Next History: The Girl Who Hacked Tomorrow (29 page)

“The President, not waiting for any help from our nation’s leadership, has called out the National Guard in six states. One deployment was delayed when the division’s team of three senior officers left their posts and checked into a hotel room with uppers and champagne.

“We break now for an emergency appeal from the Red Cross, and we ask that those of you who can will give generously. God willing, we’ll be back in a moment.”

“Lylit
told me we are supposed to make a bargain. Is that what you mean?”

Tharcia sits on a courtyard bench, Lian beside her in tailored slacks. To him sitting is no different than standing. Although heavy rain falls, the
courtyard remains dry. Tharcia, in her
Goddess Culture
T-shirt and black tights, legs crossed lotus fashion, finds the air comfortably warm.

Tharcia liked Lylit. Seemed a sensible woman. Except for the inside-her-head thing, she felt
a kinship. A woman as old as the universe? Unlikely, but she would like to meet this Lylit face to face.

It has taken Tharcia some time to get used to the language. She hadn’t realized at first that Lian and Lylit were speaking a strange tongue, but after listening a while, her brain clicked it into focus. The language of the spell, the language she’d learned on the CD in her car the night those
skritchy-skritchy
noises chased her from the house. The harder she tries to listen, the less she comprehends. When she stops trying, meaning flows to her and she’s able to respond without thinking about words.

Lian nods. High above in gray sky he
follows wide looping arcs of two winged craft. They have held station above the building since an hour after his arrival, watching, waiting.

“That is the nature of the spell you cast. You summoned me to make a
bargain.”

“A
bargain. Did it also turn my bedroom into a deep freeze?”

“Oh that. Some of Lylit’s demon friends have a warped sense
of humor. We can get rid of it.”

“Really? Is it hard?”

Lian shrugs. “It’s done. But back to the bargain. Your spell demands this, it’s one of the oldest rules. The usual thing is, I grant whatever the petitioner wants for the rest of their life, in exchange for their eternal soul. So ask away. Money, friends, adulation, achievement, beautiful lovers, supernal talents. You name it I can get it for you wholesale. And get on with my work.”

“My spell? Don’t put that on
me!”

“It is the spell you cast. I can’t leave until I grant
what you ask.”

“Well, I didn’t pick it. Your girlfriend picked it.” Tharcia tells him how she found the handwritten
poem, how it had sounded like nonsense syllables when she read it aloud in Clay’s shop. “Also, there was this dream. I spoke to a woman who said she was my secret twin. She said I needed a larger pentagram. She sounded like Lylit.”

“But you came here to summon me.
It was your intention.”

“
Yes, only I didn’t come here. I did it at my house.”

Lian shakes his head slowly. “
Humans are becoming unreasonably powerful. And how did it happen that it took three days for me to find you?”

“No idea. But please don’t scare me like that, ever. I only wanted to talk to my mom.”
Tharcia does not associate Lian’s question with the fact that she uttered the spell while gazing at the Pentagon on Clay’s laptop, its clock three days in the past.

“
Your mother has passed into Spirit. What would you say to her?”

“
Stuff between us. My mom was very bad in life. I figured she is a demon by now and I could conjure her.”

Lian thro
ws back his head with a pleased laugh. “It doesn’t work that way. Except for the ones who were created in the beginning, a good demon takes eons to develop. Like achieving sainthood.”

“Can you really not hurt her? She doesn’t deserve it. Things happened to her in life, you know.”

“Mortals have such a mixed-up view of things. Do you suppose she is in hell?”

“
Dude, where else?”

“Aside from the fact there is no such place? She has rejoined One Spirit,
the universal consciousness, as all living beings do. Your mother is fine.”

“Well I still want to talk to her. I want to take care of her. But what is this bargain we’re supposed to do?”

“We’ll come back to that. There are things you must understand. You wonder where your mother can be. She still exists, but she is not in a body. There are many mythological, religious, philosophical, and psychological descriptions of human essence. We’re talking about the incorporeal essence of a person, which holds the record of their life.”

“The soul?”

“Nearly so. There is so much folklore about that word. You’ll be clearer if you call it consciousness. Or Spirit. The vital breath within all living things.”

“
Consciousness. Do animals have souls?”

“Well, yes, but that term will confuse you.
Consciousness is fluid until it takes mortal form. Ego does not exist until consciousness takes human form. So if you think of your cat as going to heaven, you are confusing concepts. The cat’s consciousness goes back to One Spirit. But animals don’t have ego.”

“Where does ego come from?”

“I invented it.”

“
Wait wait. You invented the ego?”

“Not exactly. The Creator made it, I marketed it.
The Creator made me work hard, as with the other supreme angels, as you call them.”

“So the ego, why did you want one?”

“When I became separated from Lylit, I was lonely. Powerfully so. I gave myself an ego, the center of self-realization. The Creator provided the ego as a survival tool for mortals, for self-preservation. But I overdid it. The ego’s vital purpose is to build a strong dynamic self. In my loss, mine took control, and caused me to forget about gratitude. For a time, I saw myself as above everything. Found myself in disagreement with the Creator. I was told to take some time out.”

“Time out. So how was it after?”

“Mm. Still going on.”

“How do you feel about that?” A question Tharcia’s
psychologist often falls back on.

“I feel fine. Most humans assume that I hate the Creator. The Creator and I are closer than you could
understand. We respect each other well. We have the same intentions for the universe but our approaches do not agree at this time.”

“Different approaches to what? Didn’t
this Creator like the way you run hell?”

“Please get off the hell thing. The Creator and I
both value free will in mortals. We both want to see the design of mortal beings become perfected.”

“Huh? You mean we’re not done yet?”

“Not nearly so. Humans presume that creation took place in an instant. To the Creator it is a process of eternity, ever incomplete. The Creator and I are unwilling to force people to a particular decision. We hope that they will properly educate themselves and become complete. We both desire for mortal beings to see the truth.”

“Dude, what does being complete look like to you?”

“Being able to soften ego boundaries, for one. Being present, for another. To share with and empathize with others. Being in a state of constant gratitude.”

“Empathy.”

“Gratitude.”

“The truth?”

Lylit needs another avatar. She would prefer to have the same one, the woman
who was so elegant in life, her mind so clean and bright. Shame she had died so young. As a Spirit being who can move freely through dimensions of time, Lylit repeats her steps to locate the woman called Cynthia Mullen at the moment of her death. Mullen had died by falling into an icy lake, her remains never found. The first time, Lylit merged into the woman’s sinking body after deep unconsciousness set in, before brain and cellular damage, and with effort raised the lifeless form to the surface. The consciousness that had occupied Cynthia Mullen’s bones heart and mind for forty-four years had already departed.

Lylit now in the form of a
snowy owl waits at the exact point in time and space, perched on a fence post above the muddy bank where Mullen’s car came to rest at a steep angle. The owl’s head turns. A disturbance on the water’s surface. A figure struggles through icy water toward shore, difficult in the sodden winter coat. Choking sounds and labored breathing.

“Lylit,” the owl
calls softly.

Embodied as Cynthia Mullen, Lylit looks up, sees the owl regarding her from its wise face. She laughs, surprised and pleased to recognize herself in legendary totem bird attire. The Cynthia Mullen Lylit reaches the bank stiff with cold, bends to eject a quantity of icy river water
from lungs and stomach.

“Gah! Drowning is one of the worst.” Looks at the owl, tries to adjust the
weighted clothing. The coat stiff with ice in the wintry air. “There’s something up, or both of us wouldn’t be here.”

“There is. You get killed soon.”

“Not again! Who is it this time? Mystigor? Apatsed?”

“Mystigor and Sara.”

“Unbelievable. They are still misled. What do you need, Sis?”

“You get to have some fun first. Peek if you want, but you might like to let it play
out.”

“I love surprises! Don’t tell me.”

“We need to duplicate this one.”

“Ah, so you are going to continue the story after my death?”

“I always knew you were smart.”

A mist gathers around the owl on the branch, traceries
extend to engulf the woman, cloud swirls around sacred center. When the mist retreats, two identical women stand on the muddy bank. One is naked, dry. Both are freezing cold. The women regard one another silently.

“So tell me,” says Lylit in the heavy coat, “why are we going back?”

“We meet a man.”

“
Ooh, the way you say that. He was special?”

“He’s
looked within and learned to love himself.”

“
Ah. He has found where we dwell, in the heart of every male. Don’t tell me any more!”

“But
there is greater purpose than that. And, you have to do one thing different.”

“
Mm?”

“You have to get rid of the body.”

“I love you,” says Lylit in the heavy coat.

“I love you,”
says Lylit, naked and shivering. She imagines herself in the dressing room of a thrift shop in San Jose California. It is morning, the shop will open in an hour. In minutes she selects a chic wardrobe, a purse and shoes. A few muddy footprints mark her way. At the cash register, she leaves a small gold coin. Then, it’s a simple matter to visit the County vehicle impound, and not too difficult to convince the smitten attendant that there’s been a clerical error. It’s time for Lillian Jones to take her car away.

Inside the car,
everything is disturbed. Lillian looks in vain for the restaurant menu with Clay’s number on it, gives up, knows she’ll be able to find his house. She drives the black Aston off the lot. The day is warming as she heads toward the coast, the car’s heater turned full blast.

Detective Junipero Garcia drives up the shaded dirt track to the old bunkhouse in the redwood grove, followed by a white SUV with gold Sheriff decals on both doors and bars in the windows. He’s had some heat from the command chain on the Jane Doe thing, is pressured now to make an arrest. He doesn’t understand, since it’s a San Jose matter, why he’s picking the guy up. It plopped in his lap due to his deceased Santa Cruz auto mechanic and Cicero Clay’s phone number, written on the takeout menu in feminine handwriting. Garcia thinks it’s rather thin as evidence, but his captain is fixated on closure. Garcia argued that the current swarm of cases should be triaged, managed in priority order. And he believes that what they have on Clay won’t make it through a bail hearing. But his captain is saying
butts behind bars
and that is the end of it. Maybe after this week he can get some sleep.

Garcia gets out of his car, walks up to the
white SUV. “Hey, keep this low-key. Dude’s alright. You guys stay put.”

“S’not procedure Garcia,” one protests.

“This whole thing is counter to procedure. Hang tough.” Garcia starts for the house, notices the high double doors of the metal building stand open, heads that way. He finds Clay at a drill press, making holes in a squealing aluminum panel. Glances at the low-wing airplane, raps on the metal workbench until Clay turns.

“Detective. What brings you here?” Clay is sure it’s another routine cop visit to confirm a few things, perhaps try to rattle him into some admission, probe around the corners of the situation with the dead woman. Maybe
he’ll offer the guy a coffee, he looks so beat. Clay’s unhappy he’s not heard from Lillian. Still in a glow from the connection they had, but it’s been two days now. Hopes she’ll be back. Damn shame if she lost his phone number.