Ashes of Foreverland Read online

  Ashes of Foreverland

  by

  Tony Bertauski

  Copyright © 2015 by Tony Bertauski

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  This book is a work of fiction. The use of real people or real locations is used fictitiously. Any resemblance of characters to real persons is purely coincidental.

  See more about the author and forthcoming books at http://www.bertauski.com

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Ashes of Foreverland

  1. Tyler

  2. Alessandra

  3. Alessandra

  4. Alessandra

  5. Danny Boy

  6. Danny Boy

  7. Danny Boy

  8. Alessandra

  9. Alessandra

  10. Tyler

  11. Danny Boy

  12. Alessandra

  13. Alessandra

  14. Tyler

  15. Cyn

  16. Danny Boy

  17. Cyn

  18. Danny Boy

  19. Alessandra

  20. Tyler

  21. Alessandra

  22. Tyler

  23. Cyn

  24. Danny Boy

  25. Cyn

  26. Danny Boy

  27. Alessandra

  28. Tyler

  29. Alessandra

  30. Danny Boy

  31. Samuel

  32. Cyn

  33. Danny Boy

  34. Tyler

  35. Alessandra

  36. Tyler

  37. Danny Boy

  38. Tyler

  39. Alessandra

  40. Danny Boy

  41. Danny Boy

  42. Alessandra

  43. Cyn

  44. Reed

  45. Alessandra

  46. Danny Boy

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  All the beta readers who plowed through the potholes: Mandy Frankel, Hazel White, Sandy Gudaitis, and Chick Jabre.

  Pauline Nolet, the editor who hunts gremlins.

  And all the authors in DeadPixel Publications. I’d name you, but the order could piss someone off. This trip is much better as a ride-along.

  To the lost.

  To the lonely.

  SPRING

  We all...

  fall...

  down.

  An Incomplete List of Foreverland Survivors

  Danny Boy, whereabouts unknown

  Cyn, last known whereabouts Minneapolis, Minnesota

  Reed, whereabouts unknown

  Harold Ballard (The Director), son of Patricia and Tyler, whereabouts unknown

  Tyler Ballard, ADMAX Penitentiary, Colorado

  Patricia Ballard, comatose at the Institute of Technological Research, New York City

  1. Tyler

  ADMAX Penitentiary, Colorado

  Tyler stepped onto the ledge.

  The Italian marble was cold, his toes gripping the chiseled edge. The platform cantilevered from the roof a thousand feet above traffic. Taillights were strung throughout Central Park, starting and stopping, merging and turning, moving through the city like corpuscles.

  He couldn’t smell the exhaust from up there, couldn’t hear the horns or the congestion, the shouts and whistles.

  He held out his arms, Christ-like, tipped his head and inhaled the wind untainted by human grime, from the trash of selfish thoughts. Only the fierce breeze in his ears.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting.” Patricia crossed the portico.

  Her loosely fit dress fluttered around her feet. The brightly lit glass walls of the luxury apartment—the only such apartment atop the Bank of America building—betrayed the layers of beige fabric that otherwise would hide her pear-shaped body. Her graying hair flowed to her shoulders.

  “I can’t stay long,” he said.

  She looked through him with those penetrating eyes, a smile reflecting somewhere in their depths. Her scent carried through the cutting breeze, her dress snapping like taut flags. He stopped on the bottom step.

  “You don’t have to leave.”

  “You know I can’t stay, love.”

  A beige pile of fabric fell at her bare feet. Her naked body was without wrinkles; the sweep of her hips hypnotic. None of her curves were as alluring as the tight curls of her lips pushing into her cherub cheeks.

  He watched her from the bottom step, watched her dive into the glass-bottom pool that was suspended over the thousand-foot drop. The water, crystal blue.

  She hardly made a ripple, swimming beneath the surface to the other end. Her strokes were long, water beading from her fair skin. Tyler waited with a towel. He wrapped her as she stepped out, water dripping from her nose.

  The taste of her filled his sinuses.

  He pulled the towel over her shoulders. This time, it was he that turned away and climbed back onto the ledge. The night consumed the streets. Red lights flared; headlights glared. And there, on the horizon, between the stiff city edifices lining the streets like metallic offerings to an industrial God, just past the end of the road where the sun would rise in the morning, he saw the flicker of gray static. Nothing existed beyond that.

  Stay? That would give me no greater pleasure.

  But staying in this reality, this world that Patricia dreamed, would be so small. Despite her ability, she could dream up the city.

  Stay, he could—he wanted to.

  But stay and the human population would never know the true freedom of another reality—this reality.

  Foreverland.

  “The hosts?” he asked. “How are they doing?”

  “You know your answer.” Her shadow crept up behind him. “Hope is your albatross, dear.”

  Hope. It was indeed his bastard.

  He was not so desperate to lay his future, his life, on the fragile ice of hope. But never had he thought he would be this old, this close to the edge of dying. He couldn’t live forever. Not in the flesh.

  Unless they found someone with the potential, the brain structure, to host a limitless Foreverland, one that went far beyond the city, past the horizon, one that replicated this planet.

  This universe.

  A new reality.

  Patricia couldn’t do it. Neither could he. Even Harold, their son, if he were alive, could only do so much. But someone out there could. There had to be. And that was why he asked, that was why he hoped.

  Maybe they would find one before this flesh ended.

  Her hands slid over his ribs, laced over his stomach. “I may have found one,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “A viable host.”

  “What do you mean? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Hope, dear. I didn’t want to stoke it any more than you have. I’m taking a chance, but I’ve sensed her exceptional potential.”

  “You have her already?”

  She nodded. “I’ve already had her. She is dreaming her own Foreverland and it is wondrous.”

  His chest fluttered. “She agreed to host?”

  “No. She doesn’t know...I had to take her, dear. She has no idea.”

  It was risky, but abduction was nothing new. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I wanted to be sure.”

  “And you’re sure?”

  She kissed his chin. “A goddess.”

  Chance was a suspicious mistress, the harbinger of hope. And, try as he might to deny it, he was willing to gamble on a goddess.

  Because a goddess is what we need.

  “In order for her Foreverland to stabilize,” she said, “we’ll need her to sleep.”

  “How long?”

  “A year.”

  A year? The
y had already squandered so much time on the other hosts. Is this really our last chance to bring Foreverland to the world?

  He pulled her close.

  Their lips met, warm and wet. The wind howled. He held her until it was time to leave her, to return to the physical realm, where his body of aging flesh waited. Her floral scent lingered in his nostrils, but a faint layer of decay sifted through it.

  A year, he thought. One more year.

  A point burned his forehead like a red-hot wire. He reached up, felt the slither, the sting of a wasp as the surgical steel needle slid from his forehead.

  He stared through a blurry veil at a cracked ceiling.

  A metal door clanged. Two prison guards stepped next to Tyler Ballard’s bed and waited. He took his time, letting his feet touch the floor. He rubbed the thin spotted skin on his knobby hands for warmth.

  The floral scent faded.

  2. Alessandra

  The Institute of Technological Research, New York City

  “Ladies and gentlemen, can I have your attention?” someone shouted. “The tour is about to begin.”

  Alex put her phone away. Her husband had texted, wondering how long this visit would last. If he timed his exit from the Guggenheim, he could pick her up without parking.

  Journalists crowded to the front. Alex dumped her coffee and moved along the wall, hands still shaking. A cold wave vibrated inside her like a chilled metal coil, a set of eyes scanning her organs. Her teeth damn near chattered, but she wasn’t cold.

  Nerves?

  Through a gap of photographers, she saw the Institute’s PR person standing in front of heavy double doors. Like the rest of the lobby, they were forest green, imbued with a sense of calming and healing. She had a sense that beyond those doors it was quite the opposite.

  “I would like to welcome you.” The small woman’s name was Ellen; that’s what the badge said. She was in her early thirties, her teeth flashing a white smile. “This is a very exciting day at the Institute of Technological Research. You were handpicked to see our work up close, to ask our scientists questions. It’s through you the public will know what we’re doing.”

  She made it sound like they’d found golden tickets in chocolate bars when, in fact, they gave select tours all the time. But it was by invitation. Alex’s invitation came as a surprise. She wasn’t a journalist anymore and didn’t work for a major newspaper like the others. She squeezed between a young photographer and the wall. Her black hair fell over her face.

  She rubbed her hands. Her lips, cold.

  “Before we do,” Ellen said with her flashy smile, “I want to emphasize a few items. You have all signed a release and agreed to the above-mentioned rules.”

  She held up a sheet of paper.

  “Your enhancements, should you have them, will remain off during your stay.”

  There was a rumble of laughter.

  “I know, I know. We’re the pioneers of biomite research, but while you’re inside the laboratory, we don’t want to run the risk of interference.”

  The punchline wasn’t off, it was should you have them. Every journalist on the planet had a certain degree of biomites—the recently invented and globally distributed artificial stem cells—seeded into their brain to help with memory, data processing and, for some, emotional regulation. And this was where biomites were manufactured. Alex had the maximum allowed by the government. They probably all did.

  And that’s why I’m cold.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d shut off her internal enhancements. In the last hour, it had become quite clear how much they helped regulate her emotions.

  It sucked to be plain human.

  “Your identification has an imbedded monitor.” Ellen lifted the card around her neck. “Keep it on you at all times.”

  She added a few more pleasantries before pushing the doors open, leading the group down a stark white hallway. Alex worked her way to the end of the line. The smell of gourmet coffee was quickly replaced with sterilizing solutions and artificial clay—the distinctive odor of biomites. The place felt a bit too much like a 1940s asylum.

  Scientists stood in doorways, wearing white lab coats, smiling and waving like they were extras hired to watch a parade.

  “Alex?” The man in front of her had turned while walking.

  “Oh, hey, Mason. Didn’t recognize you.”

  “¿Come esta?” the balding man asked. How are you?

  “Muy bien.” Being Latina, she often entertained bits of Spanish. “How have you been?”

  “Soulless.”

  They had briefly worked together at The Washington Post. They caught up on gossip in between stops as Ellen briefed them on the function of the various labs—where new strains of biomites were being developed, how disease would be erased, how biomites would regenerate new limbs.

  All the promises of heaven on Earth.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Following the story, what else?”

  She didn’t want to tell him the truth, that she’d received an unexpected invitation to such an exclusive event. A man named Jonathan Deer. His name was a joke, but she’d done some research and discovered he was employed by the Institute and wanted her to see the new and exciting developments for herself. She was already writing about animal cruelty and was about to expose practices in all sorts of industries.

  This wasn’t even on her radar.

  “Congrats on the book, by the way,” Mason said. “Took balls to go into North Korea like that.”

  “That’s what they say.” Alex fiddled with her monitor badge.

  “This your next project?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Good luck, if it is. Getting inside information out of these people will make North Koreans look like old ladies. No offense.”

  “You calling me old?”

  “Calling you a lady.”

  “That’s a first.”

  His laughter was more of a grunt. Alex was in her mid-forties but turned heads like she was closer to twenty. Mason knew she was the furthest thing from a beauty queen. Those that didn’t were quickly discarded.

  They gathered at another set of metal doors. Ellen waited until everyone was crowded together. They were about to enter Wonka’s factory, only there wouldn’t be a chocolate river. Photographers held up their cameras; reporters lifted their phones.

  “So far, you’re disappointed.” Ellen smiled and many of them laughed. “You didn’t come all this way to be greeted by computer programmers and lab directors, or even get a history lesson on biomites, but it was part of the package deal. Now that’s out of the way, we can get to the good stuff. I ask that you kindly find a seat in order for us to properly introduce the main thrust of our research. You will be allowed to explore once we are finished.”

  Someone raised their hand.

  “Hold your questions,” Ellen interrupted. “There will be time for that. I also want to remind you to avoid engaging in any degree of enhancement activity.”

  She paused, let that sink in, and then opened the doors.

  There were exclamations of surprise, a storm of photography clicking and whirring. Alex could only see black walls above the group. They were reflective, like glass.

  “You all right?” Mason was looking at Alex’s chest.

  She was holding the badge monitor badge/monitor, but her hands were shaking almost violently.

  “I’m cold.” Her breath quivered. “Are you?”

  He shook his head.

  She rubbed her face. They shuffled ahead a tiny step at a time. Mason was the first to get a glimpse of what was around the corner and stopped. Alex bumped into him.

  A scientist stood next to a lone table. His hair was unnaturally black; his face thick and square.

  It resembled an operating table, but the surface was cushioned. An orangutan rested on it, his long orange hair contrasting with the green cushion, his weight sinking partway into it. There was nothing alarm
ing about being so close to a sleeping primate.

  It was the needle.

  The long, surgical barrel was positioned in the middle of his forehead.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Ellen was announcing, “if you would kindly find a seat, we can get started.”

  It was a bit like herding kindergarteners away from an ice-cream truck, but the crowd eventually moved to a small block of chairs. Alex took the last seat in the back row, oblivious to the opposite wall’s reflection.

  “Good morning.” It was the scientist who spoke, his accented English slightly broken. Russian, maybe? “I am Dr. K.P. Baronov, director and lead scientist at the Institute. I trust Ellen has answered your questions up to this point.”

  Ellen was sitting separate from the group.

  “Very good. I know you have many questions, and I will answer them shortly. I also know you are very educated in this process, it was why you were selected for such exclusive tour, but I would like to update you on what we do here and why.”

  If he thought they were educated on needles in foreheads, he had been misinformed. Alex had seen pictures, but that was it.

  “You understand, I am quite sure, that computer-assisted alternate reality, or CAAR, makes a direct connection with the organism’s frontal lobe via a surgical probe.”

  He half-gestured to the orangutan.

  “The subject’s awareness, or identity if you will, is in some ways transported out of the body and into a dreamlike state. During the inception of such technology, the identity of the subject was put into a computer, but, as some of you know, that is no longer an effective means of creating an alternate reality.”

  “Why?” Alex’s voice shook.

  “Mrs. Diosa.” Ellen half stood. “Hold your questions, please.”

  “It is okay,” Dr. Baronov said. “It is very good question and why we brought you here. You understand that there are great many benefits that can occur through this method. We use orangutan because it is the smartest primate on earth besides humans. It is our hope that, with our research, this method will soon be accessible to all people.”

  “What about permanent damage?” Alex couldn’t stop herself. Ellen’s smile faltered, but the doctor nodded without hesitation.

  “Of course, that is good concern,” he said. “There was much to learn about this process and the obvious distress of the irreparable damage to one’s psychology. It has taken much research to perfect the procedure, but I feel confident you will see the benefits today.”