Final Solstice (22 page)

Chapter 2

Down in the Star Chamber, Mason stopped to check out the state of the world as revealed by the huge screens. A greater number of Solstice employees were in the area, manning their stations, staring at the screens or engaging in private conversations and analysis. Near the center of the western section Mason found Gabriel. He was walking away, rather intent and with a frustrated look on his face.

“Trouble in paradise?” Mason asked, looking over his son’s shoulder at the likely source of his concern—Annabelle. The girl was flushed, refusing to look up, just throwing herself into some project on her screen.

Gabriel shook his head. “Nothing to worry about. I heard you had a luxury ride in to work this morning.”

“I won’t get used to it. Still, it was nice to spend some time clarifying things with our boss.”

“I’m glad for that. Speaking of whom, I’ve got to run to a meeting with him.”

“I’m not invited?”

Gabriel smiled. “Not yet. Be grateful. Not everything we do around here is fun.”

Mason glanced around at all the overwhelming stimulus, and then back to Annabelle, wondering what Gabriel did to ruin that for now. “So, son don’t you worry about your mission?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Look around,” Mason said. “All this, and the deal with the WMO. You’re no longer the outcast, the rebel with a cause. Now, if all this works the way you intend it to, if you start saving lives and giving away all this amazing foreknowledge about weather patterns, controlling nature for once instead of the other way around, well … don’t you see what will happen?”

Gabriel just stared ahead.

Okay, don’t take the bait. I’ll continue.
“Your mantra of climate change. The political and social movement, being on the right side of history against the evils of overpopulation, pollution and resource plundering.”

“What about it? None of that changes.”

“Doesn’t it? I would argue the opposite. That your movement was making good progress, that as long as the these disasters kept striking home and hurting regular people where it counts—in their wallets as well as in their homes—then you had a swelling of support and eventually all that pressure would result in the global change. But now,” Mason pointed to the center screen, the largest, showing an interconnected series of satellite dots around the representation of the earth, all transmitting data and presenting schematics and specs, “all that goes away. If this all does what Solomon claims it can, then the world has a safety net—one that will just make everyone feel that much better about driving their SUVs and cranking up their furnaces and drilling for those fossil fuels.”

Something flickered, dark and treacherous, behind Gabriel’s eyes. “It changes nothing,” Gabriel said through grit teeth. “And that’s not what will happen. You’ll see. The world has its own timetable, and the day of reckoning won’t be delayed.”

Mason smiled back. “As long as it waits until the younger generation inherits the mess.” He clapped his hand on Gabriel’s shoulder and walked passed him. “Don’t be late for your meeting.”

Twisting away, Gabriel stormed off without a backward glance.

As he left, Mason returned his attention to the main screen, studying the information on the satellites, analyzing their positions, seeing something familiar. It tugged at his mind, much like the program on his laptop. So much so, seeing the configuration, reading the statistics that scrolled by, not quite understanding any of it, but still …

“Amazing, isn’t it.” A voice at his side. She’d been standing there, he wasn’t sure how long. “Annabelle?”

“Hi, Mr. Grier.”

“Please, call me Mason.”

“I feel strange about that.”

“Well, whatever makes you comfortable. And sorry I couldn’t help notice, you and Gabriel …?”

Annabelle looked down. “He’s driven. Sometimes. And he makes sacrifices for this work. He …” She shook her head.

“I know,” Mason said. “Believe me, I’m his father and I haven’t been able to reach him for years. I was just hoping we’d have another chance, but you’re right. He can be very focused on things that I would say are not the things that really matter.” He looked at Annabelle. “Losing sight of personal connections and imagining a greater responsibility that can never be achieved isn’t a good thing. I’ve wrestled with that balance myself.”

Annabelle nodded. “In your career, always looking out for the community. Like a doctor caring for everyone else but himself and his family.”

“Exactly.” Mason sighed. “So, what do you do around here? And for that matter, what do I do? What should I be doing right now?”

Annabelle let out a laugh, relaxing around him now. “Well, that’s a good question. Actually two questions. I … I serve in whatever way I can. Solomon recognized my skills and brought me in to complement some of the others, including Gabriel. And I’ve held my own.”

“You must be good, then. Surely you had some competing offers?”

She looked up sharply, then glanced around, and when she spoke again it was with caution. “Of course I did. There was some serious competition when Solomon first made his move to set up Solstice as an independent company under his leadership. A lot of us … had choices to make.”

“And do you feel you made the right one?”

“Sometimes,” she said, but her eyes were red and trembling, Mason noticed as she looked up again at the satellites.

He decided to change the subject. “These satellites … I’m wondering, I mean I know the big push for Solstice was access to the WMO’s global network. The land and sea based weather centers, the servers and data centers. But the focus here I’m seeing seems to be on the satellites. Do you know why?”

Annabelle shook her head. “I’m thinking that’s probably what they’re talking about now in that meeting. And you asked earlier about your role. I think whatever they’re deciding, whatever this all has to do with, they need you for the next step.”

Mason looked back at the screen. “Do you have any idea what that might involve? I mean, I know they said they wanted me for the human element—my intuition, my skill at reading the data and coming to a gut feel conclusion.”

“Yeah that sounds right.”

“Does it?” Mason shook his head. “I’m not sure.” Mason thought for a moment.
She knows. More than she’s saying. Maybe she’s been told to keep it a secret. Or more likely … she’s scared.

That was it. He could hear it in her voice.

“I don’t know,” Annabelle added. “Well, I need to get back to work. You should head to your office. I’m sure there will be an email or an assignment or something. That’s how it usually works.”

“Yeah I’ll do that. But first …” He thought of something. Lowered the strap of his laptop bag and took out the computer. “Let me show you something.”

O O O

He set up at her station, and after checking around first to make sure that creepy Victor guy wasn’t around, Mason started up the program. Annabelle seemed nervous at first, and didn’t act too interested, but as soon as the kaleidoscopic swirling lines and geometric spinning figures took over the screen, she leaned in, enraptured.

After a minute, she started to nod.

“I see it now. It’s a subliminal program.”

“Huh?” Mason squinted and moved his head in and back. “Like one of those 3D pictures where you stare long enough and finally see an elephant riding a dolphin?”

“No, I’ve seen this before. I was a psych major, and I researched some techniques involving therapy for deep-seeded repression. Things like this program here often helped break through mental blocks.”

She looked up at Mason. “Where did you get it from?”

Mason started to tell her. She had that expression, and her tone seemed genuine, but still, she was Gabriel’s girlfriend. Or at least, had been up until recently. And she was a Solstice girl. He didn’t know how loyal she was. Better to be safe—and maybe he could get something out of her in the process. He thought up a quick lie.

“It was on the laptop when I got it. Part of my orientation, a list of files to open and run. Most of the others were weather installation programs, password setup kind of stuff, but this …”

Annabelle still had a perplexed look on her face. She stared at the patterns a little more, and just as Mason watched and started feeling lightheaded again, she nodded. “I would suggest, then, that you take this back to your office and keep studying it.”

She said it confidently, but her tone had changed. Mason could tell she was reverting back to loyalty mode. Convincing her that Solstice wanted him to have this “memory-block” eraser thing made her go with it. Just trying to be helpful, he imagined, but he also sensed possibly a hint of some concern for him.

“It works on the subconscious, so it might help you relax and access that intuition Solomon wants you to develop.”

“Yeah. That’s probably it.”
Actually, I’m sure that’s not it.
Mason blinked and resisted the pull of the shapes and twisting lines, and for a moment he almost saw words in the mix of weird geometry. He shook his head.
Whatever it is I’m supposedly blocking, Shelby knows about it. Have to talk to her first.

He reached for his phone. “I’ll get going then.” He closed the laptop and stepped away.

“Hope it works,” she said with a nervous smile. “And good luck with everything.”

Mason nodded and looked back up at the massive screen and all the other ones surrounding it. The satellite orientation around the earth again triggered something, a memory, an image, and with some difficulty he put out of his mind all the other weather-related imagery and news and statistics crowding the screens.

He took a step back, still studying the main viewer.

Annabelle had taken notice. “Mr. Grier? Something else I can help you with?”

“Just … the way the satellites are set up is interesting.”

“Oh that’s not all of them,” Annabelle said. “I noticed too that there were fifty that we now have access to, but Solomon had the engineering team only activate these twelve as the ones to provide coverage and data access.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Mason said. “More data is always preferable to less. And I’m sure there are whole areas of the globe not covered by just these twelve, so I don’t understand why—”

Then he remembered.
The orientation of the stones drawn on the wall in Palavar’s upstairs bedroom. Around the altar. Around the sacrifice. Weren’t there twelve there too?

Mason’s blood chilled.

It was the same configuration.

O O O

He tried four times from his office to reach Shelby, but the calls only went straight to voice mail. On the next try, the call was interrupted. It was a number he recognized as the hospital.

“Mason,” Lauren’s voice. “I’m calling from my room.”

“Good to hear your voice.” Mason leaned back in the chair and diverted his eyes from the subliminal program to the side wall, to the view of the serene mountains and streams. “How are you feeling?”

“Like that time at Gabe’s little league practice when I took a baseball to the head.”

“Oh jeez. That bad?”

“Worse, actually but I’ll manage. Listen, I’m calling because—and I’m sure this is just crazy—but I wanted to talk to you, hear your soothing voice after the awful dream I just had.”

“A dream?”

“Yeah, probably just from lack of sleep and all the medications and everything’s that’s happened, especially with the fright over Shelby, but … Oh god Mason it was so terrible.”

She had his attention now. “You can tell me if it will help. I’m sorry I’m not there with you; I figured you’d be sleeping most of the day. If you want, I can come right back.”

“No, it’s no problem. I’ll be resting, but I just wanted to tell someone. Shelby … I tried to call her because it was that raw, that disturbing.”

Mason waited, and for a moment he imagined the faux sky dimmed, the lighting shifting despite no clouds in the virtual sky.

“I was in a field, or a forest,” Lauren said. “But not in my wheelchair. I was standing, and at first I was thrilled by it. Feeling my bare feet on the grass, wriggling my toes in the earth. But then I realized the dirt was full of worms, and bugs and maggots.”

Mason trembled.

“But the worst was that I walked through them, squishing them and kept going, toward a circle of people. Twelve of them, I remember. All wearing hoods and carrying weird old sticks. I walked, in a daze, into the circle and saw …”

The room darkened further, and the images flickered and Mason almost dropped the phone as he stood up and gaped at the change. He was in the forest she was describing. Larger than life figures moved past him under a canopy of braches and leaves, all scattering when they hit the overhead tiles of the regular ceiling, but even that solidity seemed to be losing cohesion as she spoke.

What the hell is happening? This can’t be a projection or wall simulation.

He reached out to touch the nearest body—but that’s when he saw the altar up ahead. The white stone slab set upon two square blocks. And on it …

“Oh Mason, it was Shelby. And she … she was screaming. This figure stood over her with a bloody knife.”

Mason saw it, as if her words conjured the imagery through his eyes and projected them on the screen.

“He stabbed her, Mason, again and again. I screamed and tried to run to her, but now the ground was full of snakes, and they locked my ankles in place and held me down. Shelby … she turned her head.…”

And she looked right at Mason, with eyes free of pain and a broad smile as if to say:
I wanted this. I went willingly.

The figure with the crimson knife lifted his head, and looked in Mason’s direction.

“Her killer, he looked right at me Mason, and he—”

—pulled back his hood.
Mason gasped and now he did make contact with the wall and everything blasted to white, but not before he saw the face behind the hood.

“—it was Gabriel.”

O O O

“I’ve never had such a vivid dream,” Lauren said after her voice calmed, after several more deep breaths and after Mason tried to convince her it was normal.

“Everything that’s happened lately, Gabriel at this job, the way they took Shelby to administer the cure. You’re going through exactly the same sort of mental reasoning I am.” Mason spoke gently. “Your dream—nightmare really—is what we were both fearing inside, that Gabriel had some ulterior motive behind all this. Given Shelby’s research and her studies, which I’m sure she’s shared with you, it’s more than understandable that your mind came up with this, mixing everything together as it did.”