T.H.E.i., Page 4

  Chapter 4

  We left the room early the next morning. Hand in hand, Suzy and I wandered miles through the streets of Florence, back to the Uffizi, and around the square. The sculptures stood tall and proud, the concrete and marble bleached by the sun, but their usual grace and magnificence omnipresent, even resplendent. Young Italians sat on the steps laughing and smoking, flirting in sensual waves. It was warm, but not oppressive, and a light breeze washed over us. We slipped down a side street for a glass of Tuscan red and a Margherita pizza steaming with rich white cheese, a sprinkling of basil, and slices of busty ripe tomatoes.

  Afterwards it was on to Siena. We sat on the patio at the Osteria on the Piazza Del Campo and drank a couple of cold Moretti, the best Italian beer on the planet. The glow of early evening settled onto her face, her polished brown cheeks, and mahogany hair steaked with traces of red. She was simply stunning in the fading light. She looked into my eyes, then dropped her head slightly.

  “Mark, you know I love you and I would do anything you asked. Your happiness is my only concern. But there’s something hiding behind those soft brown eyes. You laugh, but there’s no music in it. There’s something hollow in your voice. It’s almost like you’ve lost the joy or maybe it’s that you’re searching. Is there something more beautiful than this? You know you can tell me anything. I won’t judge you. I’m here in our paradise waiting for you to join me. I can help. You need to trust me.”

  I said nothing.

  “When we return, maybe I should call Dr. Camdon, have him check your doses.”

  “Really Suzy, I’m perfectly alright. I feel better that I ever have. I couldn’t be happier than to be here in Siena with you. You’ve made my life a thing to be celebrated, to be honored, to be envied. No one else could have done it.”

  I looked at my left leg. It was well shaped and strong. I had two arms to match. I ran my hand over my biceps and felt the tight sinew. We walked the whole of the medieval town, marveling at the ancient brick and the elegant displays in the shop windows. The colorful flags of the seventeen clans of the city waved at us as we traversed the neighborhoods. There was the pace, the energy, the two of us holding hands and immersed in a poetry that perhaps only we understood. But she was right. I wanted to hide it, but I thought of the Dwarf, the dream . . . and there was a longing. For what? I didn’t know. I only knew it was there, and it was swelling in the recesses of my body and my mind. I tried to fight it . . . to stay in this glorious moment with the ultimate object of my love and my peace, but it haunted me like a hideous disease . . . slowly eating away the edges of my being . . . threatening to consume me in the jaws of a ravenous beast.

  I don’t know how long we were gone. A few days, a week, it didn’t matter. We did go on to the other villages, repeating our mission to be engulfed in the beauty, the food, the wine, and the sex. After all, it was Italy in the spring. It‘s what one does.

  But finally, we went back. Perhaps that was our mistake. The unit was just as we had left it, cold and lifeless by comparison to the Tuscan sun. The recliner sat before the Vid like a pagan throne, the port calling me. I waited for the tribute to begin.

  She left the next morning. I still had half of the blueberry pie and the butter pecan in the cool box. It rolled over my tongue like a sweet elixir. When I limped back towards my chair, I saw it . . . the scrap of paper. I picked it up and read only one phrase. “I’m coming.”

  At mid-morning I heard the barest tap on the door. I knew who it was, but part of me feared that Suzy had called the doctor. I went reluctantly to the door and shut one eye to peer through the tiny peephole. Nothing. Then I realized what I couldn’t see. Suddenly a misshapen hand flashed through my field of vision. I cracked the door. There he stood. Somehow he seemed even smaller that when I had seen him in the hall a couple of months ago. His features had been compressed, the eyes set higher in his forehead, but the nose shrunken and even more bulbous. His mouth had extended into a fish-like caricature. It seemed to grin and leer at the same time. He waved a small gnarled hand at me and pointed to the corner of the ceiling in the hall.

  “I’ve disabled the camera and the mic,” he croaked, “but it will only be a short while until T.H.E.I. are alerted and come to investigate.”

  I stepped into the hall and propped myself up on my good leg.

  “Getting harder to move, is it?” he croaked. “It happened to me, just in a different way. You’ll be TC before long, especially if you keep taking the damned fluids.”

  He raised his right forearm and pulled back the dirty sleeve of his tunic. There was a fiery rectangle, the keloid tissue massing to cover the large wound.

  “I cut it out . . . the port . . . used an old paring knife I found under the sofa in my unit. It bled a lot, but I’m getting whole.”

  I looked at him quizzically.

  “You dumb bastard. You don’t get it, do you? You don’t know what they’ve done to you. What they’ve removed or replaced. It’s not real . . . not real, I tell you. The trips, the woman, the sex. It’s not really happening. T.H.E.I. have your mind and they will continue to ravage your body if you don’t wake up. Before long, you won’t be able to make it to the Void. Perhaps they’ll let you continue your hollow existence or maybe you’ll just disappear like the rest of them. You’ve got to do something while you still have a choice. Don’t listen to her . . . the flickering bitch. But I’ve been here too long already. When, and if, you make that choice, I will know . . . and I will return. If not, you will experience your own personal Apocalypse.”

  The Apocalypse . . . Armageddon. My grandmother read the Bible every day. She often quoted from it. I still remembered bits and pieces, even those they had tried to cleanse from my mind. It was some sort of final reckoning, a great battle between the forces of good and evil. But those words . . . good . . . evil . . . no longer had any relevance. Why a meaningless battle when every man’s desire was only a minute away? What was the point?

  Suzy was a little late, but when she arrived, the auto-food provided a fresh lobster dinner with artichoke salad. Tonight the wine was a white burgundy . . . perfect for the meaty shellfish. We reveled in the sumptuous meal and the highlights of our trip. Italy is always good for me . . . the sights, the sounds, the scents, the whole of the European ambiance. It fills me up and makes me grateful and loving. Suzy was bubbling as we savored this trip and immediately began to makes plans for our next adventure. Afterwards, we settled into the soft luxury of each other’s embraces. Still, it didn’t prevent the dream.

  He . . . I . . . the man from the tennis court. It was almost like we were merging, falling into each other, our energies, our intent, our very spirits. He was at a lectern in front of what I imagined was some sort of classroom. It was filled with young faces, a look of eager curiosity and intensity pervading their features. I heard his voice, not so deep, but resonant and confident, weaving its own type of spell. He knew and they knew. He had something . . . if not wisdom, at least a thing of substance for them . . . perhaps even sustenance . . . a thing worth imbibing and internalizing.

  “It began with Merlin’s bargain with Uther, the ruthless master of a kingdom. The court wizard would use the ‘Spell of Making’ to enable his liege to taste the body of Igraine, the queen of his arch enemy, but a man with whom he has fashioned a truce, a respite from the war that had devastated both lands. The result of this unholy coupling was the baby Arthur, and Merlin’s bargain had guaranteed that the magician would possess this child. Uther had no choice. He reluctantly complied. Merlin determined to teach that child, Arthur, that the pursuit of justice and Godliness was to be his mission. The old ways, under the imprimatur, “Might Makes Right’, was to be discarded. Men were to be treated as men and the rule of law would prevail. But evil lurked. Morgan Le Fay, the first child of Igraine, stood in the shadows. She witnessed the rape of her mother. She knew, and thus dedicated every breath of her existence to the ultimate destruction of Arthur, her bastard half-brother,
the Round Table, and all of the nobility of man that it represented. That was the beginning, but not the end.”

  I didn’t understand at first, but I came to realize that this was the root of existence . . . the thing that separated us from the creatures that were divorced from morality and conscience . . . that operated only on instinct. Those were the things that made us human . . . flesh and blood infused with a divine spirit . . . a sense of good and evil. And if those did not exist . . . if there was no division . . . even in a relative sense, then there was no longer any link . . . any true definition of humanity. Perhaps Armageddon, a battle between wrong and right, was merely academic. A medieval concept that had no relevance, no real bearing on reality. But what was that?

  The words seemed to come out of my own mouth. My thoughts were his. Teach these young charges that pure force and violence were not the regents of the universe. There was something else, the dominance of man’s innate spirit, a desire to rise above the entities that bore no morality, the thing that strove for a world that was fair and allowed each to choose a destiny that revered and raised humanity to a sacred shrine. I scanned the faces. There was understanding and kindness. Suddenly there was a fog against the rear wall. Then a familiar image came into focus. It was the Dwarf, but he was larger. His features had softened and a patina of Godly will resided in his eyes. His smile drilled me like a laser. He raised a perfectly formed hand to his forehead in a passionate salute.

  Then the scene began to fade. It was obscured by a gray mist and I heard voices spitting from a Tower of Babel. There was the Vid. The Guide appeared in front of a gaggle of figures, their hands extended, reaching, exhorting. The voices came together and they began to chant.

  “We are one with T.H.E.I. in our paradise. It is our destiny. You desire no escape.”

  I woke with a wet clammy liquid seeping from my body, but when I reached for my left arm, it was dry and withered. My leg was dead and numb. Dream or no, I was the same half-man that had entered the bed. Suzy breathed softly at my side. In her sleep she placed her warm hand on my chest and sighed just a bit. It comforted me. Sleep returned.

  Over the next few days, I had what I can only call visions. The people, the things, the places . . . all seemed familiar. Some brought joy, some longing. Others were configured in doubt and even horror. I saw my grandmother, her arms lovingly welcoming a frightened child. I saw a bombed-out village, the carnage, the bodies without limbs. I heard the wailing of a child helpless beside his bloodied mother. What did these things mean? I didn’t know, but I felt that the man at the lectern -- whoever he was -- might, but only if I could continue to merge with his intellect and his spirit . . . to become one with his humanity.

  On that Friday, I woke as usual. Suzy had already left. I wasn’t expecting visitors, but then . . .