John Gone (39 page)

She walked up behind him and noticed the
small acorn grasped tightly in his left hand.

“What do you have there?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he answered, closing his grip.

“It takes a very strong boy to carry a tree
in his hand,” she said.

“Don’t be stupid,” Felix replied. “It’s not a
tree.”

“Yes it is,” she said. “Look.”

The woman pointed upward at a tall oak
towering above them. Curious, Felix walked tentatively to her side
and peered up the trunk of the tower, looking for what she was
seeing that he wasn’t.

“It’s a big acorn,” she said. Felix didn’t
look convinced. “Here, I’ll show you.”

The woman leaned down into the damp leaves
and twigs by the base of the tree. She chose a small stick and used
it to dig into the dirt. Soon, she found a buried acorn and pulled
it from the ground.

“See?” she said. The woman opened her palm
and offered the evidence to Felix. He approached her apprehensively
and plucked the acorn from her hand to examine it. A small white
root was twisting out from beneath its cap.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It’s a root,” the woman answered. “That
acorn is a seed. With enough time, nutrients, and sunlight, this
acorn will grow more than sixty feet. Sometimes, depending on the
variety, they can reach over a hundred.”

Felix looked down at the acorn in his
hand.

“And so, as I was saying, you must be very
strong to hold a tree in the palm of your hand.”

“Actually, now I have two,” Felix said,
smiling and showing her the acorn he’d been holding in his other
hand.

“Yes, I can see that,” she said, kneeling
down to him. “Quite impressive.”

“But it’s not a tree now,” Felix said. “It’s
just a little acorn.”

“Those acorns will always be trees. And see
that oak? It will always be an acorn. It just depends on when you
decide to look at it.”

Felix looked up at the tree again, then back
down at the rooting acorn in his palm.

“And you,” she continued, “you’ll always be a
child. But I also see a very special grown-up, an adult who has
accomplished so much for this world with that big, curious brain of
his.” She smiled at him warmly. “You have a wife and kids of your
own, a whole family of people who love you. You’ll always be that
man I see, and you’ll always be this boy, standing in front of me,
holding two trees in his hands. It’s just a matter of
perspective.”

The woman winked at him and took her acorn
back from his open hand. She dropped it back into the dirt where
she’d found it. “And like the acorn,” she said, “you need certain
things to grow.”

“Like sunlight?” Felix interrupted.

She smiled. “Yes, like sunlight. And other
things that no one’s given you yet. But we’re going to change that,
okay?”

Felix raised an eyebrow at her from beneath
the large lens of his glasses. The woman giggled at his
expression.

“Come on, let’s go home now.”

“Okay.”

A loud
thud
sounded from the bathroom.
Felix opened his eyes.

He’s here,
he thought.

Felix stood from his workstation and walked
cautiously toward the bathroom. Slowly, he opened the door.

And there he was, just as Felix had so often
seen through the small camera in the watch, unconscious and slumped
down on a toilet seat.

Felix looked at the large device on John’s
wrist, a device that he’d built as a way out. Now it was back to
deliver on the promise he’d designed it to fulfill over thirty
years ago.

He leaned over John’s body and lifted the
boy’s head by the chin. He turned it slightly, side-to-side, and
peered at his sleeping face. It wasn’t so different than his own
had been when he’d entered the lab for the first time so long ago.
He’d been so young then, with a world of possibilities laid before
him. It was back when the sun’s touch had still shown on his
face.

Felix lifted John’s body from the toilet and
carried it out into the lab.

John opened his eyes to the sight of a tall
man in a white coat with his back turned. He felt a cold surface
seated uncomfortably between his legs around his ankles. A pole
that connected the floor to the ceiling was between his knees. He
tried to move his legs back toward him, but immediately found them
stuck around the column. As his strength returned, he pulled on
them harder and harder until accidentally making enough commotion
to attract the attention of the man in the lab coat. Felix turned
and faced John for the first time.

He looked older than he had in the hologram.
The slight wrinkles and stress lines common to a man in his early
fifties were infinitely more prominent in person than they had been
on the small, often blurred, blue hologram John was used to. Felix
approached and knelt before him.

“Am I tied up?” John asked incredulously.

“For the moment,” Felix answered.

“Why?” John asked.

“Because I couldn’t be sure of your actual
willingness to remain here. I needed to be sure that I wasn’t going
to be fist-fighting a teenager. My body
has
slightly
atrophied, you know.”

“Let me go.”

“Don’t worry. The bond holding the straps
around your ankles is a simple block of ice. It will melt on its
own in about an hour, long after I’m gone.”

“You have ice down here?”

“Not as such. But I do still have a few toys
that can make it.”

Felix stood and looked down at John, still
tugging on the makeshift cuffs binding him to the rooted column.
“Well, they’re your toys now, aren’t they.”

“It’s going to make it difficult to get the
watch off with me stuck on the ground,” John said.

“You mean this?” Felix answered, revealing
the device in the palm of his hand.

John stared at the watch Felix held. Part of
him had thought that he would never have the opportunity to see it
off his arm. It looked so small and dead, lying innocently in the
doctor’s palm. It was as if it were any other watch, lifeless and
safe. Though tied and facing captivity, John felt a wave of relief
rush over him. He stopped struggling against the bonds at his
feet.

“How did you get it off?” John asked calmly.
“I’d like to see.”

“Sure,” Felix said. He walked over to the
side of the table next to him and lifted a tiny tool from its
surface. He held it down in front of John. It was approximately the
size and shape of a child’s lollypop, a thin metal cylinder leading
to a larger, flat and round circle on one end.

“Doesn’t look like much,” John said.

“And honestly,” Felix answered, “it’s not
much. Basically, the two sides of the plate are of equal polarity.
Imagine two magnets held against one another with their north poles
touching. They push against one another, sure, but that’s why these
are cased together with titanium. It also needed to be tuned to
your specific biometric signature, of course.” Felix placed the
tool into his pocket. “Well, never mind all that,” he said, halting
an obviously lengthy explanation. “Basically it just slides between
the back of the watch and your wrist.”

“So, like, two kitchen magnets could have
gotten it off my arm,” John said.

“Your grasp of the applied sciences is truly
inspirational, Mr. Popielarski,” Felix replied. “Now, if you’ll
excuse me for a moment.”

Felix held his breath and slowly lowered the
watch onto his arm and secured its old, leather band around his
wrist. He lifted his arm to his face, looked at the device, smiled,
and exhaled. “And now, John, I must be leaving. No need to draw
things out.” Felix pulled the watch’s knob out fully and began to
adjust the hands of its clock.

“It’s not too late,” John said. “You can
still let me leave.”

Felix looked up from the Diaspora at John. He
took a quick step closer and leaned down over him.

“I wish you would drop this constant delusion
that I’m ‘doing something’ to you, because I’m not. I’m not
imprisoning you here. I’m simply choosing between two people to
free. No one can call me evil for choosing myself. I’ve sacrificed
enough of my life by choosing this lab, and I’ll not do so
again.”

“You’ve never sacrificed anything for anyone
else in your life,” John said.

Felix grabbed a small tool from a drawer in
his workstation and walked quickly to John’s feet. John felt a
light, residual heat against his legs as the straps binding him
loosened. Soon, his ankles were free.

“There you go, John,” Felix said. “Do you
want to fight me? Do you want me to make this fair? Shall we decide
this like the cavemen might have? Go on, if you think you’re more
deserving.”

John stood and looked at Felix, easily twice
his size, fists raised and clenched. He read the turmoil in the
man’s eyes, and for the first time felt comfortable with the idea
that Felix hadn’t made this decision easily. This man in front of
him wasn’t just a computer program or hologram. He was a human,
something John could see more clearly now without a small button to
press that could make him disappear. Maybe Felix was right after
all. Maybe there was no bad guy standing in the room; just a bad
situation caused by someone John would never meet.

“I’m sorry,” John said, finally. “And no, I
don’t want to fight you.”

Felix calmed immediately and allowed himself
a faint smile. “That’s good, because I would have just jumped out
of here anyway.”

An inaudible chuckle shook John’s chest. “Of
course you would have.”

“I really am sorry, about this. If there’s
one person on Earth who understands what you’ll be going through,
it’s me,” Felix told him.

“I know.”

“How about a quick tour before I leave?”
Felix asked.

“I don’t mind exploring on my own later,”
John said. “I’ll have lots of time, after all.”

“Of course,” Felix answered quietly.

“I have one question,” John asked. “How did
you keep yourself from going crazy down here?”

“I don’t know,” Felix answered. “Maybe I did
go crazy. At this point, I’ve spent more of my life down in this
lab than I have outside of it.”

John nodded.

“If you’ve any questions, or just need
someone to talk to, you can reach me on the watch,” Felix
offered.

“That’s right, I forgot. I’ll have access to
the hologram thing.”

“Yes. The ‘hologram thing’ is right over
here, by the way.” Felix pointed John to a small camera on the
workstation.

“Can you make something for Ronika? So that I
can speak with her?”

“I can.”

“How does it work?”

“Just press here, and here when you want to
transmit. It will only work when the knob is in the correct
position, as you discovered, so don’t be surprised if you can’t
always reach me.”

John sat in the chair and followed Felix’s
instructions. A small hologram of John appeared on Felix’s
wrist.

“Cool,” John said, looking at himself.
“That’s what you looked like.”

“Yes,” Felix said, rolling his eyes. “I can’t
promise I’ll have the Diaspora active all of the time.”

“I understand.”

Felix nodded and exhaled a deep breath.
“Well, it’s time for me to go.”

“So go.”

Felix extended a lengthy arm toward John. He
took his hand and shook it.

“You did well to get down here,” Felix said.
“You certainly outperformed my expectations. I hope you
outperformed your own as well. When it gets lonely down here, and
you’re staring into the paintings on the wall, dreaming of another
place and time, just remember, there’s always hope. For better or
worse, I won’t forget about you. You did me a great service finding
me here.”

As John released Felix’s hand, a large object
leaning against the back wall caught his eye.

“One more thing,” John said, walking toward a
large, hollow, tally-marked shell in the corner. “What’s this?”

Felix pressed his thumb to the surface of the
Diaspora and looked to his least favorite painting on the wall. He
smiled at it sadly. “Just one more casualty of this mess,” he said.
“Just one more person who won’t be meeting me at the airport.
Goodbye, John.”

A brilliant blue light enveloped the room,
and John was surprised to find himself still standing awake, immune
to its effect. He watched as Felix raised his hand in a short,
still wave. The man’s smile widened as his body slowly faded into
the blue, disappearing completely a moment later. The light shrunk
to the size of a golf ball, then blinked out of existence.

John looked around his new cell and walked
toward the large painting of an airport that Felix had looked at
before leaving. He saw a mother and child running to a man holding
a suitcase and wondered what it meant. He shrugged and ambled back
to the chair by the workstation where he sat and stared at the
ceiling above him.

ONE YEAR LATER:

A man in a long brown trench coat walked
through the rain, a wide-brimmed fedora tilted atop his head,
shielding his glasses from the moisture that would blur their
lenses. The inclement weather didn’t bother him. In fact, he
preferred it. The raindrops weren’t enough to make him feel whole
again, but at least they reminded him of something he knew long
ago, even if he had yet to find it once more.

With each left step, the man absently dragged
the bottom of his foot across the rough concrete of the sidewalk as
he made his way toward the next hostel on his list. The coarse
surface of the pavement grated against his well-worn boot. It shook
the whole of his leg. It made him feel partially alive again.

The man stopped and looked up at the small,
windowed building with a gray roof in front of him. He read the
address on its side:
Seepferdchen Str.5
. He pulled a small
crumbled paper from the breast pocket of his coat and held it in
front of his face. Drips from the lip of his hat splashed against
the parchment’s surface, bleeding the ink of the black permanent
marker that had scrawled it. The addresses matched.