Exit (16 page)
Authors: Thomas Davidson
The rising sun spotlit the candy-apple red car parked near the heart of Harvard Square. Sidewalks were filling with pedestrians on their Friday morning march, gliding past the Buick LeSabre. Strangers had an unobstructed view of the interior, could easily see an unshaven man with a plastic half-egg over his eye, wrapped in a blanket—a human taco lying on the fabric backseat.
Tim was on display inside a mobile zoo. Missing was a sign fastened to the car door:
One-Eyed Hominid
Escapee from Parallel World
(Do Not Feed)
How could he sleep? The muffled voices beyond the closed windows made him feel exposed, self-conscious. No, more than that. Events earlier that morning had stoked things up to full-tilt paranoia—a leaden feeling that his life was on fire, and the clouds above would soon rain gasoline. Once the Tinks had zeroed in on Rayne’s bedroom window, all bets were off.
A short time after Rayne went inside CopyCat, Tim surrendered and sat up, legs across the red seat, his back pressed against the side door. He faced away from the sidewalk and the prying eyes, his attention on the traffic in the street. The urban noise was muted, but he could hear cars rumble by, hydraulic brakes of delivery vans, a door
whump
shut, and indistinct voices passing by the curb. A busker was up the street near the post office, plying the morning commuters, the wind carrying the faint strains of an acoustic guitar.
The chill in the car increased with the engine and heater off, waking him fully. More than tired, he felt burnt out, too wired to sleep. For the first time in his life, everything outside the windows, everything as far as he could see, he now viewed with suspicion. A layer of distrust darkened the city like a long shadow. Somehow, nothing really was what it seemed.
How bizarre, he thought. A few Tinks appeared in his world, and their presence unexpectedly tainted everything in a wide radius. They freely sailed through town, through streets and alleys, invading cracks and crevices. The Tinks were small, deviously small, but their diminutive size made them more unsettling. Much of the physical world could be used to hide them, shield them, help them blend in. Like birds and bugs flying into a tangle of tree branches, hiding behind houses, buildings, cars, billboards, buses.
Tim pictured King Kong. If Mr. Kong were coming to kick his ass, he’d surely see and hear the roaring beast advance, feel the ground shake and rock the Richter scale. He could see an army poised to attack, see a lethal missile screaming down from the sky in a trail of white smoke, heading for his chimney. An angry mob chasing jumpers down the street. But Tinks? Virtually no advance warning. A sneak attack—Pearl Harbor meets nanotechnology. Tim felt as if he were being stalked by the Invisible Man.
His brain shifted into neutral, his eyes flicked side to side, focusing on nothing, randomly watching the movement of pedestrians and cars.
Through the front windshield, Tim saw a man wearing a blue windbreaker crossing the street, left side to right. From a distance, the stranger turned his head slightly in the direction of the parked Buick. A quick glance.
A few seconds passed before the image registered. Tim instantly understood why. He knew that sometimes the brain didn’t process what was being seen. He had experienced this phenomenon a few years ago while squatting in front of a sidewalk vending machine, scanning a daily newspaper’s front page. The top of the paper had featured a small headshot of a famous local musician, dead from a heart attack while on tour in Europe. Tim had seen the photo and the name listed below it, but his eyes had drifted down the page. Maybe ten seconds later a tingle of unease had made his eyes trail back up the newsprint. This time the face and name had registered. The deceased had been a friend he’d known for years. The news of his untimely death almost didn’t compute. A tiny inner voice had taken control momentarily:
It can’t be; therefore it isn’t. I’m seeing things.
So when Tim saw James Carney step off the curb and emerge between two parked cars, then cross the street not one hundred feet in front of him, Tim did indeed have another delayed response, a few seconds, as if some inner radio dial were turning, tuning through static, trying to find a station within all the crackling and hissing. This time his tiny inner voice was straight to the point:
Oh…my…God.
He watched James Carney reach the opposite side of the street, turn left, walk past the CopyCat windows, and then disappear from the sidewalk. Carney truly had vanished into thin air.
Tim jerked forward, clutched the top of the front seat with both hands. He focused on the street with his one eye, squinting, seeing several pedestrians but no sign of James. He recalled what C.C. Seymour had said last night in the alley behind the theater:
"Your friend won't be joining us. Let's put it this way. His dream of an escape became a pipe dream."
Pipe dream, Tim thought. He had darkly assumed that James had been killed by EyeSoar or a drone-driven flash mob.
Alive? Could it be?
Or was his vision playing tricks on him? His eyesight was reduced to one foggy eye.
Tim sat bolt upright in the backseat, swung his feet to the floor. Adrenaline canceled his fatigue. Even the chilly temperature in the car seemed to rise. He glanced at CopyCat, wondering what to do. He had to think fast. He leaned over the seat and pocketed the keys from the ignition, exited the car, locked the door.
Sorry Rayne
. He walked up the red cobblestone sidewalk, past brightly colored trash and bottle receptacles, parking meters, and through the mottled shadows cast by the two trees in front of the copy shop. No time to alert Rayne. He knew how James had vanished so quickly before reaching the street corner.
The copy shop and the post office were separated by a narrow corridor between buildings, a perpendicular shortcut that connected Mt. Auburn Street and Brattle Street, which ran parallel. A man stood at the pathway’s entrance, his back leaning against the post office wall, while playing the Beatles,
Norwegian Wood
, on his six-string. Tim dropped two quarters into his open guitar case, turned right and headed into it. At midday, only a slice of sunlight hit the cobblestones down here. At this morning hour, the narrow path was bathed in shadows. Straight ahead of Tim, pedestrians moved in both directions. He strained his sore right eye, which had been bumped by drones the night before, but couldn’t see James. He moved through the shadows, moving his feet in rhythm with his pounding heart. He passed the sparkling windows of the Harvest Restaurant on his right, a venerable institution with a garden courtyard and heartburn prices. He kept legging it, and wondered if James had slipped inside one of the buildings in the corridor, or was walking really fast. Maybe sprinting. Or flat-out hauling ass. Straight ahead, he saw the cross street, Brattle. A mud-brown UPS truck stood in the street at the mouth of the shortcut, the uniformed driver putting his handcart into the rear. In yellow letters on the truck’s side:
Worldwide Services
Synchronizing the world of commerce
Then the driver slowly accelerated, unblocking a view of the corner nearby, Brattle and Church Street, which was just to the right, almost dead ahead.
Tim caught a second glimpse of the blue windbreaker. James Carney was heading up Church toward Mass Ave and the center of Harvard Square. He was moving along the sidewalk on the right side, passing one storefront after the next.
Tim crossed Brattle and cut onto Church. At the intersection, he began to step over the pavement markings of parallel, white stripes on gray asphalt, which always reminded him of piano keys. He’d seen the stripes a thousand times, at a thousand corners. The design was essentially universal. But today the row of long bars took on a strange new aspect. He stopped in the middle of the street, staring down. He saw a giant barcode stamped on the asphalt; an enormous, optical representation of data. A barcode was machine readable. Perhaps the events of the last two days had jackhammered his imagination. What machine, he wondered, could read painted data at the end of each street? The machine would have to be directly above the barcode to scan it. The scanner could be the width of the street, curb to curb, the size of a semi-trailer truck braked over the code and reading it. Tim’s heart quickened. Or the machine could read the code from above. Far above. A much smaller device could hover above the stripes, and scan it. Something as small as a bug.
A Tink.
Tim pictured drones swooping down, reading street barcodes. And the data?
He thought of Major DeZasta, C.C. Seymour.
He recalled the UPS truck. He pictured an EyeSoar fleet of delivery trucks. United Drone Service. UDS.
Worldwide Services
Synchronizing the world of surveillance
A horn honked
.
His dark daydream popped.
A pedestrian’s legs appeared alongside him, anchored with brown Oxford shoes shined to perfection. A voice sounded:
“What are you doing?”
Honk.
Tim’s eye rose from the asphalt code, and the no-nonsense shoes. With the cup taped to his left eyebrow, he faced the stranger, a forty-something man in a black suit and striped tie, and pointed at the bars. “They look like a barcode.” Tim glanced down again, pointing at the spray-painted evidence. “Ever notice that?”
After a moment of silence, the Oxford shoes retreated a full step. The man winced at Tim as if he were homeless, delusional, and clearly sleep deprived. The eye cup suggested a recent physical altercation while in an altered state induced by fortified wine and who knew what else.
Honk.
Tim raised his head, saw the stranger turn to the honking car, then back at Tim.
“You better get off the street. And sober up.”
Before Tim could respond, the stranger escaped to the curb and rejoined civilization.
Crowe, your head is all over the map. Focus, focus.
Crowe glanced at the honking driver behind the windshield, rolled one eye, and flipped him the finger.
The driver responded:
Honk.
Tim hastened off the barcode.
American Apparel
flanked his left.
Market in the Square
on the right was open 24 hours a day. He ducked between two customers entering the deli. He quickened his stride, wondering what to say, where to begin. His heart lifted at the sight of his recent companion. He shifted into a jog, moving past
Swiss Watchmaker
with the giant watch outside; the jewelry store,
Tistik
;
Dado Tea
; the family restaurant,
Fire and Ice
; and narrowed the gap by the Tex-Mex restaurant,
Border Cafe
, getting close behind him.
“James” he called out excitedly.
The man in the blue windbreaker was walking at an even pace. Upon hearing his name, he twitched, his stride losing its rhythm.
“James,” Tim called again. He was now about ten feet away.
James turned around. For a second, his face was a blank slate, uncertain who was calling his name. Then his expression darkened. His eyes widened as he looked at Tim; his voice loud and shrill: “Stop following me!”
“James, it’s me. Tim.” Tim held his hands out in the air, a friendly gesture. “Tim Crowe.”
James backpedaled a couple of steps. “Get away! Stop threatening me!”
Tim was stunned, speechless. The response made no sense.
“James, I thought you were—”
“Leave me alone. Back off
or I’ll call the police!”
Tim stood still, aware now of his heart pounding, hearing it drumming in his ears. Even with his limited vision, he could see onlookers slowing down in the morning sunshine, circling them in a wide berth, staring. Inside Border Café, a man was mopping the floor amid chairs stacked on tables, while safely watching the confrontation from behind a plate glass window. James looked at Tim accusingly, a mix of anger and fear. In turn, Tim felt embarrassed, felt a vague sense of guilt as if he’d unconsciously committed some unspoken crime.
When James clenched his fists in the air and screamed,
“Police,”
Tim sensed that his life was a runaway train.
Next stop: Deep Shit.
Welcome to Shitsville, U.S.A.
Rayne stood by the side of the Buick, leaning down, looking inside. Then she looked up and down Mt. Auburn Street. No sign of Tim. What could have happened? The possibilities were unsettling.
When your day begins with small drones appearing outside your bedroom window…
Either someone took him or he saw something. The Buick showed no evidence of a struggle or a break-in. She stared blankly at the car: keys gone, doors locked.
Something spooked him, or he would have come inside
CopyCat
and got her. She could only think of one likely explanation. The drones had somehow found the car, or had known their location all along. Wherever Tim was, he couldn’t be far away. She hadn’t been gone long.
She stepped away from the car and onto the sidewalk. Which direction? If only she had a witness, an observer nearby. A breeze lifted her hair as she stood still, thinking. Then she tuned into the sound of a guitar nearby. A familiar melody:
Eleanor Rigby
. Turning, she saw a busker up the street. She sprinted over to him.
“Excuse me. I’m looking for a friend. He was wearing a…” She put her fingertip on her left eyebrow.
“The dude with the thing taped over his eye?” He wore wool, fingerless gloves to keep his hands warm. Soon the sidewalk buskers would have to retreat to the subway for the winter season. When the outside temperature dropped below the mid-forties, their ranks thinned out.
“Yes.”
“I didn’t see him.”
Rayne flinched. “What?”
“Just messin’ with ya.” He jerked his thumb in the air, pointing down the corridor. “He went thataway.”
“Thanks.” She scooped a couple of dollars from her purse, dropped them into the guitar case.
“You’re a better tipper than him. C’mon by anytime.”
Rayne resumed her sprint, shooting though the shadows along the narrow path. No sign of Tim. No reason for him to stop inside this passageway. Brattle Street came into view. She thought it most likely that he arrived here, emerged from the corridor and into the sunlit street. She tunneled out into the daylight, stopped on the sidewalk. Now she had three options. Left, right, or straight up Church Street. This was a coin-flip moment. She moved over until she stood right at the corner of Brattle and Church, the center point. Which way? She turned slowly, scanning the area. Beneath the sound of traffic, the daily sounds, she heard something else. Voices. Not just voices, but excited voices. Or a single voice.
The voice sounded from nearby. She turned toward the noise. Church Street. She began walking in the street, alongside the parked cars, getting a better viewing angle. Something was happening up the street. Commotion, confrontation. She quickened her pace, and soon saw Tim. Why was he here? Who was he with? Then she heard:
“Leave me alone. Back off
or I’ll call the police!”
A circle of people surrounded the two. Most were watching while pretending not to watch. Wanting to see, but certainly not get involved. As if the two men at the center were a powder keg set to explode. The tension in the air was palpable. She saw at least two people nearby, raising their cell phones and recording the confrontation. Raw drama, along with family picnics and weddings, needed to be digitally preserved and distributed.
Then the man in the blue windbreaker shouted,
“Police!”
Rayne shuddered. She and Tim already had a ton of trouble. If trouble had a tipping point, they were close to critical mass. She sliced through the onlookers, grabbed Tim’s arm. He whirled around, one eye wide, ready to throw a punch, then the expression of defiance drained from his face when he saw Rayne.
“Rayne.” He sounded upset, confused.
She tightened her grip on his forearm. “Leave it. Let’s go.”
“I didn’t—“
She pulled him with force. “Let’s go. Now.”
Behind them, Carney shouted,
“I’ll have you arrested! Don’t you threaten me!”
“That guy…that’s James Carney.”
Rayne led him down the street, half running. “I don’t care if it’s Mahatma Gandhi—c’mon.”
They retraced their steps and returned to the Buick. Rayne started the car and put the heater on. The engine purred in neutral as Tim told her what had happened.
When he finished, she said, “I don’t get it.”
“I don’t either. ‘Stop threatening me?’ What does that
even mean?”
She gripped the steering wheel with both hands, set her forehead against the top of the rim. “Can it get any worse? Is there no bottom here? Do we just keep falling and falling?”
“It’s like the whole world has gone mad.”
She cursed, hit the steering wheel with the side of her fist, then slid down in her seat, head tilted up at the roof. “Two days ago…”
“I know.”
“And now…”
“What did you find out about EyeSoar.”
“Speaking of mad,” she said. “You’ve heard the term ‘market expansion’?” She waved an open hand through the air, across half of the dashboard, indicating the world beyond the windshield. She turned to Tim. A grim silence.
“Really?” he said.
“Really.”
They both turned to the windshield and, for a half minute, stared blankly down Mt. Auburn Street, gazing at everything, looking at nothing. Then she told him what she had learned. Finally, she asked, “What time is your hospital appointment?”
“3:00.”
“Looks like we have plenty of time for a car nap.”
“Oh, goodie.”
Rayne put it in gear and pulled onto the street. “Tim, I want my life back.”
