Ocean in the Sea Read online

  Ocean in the Sea

  Contents

  Chosen One

  Flight 341 to SeaTac

  Primates

  A Grave Conversation

  Monkey Brains

  I Believe You

  Attempted Murder

  Tagged

  Pusher Man

  Paradigm Shift

  The Formatting of Lewis Herman

  What If…

  A Helping Hand

  Fallen Gods

  Memories of the Dead

  Race Relations

  2 Days to Jump

  The City of Roses

  Heticus

  Breaking Shelter

  The Suffering

  Impacts

  Jennifer Kross

  Full of C.R.A.P.

  Battle of the Brainz

  Small Soldiers

  Animal Domination

  Xinghuazhen

  The Interview

  Assessment

  Paranoid

  Chicken with a Train

  Trails of Death

  Extraction

  The Kron Job

  The 7 Ps of Planning

  Freedom-3

  Speculatorum

  Rude Awakenings

  The Fourth Lesson

  A Rock to Step Over

  Long Story Short

  Aftermath

  Chosen One

  On an ordinary Saturday morning in central Michigan during the fall of 2061, a collection of dead leaves blew over the frosted pavement of an empty suburban alley behind two rows of houses. The cold sun broke feebly over the solar roofing shingles, feeding power to the central batteries. Above, a six-rotored postal drone buzzed on its way to deliver its packages. Inside the homes, the middle-class largely white-collar inhabitants snoozed late.

  Hidden behind the dawn sky, thirty seven different satellites chose this instant to simultaneously adjust their focus, temporarily interrupting their visual encoding. As they did so, a black limousine faded into existence between the houses and a row of tall shrubs. It took only a second, during which the security dots under the eaves of the houses briefly failed, recording nothing but static. The postal drone had already passed out of optical range, and the satellites automatically deleted their fuzzy clips from memory.

  The limousine’s electric engine remained nearly silent as it hummed out of the alleyway onto the street and drove several blocks. Manicured trees and trimmed hedges reflected over its tinted windows from either side. It parked in front of an impeccably maintained two-story craftsman where its gull-wing rear doors hissed upward, retracting out of the way. From the exposed interior, an old 2010 dubstep song briefly assaulted the serenity of the neighborhood before terminating the throaty voice of the raging soloist mid-lyric.

  As the music stopped, a man in a perfectly tailored business suit stepped forth and smoothed his charcoal pinstriped jacket. He had dark hair and eyes and an athletic body of medium build with a handsome friendly appearance. One might assume him to be in his forties. He scanned the empty street before walking up the steps of the porch where he halted before the door. Looking distastefully at the doorbell, he raped on the surface with his knuckles.

  Several minutes passed before the holographic projector lit above the camera pickup and a young man’s face floated in the air. “Who is it?” His voice crackled, not with static, but with early-morning fatigue.

  “Greetings!” declared the businessman. “Are you Scott?”

  “Yeah. What do you want? It’s early” The projection of Scott’s eyes narrowed in the display, peering at the pickup on his end. He noticed the limousine at the curb. “Have I won a contest or something?”

  “Yes, in fact,” said the visitor. “You have won an, um, a lottery!”

  “I never bought a ticket.”

  “That’s not a problem.” The businessman shrugged. “It was a secret lottery, but let me assure you that it is well-worth winning. My name is Kingery. I’m here to discuss the details.” He held up a briefcase. “Documents to sign, that sort of thing. You know.” He grinned. “Legal errata.”

  Scott studied the man suspiciously. “What have I won?”

  Mr. Kingery lowered the briefcase and looked up. “Well… It’s an inheritance. Yes. That’s what it is. You have been chosen as the heir to an estate. Sort of a big one, really.” Scott opened his mouth but Mr. Kingery quickly interrupted him. “You have questions, of course, and I will be happy to answer them, but it’s cold out here. May I come inside?”

  Looking flabbergasted, Scott’s face vanished from the display. When he opened the door he was still tying his bathrobe. As he rubbed his bleary eyes, Mr. Kingery walked past and proceeded down the hall to the kitchen. He seemed to know where he was going. Taking a seat at the table, Kingery moved a chess set out of the way and extracted a folder from his briefcase. Slapping it down in front of him, he eyed the chess board. “Game in progress?”

  “Yeah” Scott shrugged. “Matilda, coffee,” he commanded his house’s AI. “Start now.”

  “Starting coffee,” replied a pleasant voice.

  As the brewing machine clicked, Scott took a couple of cups from the rack next to the sink and glanced at Kingery who was examining the chess game. “I’m teaching my son to play,” said Scott. “You take cream or sugar?”

  “Neither,” said Kingery. “Black is fine.”

  Leaving the cups on the counter to await the completion of the brewing process, Scott sat across from Kingery. The strong aroma coffee filled the air. There were some things Scott scrimped on, but not coffee. “So… what’s this about an estate? Is there some relative I don’t know about?”

  “In an indirect manner.”

  Scott lowered his eyelids doubtfully. “You’re really here to sell me something, right?”

  “Oh, no, there’s an inheritance,” Kingery laced his fingers. “You’ll be getting my estate. All of it.”

  “You’re estate? I thought you were a lawyer.”

  “No.” Kingery chuckled. “I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a lawyer.”

  “This is weird. You understand that, right?” Scott peered suspiciously from under his brow. “Why not call first? Why come to my house at 6AM?”

  “I like to do things in person when they’re personal.”

  “So why me?”

  “We’ll get to that, but you might be interested in knowing how I acquired my fortune first. It may affect your decision to accept it.”

  Scott pinched his lips. “Child slavery? Drugs? Blackmail?”

  “No. Nothing like that. It has to do with the outcome of an experiment. I watch, sometimes I manage, but I do not interfere with anything that would pollute the outcome.” He tapped his fingers. “I have chosen you, Scott, because of the outcome. To understand the outcome you must know the question that my experiment has answered, and to know the question, you must know the story that prompted me to ask it. The motive, Scott. Once you know the motive, everything else falls into place. You might not accept my story as true, however, and we should change that first. The truth has surprisingly little power to reach those who think they already know it. Evidence is required.”

  Scott’s expression remained neutral. “You a little kray-kray, Mr. Kingery?”

  “Let’s call it eccentric. Tell me, Scott, have you ever questioned your senses?”

  Scott shook his head. “Not when I’m sober.”

  “So you’ve never thought that perhaps what your senses weren’t lying to you? We experience the world through touch, taste, sound, sight. What if they’re wrong?”

  “All of them at once?”

  “Yes.”

  Scott bit his lip and then shrugged. “How would I know?”

  “You wouldn’t. Not un
less you had proof. What if I told you that the world you live in is a product of those senses? A mass hallucination experienced by everyone?”

  “Not to be blunt, Mr. Kingery, but what does this have to do with your inherence? Or this story you want to tell me?”

  “It’s how the story starts.” Kingery grabbed the salt shaker. “You ever think about the possibility of time travel? Impossible, right? But what if time simply stopped?” Holding his hand out, he released the shaker. It stayed where it was, floating statically in the air without any motion at all.

  Scott stood and stared in obvious surprise. Not shock. He’d seen magic tricks before. He walked around to the side and waved his hand over the hovering object. His expressions softened. “So you’re a magician?”

  “Take it.” Kingery nodded at the shaker. “Take it and move it anywhere you want and then let it go. We’re the only things moving. Time has stopped for everything else. Go ahead. Play around. You can do it with any object. Just remember, the laws of physics haven’t changed. When time returns to normal they’ll obey gravity and make a mess.”

  Scott moved the shaker and let go. It stayed where it was. He tried it with the pepper grinder and got the same results. “Matilda,” he commanded his house. “Respond.” The house refused to answer. The faucet wouldn’t run. He turned over a glass of juice on the counter but the liquid stayed inside. The coffee maker had stopped brewing. Ripples from the last drip stood still inside the carafe. “How are you doing this?”

  “Are you familiar with the concept of Planck time? Time isn’t analog any more than anything else. Planck time isn’t really accurate for what’s happening, but it’s the closest unit of measurement. In reality, it’s what we call a ‘tick’ of the system clock. Normally every particle is rendered one at a time. Some objects seem to move faster than others because their distance increases more between each tick. We don’t notice because the distance is too small for us to measure. So are the ticks. You can’t measure them when they define time for your existence.”

  “But…” Scott shook his head. “Why are we…”

  “Able to move? Because I’ve slowed the system clock for everything except us. Everything else is still moving, we’re just being rendered at a billion billion times the rate of everything else. It’s called temporal rendering order priority, or TROP. The effect makes it appear as if time has slowed down, and it has. It’s barely moving. Your next question is how.” Kingery smiled slyly in one corner of his mouth. “And that’s where my story comes in. It’s complicated, so it’s best to start at the beginning. It’s a long story, but time isn’t a problem now. It’s also a very improbable story, but I think you’ll come to understand that probability, like everything else, is malleable. I’m going to wake you up, Scott. You may wish you’d been left asleep when I’m done, but I need you awake to understand the truth.”

  “Hold on.” Scott raised his hand. “I’m already awake.”

  “Well, yes,” agreed Kingery. “I’m speaking metaphorically. You’re awake, but you don’t know what’s actually happening in your universe. I’m going to show you what your world is, Scott. Why it exists, and what purpose it serves. I apologize in advance. I’m not giving you a choice and some of what you’re about to experience will be thrust directly into your mind. It won’t be just a story. You will see some of it and feel it as it was.”

  Scott’s eyes flared. He straightened his spine. “Wait a second…”

  “No. No more waiting,” said Kingery. “The story begins several decades ago on an airplane in the year 2025.” He held up his index finger. “And for you, that time is NOW.”

  Flight 341 to SeaTac

  From his window seat, Lewis Herman stared out the rain-streaked plexiglass into the mottled storm clouds and felt his heart race. Lightening popped like fireworks, transfixing him. The rumbles of energy vibrating through the craft represented peril, death, and hope for a quick ending to his miserable life. A direct strike could damage the engines, or maybe blow a hole in the fuselage. It could come at any second. Better than anything he’d spent time dreaming about – jumping off a bridge or a bullet to the brain. His therapist would not have been pleased with these thoughts.

  Screw her.

  Next to Lewis, Professor Thomas Yangley clutched the arms of his chair with white knuckles, pinching his eyes shut. A sudden tilt to the right brought the sound of crashing metal from the steward’s station at the rear of the plane. One of the carts had tipped.

  Lightning flashed again. Tilting left, the plane dropped through two more low pressure pockets. Each brought shouts from the passengers. Poor Professor Yangley was practically hyperventilating. The sweating old man did not look good. It was typical to provide some form of reassurance under the circumstances. People did things like that. It was normal.

  “We’ll be fine,” said Lewis. His voice was empty of emotion. “What are the odds of lightning hitting the plane?”

  The Professor groaned. “As a Statistician,” he said, “I can assure you that it happens more frequently than the airlines would like to admit.”

  “Well, then.” Lewis tried not to sound smug. “They probably account for lightning when they build these planes.”

  “They do, but that doesn’t mean they can’t crash.”

  Leveling out, the aircraft steadied. For several minutes no one said anything, then the intercom crackled and a voice spoke in a dry droning.

  “Uh… this is your Captain. I, um… apologize for the turbulence. We’re above the storm now, and it should be clear flying from here to SeaTac. Oh! Uh… estimated arrival time is… one hour and twelve minutes. The attendants will be around shortly to, uh… clean up anything that may have spilled.”

  Professor Yangley wiped his forehead. His face was still white, but he’d stopped breathing so hard.

  “Are you okay?” asked Lewis.

  “I’ll be fine.” Thomas took a pill case out of his pocket and threw down a couple, swallowing them dry.

  Lewis examined a dog-eared magazine from the seat pouch. The date read January 2024, a year out of date. He stuffed it back and pulled his tablet out of his carry-on. Since he wasn’t going to die, he might as well get some work done.

  “Oh,” said the Professor, noticing the letterhead on the display. “Majutay Radionics.” He pointed at the tablet. “I work there. I mean… I work close by. My company shares the same building.”

  Lewis identified the comment as a prompt to engage in conversation. It would be rude of him to ignore it. A question would further the exchange, but perhaps Thomas could supply useful information about the work environment. “Nice facility?”

  Thomas shrugged. “Sure, if you like polished metallic sculptures and abstract paintings of alien landscapes. The interior design looks like it was thrown together by a sadistic dentist. But the cafeteria is wonderful. Marriott chefs. Their weekly specials are well worth the price.”

  “That’s good. I don’t cook much.” A sadistic dentist, thought Lewis. A metaphorical analogy intended to infer the thought processes of the interior designer responsible for selecting the abstract paintings and metal sculptures. The statement was intended to spark his imagination and evoke imagery of the artistic style that a sadistic dentist might prefer. Sadism, of course, defined an individual whom enjoyed the pain of others, and dentistry doubled the implication as it was historically painful, though not currently, and therefore an anachronism. In this context, Thomas was referring to the historical pain, a stigma still attached to dentistry. “My dentist has never caused me pain,” Lewis observed out loud. Instantly, he regretted the comment. It was abnormal. He decided a distraction was in order. “But I do look forward to trying the food.”

  “Are you moving to Seattle?”

  “I…” Lewis paused. “I’m not really sure. The job is temporary.”

  “Ah, I see. Hard to be away from family. Kids?”

  Lewis looked at the ring on his left hand. Thomas must have noticed, making the obvious ass
umption. “No. I’m not married. I still wear the ring. I suppose I shouldn’t, but it seems wrong to take it off. I tried, but… I’m used to it.”

  The Professor chuckled. “I’ve been divorced three times. Taking the ring off is the first thing I do. It’s become a tradition. I sell the ring and use the money to pay for my first post-divorce date. I suppose that seems cruel, doesn’t it?”

  “Cruel? No.” Lewis ran a finger down his cheek. “Mine is a reminder of better times.”

  “Ah… It wasn’t your idea then. Sorry to hear that. Has it been long?”

  “Only a year, but it wasn’t a divorce.”

  The Professor’s eyes widened and he cleared his throat in embarrassment. “Now I really must apologize. I shouldn’t have assumed.”

  An uncomfortable silence reigned for nearly a minute.

  “It was a train accident,” said Lewis. He stared ahead, speaking into the back of the seat in front of him. “She tried to cross the rails. It was dark. She was late for a movie and the crossing arms always drop several minutes before the train comes. She knew she could make it, but the car got stuck. It was icy, and in the dark there was only the light of the train. She probably didn’t know how close it was. They told me it was quick and painless.” Lewis had told the story so many times that it was now compressed into a single paragraph.

  Thomas shook his head. “Um... that's... awful. Again, I’m sorry. I can understand why you still wear the ring. Was she alone?”

  “No, my son was with her. He was three.”

  Thomas nodded and silence took over again. Lewis knew the drill. What could one say under such circumstances? At first, they struggled to find some way of expressing their sympathy. After a while, they realized nothing was better than “I’m sorry,” and they’d already said it. In a few seconds, Thomas would change the subject, hoping to lighten the mood. Few people could let the darkness linger. They would feel a need to ‘clear the air.’ In the meantime, Lewis focused on the document.

  “So,” said Thomas after several minutes, “What do you do for Majutay?”

  “I’m an analyst,” Lewis replied without looking up. “They want me to draft a series of technical specifications for a product. It’s more of an editing job than anything else. The actual material is over my head.”