The Devil's Dream: Book One (29 page)

"You see this,
here? This is his brain."

She was looking at a
house on the screen. A large thing surrounded by a high fence, barbed
wire wrapped over the top. The yard was dead, no sign of green
anywhere, and on either side of the winding pathway leading up to the
house were huge dogs held to their spots by chains hooked to posts
that were planted in the ground. The yard, the dogs, the fence, all
of it looked like a decrepit property run by someone who hated the
world.

Until she looked past
the yard and saw the house. It was beautiful. Stone laid upon stone,
with a high roof that seemed a mere breath away from touching the
clouds. The windows all revealed white lace curtains blocking the
view inside.

The property wasn't
fleshed out of a cartoon, but real, looking alive. She could see the
dogs breathing, watched one lie down in the brown dirt.

"What is this?"
She asked.

"We had it
designed when we kept getting lost inside his mind. We were pointing
and clicking on the parts of the brain we had mapped out, but Brand
somehow managed to put down traps for us and it would completely shut
the computer down, which would then take a day or two to get back up.
This yard here? That was one of the hardest spots to navigate,
because at first we had no idea there was a fence up, then we didn't
realize there was this barbed wire." He made air quotes as he
said the word, "And these dogs? Jesus, that took a while. It
became too much marking down everything on the actual spots of his
brain, so we created this."

"But the dogs are
moving?"

"Yeah, this thing
isn't static, it isn't like a picture because the map of Brand's
brain isn't static. What we gathered from him is all here, but it's
constantly moving, constantly adapting."

"How is that
possible? His mind is no longer hooked up, right?"

"Yes and no.
Physically, he's gone. However, after being hooked up for ten years,
the system learned everything about him—how his brain reacts, where
he wanted things to move and when, how his thought patterns changed.
That doesn't mean we control this thing, only that it's going to move
and adapt the way Brand would if he was still hooked to a Silo.
Yesterday we lost a dog. The chain is still there in the back of the
yard, but it ran into the house and is probably lost somewhere
inside. To be honest, I haven't played around with this thing much
since the cops were removed last week. The vault is inside the house,
as well as other traps. Most of it's mapped out, but we could
probably find more tricks he set up. He knew he couldn't get the
information he wanted if he closed himself off to our systems, but he
did everything he could to keep us out."

Allison understood why
she had lost her job. Brand wasn't human. He was something from
another planet, something that wasn't meant to be born here on Earth,
something that was almost a blasphemy to the rest of God's creations.
She couldn't compete, couldn't be asked to stop someone like this.

"What if I had
been put in a Silo for ten years?"

"It would be like
the other two prisoners we have. Point and click on parts of the
brain to understand what they mean. Not complex. The arduousness of
what he's done here, I can't even begin to describe it. I would have
said it was impossible before I saw it, that no one could program
their mind against our computers, but he has. Would you like to see
the vault?"

Impossible
.
That's the word Riley used to describe this little scenario set up on
his computer screen. Everything this man had done was looked at as
impossible until he did it. Then it simply became part of his legend.

"Yes, show it to
me, please," Allison said.

He clicked along the
path and the screen moved as if someone was actually walking. The
dogs didn't try to leap off their chain, only laid or sat with their
eyes following the invisible stranger on the path they were meant to
guard.

"Why don't they do
anything?"

"Brand didn't want
them to alert us. When we were stumbling along here blind, we
couldn't hear or see the dogs, which are just traps, because they
didn't jump out at us. We would just basically walk into them and
then the computer would lock up. At one point we had to bring in a
whole new computer because of his traps."

Riley navigated the
path with the speed of someone who had done this countless times.
Through the heavy wooden door and then into the house. He didn't slow
down once inside, and what Allison saw was a blur as he walked
forward. A mirror standing the length of the wall, a black hole in
the middle of the floor that seemed to drop forever as Riley trotted
around it. He went up a staircase, going to the left and right
because large spikes were driven up through the wooden floorboards;
spikes so long they would pierce completely through the foot with
multiple inches to spare. She could see from the top of the staircase
that there were others stairs, some going down, some going up, and
she began to get the sense that this place was more a maze than a
house—that if she were to take control of the mouse she would
quickly find herself lost.

He opened a door and
there it stood.

A bank vault sat in the
room, touching the ceiling in its vastness. It stretched across half
the room, more than twice the length of a man.

"Here it is,"
he said. "It's literally the closest thing I can think of to
represent what he did, and the combination is beyond anyone I know.
The metaphor I used about flakes coming off a rock might not have
been apt, but until you saw this, it would be hard for you to
understand. When we mapped out the dimensions of the vault, there
were things we learned. Little things. One was his hate for Linda
Lucent. Perhaps he had meant to put that inside, maybe he didn't, but
there was residual knowledge on the outside of this thing. I sent it
up the chain of command, but I'm not sure how much help it was given
the attention she was already getting. There's probably more
information inside this thing," he said, pointing at the screen,
"than we would know what to do with. Unfortunately, I don't
think we can open it."

Allison stared, almost
not believing any of this.
The
hate for Linda Lucent was a residual on the outside of it? What did
that even mean? Like instead of Brand leaving fingerprints on
something, he left hate?
The whole thing was completely
beyond her.

"Why can't you get
in? Couldn't you blast it open?"

"If we tried
something like that, kind of wiring the piece of his brain that hides
this thing, the whole structure would collapse. We would get inside,
but in doing so, the whole house would fall down around us. The
impact would destroy the computer, but more importantly, we would
have no way to get back inside his brain. Everything would disappear.
He couldn't delete anything he came across or anything he gave us,
but he set everything up so perfectly we have no chance of getting to
it."

"What would it
take to get in?"

Riley laughed. "If
I knew, I'd already be there. We've tried hacking it, we've tried
letting the computer hack it. There's a combination of numbers that
will open it, but we don't know what they are. Every algorithm we've
ran came up empty."

"So you're giving
up?"

"We've got other
people to look after, and I have to do a good job of making sure I'm
not fired over the next couple of months. A lot of people could trace
this right back to me and there wouldn't be much I could say."

Allison nodded.
"Luckily I think they might have stopped the firings with me,
and don't plan on looking much further back right now."

"What else can I
do for you, Agent Moore?"

"Nothing else to
show me?"

"We could go
deeper into his brain, I could let you look around. There's a room
created for his son and another for his wife. They're both pretty
magnificent. It's hard to look at those and not feel for the guy.
Would you like to see?"

She didn't want to look
at his son's room. She didn't want to be reminded of Marley, of her
not waiting at home for Allison to come back. She didn't want to
think about this man's willingness to sacrifice innumerable humans
while she couldn't sacrifice a job. Rally though. She felt for Rally
because she knew the woman. He was separated from her for fifteen
years, and yet he came to the restaurant for her, to take her away
and then bring her back because she asked it of him. Allison didn't
think that Brand ever entertained thoughts of keeping Rally against
her will. Allison had listened to the calls; she understood that his
love wasn't a charade.

"Will you show me
what his wife's room looks like?"

"Sure. We can go
there. Grab a chair from across the room and we'll give it a look."

* * *

The door opened in
front of Allison, and while she couldn't actually smell it, she saw
the rose petals immediately on the floor. Hundreds, maybe thousands
of them, covering the entirety of the room. No one who stepped inside
here need ever touch the floor. She imagined the sweet smell of
flowers reaching her nose if this place actually existed.

The door swung all the
way open, and Allison, sitting in her chair, lost her breath.

The ceiling was the
moon. There were no painted wooden panels, no bricks or stone, but
the actual moon's curvature sinking into the room. It shone a cool,
pale light, illuminating everything. Allison walked in, reached up
and stretched to her tippy toes, her finger caressing the sand of the
moon. It shifted under her hand, but didn't fall to the floor—the
moon holding some strange gravity. A shelf lined the wall: a dark,
red wood, unbroken as it stretched along the circular room. Allison
brought her hand away from the moon, ignoring the statue in the
middle of the room, and walked to the wall.

Jewelry was strung
along the shelf. Rally's jewelry. Gold necklaces, diamond earrings,
bracelets. Nothing was matched, but placed randomly, gorgeously.
Allison imagined that if Rally could walk in here, could see this,
she would understand he placed everything
exactly
as he wanted it. She touched a black earring on the shelf,
but didn't pick it up. She didn't want to disturb what had been done
here. Years of dedication in making everything perfect and she was
walking through as an unwanted visitor, prying into someone else's
thoughts. Behind the shelf, on the wall, a video streamed, also
stretching across the entirety of the room. The video was built
directly into the wall, showing different parts of their life
together on what looked like an infinite reel. Allison walked along
the shelf watching the movie, looking at the couple hugging, the
couple arguing, the couple sleeping. There were no parts of the video
where they were separated; whatever it showed, be it a good memory or
a poor one, they were together.

Rose petals were
scattered amongst the jewelry, lightly sprinkled as if they had
fallen from the sky in a sparse rain. She found Brand's wedding band
sitting under Rally's at the center of the shelf. She stopped,
looking down as Rally's sat partly on top of his, leaning on it for
support.

Allison looked on for a
second and then turned to see the middle of the room.

The statue stood,
something carved out of stone in the same manner the Greeks had
praised their Gods. It was Rally, standing in a dress, wearing no
shoes, her right hand partly covering a smile and her left reaching
out in a 'stop' gesture as if someone was making her laugh too hard.
Allison reached up and nearly touched the stone, realizing as she did
the effort that had gone into this. True, everything was a
representation Riley created, but the underlying world was all Brand.
The curved mouth, the fingernails that stuck just so far from the
fingers. Individual strands of hair somehow showing out of the
granite block. The mental effort it took to remember every single
detail and then recreate it in stone. Allison didn't deserve to touch
it, didn't deserve to take part in it because she had done nothing to
create it.

She put her hand back
to her side.

Brand had stored his
wife here for all those years that he had no one. How many times had
he visited this, understanding that he would never see her again,
that he could only watch the memories flowing across the screens he
created and look on at the statue he built. This was his sanctuary,
the place where he kept his wife.

Briefly, for a few
seconds only, Allison allowed herself to forget all the people
Matthew killed.

* * *

"Want to see his
son's room? It's even harder to look at than this."

Allison wiped tears
from her eyes, sitting in the chair next to Riley.

"I think I'll
pass. Looking at this almost makes you root for him and that's not
something either of us needs to do."

"Probably right.
It was pretty jarring for me too the first time I saw it. Now I just
see a puzzle I'll never finish. Would you like a tissue?" Dr.
Riley asked.

"No, I'll be fine.
It's hard to see all of that and understand what the woman meant to
him."

"He killed her
didn't he?"

Allison nodded. "She
was trying to kill him. She might have succeeded, no one knows. No
one has heard from him since."

They both sat in
silence, looking at the computer screen and Rally's memorial.

"Thanks, Dr.
Riley. If we don't see each other again, it's been a pleasure."

He extended his hand
and she shook it.

Matthew watched the
young girl step off the bus and walk up the driveway. Her brown hair
had been brushed since she ran around the playground. Her hands held
the straps of her book-bag and her eyes looked at the ground in front
of her. She was a pretty little girl, and even though she looked at
her feet, her shoulders didn't slump forward and her steps were light
across the concrete. Matthew smiled and moved away from the window.
He sat down in the living room, choosing a chair that gave him a view
of the front door.