Voices in the Stream: Phase 02 (The Eighteenth Shadow) Read online

  “Well, he’s drinking something, and it’s glass. I’m activating alcovap. Come on, let’s git ’er done!”

  Jenks pressed forward over the rise. Tramm followed, finger quivering above the trigger. They walked down the short rise towards the man who was standing on a slight outcropping before a sand bar. He was as tall as Jenks, but not nearly so bulky. Blonde hair ranged from under a cowboy hat and he didn’t look in the least surprised to see them. He held the stock of his antique hunting rifle with the barrel pointing over his shoulder. In his left hand was a mason jar.

  Alcohol!

  Tramm heard the unmistakable klaxon of Jenks’ alcovap array.

  As Jenks walked up, the man turned and nodded their way congenially, “Howdy boys. Moon over the water’s pretty as a picture this time of night, ain’t it?”

  “Hold it right there!” said Jenks. He was three meters away pointing his shotgun at the man’s chest, “I don’t suppose that’s booze you got in that mason jar, is it?”

  The man spoke with a country accent as he raised the tiny jar of clear liquid, “This here? Why yes, in fact. It’s a little home brew of my own making, fresh outta the copper. Care for a nibble?”

  The man inclined the jar towards Jenks.

  A true moonshiner!

  Tramm could feel his heart beating faster and faster. Something was off.

  Jenks carried on confidently, though, “Mister, put that weapon and the drugs on the ground. Nice and slow. You turnin’ ’round is how I want it.”

  Tramm switched off HUD and raised his goggles. The man’s eyes were as blue as sapphires in the moonlight. He looked like you’d expect a shiner to, scruffy and unkempt with sideburns growing like it was the wild west.

  The man didn’t flinch, his voice was almost sad as he spoke to Jenks, “Buddy, you tryin’ to get me in bed? Or arrest me?” He took a couple of steps towards them, now barely a meter from the shotgun barrel.

  “Stand down, mister! Drop that rifle or I’m gonna have to put you on the earth!” yelled Jenks.

  Tramm could hear him spool up the sonic round in his shotgun, a noise like a model hovcar getting ready to float. Something moved in the blackness of the brambles behind the man, then the leaves were still. The autumn woods were thick with nocturnal animals.

  The man turned the corner of his mouth and took a sip from the mason jar, wincing, “It’s a little rough going down at first. Then after a few shots, your throat gets numb.” He raised his eyebrows and winked at Jenks, “After that, it goes down like water.”

  “I said stand down! Drop the gun, drop the drugs. Do it now, boozy!”

  Tramm was glad Jenks was doing the talking. Jenks had actually memorized the CNED arrest script.

  The man said, “Look fella. I told my boss I wanted to try this my way. Get this; she doesn’t even think you guys are human anymore. I disagree. But let’s be clear; I ain’t gonna drop shit. If anyone’s turning around, it’s gonna be you. Turning around to your own jurisdiction and pretending none of this ever happened. Can you reckon, Hercules?”

  “What’s he talking about, Stanley? His boss?” asked Tramm nervously.

  “Shut up, Phil!”

  “We are with CNED, mister!” barked Jenks. “I swear to Dog I’ll put you down! You’re under arrest for possession of a controlled substance. I’m not gonna repeat myself! Drop your weapon!” Jenks was yelling unnecessarily loud. Tramm could see his partner’s leg shaking.

  The man was unphased.

  He sighed and took another step forward, “Come on, boys I’m really tryin’ here. You’re only…”

  BOOM! Jenks fired his sonic shotgun point blank. Tramm lurched as the man’s body flew backwards like a rag doll, cowboy hat and rifle and mason jar full of booze crashing to the dirt. His form collapsed, unconscious on the deer trail.

  “Holy Dog in the sky!” exclaimed Tramm, wide-eyed.

  Jenks chuckled, sweat glistening on his brow, “That’ll teach a shiner to gimme lip! I warned him, Phil! I couldn’t a done much more than… guh!”

  A black dog materialized in a blur and closed its jaws around Jenks’ thigh, snapped his femur like a twig as he screamed, “Noo!” battering the animal desperately with his rifle.

  The dog took the big man to the earth like he was a toddler and ripped one arm off with savage speed as Jenks wailed hysterically. Arterial blood spurted over the forest floor. Tramm fired but the animal moved as if anticipating the blast. There was a flash to the right, something struck him like a sledgehammer. He was on his back.

  A second dog.

  Tramm tried to scream, but the animal’s paw was crushing his shoulder. He slammed his shotgun into the dog’s head, hoping to break its jaw, but it felt like hitting a tree with a tennis racket. Before he could think, the black beast ripped his shotgun from his hands and bit the weapon in half. Tramm thought he must be hallucinating. The pain in his chest! He could hear his ribs start to crack, one after the other, pop… snap… pop… impossible pressure! He looked over at Jenks as the first dog removed his partner’s head with two ravenous bites, rivers of blood slavering between its silver teeth. Were the dogs’ eyes red now?

  Phillip Tramm gasped his final breath as he looked down at his own body. The monster pinning him to the ground had pushed its paw through his shoulder. The dog was studying him, pointed canines hovering centimeters from his face like black blades. He could see the moonlight poking through the canopy of leaves above. The teeth came closer, closer, slow and merciless. The animal had no breath? How strange.

  Somewhere in the distance, an owl cried out. The haunted sound echoed through the trees, and then the moonlight was gone for good.

  Chapter 2.5 – Fractures in the Daydream

  April 2081 – One Year Six Months Before Event.

  The sunlight falling over the hardwood floor gave the polished boards a rich, orange glow. Dorothy smiled at the color, opening her sapphire eyes and rolling over in the moments between dreaming and light, letting the sounds of morning fill her ears. Blue jays, sparrows and cardinals chitted busily amongst the lime-toned bloom leaves of the tree outside their window.

  She loved the fact that it was their window, their apartment. They even had their own entrance, outside stairs running diagonally up the back of the farmhouse. Their own kitchen, their own sonic laundry, Dorothy luxuriated in this thin shred of separation. Just as she luxuriated in the sensation of warm sheets on her skin, a cool breeze coming lazily through the open window. The breeze brought familiar smells of prairie grass and tilled dirt, hickory bark and first pass marijuana plantings. Home.

  She sat up and looked at her husband, grateful he was able to find sleep. His eyelids flitted to and fro over some no doubt less than pleasant dream. Occasionally he gritted his teeth.

  William never asked for this.

  She had certainly not. Yet it was the best life either of them had ever known.

  What does that say about us?

  Despite the substantial sums they were paid each month, those digidollars went straight through the laundry into an encrypted account. An escape account, Dax called it. Certainly they did not want for any comfort, though theirs was not the leather clad life of luxury portrayed by drug dealers in the holoflix either.

  Their space was sparse, filled with furniture she had dragged William to select at various garage sales and CNED personal effects auctions. She loved 20th century antiques. Anything with stainless steel and Formica. Or vinyl. The United States of a century past must have been amazing. It was the yellow, wallpapered days of the 1970’s that she yearned for.

  One of her most treasured possessions was an antique holograph – photograph as it was called – of her great grandparents standing beside a car in their driveway. Her grandparents had driven around the streets of Salina, Kansas, in a vehicle that ran on gasoline, rolled on steel and rubber wheels, shaking over every imperfection, crack and pothole. She smiled at the romantic notion.

  Here in 2081, everything was done for you.
The sky itself ran on automatic. That the old fashioned clock hanging above their kitchen sink was nothing more than a hologram, Dorothy lamented. Below it, a holovid provided a real time view of the world from the top of the farmhouse, complete with temperature, humidity and wind direction. Their coffee maker, networked to her combud biorhythm app, had ground its beans and begun brewing the second her brainwaves indicated a waking state. The smell was delicious. The practicality and efficiency of it all was… irritatingly enjoyable.

  But Dorothy still wished it was April of 1974.

  She leaned back into bed, resting her head in her hand. Her eyes again found the sleeping form of her husband. Dorothy loved the way nudity brought him out of character. He was no longer this modern day wild man in a cowboy hat. He was simply her husband, the hunter from Oklahoma. Faithful, pained, quiet, honest, forthright and beautiful. He was her man as she knew him. Even if to Dax Abner he was something more magical.

  She grabbed a vaporjoint off the end table and took a couple of drags, watching the smoky water vapor curl towards the ceiling.

  “Vision recommended after all,” she said to herself before turning her attention back to her man.

  William was easily objectified. She noticed a few gray hairs poking through his perpetual five o’clock shadow, but the hair on his head was still sandy blonde, wavy without the hat. She inhaled his smell, wishing she could bottle that earthen odor and carry it with her.

  Their marriage had seemed inevitable. One of the many inevitabilities that had catapulted her into this sunny life of crime, all starting with the day Dax Abner had walked into The Rowdy Pony. Little had she known that agreeing to work for the handsome foreigner, in pumpkin botany (she had to giggle at her own naivete) also meant meeting her future husband. She might as well have been a magnet thrown in front of a levtrain. There was no escaping the force of Dax Abner’s will.

  Is it okay that I secretly love Dax’s power?

  She would never forget that May afternoon, stepping out of the hovlimo and onto the farm’s circle drive beneath the shade of the huge cottonwood. What a crew that had greeted her. Dax Abner first, wearing both his fine Italian suit and perfect decorum. Then FREYA, SIEGFRIED, LOFN and SNOTRA, all posing as run of the mill organic Rottweilers. Hugo with his full sleeve tattoos pouring down his arms and a grin the size of the Yucatan blowing his constant cloud of jane.

  “Ms. Nichols, allow me to introduce my chief of security, Mr. William Thomas Angevine.”

  Dax had known. Joan ran her psychological profile through a compatibility matrix… voila! Instant husband.

  Every girl should have a dolphin. Oh wait…

  She thought William was some kind of actor, larger than life, standing there in his aviator sunglasses and brown leather cowboy boots with the square toes, surrounded by Rottweilers. The tight fitting, white t-shirt tucked into the worn, black leather belt with a plain pewter buckle. The hempstraw cowboy hat. Those ridiculous sideburns!

  Dog, I’m blended…

  How had William come through the horror of what he could remember only in dreams, with a heart that could still be broken?

  If his heart broke again, it would be her fault.

  And Tara’s.

  She smiled and shook her fist in imaginary anger, gazing at the ceiling above where Tara and Dax lived in the attic.

  Dorothy tossed the sheets off and grabbed her robe from the back of the bed. Chilly toes on the hardwoods, but she had to pee. She tiptoed across the creaking floorboards and ducked behind the half-wall made of glass blocks that hid the stool and sonic shower. She relieved herself, washed her hands, then padded over to the kitchen for a glass of water.

  The kitchen com node recognized her proximity and chatted merrily into her combud, “Good morning, Dorothy Nichols. You are scheduled to report to aquarium control for operator duty at noon.”

  “Got it.”

  “Would you like me to remind you thirty minutes in adva…”

  Mute, she thought, and the com stopped speaking.

  She poured a glass of water from the reverse osmosis dispenser and drank it slowly, looking back across their 200 square meter apartment. The bed was at the opposite end from the kitchen, and the open air bathroom was against the far wall beside the door to their back stairs. A red and blue oriental rug in the center of the room drew the eye. She practiced yoga on that rug.

  That very same rug…

  She finished the water, padded back to bed and tucked her chilly toes back under the covers. She picked up the vaporjoint and resumed staring at the ceiling.

  What are you and Dax doing, Tara?

  They never heard them. Of course the rebuilt facade of a 20th century farmhouse was what surrounded them. She knew the interior had been reconstructed with layers of rubcrete insulation between the floors and walls to guard against the DOGS units’ gravotemporal feedback being picked up by a high altitude drone. All the same, Dorothy secretly yearned to hear something from the couple above. A bedpost scooting. A soft moan. It was difficult for her to imagine Dax Abner not wearing a suit, let alone naked in the throes of passion with Tara. What throes of passion, though…! Dorothy didn’t like that the thought of them having one another was so stimulating. She was becoming obsessed. And she knew damn well why.

  It was six Saturdays prior. The boys had gone into town with SIEGFRIED to scan a new field recruit. Of course, having a drink at The Green Lady Lounge was on the agenda too. The rains had been falling since noon that Saturday, thundering gray and lonesome across the prairie. Joan, the being who managed them all, swam disconnected through her liquid world while the lady cyborgs, FREYA, LOFN and SNOTRA, kept their reticent, gigantic packmaster company in the warehouse below the barn.

  THOR. Dorothy had been daydreaming of the creature that he was, always onstream, yet almost always motionless. Unless left alone, in which case he would dutifully patrol the interior perimeter of the warehouse or barn with heavy metal steps. Even Goran and Cat had lost all fear of the massive cyborg. Nonetheless, every time Dorothy walked past his quiet form, her mind ran wild with fantasy. She imagined the tension building, night after silent night, within this mountain of titanalum and graphene. One day he would snap and burst through the asphalt floor of the barn in a single leap, firing lasers and destroying everything in sight. THOR was a force of nature. And like the thunderstorms tearing across the plains from Colorado that day, she was certain that once unleashed, his rage would be without remorse.

  Yet the cybernetic packmaster slept dutifully and remained silent, utterly powerful, devoted to William. The conflicting sense of peace and danger that accompanied this knowledge, combined with the lightning and steady sound of falling rain, had made it a perfect time for Tara Dean to appear, snapping Dorothy from her thoughts. Tara always arrived when there was electricity in the air.

  Dorothy had finished practicing yoga only a few minutes earlier. She was sitting half lotus on the oriental rug in the center of the apartment. A stick of incense burned on the kitchen counter. The com was tuned to the Ambient Transience streamcast on KJHK.holo, low volume acid jazz bumping from invisible speakers in the walls. A turn of the century lamp glowed on a low table in front of the window. The only other light came from the unnerving flashes of lightning and a few old fashioned wax candles burning demurely on the antique, red Formica dining table in the apartment kitchen.

  Whenever their schedules allowed, Tara and Dorothy practiced yoga together. Tara was irritatingly and beguilingly the apex of the female form. She would walk into the room and gracefully swan dive into a low plank, rolling her legs forward until she was balancing on one arm in the incredibly difficult wounded peacock pose. She would lazily hold wounded peacock for 120 seconds on each side, then spend twenty minutes in a headstand as though it were no big deal.

  Irritating. Beguiling.

  This night, however, there had been no joint practice. Dorothy was just standing to shower when Tara tried to push her way in. Dorothy had latched the door to keep h
er irrational fear of the thunder at bay. She walked over, toweling sweat from her face, and opened it to find Tara smiling wickedly. A four liter mason of dark beer was tucked under her arm. Dorothy smiled back. This porter was a rich, black brew made with the sky’s blessing by a red-nosed city priest named Father Tom McTone.

  “Tara! You’re barefoot and half-soaked!”

  Tara looked past her at the candles and yoga mat, “I didn’t interrupt practice, did I?”

  “No, just finished, come on in.”

  Tara slipped straight to their kitchen and snatched a couple glasses from the cupboard, “You’ll drink with me then? We’re the only humans left on site.”

  Dorothy closed the door and returned to her yoga mat on the oriental rug, “Sure, beer sounds nice. But I still don’t see why you’re soaking wet? I know you didn’t walk here from 9th Street Mission.”

  Tara kicked her boots off and plopped down on the opposite end of the yoga mat with the glasses and beer jug, “I don’t know what’s got into me today!” she grinned. “The rain just felt so good, these warm springs! I was dancing with the thunder outside. I’m just so happy!” She shrugged, “I don’t know what it is.”

  Dorothy smiled as Tara filled her glass, “You got out of the hovcar and just started dancing in the rain?”

  Tara held up her glass, “Cheers!”

  Their glasses clinked brightly as another bolt of lightning flashed. Both took deep sips of the porter.

  “That lights the grid. Thanks,” said Dorothy, trying not to stare at Tara’s drenched clothing.

  “Ain’t nothing,” Tara said. “Just glad you’re here. And yes, I felt like dancing in the rain. I imagined there were people hiding, watching me from the woods, but not in a creepy way. Don’t you ever just feel like spinning in one place until you’re dizzy? Like when you were a kid?”

  Dorothy shook her head, “Not exactly. I feel like doing yoga most days.”

  Tara rolled her eyes, “Ugh, I know, every evening at 6:00. You gotta loosen up.”