Stunned (The Lucidites Book 2) (2 page)

“No, but this is different. Trey has asked—”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, never mind then. If Trey said to keep it a secret, then I won’t know unless he’s the one who chooses to tell me. My own brother didn’t even rebel against the Head Official the last time he made a demand like that.” I turned to Samara, who was doing a lousy job of pretending not to listen. “Speaking of Joseph, have you seen him around lately?”

“Hardly,” she admitted.

“Yeah, me either.” I sighed. I really needed his counsel, but he hadn’t been coming by my room in the evenings like he normally did. At meal times he was mostly absent or rushed. Strange that he’s the one who begged me to stay at the Institute and he was missing most of the time. “What about you, Trent? Have you seen Joseph?”

“Girl,” Trent said, tucking a dreadlock behind his ear, “I’m lucky to see my own image in the mirror as of late. I’ve been working too much to keep up with anyone.”

Trent had been recruited by Ren to work in his department. Although I thought Ren’s full time job was being a middle-aged, red-headed jerk with a chip on his shoulder, he apparently was pretty successful as the Head Strategist for the Lucidite Institute.

“I know what you mean,” Samara said, turning to Trent. “The news reporting orientation is pretty time consuming.” She stood up from the table. “Hey, maybe Trey has Joseph working on a project too.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I said.

“Well, speaking of work, I’ve got to run,” Samara said.

“Me too,” Trent said, and followed Samara out.

Since I didn’t want to be alone with George, I made up an excuse about having something to do and left the main hall. The truth was I didn’t have a single thing to do. Everyone from my team had a project to keep them busy during the day. Not me. This left me hours to idle around my room and read books. When I couldn’t stand it any longer I’d throw on my sneakers, grab the iPod Aiden gave me, and go for a run. Other than these activities I didn’t have any way to occupy my time at the Institute. The only relief I had was when night approached and I traveled to whatever place and time on earth I chose. Most of my dream travel was spent searching the past for interesting times in history. This is apparently what most new Dream Travelers spend their time doing.

“Everyone is always obsessed with the past,” Shuman informed me one day during lunch. “Nothing is as real as the past. It is that surreal aspect that draws people to it repeatedly,” she said in her airy tone. “However, a time will come when you realize the past holds fewer answers than the present. Those who live in the moment are the most powerful.”

For a while, I hardly spent any of my time dream traveling in the present. Apparently I wasn’t after answers as much as distraction. There were so many times in history I wanted to see with my own eyes. In a little over a week of dream traveling I’d witnessed everything from Lincoln’s assassination to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. My nights were a history book of education. However, I did learn that I had to limit my time travels. It was more draining than present time dream traveling. It was difficult too. Going back too far, for too long cost energy and required me to return to my body where I was forced to fall into mindless sleep. Luckily, my night spent with Bruce Lee, when I learned kung fu, had worked because it wasn’t too far into the past
and didn’t take too much out of me
.

Currently I was distracting myself by brushing up on present-day sociology. Right now, Eastern Europe was on my curriculum list. Cafes like this one in Prague offer richness that can’t be found in museums. For hours I listen to conversations, watch interactions, and study the human condition. And as a bonus, I’m learning Czech.

Still, the people watching isn’t enough. Exploring the major points in history isn’t enough. My dream travels have failed to take my mind off my loneliness. A few weeks ago I didn’t want to die because I’d lose all the people I’d come to love. Now I’m miserable because I’m alive and very much alone.

The older gentleman sets down his coffee cup and slips the girl his phone number. She politely accepts it, but I’m guessing she’ll only use it as a bookmark. People are so unbelievably convoluted. Soon I’ll forget all the complicated people and emotions inside this tin box where I’m forced to physically reside. Soon I’ll be living with Bob and Steve, who aren’t difficult at all, but rather simple. From their place I’m going to soak up normalcy. Right now I’m craving that more than nineteenth-century poetry.

Chapter Two

N
o one speaks to me at breakfast the next morning. They’re all too busy shoveling food into their mouths so they can get to work. George looks like he wants to say something, but doesn’t dare.

If it wasn’t for Patrick, the Institute’s courier, then I would have taken a vow of silence for the day—just for the hell of it. He stops me in the hallway. “How you liking your stay at the Institute thus far, sweetheart?” he says, tipping his baseball cap at me.

“Fine.” I sort of shrug. “I could use a window in my room though.”

“Couldn’t we all.” His chuckle makes his mustache twitch. “Sweetheart, you need to badger your admirers to send you more gifts, that way I have an excuse to grace you with my presence.”

“I’ll get right on that. Actually, I wanted to send a letter this morning.”

“Well then, I’m your man. You got it with you?”

“No, haven’t written it yet. I was wondering, though, does the Institute have internet?”

“Well, sure,” he says with a laugh. “We’re underwater, not in the dark ages.”

“Oh good. I was thinking that for letters and stuff I could send emails. That would save you the trouble.”

He frowns. “Whoever said it was trouble?”

“Well…I…just…”

He dismisses me with a wave of his hand. “Oh stop now. You send your emails. I’ll find a way to see your pretty face, even if I have to write letters to you myself.”

I laugh. “Patrick, you’re a charmer, aren’t you?”

“I’ve been called many things, but that’s not one of them,” he says.

After getting directions from Patrick I take off for the computer lab. I find it on the third level. Of course, email! Why hadn’t I considered that before? Must have been that whole fear of being murdered thing that overwhelmed my practical nature.

The rest of the day I spend reading Stephen Crane’s
The Open Boat.
This classic is one I was waiting to devour on a lonely day, just like this one. Strange emotions arise as I read. Passages are completed in my mind before my eyes finish them. The entire book is like a long-lost best friend—or twin brother. It’s like I’ve already read this book, although I haven’t. Something in this particular fiction speaks to me and I can’t shake the feeling. And I also don’t understand it. Crane wrote, “When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important . . . he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples . . . .”

If I’m truly delving into my psyche, as George would have me do, then I admit that on a subtle level this passage makes me wonder if we’re truly all alone. I wonder this more lately with all my solitary hours. If God reigned in this world, would Zhuang have been capable of doing what he did? But what people did to stop a man like Zhuang was an inspiration. And I’ve read enough to have an idea of where most great writers believe inspiration comes from—a holy source. Still, the passage keeps me wondering, not just about God, but also about whether we’re always grasping at straws that aren’t really there. That’s what keeps me up most nights. Those damn straws.

I close the book, then my eyes. I have an important appointment to keep. The silver tunnel is smooth and long, full of turns. I enjoy the wind on my face and the adrenaline which always accompanies my dream travels. This time it’s also accompanied by a sense of joy.

It feels good to see their faces—Bob’s round one, Steve’s long. Hard to believe it’s been a month since the last time I was in their company.

Bob studies me. “Roya, you’ve changed.” His tone doesn’t carry a bit of criticism, only wonder.

“I’m not any taller, if that’s what you mean.”

He snickers. “No, and your days of growing may be over, but you do look stronger—like you could beat Steve in an arm wrestling contest.”

There’s no doubt about that.
“I’m still the same Roya though, just more seasoned.”

“Yes,” Steve says, “and you still have that defiant look in your eyes. Don’t ever lose that.”

“No worries. It’s inborn,” I say.

They both wear skeptical expressions as they scan the surroundings. Our ghostly figures stand in tall, damp grass by the lake. Even though it’s dark, I can see Bob and Steve’s house isn’t built yet. The field where the house will stand one day is open except for a few pecan trees. The lake beats on the shore of an unprotected beach.

“All right, Roya,” Steve says at last. “What gives? Why we’d meet here? I don’t mind, but…”

Bob’s at Steve’s shoulder. He looks like he’s wondering the same thing.

“Well,” I begin, “I probably could have come up with a better location, but I knew this one would be perfect for my purposes.” They both exchange curious glances. “And besides, I wanted to return to you guys’ place. I’ve missed it. It’s just I forgot the house wouldn’t be built yet,” I say. What I don’t say is I’ve also missed the lake. It’s where I grew up and the only part of my childhood I can still fully experience.

“Why November 17, 1966, though?” Bob asks.

“I figured it would be great to have a show to watch while we catch up,” I say.

“Show? What kind of show?” Steve asks.

I point to the sky, allowing the grin I’d been suppressing to escape. “Only the largest meteor shower ever.”

Satisfied expressions unfold on both their faces.

“If my research is correct,” I continue, “then we have approximately three minutes to find a nice place to sit before the show starts.”

We settle down on a sturdy log along the beach. The first stars fall right on cue. With each passing second, the volume of meteors increases until they’re sprinkling down all around us. We’re speechless for a few minutes watching the best fireworks show in the world. It’s impossible to count the meteors streaking from every possible place in the vastness. According to what I read, on this night the meteors fell at a rate of approximately sixty per second. When I read that I could hardly believe what a display of that magnitude would look like. Now I know.
Unearthly.

I recede into my thoughts and pretend I’m on a distant planet and this is the show I watch every night before I go to sleep in my antigravity chamber. These stars are a part of evolution and their falling means that more stars are being created to take their place. Bigger ones. Better ones. But one day they will fall too.

I gaze across the lake. The house I grew up in hasn’t been built yet either. As if sensing my thoughts, or maybe following my line of vision, Bob says, “You think about the family you grew up with often?”

“Only when I feel like torturing myself, so yes,” I say.

“I’m certain they feel a loss, not having you in their lives anymore,” Bob says.

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” I say.

“Even though their minds have been reprogrammed, their hearts have not. That would be impossible,” Steve says.

I shrug. I don’t feel like telling them that I know for certain my absence has gone unnoticed by my fake family. Shortly after the battle with Zhuang I returned to the home where I was raised. Joseph had been the one to suggest it.
Closure
. That’s what he’d called it. That night he traveled to the pig farm where his father made his life hell after his mother died. I returned to the lake house to spy on the people who raised me. It felt weird to call them my parents now. I realize now the modifier, which the Institute had used to manipulate them to accept me as their child, had begun to wear off a couple of years ago. That’s the reason numerous times they acted as if I didn’t exist—or at least I believed they were acting. Now I know that for them, I didn’t truly exist in their reality. It was only once Aiden had perfected the technology that the device worked more fluidly, but it still was no match for Zhuang. He was the one to undo all its programming. He was the one who set me on a new course by getting me thrown out of my fake family’s home. Zhuang thought he was sending me in his direction, but he was wrong.

My fake brother’s space in the garage hadn’t changed a bit. The same lumpy couch sat in front of a nearly burnt out TV. Even his dirty laundry was piled in different corners of the room. My phony family was still coming to terms with his passing. Shiloh might have been an established loser, but he was also a beloved member of that family and the community. People liked his easy grin and carefree attitude. Turns out those are the same traits that made one effortless prey to Zhuang. That’s the reason Shiloh was the first to succumb to the brainwashing. He was barely functioning the last time I saw him, which is why he didn’t survive the blast that we suppose happened when Zhuang’s consciousness imploded or exploded or whatever it did.

The people I’d known as my parents for the first sixteen years of my life were lying on the couch, curled up in each other’s arms and watching a reality TV program when I visited. They seemed subdued as they chatted about their favorite characters during the commercials. There was absolutely nothing new or different about them. The modifier’s failure had proved useful in this situation at least. There didn’t seem to be any indication that I ever existed in that household. Trey explained they’d probably disposed of my stuff when in the hallucinator phase of Zhuang’s attack.

Who knew what the school or town thought? Honestly, I was one of those people who didn’t make much of an impact. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if my disappearance went unnoticed.

What bothered me the most about that visit was that I felt no hurt at being obliterated from these people’s lives. The point that these things rarely upset me is the most bothersome part. Most people feel. They care. Maybe that’s the reason I’m on the verge of living a new, unmemorable life at the Institute. Obviously, I’m trying to manipulate myself into doing something about my emotional numbness, but so far it isn’t working.