The Spaces in Between (8 page)

“A computer file is a collection of ones and zeros. The ones representing the presence of electrical charge, and the zeros the absence. Theses charges are actually the average wavelength rounded. A human being is simply a wavelength on a different frequency.”

- anonymous drunken physics teacher

Book Two: Digital Soul

In which the Warren is pursued…

Zrrrt! Zrrrt!

What the hell is that? Warren Elliot pondered the noise that pervaded his dreams before snapping awake. His cell phone vibrated on the nightstand next to him with a noise far more obnoxious than his Saved by the Bell ringtone. The digital alarm clock flashed 3:01 am in red, fragmented letters. Unknown was the only thing displayed on the backlit Motorola screen. He went for it with his right hand and knocked several things off the nightstand.

“h-Hello.”

Silence.

“Hello?”

More silence.

“Hello!”

Nothing.

Having observed the three-hello rule for disconnected calls he snapped the phone shut and returned it to his nightstand. By the light of his alarm clock he found the book he knocked off the nightstand. He couldn’t see the cover, but he already knew its title
Astral Projection for Beginners
. After returning it, he retrieved the notebook and mechanical pencil from the floor.

Without proper light he opened with a swish of his right thumb, laid the notepad on the nightstand, and scrawled on it in large, squiggly words the only fragments of his dream that he could remember. Cameron. Zombies.

Cameron was the protagonist of Warren’s only published short story “The Spaces in Between” based on Warren’s comatose dreams. It had been three months since the car accident where he lost the use of his left arm – for no apparent reason. No nerve damage, no tissue damage, no muscle damage, and the rest of his tests checked out. It was like his brain was ignoring it.

“Must be psychological,” the doctor had said in St. Brendan’s Discount Hospital – Baltimore’s HMO of choice.

It didn’t help that in Warren Elliot’s dream he saw his arm cut off in a botched heist of a space museum lead by the Dread Pirate Cameron. He believed it had to be psychological no matter how real it felt, because out of body experiences don’t really happen. Even though Elliot never went to college he knew enough about science to say that an existence beyond this one was impossible.

But there was something in the back of his mind begging him to believe his comatose dreams. Something in his subconscious wanted to believe in the Astral, the spaces in between our world and the next. He sank back into the bed and mulled over what he had read in
Astral Projection for Beginners
that he was researching in an attempt to write Cameron on his own.

Warren told his body to relax and focused on each body part until he could not feel them anymore (using his left arm as a reference). He grasped an imaginary rope with an arm in his mind and pulled with every fiber of his concentration. His skin was covered in pins and he concentrated harder. He shouted leave in his mind. His body began vibrating and a ringing started in his ears.

ZRRRT! ZRRT!
Warren’s rope of concentration snapped under the strain of distraction. He sat up and glanced at his cell phone. The glowing LCD on the phone’s faceplate announced that Unkown was calling again. Warren hit the silence button and waited for the light on the Motorola to go out.

He turned the other way and tried to fall back to sleep. He was wide-awake now and couldn’t concentrate on relaxing. His body was now ready to get up and do something. He considered waking up Janet, his fiancé to see if could help him get back to sleep, but once his eyes were fixed upon her ordinary beauty he couldn’t bring himself to disturb her. It baffled him why a woman of her caliber would stay with him a man that had to grow a beard to create the illusion of having a neckline.

Clad in a t-shirt proclaiming “Joss Whedon is my Master Now”, boxers, and one sock Warren dragged himself into the dining room. Well, the area of their studio apartment that had a dining room table next to a microwave, sink, and refrigerator. He threw his notepad and mechanical pencil on the table before pulling himself up. He tapped the pencil on the notepad with his right hand trying to pierce the fog that divides dreams and memory in the brain.

He absently scrawled on the paper while trying to divine any of the details from his brain. Being a very lonely man for a great deal of his adulthood Warren was comfortable at typing with only one hand, but writing with a pencil was a little faster for him. He checked the clock. Thirty minutes had passed and all he had to show for it were strange circles under “Cameron. Zombies.”

He tried to twirl his Bic mechanical pencil between his thumb and forefinger, but he fumbled due to its awkward weight. His pencil was missing the clip that would allow him to attach the pencil to his clothing- certainly chewed off by Janet in a moment of frustration. He got one of the unsharpened pencils from his stash under the sink for just such an occasion.

The perfectly balanced pencil spun in a circle between his fingers, and Warren passed the blurred circle from his thumb and forefinger to his forefinger and middle finger then back again with mechanical precision. Watching this was calming, and the hypnotic effect parted the veil in his mind.

Warren recollected the visage of the Dread Pirate Cameron, the Pirate King and star of his dreams. A lanky young man with an eye patch and red dreadlocks dressed in full pirate regalia crawled out from the tear in the veil. The third eye in the base of Warren’s brain went over every detail until the Pirate King was complete.

“So what’s the haps, Captain Cameron?” Warren asked the empty room. The spinning pencil went back and forth between his fingers.

“Same old, same old,” the Cameron in his mind replied, “Just swiped some more tablets like the Mehmet talisman from ship full of zombies. Covered with Creation’s source code I’m sure. Wish I could read it.”

“I can’t help you there,” Warren said, “That’s quite a story. Mind telling it to me?”

“Got a pen?” Cameron said, “Before we start. I just gotta say – I’m really sorry about your arm.” Warren nodded and the Cameron in the theatre of his mind’s eye related to him everything. Of the space ship
Fillipre,
its cargo bay full of the wretched dead between him and the secrets he desired. Of Cameron’s trip to the Underworld, and of Lilith and Adam, the first man and woman’s role in banishing the biological weapon that kept the crew of
Fillipre
alive long after their deaths.

Warren only half paid attention to what Cameron said as his right hand wrote furiously every detail Cameron dictated through the whole night.

2

“Wake up or you’ll be late for your interview,” Janet whispered into Warren’s ear and shook him awake. He woke up with a start at the dining room table. His eyes darted to the clock on the wall’s arms that pointed to 8 and 1.

“Why didn’t you wake me sooner?” Warren was a late riser by nature and liked having a few hours of hitting snooze on the alarm clock before properly getting up.

“Well I thought you needed the rest. Especially when you decided to pull an all-nighter on a new story instead of resting up for your interview.” Today was Warren’s first job interview after his accident. Since he had accidentally called his client, the Australian porn king with a fancy for Ostriches, he was technically on the job so worker’s comp has been sending him a meager stipend.

“How long have you been working on this?” Janet said.

Warren was about to say since last night, but stopped himself once he realized she was holding over twenty pages in her hand. Could I have really written that much last night? Was that even possible? Maybe if it was being dictated to me, but still.

“It’s pretty creepy,” Janet said, “I really liked Adam, but this might be a bit much.” She held up the last page; which only contained a drawn picture of a head shaped like a reverse teardrop, two huge black wells of eyes, and a tiny slit for a mouth. The whole head was shaded with sloppy lines of pencil maybe to show that the creature had grey skin. It most likely did since it bore a striking resemblance to the probe happy gray aliens that abductees on TV would suddenly “remember.”

He couldn’t quite remember what the people on TV had called them. Was it Zeta Rectus? That seemed oddly appropriate, but one name suddenly came bubbling to the front of his mind from behind the veil.

Lam
.

“I’ve got to get to work,” Janet said. She put some more food pellets in the cage for the pile of rodents that was currently residing in the wheel. It was a gift from Warren with the lump of change that he got from the Cameron short story that some Sci-Fi rag she couldn’t remember printed. She never bothered reading it, because she was the one he dictated it to as soon as he regained consciousness. It was full of horrible memories for her.

After he cashed the check Warren insisted on picking her up a pet. At the pet store in either the hamster or the mouse pen – it didn’t really matter which – she immediately wanted the little plastic house that was full of rodents. She named this pile of rodents Steve, and treated it as if it were one creature.

“Don’t be late for that interview.” Janet returned the stack of papers to the table. “I had to pull some favors to get it for you.”

“I won’t.” Warren lied without knowing it yet. She kissed him on the lips.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Then Janet walked out the door and into harm’s way.

3

Warren charged down the street as fast as his doughy legs attached to his disproportionate programmer’s ass could take him. Which happens to be not very fast at all. Wolfmother blaring in his ears dulls the pain in his legs courtesy of the Zune he purchased with the most of his short story money. Anything to stick it to Steve Jobs.

Much like Janet prophesized he was running late. If he didn’t make it to the bus stop in five minutes he’d miss the bus for the Inner Harbor. Putting this into perspective it was usually a ten-minute walk from Warren’s apartment.

Their apartment was near the cemetery where Poe was buried, but he couldn’t remember the name. They had no interest in visiting it, because they had not interest in getting shot. In Baltimore once you lieave the strip of city that the Inner Harbor lies on you’ve fallen into the Ghetto.

After the H1 model Hummer, the insurance money he got for his car was just enough to replace his laptop. This lack of a car forced him to walk everywhere he needed to go when Janet wasn’t available to chauffeur. This has lost him twenty pounds, but sadly no one has really noticed. Warren was jerked by into reality by a man grabbing him by the arm.

“We need to talk to you, son,” announced a man in a black suit. A strange and unassuming man that could play some generic Federal Agent. Warren’s heart pounded, and he thought of this man being from Homeland Security to talk to him about his work as a security programmer for that Australian porn king.

“All of those things were legal!” Warren said, “In the countries they were filmed in!” The man in the black suit did not produce any form of ID and said no more. Panic gripped Warren by the testicles all the up to his stomach, and he brained the man with his laptop. He bolted faster than he had every traveled by foot in his life to the bus on the horizon.

Warren found himself charging through mist. The man in the black suit and the bus were nowhere in sight.
Pollution has been getting pretty bad in Baltimore.
Instead of smacking into a street lamp like he expected he was instead greeted by a pair of breasts. He stopped in his tracks to avoid running into them. After a few moments he realized that these breasts were attached to a woman as they most often are.

Raven black locks draped over her shoulders that were a perfect contrast to her milky white skin. Her vermillion lips perched as if she were about to speak. Her eyes…well he never got a good look at them because he couldn’t bring himself to make eye contact. Warren’s eyes were fixated upon her neckline with the breast bulging from her bodice, and should they escape everyone in a three-block radius would be dead.

“Pitching a tent, are we? Does that mean you’re going to stay awhile?” the woman said. Warren blushed a deep crimson. “You are in danger Warren Elliot. The only safe place for you is my kingdom. You only have to stay here a day. Would you like to spend the day with me?” Warren nodded. “All you have to do is say yes.” His face felt like it was on fire. He pursed his lips to reply.

“Ye-.”

“That is quite enough Lilith!” a grizzled old man stepped through the mists. They parted to reveal that they were in a forest at twilight. The moon overhead was so full and bright, however, that Warren was sure he could read the Asimov novel in his laptop bag.

“I’m only allowing you here as a favor,” Lilith said with a scowl.

“That would be the worst mistake of your life. While Lilith is blessed in knowing all truths, she chooses to speak in only half. You are indeed in grave danger and there is a price for safety. But she is not the only or the best way to protect you. A day here in Fae lasts over a year in your world.”

“Who are you? Where the hell is this? I’m in danger?” While Warren addressed the man his eyes were still transfixed on Lilith’s cleavage. At a glance he could tell that the old man was dressed in gray robes, held a gnarled staff in one hand, and a tablet PC in the other.