Known Afterlife (The Provider Trilogy, Volume One) (8 page)

Stalling had
grown accustom to this quirky habit as had Antone, though his friend never failed to blush at the site of her body in this state; always finding the need to check updates on his visor or casually turn to survey some distant spot in the server farm. Comfortable in her own skin and the choices she made in life, Stalling was certain she was conscious of the primal reaction the ritual action generated in the two of them. Unlike Antone, Stalling no longer hid his response. He concluded, despite how recluse and geeky his head scientist was, it never hurt to let a women know she was attractive. If it was not Stalling giving it to her, who would.

"I feared that would occur," Stalling replied after she had pounded out a half-mile or so.

"How is it you feared it and I didn't?" She huffed, doing nothing to disguise the anger in her voice.

Stalling had been on the receiving end of Jennifer's displaced aggression more than once. His intimacy with the bigger picture was a constant source of frustration for her analytical
mind and something she either refused, or in Stalling's opinion, feared to grasp.

"Until an hour ago, there was no sign, no warning. Shit, I didn't know it was conceivable until a few hours ago. What have you not told us Stalling?"

Despite his herculean patience, her accusation produced a rare show of anger across his face. Stalling gazed at the mainframe as his thumb absently traced the line of his tightly manicured beard. He was not angry with Jennifer it was with himself.

"It is n
ot a matter withholding anything. My full disclosure to the two of you has not wavered. The issue at hand has only just now revealed itself...a mistake made by me over twenty years ago. A mistake related to the very basic tenets of my original theory."

Jen
nifer, who had kicked into what was a full sprint for most, met his trademark, allusive statement with a flat stare. "Well you had better devise a plan on how to fix it and fast. By my calculations, we have less than six hours before everything becomes corrupted."

"What about the back up?" Antone chimed in.

"I'm confident all the back-up data is safe. But we all know, without the farm and mainframe, it's worthless," Jennifer said.

"Not entirely. Alterian Enterprises would live to see another day. Only a few
of our corporate clients would be affected by the problem and only to a minor degree. A mere inconvenience. Nothing money can't take care of." The statement repulsed Stalling before it cleared his lips.
The vision had never been about the money or the power. When did either become a concern?

Disturbed by these thoughts, Stalling turned back around to face Jennifer. Instinctually, sensing Stalling was on the verge of making a critical decision, Jennifer got off the treadmill. Stalling let the silence in his
mind settle for several moments, doing his best to clear all selfish thoughts. The action he must take next was clear the moment Clortison's seemingly unrelated words triggered the answer. He just wasn't ready to accept it, until now. His friends and followers made choices over the years using their own free will. This Stalling was sure of despite how persuasive he knew he could be. They trusted he would do the same.

"In order to save him, he must first die...again," Stalling stated. "Start the
shutdown process, the program is going off-line."

Chapter 7

"Your health remains my responsibility," Calivera had said, insisting she escort Steffor to the ceremony. He did not attempt to argue or to hide his delight at the prospect of her ongoing presence.

The remainder of that day she focused on Steffor's rehabilitation: hours of deep tissue massage, Source spas, cleansing steam showers, fo
llowed by a deep sleep induced by large doses of chemicals Calivera helped release from his own body. As she laid her head down to sleep soon after, exhausted beyond precedent, Calivera knew Steffor was in perfect physical health. Her lingering concern related to his mental state, an inconsolable melancholy pervading his attitude since his removal from the table. To part ways now, she concluded, would be negligent in her duties as a Healer.

Accurate as her observations and conclusions about Steffor were and
despite her exhaustion, Calivera could not sleep. She was unwilling to accept the consequence of Steffor's abrupt arrival in her life. Saving Steffor had irrevocably changed her and attempts at denying the event taxed her soul with every passing moment. As if thick sediment settled at the basin of her mind, repressed memories stirred, determined to rise to the surface.

Steffor roused a power within that, up to that moment, she was determined to keep dormant. The emergence and rapid growth of this mysteriou
s power aside, before Steffor, Calivera's life had been very fulfilling, finding all the solace she required in the Provider's Law. Now, that past existence read more like a mundane passage from the Deeds then the life she led for the past twenty eight years, or at best, the foggy remnants of a previous life long past.

Her discovery of the unique ability
—one the Mysticnet, after a lifetime of searching, showed no record of any Citizen, alive or past, ever possessing—coincided with her indoctrination as a Healer. She was young and clumsy at that time, her shifting limited to healing minor scrapes and bruises, but even then, she knew her ability to see the wounds of the
soul
was not normal. She managed to keep it hidden for years, up to the fateful day Master Higfreid, her first teacher and mentor, learned of it by accident.

Three months into her long awaited training, Higfreid was playing the role of patient, lying prone on a Healer's table, while teaching his students how to use the table as a conduit to both
amplify the healing properties of the Source and the patient's ability to consume it. It was then, as Calivera shifted the Source from the Provider's spirit into the table and began to transfer it into Higfreid's body, that she temporarily lost her grip on the strange power she had kept at bay for so long. Before she knew it, Calivera was probing his soul, revealing to both of them his deepest, darkest wounds dating from his current life all the way to his first incarnation, to the dawn of time itself.

It
was over as soon as it started: Higfreid shot up from the table to break their connection, turning to her for but a brief second, his face a mix of terror and awe, before moving onto the next student as if nothing had happened. From that incident alone, she learned how to keep the eerie talent hidden from her patients, but never from herself. Whenever she treated someone for an injury or illness, a person's deeper wounds were revealed for her to see; spiritual maladies compiled over hundreds or thousands of past lives, unconsciously influencing the wellbeing of the present. She resisted the temptation to dive into the soul of each, confident she could heal those invisible wounds. In the end, she feared how people would react but more importantly, she feared what she might find.

Over and over, she told herself,
the Provider will reveal the purpose of his gift in due time
. She would extenuate her decision to keep the power hidden from the whole by reciting to herself the popular verse from the Deeds: The Provider reveals that which we are prepared to see.
If the Provider intended for us to know the details of our past lives, then he would reveal them accordingly. Who am I to prevent another from learning of past mistakes, the opportunity to make the hard decisions they failed to make in the past.
Healing the spiritual wounds from past lives of those patients who randomly came to her shell, she concluded, was not her purpose. She would be patient.

Despite what she assumed was a harrowing experience for the other,
Higfreid became her most influential instructor and over the years of training that followed the incident, he remained a close mentor and confidant. Up to the day of Steffor's accident, Higfreid never confronted her directly about the unique ability. When he finally did, while discrete, his intent was clear.

The moment Steffor arrived in the ancient Healer's shell shifted deep into the Trunk's sapwood coursing with the Source, they placed him on the hallowed table before an assembly of the Provider's most e
xperienced Healers. They immediately began to apply all their knowledge in attempt to revive him. Calivera and dozens of others watched as they submerged the lifeless body into the Source infused table, the curved walls pulsating so bright with the Source one had to squint. But it was all for naught, the damage was too extreme, too much time had passed. After an hour with no pulse, they proclaimed him dead.

Calivera tossed fitfully in her bed at the memory, remembering the look of frustration across Higfrei
d's face as he turned from the table to catch her concerned stare. Without hesitation, as if on impulse, he requested everyone to leave the shell with the exception of Calivera. Once the room had cleared, he walked over to her and said, "If he is to be saved, it will be by your relationship with the Provider." With that, he left Calivera and Steffor to be alone.

She had stood next to the table for several minutes, fixed on the soft contours of Steffor's pale face protruding the surface, unsure of what Higfr
eid expected her to do.

My gift, whatever it may be, does not enable me to raise the dead!

Finally, not sure what would come of it, she lay onto the table and gently placed her forehead onto his. Without warning or permission, something summoned her power and forced it into action. She shivered uncontrollably, as the repressed memory keeping sleep at bay rushed to the surface, reliving the helpless feeling of that commanding presence ripping her essence from rigid body. As if pulled by a current, Calivera waded through Steffor's heart, exploring every haunted cove and joyous sea, but could not find his soul. Then, more a ping on her own heart then words to the ear, she heard Steffor's cry for help.

It hailed from the murky depths of an ocean of life that had
no end, a vast plane of solitude and peace. A place that she gravitated toward yet desperately feared to explore. As her energy began to fade, she realized the fear of not being able to save Steffor overrode all other concerns. Tying the Provider around her soul as if a lifeline, trusting it will lead safely back home, she swam, deeper and deeper, drawn to Steffor by a force she did not understand, knowing the moment she started that she would never have the strength to return. There was no turning back.

Sleep seeped into her mind at that moment, the pressure to recall the memories of what happened next too much, too soon.

*****

As they set out for Teuton Valley the next morning, Steffor appeared fit as ever. Word of his return to life had spread quickl
y across the Mysticnet and by the time they started to ascend the ornate stairways, spiraling ramps and winding roads of Razum's suburbs shifted into the limb’s ridged mesas. Citizens from all over the region crowded every deck, guardrail, window and balcony to witness his passing.

Children swam at his feet, sheepishly clinging to a finger or caressing a portion of his garments before running off with giddy delight. Trolley Shifters yelled fro
m their cars in hopes they could help him reach his destination, shops offered their finest wares and goods. Still steeped in the confusion, Steffor was gracious in his refusal and projected the poise and confidence of renown. Relief washed over Calivera, knowing she was the only one aware of the sadness etched deep into his heart.

They cleared the last village by mid-morning and soon after began their ascent of Sofelarus Pass: a rural trail shifted at a vertical, westward angle between the massive bark pla
tes known to that region of the Trunk. Since childhood, Calivera had loved the challenging hike, always enthralled by the peeled sides and ends of each bark plate, perceived by the traveler as scaly bluffs curving outward. The sun sliced through the horizontal canyon, shining a wide beam against the inner Trunk wall looming to their right, casting the shifted trail—etched far away from and well below the lip of the bottom bluff—in light shadow and cool temperatures.

Returning to the popular trail for the fi
rst time in several years, Calivera savored the aesthetic activity of life indigenous to the pass: the graceful flight of Sofelarian hawks nesting high in the rafters, the myriad of insects scurrying along the floor and walls, each in search of a meal or in desperate fight for survival, the maplen mouse, leaping from tunnel to tunnel with lightning speed; the soft beds of teal green moss growing everywhere.

Within a few hours of hiking up the pleasant pass, they reached the fork located on the southwest sid
e of the Trunk, relative in altitude to the three limbs that grew horizontal in that general vicinity and constituted for the region known as Sofelarus. All three branches—one growing downward to the northeast, another level and to the southwest, and the third due west—extended all the way to the edge of the Deagron Fields, providing a rare and spectacular aerial view of the Sevorist Root Mountain Range. But, for as long as the branches were, they were narrow, the maximum width of any no more than a couple a miles, mere twigs in comparison to goliaths like the Razum flying buttress or Constunkeen's massive prairie bough.

They chose the trail heading due west, which immediately began to round the Trunk. Within an hour, the trail crossed over to the base of th
e western branch, where they stopped to survey the next leg in their trek. For the past millennia, the west branch of Sofelarus, aptly named Shifter’s Way, was the primary training ground for the engineering Shifter.

Growing miles above and in parallel to
the Razum buttress below, Shifters Way was a three dimensional jungle, encased by a canopy of reddish-gold foliage and thick with vegetation: lush hanging fern gardens, reefs of countless epiphytes, bushes bursting with blooms and ripe berries and thickets of creeping vines. Altered by countless generations of Shifters, the convolution of sub-branch, stem, leaf and plant life offered a never-ending selection of trails, from the vigorous only the most adept climbers dare attempt, to the leisurely chosen by the regions residents and visitors alike.

Calivera watched Steffor train his Guardian vision up the limb's gradual ascent, to a location beyond her sight miles away. "At this pace, we should reach Fregak's Ladder before evening," Steffor stated. "If all rig
ht by you, once we reach Instenkul, I would like to make a short detour to Lake Arol, to meet with Master Kilton."

"I think that is an excellent suggestion," Calivera replied, concluding if there was one who could lift the cloud of depression clinging over
Steffor's soul, it was Kilton.

They entered the labyrinth, choosing a well-traveled trail, lit by brilliant sunbeams and replete with shifted steps and footholds. A half-hour in, Steffor guided them off the wide trail, up a latticed ramp shifted from stem
and vine.

Like any of the Provider's Citizens, Calivera was an adept climber and welcomed the change of pace. The new trail soon narrowed to shoulder width as it wound above the main branch floor, requiring Calivera to exert all her energy and focus on th
e next step. The exercise, she soon discovered, brought reprieve from the concerns still lingering from her restless night before. A few hours into the vigorous hike, she was disappointed to see Steffor turn to the side and plop down to rest.

Dangling thei
r legs over the thin stem, they ate a simple meal of nuts, berries and a few slices of kuwani, a novel treat Calivera was pleased to see Steffor enjoy. Calivera sensed a lift in Steffor's spirits as the afternoon had worn on. When permitted by an open stretch or wider section along the trail, they had spent the time actively listening to the other tell stories about their separate pasts, a diversion that produced frequent smiles and genuine cheer from both.

Now, as they shared a meal in silence, Calivera ca
ught Steffor frequently admiring her bare legs, exposed high above the thigh by her sensible but tight-fit hiking shorts. The desire witnessed in his eyes stirred her libido, for many times that day she too caught herself leering at Steffor's taut backside. His feline grace softened every move and gesture, leading her to daydream of his embrace: her hands moving from his supple neck and shoulders, down the small of his back, to the cleft between buttocks and thigh, as he caressed her in kind.

It is the natu
ral bond formed between patient and Healer
, she thought in attempt to dismiss both of their behaviors.
It will pass in due time. Besides, I am not attracted to Guardians.

Guardians were a Healers most common patient and, before meeting Steffor, her view of
the race, from an attraction standpoint, was one of indifference. By design, she did not spend much energy—unlike most young Citizens—in exploring what type of person she was attracted to but as an unspoken rule, she had ruled out Guardians as candidates for potential mates.