twisting metal giving way to a new category of physics. The category of accident dynamics. She felt the straps of her five-point harness digging into her chest, she felt intense heat, then blinding agony as something hot tore into her left side. She was aware of tumbling for an instant, then sliding. Upside down. In the rain. Mud streaming into the remnants of the King Air’s front end. Hanging upside down, still strapped in her seat. She saw the aft one-third of an airliner cartwheeling into the air, the right wing and center section of a large twin-jet skidding sideways down the runway, the right wing pointing skyward, and as she watched this section blossomed then disappeared inside an explosively huge fireball.

The pain returned.

She looked down, saw her left arm – from the elbow down – was pinned between the cockpit wall and scorched earth. There was no blood. The skin of the fuselage had effectively provided a temporary tourniquet, but that did not mean her arm no longer felt anything. Quite the contrary. Her left side burned with pain, a screaming pain she had never experienced before, yet she could not keep from looking at the spreading fireball.

Only it wasn’t spreading now.

The rain was so intense it was putting out the fire almost before it could consume the people inside the tumbling center section of the aircraft, and now she could hear it. The hollow tumbling, the shrieks as the main spar-box gave way and the right wing separated from the fuselage – and just then a huge tire literally rolled by just a few inches in front of her face, splashing even more mud onto her it passed.

Then the sirens, and the screams. A few at first, then a dozen voices in agony. Then dozens. Hundreds. Then a choir of sirens joined, too many sirens to count, yet not one coming for her. Soon she saw cops and firefighters running by a hundred yards away and she screamed once, twice, a third time before someone, a cop, turned her way. They made eye contact. He called out to others and started running her way and he slid to a stop and was down on his knees assessing the situation, then he was calling out for a firetruck and “the jaws”.

“What’s your name?” the cop asked. Kindly, gently. Real empathy in the man’s eyes.

“Linton. Linton Avery.”

“Okay Linton. Anyone else onboard with you?”

She shook her head.

“Okay. Look, there’s jet fuel everywhere. We need to get some foam around the wreckage then we can start to get you out of there,” he said, starting to stand.

“Don’t leave me!” she screamed. “Please!”

The cop looked at her, then leaned in over the shattered instrument panel and found her right hand, her good hand, and he took it in his. “You got it, Linton. I’m here, and I’m not going to let anything happen to you, okay?”

She nodded, the sudden panic she’d felt began to ebb away and she squeezed his hand. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Jim Cole. You know what happened, Linton?”

“Hit some birds. Maybe ten miles out. Lost everything. Windshield, electronics, radios. Lost power, pitch and roll, had rudders I think but I was fighting for control.”

He nodded and Linton realized this was indeed a cop. And she’d just been involved in a big fucking accident. Her insurance company would not be amused that here she was, spilling her guts to a cop, a living, breathing tape recorder and evidence collating machine.

“My arm hurts, it’s pinned under here and I think I have some broken ribs.”

“Need a paramedic right now!” Jim called out to firemen running up to him. Two new faces joined him and Linton blinked back tears as she realized help had finally arrived. Firemen began looking through the wreckage as a paramedic slid in beside her, yet Cole did not let go of her hand. He was as good as his word too, all the way to MassGen.

+++++

Lawyers from two insurance companies and the lab surrounded her the next morning – before she was wheeled off for a second surgery on her left hand. The radius and ulna in her left forearm had been set and pinned the day before, before the extent of injuries to her left hand had been fully evaluated. Now her orthopedic surgeon was describing what a mess her left hand really was.

“Look, I’m going to level with you. I doubt you’ll ever be able to use that hand again, and if you can’t afford years of physical therapy I’d recommend amputation. Even so, even if we can save the structure the nerve damage is going to be extensive…”

“Can you get a neurosurgeon to work with you?”

“Look, there’s no way an insurance company will cover that.”

“I’ll cover it,” she said.

“We’re talking fifty, sixty grand…”

“I’ll cover it.”

“Okay. Let me make a few calls.”

“Get the best, okay?”

He nodded before he left then the insurance suits had walked in; they were in damage control mode, and had stalled investigators from the NTSB all day yesterday…

…but Jim Cole had left her only long enough to go to the bathroom. He’d told her he was on his regularly scheduled days off, so it didn’t matter.

And when he did get up to use the bathroom the sense of panic returned.

And when lawyers’ questioning got a little too coarse Jim Cole stood between them. Pretty soon all the lawyers knew the score: Don’t fuck with this cop. It’s gotten personal.

After the second surgery, when she first opened her eyes in the recovery room he was there, sitting beside her bed, holding her right hand.

“You’re still here?” Her voice was dry and cracked. Like her lips.

“You told me not to leave, remember?”

“I do.”

“So I’m here – until you tell me to skoot, anyway.”

“Anyone at home?”

“Nope.”

She nodded. “Then promise me one more thing, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Don’t ever leave me. Not ever.”

He smiled. “Look, when all this is behind you…”

“Look, Jim, I’ve been alone all my life – and I don’t ever want to be alone again. But it’s more than that. I don’t want to wake up ever again and not see your face, your eyes, looking into mine. Okay? You got that?”

“Linton. I’m here until you tell me to go, so don’t worry about these things…”

She smiled then coughed and the pain from her fractured ribs tore into her and she cried out.

The recovery room nurse answered Jim’s call almost immediately, and when she saw the problem she returned with a syringe and inserted it into the port on Linton’s IV…

The feeling of all-enveloping warmth was more than she could resist and she felt herself falling into a sea of infinite warmth. 

‘This is so…strange?’

‘I’m floating. Like I’m inside a sensory depravation tank. Oh, what was that movie? Oh yes, Altered States. Have they put me in a tank like that?’

She opened her eyes, or at least she thought they were open, only there was nothing to see. Pure nothingness. And then she felt a rising tide of panic…

‘I’m dead. I’ve died, only my brain is still functioning…at least it is on some level.’

She turned her head but it didn’t matter. She was now inside a sea of nothingness.

‘What was that thought experiment? I was taking a Religion and Science class and a Jesuit was teaching that day.’ Her mind raced, raced against time because now she was certain that as her body lost function – as oxygen depleted within her brain – all that remained would vanish into this encroaching nothingness. 

‘Imagine the universe,’ the Jesuit began, ‘our universe in all its infinite majesty. And that universe is expanding, isn’t it. Explosive propulsion, the residual expansive force after the so-called Big Bang. Then there’s Dark Matter. And for whatever reason all the energy of the original explosion seems to make everything in the universe, all the planets and galaxies and all the stars keep expanding and expanding until at some point in time all that energy begins to fade away. Stars will expand, eat up their solar systems before they go nova, and with their energy depleted the burnt out matter will simply fade away. Into nothingness…

‘Now, let’s imagine that future universe.’

The priest looked around the room, his eyes making contact with everyone in the classroom.

‘So. What’s left? What is this universe now? An infinite sea of nothingness, nothingness in every direction you can imagine. So again, what’s left?”

One student raised his hand and the Jesuit smiled. “Please. Tell us,” the priest said.

“God,” the student said.

“God?” asked the priest. “God has been reduced to burnt out matter drifting in incoherent nothingness? Surely you can’t be serious. Anyone else?”

And Linton had raised her hand.

“Yes, please. Go ahead.”

“Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. New attractions will form. Gravity will reassert itself, matter will coalesce, new structures will form and new life will emerge.”

“And what of God?” the priest asked. “What becomes of Him?”

“The nature of God can not be understood. Assigning motives to that which can neither be understood nor observed is an exercise in futility.”

The priest nodded, his smile was genuine. “So by that I take it you mean my life has been an exercise in futility?”

“Life is the sum total of the choices we make. Nothing more or nothing less. Your choice was to study God, and I view that as a value neutral proposition no different from my choice to study neurobiology.”

“So then, tell me something. This God of mine cannot be measured, only inferred. Correct?”

“I assume so, yes.”

“Okay. What of my choice to study God? Can you weigh that choice, or measure its velocity?”

“Of course not,” Linton replied.

“Oh? You can’t measure the ultimate value of these choices by their outcomes?”

“You’re conflating science and faith, using one system to assign arbitrary values to subjective measurements within two systems that simply cannot be reconciled.”

“So then, a choice is simply a choice? But can a choice be good? Or bad?”

“And again, you’re assuming responses we call good and bad can be measured using the tools of science…”

The priest rolled his eyes. “So if a drug dealer shoots me when I’m walking along, minding me own business…?”

“We were talking about a dying universe reaching a state of entropy. What has this got to do with morality?”

“To you, a scientist, I assume it means very little. To me, however, the universe cannot exist without Good and Evil; the ultimate fate of the universe will be determined by the contest between these two opposing forces…”

“But there’s simply no way to know…”

“And aren’t you assuming that all the mathematical prognostications you scientists dabble in will lead you to some Ultimate Truth? What do you call it? GUT? Some mystical Grand Unified Theory of…Everything. Everything, that is, but God…?”

The warmth that had enveloped Linton was fading. She felt traceries of pain tickling at the edges of consciousness and she wanted to call out to the nurse – to make the pain go away and never come back. 

“So,” she heard the priest saying, “you prefer the nothingness of a rigid scientific worldview…?”

‘Do I prefer nothingness?’ she heard the little voice in her mind asking. “Do I want this nothingness over everything else? The certainty of numbers, the resolution of a hypothesis? Is that all that I am?”

The warmth receded, soon replaced by bitter cold.

And yet the nothingness remained.

Only now she felt no pain. There was only nothingness.

“I am dead. This is it, my brain is going. Hypoxia. My O-2 sats must be in the eighties now, lower in the extremities. What happened? I thought I was doing okay. I was going to make it…”

But she was talking. She heard her voice – reverberating off – something?

Trees. Black trees, asleep, in the nothingness. Huge trees, barren, stunted and misshapen, their limbs and branches spreading out into – nothingness. Branches, dying branches, reaching out, spreading in dendritic  chaos – just like any brain might. The nerves throughout a body, reaching out to receive the world. Input, response. She was hardly any different than these trees – within that one simple calculation.

Her feet were cold now, axons and dendrites firing and transmitting, all relaying physical reality to her brain. Cold and – wet. She was standing on a loamy substrate, her toes flexing, digging through freshly fallen leaves into the decay beneath. Into nothingness. Unsteady; she felt unsteady. Like she had been pulled from her bed at MassGen, not given time to adjust. Light-headed, seeing stars. No pain at all, anywhere. 

In the dim light of this forest she held up her left hand. It was not mangled. She flexed her fingers, brought her left index finger to her nose. Sensation intact. No trauma visible – none.

“This doesn’t make sense. This can’t be a dream, but this can’t be real.”

She took a tentative step forward. The footing, solid. The feeling of disorientation, diminishing. She saw movement ahead. Something tall, standing and staring. At a village. A Japanese village. Medieval. Gray plaster walls, gray wood diagonal braces. Round paper lanterns, modest throngs of people going about their lives, walking into shops, carrying food home for their evening sustenance. 

She looked up at the stars and could not recognize a single constellation, yet the stars seemed brighter here. No industrial civilization? A medieval village made sense, in the perverse logic of this place.

She looked around, assaying the scene, analyzing every sound – from her bare feet moving through the leaves to the rumbling thunder in the distance. The wind? Steady from behind, and cold. Not cool, but cold, verging on bitter cold. She’d need shoes soon, and socks. And a coat. A hat and sweater would be nice, or a fleece jacket.

‘Jeez, just how much stuff do I take for granted? And where am I going to find a fleece jacket in medieval Japan? Fleece is a petroleum by-product – and these people don’t even know what oil is.’

Never taking her eyes off the creature ahead, she moved quietly through the woods until she came to a walkway. Black stones, smooth, wet, so smooth the stars reflected off their glistening surface and, once again, she’d never seen anything like that in her life.

And the creature…was a man.

Dressed in gray, or something like gray. It was hard to tell absent sunlight. And it, he, was still staring at the village. She pushed aside a last bunch of underbrush and a twig snapped – and the man spun around until he was facing her.

His eyes assayed her – for what? For threats? Then his eyes went to her feet.

“No shoes,” he sighed.

“What?” she replied.

“No shoes. Both of us. What are you wearing? Scrubs?”

She hadn’t even noticed; she looked now and the shape was right, even the drawstring on the pants was tied just as she usually had tied them, years ago when she’d been a resident. “Looks like it, yes.”

“You a doc?”

“Sort of. I have an MD but I’m in research. Funny, because I don’t think I’ve had on scrubs in at least ten years. And what is that you’ve got on? It looks like a flight suit?”

“It is, from about twenty-five years ago. Navy. I was flying A-7 Corsairs, usually in the North Pacific, the last time I had this particular suit on.”

“North Pacific?”

“Yeah? Why?”

“Well, it looks like we’re in Japan.”

The pilot nodded. “You got a name?”

“Linton. You?”

“Trip. Trip Anderson.”

She froze inside. Trip Anderson was the name of the pilot flying the 757 she’d hit the day before yesterday, which meant this meeting wasn’t an accident. Neither could this chain of events be locked away inside a dream.

“You okay?” she heard him ask.

“I’m cold.”

“I hear that.” He crossed his arms over his chest as he turned to face the village again. “I’ve been watching those people for a while; they seem quiet enough…”

“Trip, if this is medieval Japan that means there are samurai in that village. Breaking the rules means losing your head. Literally.”

He reached under his left arm and unsnapped a holster, withdrew an Colt 45 pistol and pulled the slide back fractionally before re-holstering the weapon.

“And in case you haven’t studied medieval Japan,” she sighed, shaking her head, “most Samurai were excellent archers.”

“Well, I figure if we need some magic this might do the trick. Besides, I’ve got 15 rounds on me – which ain’t exactly enough to start a war.”

“We need shoes, and coats.”

“Uh-huh. I doubt anyone here takes plastic, if you know what I mean.”

“Fuck,” she moaned, suddenly feeling depressed. ‘So this is what it feels like to be broke…?’

He rummaged around inside a pocket in his flight suit and produced a little cotton pouch and nodded. “Well, I’ve got ten one ounce gold bars. Credit Suisse, too. That ought to buy us a bowl of soup.”

“You got anything else tucked away in that thing?”

“Yeah…you know…that’s the thing, the weird thing. I’m pretty sure I was buck-naked when I first got here, and a few minutes ago I was certain all these pockets were empty.”

“It’s also convenient,” she added. “You don’t happen to have a flashlight, do you?”

He ran his right hand down his thigh then nodded as he pulled a standard issue Navy flashlight from the pocket on top of his right thigh. He felt new weight under his butt and felt his parachute attached to the harness – which had also suddenly appeared. “Okay. Add one parachute, one small liferaft, and one very small but very complete first aid kit.”

“Anything else? You got an aircraft carrier stashed away somewhere in there too?”

“My logbook. Two ball point pens.” He reached under his left thigh and produced a large K-Bar fighting knife. “And one toothpick,” he added sheepishly.

“But no shoes,” she stated emphatically. “Well, I guess that means we try the village.”

“We don’t guess anything,” Trip stated. “We take a look around, keep out of sight until we know what’s a threat.”

“I’m cold, and we’re going to get hungry…”

“And I can use the chute to make a shelter. Not to mention I have about two weeks worth of MREs.”

“Is that the freeze dried crap…?”

“It’s food.”

She nodded.

“I think I heard water, maybe a creek, over there,” Trip said, pointing to another line of trees along the bottom of the foothills. “Let’s work our way over to those trees and see if we can make out any troops or guards.”

But there were none; indeed, the village seemed inordinately quiet, almost tranquil, so they decided to walk on into the center of town, by way of what appeared to be the main street. And yet hardly anyone looked up when they walked by. Linton made eye contact with a couple of townsfolk but they did not react to two Americans strolling through their medieval village in any perceptible way. Not a nod of recognition, not even the faintest glimmer of a smile. Nothing.

“It’s like we don’t even exist,” Trip whispered. “I don’t get it.”

“Maybe we don’t.” she whispered in reply.

“What?”

“Maybe this is another dimension. Maybe they can’t see us.”

“Or maybe there’s nothing unusual about us,” he countered. “And look…no one’s wearing shoes?”

“That is weird.”

“Did you see any planted fields out there? Anything like wheat or corn?” he added.

“No. And no livestock, either. No ocean, no pastures, no place to secure a food supply.”

He walked over to what looked like a restaurant and poked his head inside the stall. People were indeed eating, for the most part noodles and soup, but he didn’t see any obvious protein or breads. An elderly man, and he looked Japanese to Anderson’s unpracticed eye, brought two bowls of soupy noodles to the entry and handed them to him. Trip bowed his thanks and the man bowed in return then returned to his kitchen; Trip handed a bowl to Linton then took a tentative sniff at the contents in his bowl.

“It smells kind of salty,” she said as she sniffed, “maybe like a fish stock.”

He took a sip and nodded. “Fish, or shrimp. Definitely not chicken.”

No one was using implements; no chopsticks and no forks or spoons, so Trip ate as the townsfolk were eating; tip the bowl up and drink. The noodles were just that, the broth did indeed taste like shellfish, maybe shrimp. Nothing else was in the broth; no onion, no other spices. Bare basic nourishment. When they’d finished he carried the bowls back to the counter and smiled at the old man, then shrugged.

The old man returned the smiled and then nodded politely, so Trip turned and began to walk out the stall, expecting the old man to give angry pursuit at any moment – but nothing happened. Indeed, people came and went and no money was exchanged – anywhere, for anything. Some people ate in these stalls – at simple tables, while other took small containers of these noddles and put them inside a wicker shopping tote, yet no one paid for anything.

They then walked up this main street, passing more food stalls and other shops that seemed to stock modest housewares, but neither saw artisans making tools or anything that could be used to hunt or cultivate a food supply. And it appeared that every food stall was serving the exact same noodle soup.

“You do know that this makes no sense,” Linton sighed, but Trip was looking inside one of the paper lanterns that hung outside a food stall.

He shook his head then walked back to Linton, and he looked upset.

“What is it? Something wrong?” she asked.

“No wires, no open flame, and no fuel source. Just a ball of fire suspended in mid-air.”

“What?” she said as she shuddered to a stop.

“Look for yourself.”

So she did. And when she came back she looked perplexed. “It’s like a miniature sun. A tiny fusion reaction suspended inside a magnetic field. And that’s a light fixture…?”

“And that means?” Trip sighed.

“We ain’t in Kansas anymore.”

“Layers of technology that shouldn’t coexist,” he said, his voice low and indistinct, under his breath. “None of this makes any sense.”

“Because we’re looking at it from our usual perspective.”

“That implies we’re dealing with a radically different technology from our own, doesn’t it?”

She looked at him carefully, only nodding passive acknowledgment of these implications. “Medieval structures of life and advanced fusion technology, and have you noticed anything different after eating those noodles?”

“I’m not hungry anymore, I guess. Why? Have you?”

She nodded again. “I’m not cold. In fact, I hardly feel the cold now. Chewing coca leaves in the Andes has the same effect, it even lessens the sensations of nausea and panic that attend oxygen deprivation. And guess what. We just might be justified feeling a little panic right about now…but I take it you don’t?”

“No. I never panic, about anything,” he sighed.

She looked at him and shrugged. “Lucky you,” she muttered – maybe a little dismissively. She thought of him two days ago, his aircraft tumbling out of control. Had he not felt panic then? Had his life not flashed before his eyes?

He shrugged. “I do feel – different – now that you mention it. More energy, maybe.”

“An interesting picture of life in this village is coming together, don’t you think? Communal food containing a stimulant, no apparent system of agriculture…”

“Which means…what, exactly?”

Linton jumped back as a huge white wolf walked by, right down the middle of this cobbled main ‘street’ – yet once again no one reacted to its presence. “Oh, man, this is too much,” she said as she turned and followed the wolf. Anderson looked at her and shrugged, then trotted to catch up with her. “What do you think this means,” he said as he caught up with her, pointing at the animal.

“I don’t know, but this culture hasn’t developed naturally. It’s been cultivated. Tended. Maybe like an experiment,” she sighed as she trotted along behind the wolf.

Thunder rumbled overhead, and a jagged bolt of lightning illuminated the mountains looming above the village. And both of them staggered to a stop as the wolf walked up to a very young girl, and it came up to her slowly, then stood by her side.

The girl seemed lost and alone, yet the wolf was no stranger to her.

“What the fuck is that,” Trip mumbled, pointing up the hill towards what looked like a temple, or perhaps a castle.

A samurai warrior stood on a rocky promontory overlooking the village, and he was looking down at the little girl.

Then the warrior pointed at her with his spear, and with his other hand he bade her to come up the stairway in front of her.

The little girl hesitated.

Then the wolf looked up at her and Trip could tell, even from fifty yards away, that the animal did not want her to move; it had stepped in front of her and was even now pushing her away from the stairway, and away from the samurai. “What do you make of that?” he whispered to Linton.

But she just started walking towards the girl, and the wolf.

The samurai reacted almost instantly; his malevolent gaze flickered and shifted towards Linton, then to the strange man behind her. And the wolf turned and looked, too. The samurai reacted to this new presence by slamming the metal hilt of his spear down onto the stone promontory, and as the sound carried over the valley within moments the warrior was flanked by a dozen or more samurai, and not one of these well armed warriors appeared happy.

By the time these fresh warriors had taken up positions, the wolf had moved to shield the little girl, and then Linton arrived.

“Are you alright?” Linton asked.

The girl looked up at Linton and shook her head. “Where is this place? How did I get here?” she asked.

Linton shook her head as she began speaking, as she knelt beside the girl. “I don’t know. We just got here, maybe fifteen minutes ago. What do your friends call you?”

“Heather. Heather Valentine.”

“And where are you from, Heather Valentine?”

“Boston. Right across from the airport, in Winthrop.”

Trip had been watching and when the little girl mentioned Winthrop his mind went to his last approach at Logan, and he reflexively looked down at his legs – just to make sure they were still there.

“Do you know how you got here, Heather?” Linton asked.

“No. I think maybe I had just gone to sleep, and I was having a dream. I thought it was a dream but I don’t remember waking up. Anyway, here I am.”

The wolf looked at Heather, then at the warriors gathered on the promontory and it began to push Heather further away from the stairway. As Linton watched this she thought the animal was already too protective, somehow too attached to the little girl, but then again what did these samurai want with her…or with any of them?

…then she felt a new presence. Another wolf was brushing up against her legs, pushing her away from Heather. She turned, looked down into huge amber-brown eyes staring up into her own. Another pure white wolf, larger than the one beside Heather was now by her side, and yet another was trotting up the street towards Trip Anderson.

But the samurai had not moved. They were looking at the wolves, and Linton thought the samurai were surprised by this sudden show of force.

Then a fourth wolf appeared. Silver white fur and this animal seemed old, with splashes of white around its muzzle and eyes, and a stiffness as it walked. The three wolves turned and gave way to the fourth, and when the elder wolf walked directly to the stairway they each nudged the human by their side and gently herded them to the first step. As Linton looked on, each samurai on the promontory knelt as the eldest wolf walked up the rugged stairway, and bowed their heads as it gained the last few steps. Each samurai, that is, but one. The original samurai that had first summoned Heather.

This samurai walked over to the rocky stairway and bowed formally as the old wolf arrived, then he lay his spear on the ground between them. The wolf walked up to the samurai and stood on its hind legs, placing his hands on the samurai’s shoulders, looking the man in the eye. They each bowed their foreheads until they touched, then the elder wolf dropped to the promontory and resumed walking towards the temple. Linton caught the very last of this rather formal greeting and she immediately understood that she was in a world she knew nothing about.

And yet, she knew that she was scared.

Heather took her first tentative steps up the stone stairway, yet she soon gave way and fell in behind Linton. Trip Anderson watched this and shook his head, then took up the rear – while keeping an eye on the wolves behind him. He stopped about halfway up the hundred-foot promontory and looked out over the village, and was surprised how small this town actually was. A few hundred people lived here, perhaps, yet there were no evidence of any of the sorts of technologies enabled by electricity – other than the plasma lights in the lanterns. There were no trains, no airplanes, and no cars or buses – and more curious still, no signs of horses. Just what the hell did these people do, or did they not venture forth from their homes – except to be fed?

And almost immediately he felt light-headed, like he was once again climbing one of the fourteeners in Colorado. He’d gone there the summer after he graduated from high school. He and a bunch of friends. They’d planned the trip all year and had gone to Rocky Mountain National Park because they’d all wanted to go climbing – even though not a single one of them had ever done anything more rigorous that climb Jungle-Gyms in grade school. They’d driven straight to the trailhead for Long’s Peak, arriving at three in the afternoon, and only a park ranger’s admonishments had stopped an attempt that afternoon. “Get acclimated,” the ranger advised, “get yourself the right kind of clothes, and get here to the trailhead about three in the morning. You’ve got to summit by late morning and be well on your way down by noon because thunderstorms roll over the range almost every afternoon. Two or three Texans get killed every summer by lightning strikes…”

“But we’re from California,” Trip had countered playfully.

“Dumb knows no borders, at least none that I’m aware of,” the ranger shot back.

So two days later they made their ascent, and of the six who started two dropped out almost immediately. Altitude sickness. Then four made it to the Keyhole, After they clambered up the last boulders just above this slot, only Trip and Stacy Evans decided to carry on. Yet after clearing the slot above the shelter they soon encountered the hard reality of high alpine free climbing. First they had to navigate the traverse, a precariously narrow ledge with an almost 1500 foot drop awaiting the careless placement of just one step. Then up a thousand feet between massive boulders that seemed to have been cleaved with a sharp knife.

When they started up a near vertical slab of granite that, even so, had excellent hand and footholds, Trip was almost ready to bail but he was more afraid of wimping-out on Stacy. He’d had a crush on her years ago – before she took up with Anson, his best friend – yet she and Anson had broken up a couple of months before graduation. So, she was available now – except she’d let everyone know that she wasn’t going to date until at least her third year of college. On the other hand, Trip had to report to the Naval Academy in three weeks, because there was no such thing as summer vacation once you accepted a place in an upcoming Academy class, and that meant any kind of relationship he was going to have with Stacy was going to happen now, in the next three weeks.

She had pulled off her Levis at the shelter and now had on lycra shorts, and they were so tight on her he could make out every contour beneath, but right now, as they made their way slowly up the granite face, all he could see was the soft white flesh of her inner thigh – and the outlines of a camel toe under her shorts when she moved just so. And with a start he realized this was the one place in the world he just couldn’t afford to lose his concentration, where he had to keep his mind on the more immediate challenge, yet every time she moved ‘just so’ he was soon lost again.

Until she looked down at him. “Trip! What are you staring at?”

“Where you’re putting your feet.”

“Uh-huh, right.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Maybe you better come up and take the lead.”

“Okay. On my way. Can you see how much more we have?”

“Looks like about another fifty or so feet. After that the trail guide says we have a couple hundred feet to reach the summit.”

“Is there an easier way down?” he asked.

“Nope. We go down the way we came. Trip Anderson? Are you getting scared?”

He didn’t answer until he had climbed up next to her, but he stopped there and looked her right in the eye. “I’m not scared for me. I’m scared for you.”

“For me? Why?”

“I don’t think I could stand it if something happened to you.”

And she had leaned over and kissed him. Nothing passionate, more like a slight kiss on the lips to acknowledge his feelings. “Alright, hotshot. You can lead now. It’s my turn to stare at your ass.”

They made the summit a half hour later and they both marveled at the small plateau of flat granite that defined the summit. Their were a couple of small groups walking around taking in the views, but he and Stacy just sat down and rubbed their burning thighs. Cities and towns that lined the front range were visible to the east, but to the west: a gray-blue wall of boiling cloud, the spreading anvil tens of thousands of feet high – and building.

“Yowza! That’s one muther-fucking big storm,” someone a few yards away said to his group. “We better start down now. Maybe we can get to the Keyhole before it hits.”

“We just got here?” Stacy sighed as she looked at Trip. “What a gyp!”

And as bad as it had been coming up, going down was ten times worse. The vertical slab was bad enough, but that interminable ledge seemed even more vertiginous heading down. One girl in the group just ahead was freaking out, crying uncontrollably, and then she lost her balance and started sliding down the scree. Trip was a hundred yards behind and the girl’s scream was the most terrifying thing he’d ever heard in his life; he watched helplessly as she slid on her rear, but then she started tumbling. 1500 feet down, until she disappeared in a boulder field above a high alpine lake.

He’d turned and looked at Stacy – but she was staring at the thunderstorm. At great gouts of lightning along the storm’s leading edge. And now they all heard the thunder…

And he looked up at Heather – because she seemed to be faltering.

“How are you doing?” Trip asked the little girl.

She stopped and stood still, then turned fractionally to answer him. “I’m afraid of heights,” she whispered.

And he hustled up to her side and took her hand. “Don’t worry. I’m here and I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“Could you carry me?”

“Sure,” he said as he knelt down a little, with one knee on the step ahead. “Just put your arms around my neck and wrap your legs around my hips.” When he stood again he saw Linton looking at the girl and shaking her head, but Trip ignored her. There was something about the woman that was grating on him, but given present circumstances he decided this was not the time to press the issue.

The little girl weighed next to nothing and carrying her wasn’t a bother, and one of the wolves came up and climbed along beside him. He heard thunder and his mind went back to Long’s Peak and that day with Stacy and that unknown girl’s forlorn scream as she fell to her death, but like everything else from that part of his life those moments had all but disappeared. He’d heard once that Stacy had married but even that bit of news had hit him as an errant thought. He’d had, by then, too many good times with stewardesses to remember a girl from high school, a childhood crush that had never panned out.

And then they reached the plateau atop the promontory, and into an open, manicured garden, complete with a reflecting pond – and beyond which the temple had been built. Shoji screens lit rooms from within, the ground floor bounded by multi-level stone terraces surrounding the entire structure, and a purely ornamental tower perhaps a hundred feet tall loomed over the garden. Perhaps a hundred armored samurai waited on the terraces, their spears all angled skyward at the same angle, their two swords now plainly visible. Trip spied ramparts beyond, heavy stone ramparts with positions for archers – which were manned. Ramparts designed to keep someone, or something, out of the temple grounds. The archers were watching something on the other side of the ramparts, quivered arrows at the ready.

Linton did not know what to make of all this – the samurai guards, the elaborate temple and its magnificent grounds, nor the white wolves now sitting idly by their sides. The tall, almost malevolent samurai that had first beckoned Heather still stood on the upmost crags of the promontory, unwilling – or unable – to relinquish his post, and with his duty now apparently at an end he had resumed watching over the village below.

And she was shaking inside, shaking with fear, because to her an unknown like this was the greatest threat one could face. She had no idea what she was facing. Who these people were. What role these wolves had assumed, let alone how wolves could act in such a domesticated manner…

…then a shoji slid open and an elaborately robed and coiffed woman – was she Geisha? – stepped out and beckoned the old wolf to come up onto the terrace. Linton went and stood beside Trip and they watched as the old wolf walked up stone steps onto the first terrace, but what stunned her most of all was the way the samurai guards deferred to the animal. Each bowed precisely just as the wolf passed, then each snapped back to attention, and even Trip was impressed by the military precision of this display. Yet even more interesting was the reaction of the three wolves still by their side; each followed their leader with focused eyes, each seemed to acknowledge the respect paid with a slight twitch of the tail.

Heather reached out and ran her fingers through the pure white mane of the wolf by her side.

He acknowledged the gesture with a sidelong glance and a deep sigh, then he turned to face Heather and lowered his forehead towards hers. Maybe it was instinct, perhaps intuition, but Heather lowered her forehead and placed it on the wolf’s – and the reaction was instantaneous. A shimmering bronze colored aura surrounded them both, and the old wolf on the terrace stopped and watched – then lifted his head and howled. The two wolves beside Trip and Linton began howling in harmony with their elder – and every samurai in attendance turned and bowed to Heather and her new protector.

“What the bloody hell is happening?” Linton whispered.

But all Trip could do was shake his head, slowly, for he was as perplexed as she.

The howling went on for several minutes, then the old wolf turned and continued on his way through the open shoji screen and into the temple. A few more minutes passed then the geisha reappeared; she looked at the remaining wolves and motioned to them, and it was as if she had summoned them with her voice for the wolves moved quickly to shepherd Heather and Linton and Trip to the terrace. The sentinel-like samurai regarded the strangers passively as they walked by, entering the inner sanctum of what was, apparently, their most sacred space.

As Trip entered the temple the first thing he saw was an enormous golden Buddha at the far end of a rectangular room which, and to his eye the room appeared quite a bit smaller than a basketball court. Woven tatami mats covered the floor, and near the Buddha was a scarlet rug perhaps eight feet by ten. An old man dressed in purest white robes sat cross-legged in the center of the scarlet rug, with his two swords placed in front of him, centered quite carefully and an obvious sign that by disarming so he did not want to be seen as a threat.

Linton wasn’t any kind of authority on medieval Japan but she sensed power in the room, that this man held immense power within this realm. He had to be some kind of warlord to have such an army, and to live within such fortifications, yet it was the wolves that still fascinated her. She sensed an uneasy truce between the two groups, and noted that as the wolves entered with them the line of samurai from the terrace filed in silently behind them, their hands on the hilts of their swords.

When the three strangers were in front of the scarlet rug the geisha gestured for them to sit, which Trip found laughable – as there was nothing at all to sit on. Heather, being young and naturally limber, plopped down with all the grace any other seven year old girl might, while Linton struggled to sit gracefully. Trip, on the other hand, still didn’t know what was happening with his legs. Was he really in his 20s again? Would his knees buckle?

But he sat effortlessly and crossed his legs exactly as the old samurai had. He sighed inwardly, more relieved than he could have possibly expressed.

Then the old samurai spoke. In Japanese, apparently. He looked at Linton, who shrugged their collective incomprehension and the old man seemed to understand. He turned to the geisha and uttered a command, which she relayed to one of the soldiers waiting just outside another screen. This young man took off through a hidden passage, and the old samurai turned to the geisha and spoke again.

The geisha went to a low table and brought tea, serving first her lord and master, then the three strangers. She poured from a simple ceramic pot, robin’s egg blue speckled with the muted umber of the namesake egg. Trip took the proffered cup and smiled his gratitude, Linton did the same, but the geisha did not stop to serve Heather. Perhaps, Linton thought, because she was a child?

There was a stir, something like an echo, then the young samurai returned – and behind him walked a priest. Yet his priestly vestments were the same golden orange of a Buddhist monk’s robes, even his somewhat muted chasuble was the same golden orange. The priest came in and immediately sat next to the old samurai, but on the samurai’s right side. The old man spoke in hushed, low tones to the priest and the much younger priest nodded his understanding. 

But Linton was now in a state of shock, and she was staring at the priest as terror consumed her. He was the same Jesuit priest she had challenged decades ago during an undergraduate lecture concerning Religion and Science and the nature of the universe. And she watched as he looked at her, and as recognition spread slowly across his face she saw the faintest glimmer of a smile spread across his unusually serene face.

© 2026 adrian leverkühn + adrianleverkuhnwrites.com + this is just a story, pure fiction plain and simple, and no persons mentioned should be regarded as anything other than fictitious. The next part of the story will follow in LST (leverkuhn standard time), which means a week or so. Or thereabouts. 

I hear a new McCartney album drops on the 29^th. Let me know if it’s any good.