John Gone (14 page)

“Actually, Felix,” she said sharply, “I do
know. I have your file, and no, you don’t have much of a life. That
being said, don’t worry. You’ll return as yourself. You’ll go to
the local authorities, state that you faked your own death, plead
the fifth as to why, and pay the fine. There’s no jail time for the
offense. The amount owed will be covered by us in addition to your
stipend.”

Felix leaned back in his chair once more and
mulled over this new information. “Really?” he finally asked.
“There’s a fine for faking your own death?”

Karen nodded.

“You should have asked before killing me,” he
mumbled.

“No,” she responded, “
you
should have
asked. If you had questions about this procedure, you could have
contacted us. It was in your contract.”

Felix hadn’t read the document closely. He’d
tried, but each time he looked down at it, all he could see were
imaginary dancing dollar signs that made him giddily turn back to
the page where the amount of his payment was spelled out digit by
digit. It was the same page, just one line above the payment
details, where his signature had been required.

“Fair enough,” he said.

Karen looked at him, her expression confused.
“Thank you,” she said hesitantly.

“I’m not an unreasonable man, you know.”

“I never stated such.”

Felix looked at her and smiled. “Let me ask
you something,” he said.

“If I can answer it, I will.”

“If I’m dead, should I be concerned that
we’re travelling straight down?”

“Let me see her!” the hologram demanded. The
projection’s voice came through crisp, clear, and agitated.

“See who?” John asked.

“Karen. I heard her.”

“Me?” Ronika interjected.

“Let me see her!” the hologram repeated.

“You’re looking right at her,” John pointed
out.

“I’m looking right at ... no, you idiot! The
eyes of my hologram can’t see anything! The watch face; that’s
where the lens is. Turn it!”

John pointed the watch at Ronika, who waved
and smiled at its face.

“Alright, you two,” the hologram said, “I
want some answers.”

“Oh,
he
wants some answers,” Ronika
said.

“Where’s Karen?” the man asked again.

“We don’t know a Karen,” she answered
combatively.

“Where did you get the device?”

“Whoa, hold on,” John said. “We’re not
answering any more questions. It’s your turn.”

The small blue hologram paused, let out a
roar of frustration, and relented. “Fine! What?” he asked.

“What’s your deal?” John asked. He brought
his face in close to the projection and waved his hand in front of
it, then through it. “Are you trapped inside the watch or
something? I mean, what are you doing in there?”

The hologram lifted his glasses up to his
forehead and rubbed the corners of his eyes between his thumb and
pointer finger. “Oh, God, if there is one, help me. You, the dumb
one, let me talk to the female again.”

“Answer him,” Ronika said, backing John’s
question.

“No, you ignoramus,” he answered. “I’m not
in
the watch. It’s just a hologram, projecting my image
remotely.”

“Then where are you remotely projecting
from?” John asked.

“Now that’s the question, isn’t it?” answered
the light. “Well, the truth is that I don’t know exactly ... but I
have my suspicions,” he added, mumbling.

John thought for a moment. “So, where are you
exactly?” he asked again, hoping for a better answer.

For the first time, the man in the light
seemed to calm. His voice became lower, more saturnine, and its
natural deepness became apparent. “Tricked, trapped, stuck,
imprisoned, occluded, and stationary. What did I just say? I don’t
know
.” The man sighed. “Listen, let me propose something.
You tell me everything you know; I want your entire autobiography
since you acquired this device. You do that and I’ll tell you some
of what I know. I’ll do my best to answer your questions about the
watch, but not about me. Fair?”

“I--” John began.

“Just say yes,” the hologram said,
restraining his temper, “and make this easy for everyone.”

“Yes,” Ronika quickly answered. Immediately
after, she looked to John for approval. He nodded.

“So, do you have a name? It might make a good
place to start,” the man said.

“John Popielarski.”

“I’m Ronika. Like Veronica without the
‘ver.’”

“Kala,” the hologram said. “Doctor. Dr.
Kala.”

“Wait, your name is Dr.
Claw?
” John
asked. “The villain from Inspector Gadget?”

“No, no,” Kala answered, shaking his head
into his hand. “Ready? Say Ka.”

“Ka,” John repeated.

“Say La.”

“La.”

“Now put them together.”

“
Ka-la
,” John said.

“Okay, kindergarten is dismissed. Now, Mr.
Popielarski, please proceed in giving me the facts. No fanciful
elaborations, please; just tell me everything.” The hologram sat
down, though no chair was visible in the projection.

John proceeded to tell Kala the entire story,
where he’d found the watch, where it had taken him, and about the
two men who’d come for it. He neither embellished nor omitted any
of the events. For over two hours the hologram listened silently,
sometimes taking notes with an unseen pen and paper. He was so
quiet during the story that twice, John had stopped and shaken his
watch, curious if they’d lost connection.

While he spoke, he watched Ronika listen to
him quietly but intensely. Knowing Ronika, her mind was likely
sifting through the details just as intently as Kala, hoping to
solve at least some of it before this man in the hologram
inevitably spoiled some of the answers for her.

John ended his story with the day’s afternoon
at Ronika’s idea to change the time. Kala broke his silence with
laughter.

“Simply change the time. Clever thinking,” he
said. Ronika couldn’t hide a grin. “However,” he continued,
“absurdly moronic in practice. That’s not how these things work,
you know.” Ronika’s grin flipped upside-down.

“How was I supposed to know how it worked?”
she asked confrontationally.

“Indeed,” Kala remarked, pacing back and
forth across the watch’s face. “I’ve heard your tale, dissected its
content, and drawn some conclusions. Would you like to hear
them?”

“Talk,” John answered.

“My first conclusion is that you’re not
lying, nor working with my enemies, and indeed, the enemies of
all,” he proclaimed.

“Enemies of all,” Ronika repeated. “Sounds
epic.”

“Does it?” Kala asked. “Sorry, I’ve been
cooped up for awhile and may be blowing things out of
proportion.”

“So, who are these ‘enemies’?” John
asked.

“We’ll get there. Calm yourself,” Kala
answered. “Okay, here it is. The watch is mine. I invented it. I
built it.”

“Really?” John asked, incredulous.

“And here’s a real humdinger for you,” he
said. “I did all of this in 1975.”

“Impossible,” Ronika protested. “He’s lying.
This sort of technology doesn’t even exist in this form today, let
alone in the caveman days.”

“Caveman days?” Kala laughed. “I like that.
But I’m afraid, my little miss, that it did indeed exist then as it
does today. It’s simply not its time in what they call 'The Cycle'
for you to have seen it yet. You’ll be seeing it emerge in, oh,
let’s say about four more years. Not teleporting exactly, but
holograms, etcetera. It will be the next ‘big thing.’ What’s
popular nowadays? Touch screens? Basic robotics? The early
foundations of artificial intelligence, and ... ” He paused and
rubbed his chin theatrically. “Egad, perhaps even glasses-free 3-D
televisions?”

“Everyone knows that,” Ronika said, crossing
her arms and wholly unimpressed.

“Not everyone,” Kala answered. “One might say
that I’ve been living under a rock for the last thirty-eight
years.” He waited for a response, but received none. “I’ve been
caught underground, in a room, a lab, since 1972.”

Ronika appeared to do an equation in her
head, and soon nodded her approval of the doctor’s number.

“And how did that happen?” John asked, much
more willing to believe odd occurrences now than he’d been three
days ago. “What are you eating down there? Where are you, uh,
relieving yourself?”

“No, that’s more than enough about me,” Kala
said. “All you need to know about my predicament is that it is as I
have described it to be. The deal was about the watch, and
according to my count, you may want to find out a bit about it
before, let’s say, sixteen minutes from now? That’s when class
breaks for recess, after all.”

John looked down at his watch. It was 2:58
P.M.

“Okay, let’s talk about that technology thing
from before. What did you mean, 'The Cycle?'” Ronika asked.

“The Cycle is a continuing process designed
to develop and introduce technology to consumers in a timeline
conducive to maximizing profit,” Kala explained
matter-of-factly.

John opened his mouth to speak.

“And before you ask any questions, Mr.
Popielarski, I’ll explain it just a bit better. There is at least
one company, possibly many, dedicated to recruiting the most
intelligent people on Earth to their cause. And what is that cause,
you may ask? It’s exactly what it always is: money.

“After Albert Einstein’s unpredicted
popularity in the twenties and thirties, certain people realized
that some humans walking around were much smarter than others. Not
just a small bit smarter, mind you, but worlds and perhaps
universes smarter. Certain people throughout history have always
held this mental distinction, but it wasn’t until the early
fifties, the true dawn of modern Capitalism, that anyone discovered
how to take advantage of men like Einstein, though he himself was,
of course, dead at this point.

“It was then that someone thought up the
cycle. It’s ingenious in and of itself, really. First you hire, or
otherwise cajole, a great mind to develop some bold new
advancement. Next, you suppress it and build companies, portfolios,
markets, and sometimes even militaries that can sit peacefully in
wait until the world is positioned just right. Then, wham!” he
yelled loudly. “You release it at just right moment and make a
fortune.”

“But, I don’t understand,” John said. “Why
not just sell something when you make it? Why develop all this
technology and hold it back?”

“Because,” Kala said slowly, “first, they
like to set you up, and your children up, for the big buy. They
call it ‘priming the market.’ Think about it. What if touch screens
had come out twenty years ago? They would have become the standard
immediately. A phone with a touch screen would’ve been interesting
and profitable, sure, but not at the peak of the technology’s
potential.

“Instead, the company chose to make handheld
technology develop slowly and specifically push the trends to
perfectly accommodate the technology they’d hidden. Text messages,
email? See what I’m getting at? Touch screen technology in 1980
would have made approximately two billion dollars over ten years.
If released in 2005, I saw it projected to make twice that amount
in half the time. Perhaps it’s even leading to the next fad on the
company’s tech list.

“They call the process ‘Wait-Gain.’ Cute
name, isn’t it? These things are planned out years in advance. Some
tech sits on the shelves for a year or two, others sit for half a
century. It all depends on the economy and the trends. That’s what
The Cycle is,” Kala finished. “And you probably thought planned
obsolescence was a bitch.”

Ronika collapsed to the floor and landed
cross-legged on the carpet. “You just completely--”

“Bogarted your brain?” Kala mocked in his
best teenage-sounding voice.

“So, someone’s planning on selling a
teleporting wristwatch that sticks to your arm and kills people?”
John asked.

Kala laughed heartily. “Not quite. The watch
is something different. It’s a development important enough to be
sold to a militia or government. I don’t know for sure; I’m just
hypothesizing here. As to who first discovered quantum
displacement--teleportation as you’ve been calling it--or why, I
don’t know either. That information was classified during my time
at the company. I was simply brought on board to figure out how to
power the process. My hypothesis and eventual working conclusion
was to use the body’s natural energy.”

“The body doesn’t have the sort of power to
create something like ... like ... some sort of forced quantum
event!” Ronika argued.

“Something you’ll learn--actually, scratch
that--something you’ll probably never learn is that different types
of energy operate at different efficiencies. The variable for their
efficiency isn’t standard or linear, either. They fluctuate
depending on for what you’re using the specific type, especially
when we’re talking about acting on a quantum level. The world isn’t
just watts and calories, you know.”

“Okay, stop. I’m running out of time and have
no idea what you two are talking about,” John protested. “So, the
watch is using body energy, or something. That’s why I feel tired
when I teleport?”

“Duh,” Ronika said quietly.

“There’s a strong connection that needs to be
maintained at all times for it to work. That’s what’s adhering the
device to your arm. There’s a special tool that’s used to remove
it. If you don’t have it and try to force yourself between the
connection ... well, you saw first-hand what can happen,” Kala
explained.

“Then where can I get the tool?” John
asked.

“From me,” the hologram answered. “But you
have to come and get it.”

“Okay, how do I get there?”

“An entrance would imply an exit, and if
there was one of those, I certainly wouldn’t be sitting here,
underground, speaking with a two-legged high school science
textbook and the inquisitive son of whom I assume to be a
working-class Pole.”