Rift (29 page)

It's a world I don't miss.

I agreed to transmit, in part, to change my life for the better, to invigorate my life. Has Cameron achieved such a thing? I'm not sure. Maybe he's found a small taste of excitement during the past few days, but if he knew what it was like to nearly die, perhaps he would know what it is to really want to live.

I read once that, as late as 1920, the average life expectancy in the United States was fifty-five. Which means that until medical science learned how to tamper with nature, the average person in the United States barely lived long enough to raise his children to maturity. At the time such a thing seemed significant to me. Why should we live any longer? For what natural purpose?

But now I realize that, even without the basic function of species propagation, a person can find fulfillment, a noble purpose to make life worth living. I just hope I have the strength to see mine all the way through.

         

It's a party here in the motel room, as boxes of pizza are devoured, as six-packs of beer are sucked down in front of the blaring television set. After today's preparation and exercises, Clay has afforded our team with a little time to unwind before we turn in for the evening. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is destroying entire legions of terrorist bad guys in the evening's pay-per-view presentation, and our military commandos cheer him on with disconcerting fervor. These men worship him because they want to be him, and in some ways they are. Physical strength, determination, and the ability to fight are central to their occupations, to their lives, and their bodies reflect this. Their demeanors reflect it. Do I really expect to accomplish on my own what four soldiers have been brought here to do?

I've stayed away from the pizza, obviously, and after one beer I elected not to put anything else into my stomach. The nausea is under control now—barely—but I don't want it to return at an inopportune time. So instead I sit on the bed, pretending to watch the movie when really what I'm doing is watching Crystal. She's quiet, too, distracted it seems, and I wonder what she's thinking.

After the movie, the team retreats to their respective hotel rooms. Brandon, Scott, and David will bunk in one room, while Clay, Lee, and Randy will sleep in the other. Crystal, Cameron, and I will remain here. Crystal gets her own bed, of course, while Cameron and I share the other one.

Crystal uses the bathroom first. From behind the closed door we hear the typical sounds of nightly hygiene.

“She's beautiful,” Cameron says to me.

“Yes, she is.”

He seems ready to say something else when the bathroom door opens and Crystal emerges in a navy blue T-shirt and plaid boxer shorts.

“Which one of you is next?”

“I'll go,” I tell her. “And now that we're alone, why don't you go ahead and fill Cameron in on the real situation? What you told me this afternoon. He's going to find out soon enough.”

In the bathroom, I brush my teeth first. It seems silly to perform this kind of maintenance considering the short life span that likely remains for me, but mainly what I'm trying to do is clean my stale breath. Next I wash my face. And then, as absurd and pointless as it may seem, I go ahead and wipe down my crotch with a damp washcloth. There is no doubt that I am not the first man to do such a thing in the presence of a woman like Crystal, considering how many of us entertain dreams of sudden, impulsive sexual encounters that defy reason. Of course I could never summon the nerve to make the dream a reality, but I freshen myself anyway.

Cameron goes next, briefly leaving Crystal and me alone in the room. Her skin is tanned velvet, her blond hair a waterfall reflecting evening sunshine.

“I hope you know what you're doing tomorrow,” she says to me.

“So do I.”

“It's not too late to change your mind. If you decide between now and in the morning that you'd rather do it our way, just wake me up.”

“Okay.”

God, she is so gorgeous. Right now I think I would go crazy if I wasn't able to look at her, if I wasn't able to sit here and absorb her beauty. I want to touch her. Hold her. I want to kiss every square inch of her body, taste her precious skin, smell her golden hair.

I must be insane. Tomorrow I am going to thrust myself into a situation that could likely result in my own death, and yet I cannot control my lust for this woman, this woman who has lied to me since the day I met her.

Cameron opens the door then and emerges from the bathroom. He looks at us briefly and then crawls into bed on the side facing the wall. I lie down near the nightstand.

“Want me to turn off the lamp?” I ask Crystal.

“Sure,” she says, and pulls the covers up to her neck. “We're going to need plenty of sleep.”

         

But of course I don't sleep at all.

The room is still now, dark and quiet except for the low rumbling of the air conditioner. Something about this situation reminds me of summer nights in South Padre during high school and college. Hotel rooms with sand-matted carpet that stunk of beer and pizza and where sleep was as foreign as the ruble. I lost my virginity in such a room, to my girlfriend of three years, a nineteen-year-old goddess with skin so tanned that when her navy blue bikini disappeared, I thought for a short, drunken moment that she was wearing another, white bathing suit underneath. And when my eyes fell from her white breasts to that closely shaved triangle of hair, sharp ecstasy poked through my alcohol haze like a silver dagger, and I was awake, I was
alive
. I didn't care who was in the room, I didn't care what time it was, and if I had my way, I would never leave the room again. I would just keep on doing what I was doing, with her, and when I was done I would go back for more, and then go back again, and again, and again . . .

Sleeping six feet away from me, Crystal's breathing is a hurricane in my ears. Her facial soap is a meadow of fragrant wildflowers. My heart races as if I'm running, as if I'm chasing her across that fiery meadow, watching her run just fast enough to stay ahead of me, but not quite fast enough to get away. She looks back occasionally, through the swirling gale of her blond hair, beckoning me with that familiar spark in her eyes.

“Cameron,” she calls to me. “Run faster.”

My legs pump harder to close the distance between us.

“Cameron,” she says again, and now I open my eyes.

The hotel room remains cloaked in shadows. The air conditioner hums a single-note melody.

Crystal is looking at me.

Or so it seems until my eyes clear and adjust to the darkness. Then I recognize the optical illusion: Her face is turned this way, but her eyes are closed.

Just wake me up,
she'd said.
It's not too late to change your mind.

I turn and listen to Cameron's breathing. It's rhythmic and heavy. He's asleep.

The alarm clock reads 1:52. A little more than three hours from now it'll be time to sneak out of here and begin preparing my case against NeuroStor. You'd think I'd be going over the plan in my head, checking for flaws, preparing for every conceivable obstacle I might encounter.

Instead I can't stop obsessing over the magnificent creature sleeping two yards away from me.

It's not too late to change your mind.

Cameron's breathing remains steady.

I slither out of the bed. Listen again to Cameron. Still sleeping.

On my knees, I cross the gulf between the two beds. Crystal faces me, her body an hourglass beneath the sheets. So still. So beautiful.

My voice a whisper. Too low for her to hear me. What the hell am I doing?

“Crystal.”

Her eyelids pop open like window shades.

“Hi, Cameron.”

She's not asleep. I swallow and search for an excuse, some reason why I came over here other than the real one.

She waits.

What difference does it make now? If she declines, we'll still go through with my plan tomorrow. I'll still invade the NeuroStor building. My cloned body will continue to betray me.

The risk is minimal, the reward immeasurable. Why can't I do it? Why can't I just say it?

Crystal opens her mouth to speak, but I decide to go first.

“I want you,” I breathe, leaning now just inches from her face.

“Then come take me.”

Crystal pulls aside the sheet and makes room for me beside her. The bed is warm and smells like the meadow in my dream. She pulls off her shirt, freeing those magnificent breasts, and I follow her lead. Our arms tangle, pulling each other close. I stiffen between us.

“What's this?” she asks, reaching for me.

Then our mouths together, devouring each other, eager tongues tasting someone new. My hands on her legs, her breasts.

“I love the way your skin feels,” I tell her.

My mouth slides down her neck, tracing wet tongue circles. Velvet skin. Nipples erect.

“Honey,” Crystal says, “don't stop doing that.”

But my tongue has other intentions, and soon it begins tracing circles again, this time down the smooth plain of her stomach.

“Keep going,” she tells me.

I do.

And we do.

         

Heavy breathing now. Loud in my ears.

The fleshy smell of sex.

Sweat nestled in the small of my back, in the cleft of my buttocks, where Crystal's hands cling for purchase.

Grunting. Sprinting toward climax. Pounding a feverish rhythm.

“Oh,
yes,
” Crystal whispers.

A question occurs to me, distracting my attention from the task at hand.

“Inside,” she says.

“Are you sure?”

“Goddammit, yes.”

But for a moment I pause, suddenly aware that I am not alone in here, that my penis is traveling through real estate previously occupied by Rodrigo Batista. Uncountable seconds march by while my erection softens, while I struggle to find a pleasurable friction rhythm, while I try to coax back the suspension of consciousness required to conceal the physical absurdity of sexual congress. I picture Crystal's lips around the helmet of my penis. Imagine myself pushing gently into the dark netherworld of her anus. Call up entire libraries of pornographic interludes that do not include Batista's smug, greasy face. And finally, after endlessly thrusting into her, my erection returns and I begin again to run.

But now Misty's face, familiar and curious, appears to me in a splash of guilt, and I try to push it away, willing myself to believe that she is not my wife, that I have no claim to her and thus am not cheating on her, but my mind struggles to reconcile this information with the knowledge chiseled into my heart, and I begin to soften again, and . . .

And
no
! I will not! I am with
Crystal
now because the desire I feel for her blots out all logic, all reason, and now—

Now I sprint.

Climbing. Reaching. Clenching.

“Oh, Cameron!” Whispers still, but surely loud enough for Cameron to hear.

I explode inside her.

Meltdown.

         

“Do you think he heard us?” Crystal asks me.

We're lying there together, on top of the sheets, sweat cooling on our skin.

“I don't see how he could've missed it.”

“It looks like he's sleeping.”

“Like you were?”

“Touché.”

I start to say more but don't.

Sometimes it's a crime to break the silence.

         

I think back to the cabin, to this motel room earlier in the day, and realize how much I've wanted her, how much I still want her.

“Can I ask you something personal?” she says.

“Sure.”

“Did this make you feel guilty at all? Did you think you were cheating on your wife?”

“No,” I lie.

“Did you think about her while we were having sex?”

“A little,” I say. “Even though technically I've never even touched her, my brain tells me Misty is the only sexual partner I've had for sixteen years.”

“Oh.”

“Were you expecting me to be honest? Or was I supposed to lie and say you were my only conscious thought?”

“No, I was just thinking how weird it must be to have thirty-five years of memories but only be a week old.”

“I don't really think of it like that. I can't distinguish between myself and Cameron. If he wasn't here now, if I hadn't seen him with my own eyes, I would have trouble believing this was even real.”

“Do you know what that means?”

“What?”

“It means that you better hope this assault on NeuroStor is successful. Because otherwise less than a handful of people will ever know you were alive.”

ten

B
ravery was easy to come by when I dreamed up this preemptive strike yesterday, but as I stand here now, about to enter Clay's hotel room at 5:20 in the morning, I have lost that courage. In fact, I am so paralyzed by fear that I cannot imagine how I'm going to walk in there and take a suit, a gun, and a duffel bag full of C4 explosive without waking up everyone.

Clichéd as it might be, I close my eyes and draw in several deep, measured breaths. To my surprise, the smooth breathing stills my hands and slows my heart rate. Clear thoughts step forth to be recognized. The door between our hotel rooms is not locked. It should open quietly and does. I push it far enough forward to step through the opening.

Lee and Randy occupy one bed, while Clay lies by himself in the other one. All of them appear to be asleep.

I creep forward, wary of a creaky floorboard, until I stand above the table where the weapons lie. There are six machine guns and four duffel bags stuffed with C4. Beside the table stands a neat pile of the specially designed firefighter suits.

I am about to pick up a machine gun when Clay shifts in his sleep.

This is never going to work.

After a few seconds I look more closely at him, but Clay still seems to be sleeping. I wait another moment and then reach down again to pick up a machine gun, which is already fitted with a clip. Look back at Clay. His chest rises and falls. Rises and falls, like waves on the beach.

Now I reach for a duffel bag, and—

Clay blows out a dry, hacking cough. He shifts again and then opens his mouth.

“Don't forget the C4,” he says thickly.

At this point, I'm afraid my bladder is going to fail me. My eyes dart to the other men in this room: Randy and especially Lee, who is sleeping closest to Clay. But none of them stir.

“Blow up his fuckin' blduuugg . . .”

He trails off. Talking in his sleep.

And after a moment, he starts breathing normally again.

I'm afraid to move, to do anything that might trigger Clay awake, but I can't just stand here either. From the corner of my eye I see a silhouette appear in the doorway to the other room.

It's Crystal. She's giving me the “hurry up” signal.

I pick up the bag of C4, which is much heavier than I thought, and carry it toward the door. Crystal pushes it open and then takes the gear from me.

“You need a suit,” she tells me. “And get another weapon, too.”

I look back into the room. Everyone is still sleeping, but we're really pushing our luck now. Still, I tiptoe back in and sling another machine gun over my shoulder. Then I reach for a suit. It rustles as I pick it up, but Clay doesn't stir. Nor does anyone else.

Crystal again beckons me to hurry. This is the home stretch. I head for the door, lucky as hell to have completed this first step without a hitch. I don't hear the voice until I reach the doorway.

Clay, from behind me.

“Where are you going?” he says.

         

But when I turn toward Clay, assuming he'll be propped on his hands watching us, I don't see anything like that at all.

He's still sleeping, of course. I guess I'm not the only one stressed out over the invasion.

“Let's get out of here,” Crystal says.

She takes the suit from me as I step through the doorway. I watch Clay as the door closes, but he never moves. The gap grows narrower and narrower, and finally I can't see him anymore. The latch clicks shut. If he wakes up now, we'll know it when the door flies open.

But that doesn't happen.

“Cameron is waiting for us outside,” Crystal tells me. “Let's get the hell out of here.”

We walk quickly to Lee's car. Sodium lamps cast pale reflections on its shiny hood. Cameron has the trunk open, and we dump the weapons inside. Then we climb into the car. Crystal will drive, Cameron shotgun, and me in the back.

“Where's the knife?” I ask.

Cameron reaches into the glove box and hands it to me. A utility knife with a stout six-inch blade.

While Crystal turns the ignition, I take the knife and get out. The engine roars into life, and I shoot a look toward the motel, sure that Clay is going to come running. But he doesn't, at least for now.

The van is just a few steps away. I make crisscross stabs in the two front tires—compressed air whistles through the slits, but not too loudly—and then do the same to the rear tires. When I get back into the car, we drive out of the parking lot. I watch the three hotel room doors. None of them open.

We drive for a while without saying much. Last night Clay made us study the route to NeuroStor until everyone could recite the streets and turns by heart, and Crystal drives about halfway there before veering off course. She's going to find an out-of-the-way place to park while I do my work on the computer.

We end up on a street populated by duplexes. Cars are parked against the curb in front of every other house, so Lee's car won't stand out if we have to sit here for a while. Cameron finds the laptop I bought yesterday and hands it to me. I hook it into the portable phone and go to work.

“So you're going to build a Web page with a link that will let people watch this movie we're going to make?” Crystal asks me. “How are they going to find it?”

I look up at her. “I thought you guys were computer experts.”

“Lee is the technology guy. I'd be lost without him.”

Suddenly it hits me: I'm in charge here. The success of the plan rests squarely on my shoulders.

Of course, this is what I want now. I'm going to derive closure by extracting vengeance from the man who put me here in the first place. And I'm going to do it exactly the way I want.

“In the old days you'd register with a search engine,” I explain. “Yahoo, Excite, something like that. Send them information about your site, and they would add it to their database. These days, most search engines crawl the Web looking for new pages to list, using metatags or the content itself to classify them.

“But it takes weeks or months for crawlers to find you, so what we'll do instead is e-mail the URL to as many news agencies as we can think of and let them advertise for us.”

“Okay, so let's say they find the site. How are you going to load the movie on there? And will it automatically start playing on their screen?”

“The camcorder we bought yesterday uses a hard drive instead of tape to store video information. It automatically encodes the picture using MPEG-2 compression algorithms, the same standard used by digital television satellites and DVD players. The camcorder will simultaneously record the footage onto its hard drive and broadcast it to this laptop with the FM transmitter. That way, if something happens to me or the camcorder and we can't get it back out of the building, the footage will be backed up on this laptop. Once the file is complete, Cameron will convert it to a couple of Web-friendly video formats and then upload them to the Web site. I'll include Media Player, QuickTime, and RealPlayer hyperlinks for people who don't already have the viewers, and then it'll be as easy as point and click. Streaming video, or download the file and watch it on your computer. Then he'll copy the high-quality, MPEG-2 footage to videotape and send it to a local television station. Once someone watches the tape, our story will be the hottest news in town. No one needs to hijack a satellite to get this on the air.”

“We should e-mail the file to all the main news outlets, also,” Cameron says. “In case NeuroStor somehow gets your Web site pulled.”

“You're right,” I say. “We could send it to every TV network. Newspapers. Magazines. I didn't even think of that. There's no way Batista or King could stop them all.”

I spend twenty minutes or so keying in the HTML and then pull up the FM software.

“I've used this kind of program before,” I tell Cameron, “and it's easy. To make sure the connection signal is strong, all you have to—”

“Cameron,” he says. “I know how to do it.”

“Oh. Right. Of course you do.”

I glance up at the dash clock. It's nearly 6:30. Someone at the hotel is probably already awake. What am I going to do between now and 8:00, when it will first become feasible to invade the NeuroStor building?

It will take Clay a few minutes to figure out what happened—I can hear him yelling already—and a little longer for them to agree on a course of action. The damaged tires will slow them even more. But if someone is already awake, can I reasonably hope to delay them for an hour and a half? Clay will know someone in town who can bring him a car. Or they could just hot-wire one. It's about twenty minutes from the hotel to the NeuroStor building, but the reality is that he'll be able to get there before I can go in.

I wonder what he'll do. If he'll try to stop me.

“What are you thinking about?” Crystal asks me.

“Problems. I knew this would be difficult, but now I'm starting to wonder if I can pull it off at all.”

“Think positive, Cameron. Keep your chin up.”

Easy for her to say. After all, this place where we sit is a five-minute drive to my death. Five minutes. Sure, I may have transmission sickness, and maybe I'm going to die anyway, and maybe I'm following through with a choice that will transform my death into something that will undoubtedly be remembered as something important and special. But the reality is that, as angry as I am, as much as the delicious vision of vengeance drives me, I am nothing short of terrified. I could die in approximately two hours. And even that statement, those words, what do they mean? What does it mean to die? Some people don't believe in God, in heaven or hell, in a soul to be placed in these planes of eternal bliss or suffering. Others can't imagine a world without spiritual afterlife. But where do I fit in? Regardless of your beliefs, what do they say about a clone like me who was created artificially less than a week ago?

I guess I can't fault Crystal for trying to improve my attitude. I didn't tell her, or Cameron, the entire story. They think I plan to get out of there alive.

         

A few minutes later we're standing outside Lee's car as the neighborhood comes alive around us. The people who populate these multiunit homes are a varied lot. A few minutes ago a clean-cut young man wearing a pressed white shirt and fashionable tie drove by in a sparkling Toyota Camry. He waved. A minute later some blue-collar fellow passed us in his dented blue Chevrolet pickup, a cigarette pinched between his angry fingers. Right now I'm watching a thin woman shuffle down the walk toward her morning paper. Something is wrong with her hip, and yellow hair hangs like a spent mop from her head. Her skin is paper white. She walks like she has a hangover. In the middle of the week.

Misty and I lived in a neighborhood like this once. Duplexes are transition living for some, a destination for others. They can be nicely kept or crumbling toward the ground. The benefit to Crystal, Cameron, and me is that with such diverse neighbors, no one is likely to glance at us twice, even if I am standing on the curb, talking to a miniature camcorder mounted on a tripod.

Right now, I'm the only person in frame. Crystal looks into the viewfinder and gives me a thumbs-up sign with her hand. Cameron is sitting on the curb with the computer balanced on his lap. We're taping some initial footage and testing the FM communication system.

“My name is Cameron Fisher,” I say. “Six days ago I agreed to help test a machine for NeuroStor, the company I work for, which is based in Plano, Texas. This machine—”

Crystal steps away from the camera and waves me off. “You're not looking into the lens, and you sound like you're reciting something you memorized for school.”

“I did memorize it. How else I am supposed to—”

“This thing has fucked you up, Cameron. You just spent the last five days running for your life for Christ's sake. Your best friend was murdered. Don't recite it for us. Make us
feel
what happened. Clay was right: It has to be big for TV.”

“We don't have a lot of time for this,” Cameron says from the curb. “Can we start again?”

The morning air is wet, and I'm beginning to perspire. Crystal signals for me to start again.

“My name is Cameron Fisher. I'm the victim of a sadistic experiment performed by a corporation you may know as NeuroStor. NeuroStor has invented a machine that can scan an object in one location, digitize it, and transmit that information via satellite to another location, where the digital data is used to reassimilate the object. I have worked for NeuroStor for six years, and its president, Rodrigo Batista, offered me a substantial amount of money to test the machine. I accepted this risk without realizing that he had deliberately misled me regarding the nature of the test.

“Five days ago I entered a transmission portal in Houston, where my body was scanned, and an hour later I woke up in Phoenix. Everything seemed fine at first, but after only a few hours, I began to feel weird. I lost my coordination, my balance. And I realized someone was following me.