March 2001
The room was hot, and I swept my foot over the vent in the floor to check for air conditioning. The air rising from the vent wasn't appreciably cooler, but it was hard to tell. I headed over to my brother's room to check his vent, guided more by suspicion than whim. I was not favored by my stepfather, and I felt sure that I'd been given short shrift as far as temperature control amenities were concerned. And indeed the neighboring room was notably cooler. In the middle of the room an industrial sheet metal duct hooded a large opening in the floor. Beneath this floor was a ramped passage that widened into a submerged metal chamber. The duct towered over me, and the rampway in the floor seemed forbidding. I peered into the opening I found it lit by a series of flame jets down the left side, as though from inset torches. Their directed heat warmed my face even at that distance, so entrance seemed unlikely. But at the same time I could feel cool air coming from the right side of the opening, and knew then that my suspicions of favoritism were correct. How it was possible to feel both hot and cold air from the same opening puzzled me, but the details were more than I could focus on, and perspective shifted...
I overheard Jennifer Lopez, the protagonist, declaring that she would just have to adjust the air conditioning herself to counter the oppressive heat. My stepfather's voice issued from points unknown, and countered that she would be caught if she tried. And I saw what he meant. Trained at the coolant controls to the right was featureless black video camera on a pedestal. Before the camera was an upright tennis racket with a pink rose woven into its net. My stepfather's voice said, "There's no way to get past the rose." In my mind's eye I saw an accompanying time-lapse film of the petals of the rose opening and curling, and then wilting and finally dropping off. I understood that my stepfather meant that any tampering of the camera would be revealed by the rose's apparent jump in maturity once the tape was reviewed. The plan was ingenious, and I was impressed by how well thought out he was about maintaining control over the temperature.
Suddenly I was seeing things from the camera's point of view. I was seeing the tape being reviewed. Down inside the metal chamber, the rose had wilted appreciably since its first appearance, and the camera slowly panned down to reveal the bottom half of the chamber flooded with water. The purpose of the racket became clear then, as feathers floating on the water's surface had snared themselves in its strings. This, I knew, would further incriminate us. We had been unable to outsmart my stepfather despite our efforts.
I was shaving in the bathroom, shirtless before the mirror. Regarding myself, I noticed a single hair on my left shoulder and casually swiped at it. But the hair was growing there, in fact, and remained a stubborn distraction. I flicked the electric shaver off and leaned in closer to the mirror to get a better look - only to see, to my alarm, that my upper back was covered with long, wavy blond hair. I grabbed at it, and was relieved when it came away immediately. It wasn't mine at all, so how had it come to be there? I wondered. I had a sudden impression of a long-haired woman whose hair I'd cut, but the image was fleeting. I stood there with handfuls of the hair, and noticed with some revulsion that it was mixed with dust and lint and scraps of floor detritus. And something else still. At the center of the repulsive ball in my left hand sat a bronze key, and the sight of this made me extremely uneasy. I had the panicked feeling that I'd forgotten about the keys, and that they were essential. I had yet another vision as I stood there, and saw myself back in my room, tossing the hair - and key within - to the floor between the bureau and the wall. Shining up at me were the two companion keys, which eased my nerves.
In the living room I joined my mother, brother and grandparents, who were arranged neatly in chairs and couches to the outside of the room. It was now 3 PM, and we were eating bowls of cereal and talking about how my stepfather was terrorizing us all. I knew that he was upstairs sleeping, and I felt a twinge of guilt for talking about him in his absence. Still, I grumbled about my living conditions, and spoke of leaving the environment entirely. "You have a low rent here," Mom said. I agreed that $600 was low, and felt frustrated by the lack of viable options. Just then the phone rang, and I heard my stepfather, roused, clomping down the stairs. He stopped at the foot of the stairs and regarded us with silent impatience. I looked at him over my shoulder and felt pity.
The world was blanketed with fine gray ash, including the street I was driving on. The other cars were driving too slowly, so I sped up - but soon regretted it. My car started to spin, and I fought to maintain control. "Oh, the ash," I said. As I straightened myself back out I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the familiar flash of red and blue. Perfect timing, I thought, but pulled to the side of the road to wait for the police cruiser, which was still nearly a block behind me. I noticed, while watching the cruiser's slow progress, that my car was actually missing some of its glass, and that it was mostly open to the outside. It didn't concern me. I was pleased that I had thought to make it easier for the police by waiting for them. I wondered if it would be acknowledged. I wasn't, in fact, nervous in the slightest, and offered my registration when the cop sidled up to my door. She started talking, but I'd only lowered my window a crack. Not wanting to look suspicious, I lowered it all the way.
Then she and I were laughing and having easy conversation. She was in my driver's seat and I was next to her. She looked tough, like she'd been around. But there was a sympathy in her face that made her easy to talk to. Kind of like Frances McDormand. Outside the car I noticed a man - her partner, perhaps - sniffing around my car. The woman was saying to me, "You have the licence of the car that was ticketed last time, and that's the one we need to repossess." I explained to her calmly that she was mistaken, and that I had never had a moving violation. She started to correct me, and I continued, "Except for that one a long time ago." She nodded. I was certain that I could clear this whole matter up. She was saying, "We were actually looking for a licence plate match, believe it or not. It's just luck that I happened to see your car going by. I was surprised!" The man outside, I saw, was actually hitching the back of my car to a tow truck. Now I felt a little more concerned about the way things were heading. If I could just get them to see that they had confused me for someone else. "See, but that's not me," I told her. I had cogent arguments, and she seemed sympathetic even as the rear of my car was lifted up. I couldn't believe they were going through with this, and felt frustrated that the man outside wasn't waiting for her to report on the situation. "We'll just have to hang it up," she was saying. I wasn't understanding her anymore. Not until the rear of the car kept lifting, and continued until we were dangling from the crane - completely off the ground. I felt violated.
Back at the motel I was storming around, not knowing what to do. "I'll sue them!" I said, pacing up and down the old, Formica-tiled hall. The narrow hall was painted an institutional powder blue, and I passed by the vending machine room on my way to the lobby, which was no larger than a waiting room. I saw Cody there in a chair, and it brought to my mind a possible the freelancing angle. "My car is necessary, because I'm a freelancer." Cody agreed with me, "You need your car to get to your clients." Suddenly my argument was clear. "Yes!" I said triumphantly. "I'm a freelancer, and without my car I cannot get to my clients, and if I can't get to them then I can't get paid! I'll sue them for endangering my livelihood!" There were other people in the waiting room, and my performance was drawing curious eyes now. I had places to go, and called to them over my shoulder, "Man's got to git paid!"
Having escaped from the subterranean, labyrinthine world below, I stepped onto the surface and found myself on a windswept rise overlooking the ocean. The bleached grass here rippled on currents of coastal breeze, and the featureless clouds above were a shelf of gray cotton. The view was exhilerating, and my partner was there to meet me, now eager to show me what she'd found. I looked back one last time at the crumbling shaft from which I'd emerged. It seemed smaller already. My partner stepped close to show me, in confidence, of her find. It was a small egg, the size of a candy, and she was visibly excited by it. In truth it wasn't much to look at. Its white enamel shell was speckled with faded blue dots, and it was flawed. Through fine cracks I could make out a translucent gel inside that had yellowed with age. But no matter, I knew this was something valuable. "She's old," my parner confirmed, "But watch what I can do with her."
She held the egg in her open palm, and put her hand out toward a tree a few yards inland from where we stood. Reciting a simple incantation, she activated the egg, and the tree began to glow white, seemingly from within. A moment later and the glow disappeared leaving nothing behind.
I was thrilled, and had a new sense of hope. This now, this would surely help us in our struggle for freedom! She opened her hand to show me, and there were now two eggs. The second was striped and purple, and was even more worn than the first had been. Wondering whether, at one time, these eggs had been plentiful, I glanced at the high grass at the edge of the escape shaft with the vague notion of finding another one at my feet. And for a moment I thought I actually saw one, a hint of color next to a low concrete moulding that stretched from the shaft. But it was just refuse; a colored candy wrapper.
To the other side of us, toward the shore, there was a metallic structure painted in the orange/yellow of construction machinery. It looked like the top of an elevator shaft - a representation of what lay beneath us, and I regarded it with the same contempt. "What about metal?" I asked my partner. I had my doubts. She seemed reluctant to try, but we had to find out. She held the egg aloft once more and triggered it with a word. The structure began to glow just as the tree before it had, but when the glow disappeared the structure was still there, seemingly untouched.
"These eggs are old," she explained to me. "They're not as powerful as they used to be." But I thought that she was perhaps going about it in the wrong way, and asked to have a try myself. She handed me the older of the two eggs, the purple one. It was warm in my hand, and I rolled it around to get a better look. My partner had a closer connection to the eggs, I felt, and I had the feeling that some amount of this sympathy was necessary for the eggs to work. I tried to clear my thoughts of doubt as I considered the specimen. The gel inside, visible through the chipped enamel, had turned almost amber. I wondered what it had been like earlier in its life.
I chose a subject - a small generic concrete projection of some kind - and held the egg out. I said, "Make that block resonate-" My partner voiced her concern, and I thought, How do you know what I'm going to do? I went ahead though, sure that I was onto something. "Make it resonate at fifty thousand megahertz." The egg jumped out of my hand, and I heard simultaneously a small electronic screech in my head. Now in the dirt at my feet, the egg looked different. It was shiny and translucent nearly all the way through, like caramelized sugar. It looked burned, and I sensed in it anger and fear. I was frustrated by my inability to control the eggs, but understood at the same time that my request was made in ignorance. I knew nothing about these eggs, and held no real empathy for them. This was now borne out. But I wasn't going to be discouraged.
I still believed that my idea would work, and snatched the egg from the ground and repeated my incantation. My theory was that at the right frequency the target structure would simply shake itself into dust. There was no glow though, and I only had a moment to react before the concrete cube launched itself at my head.
What unexpected law of nature had I invoked? I raised my arm to block the structure, which was now apparently attracted to my head, as if magnetically. I saw that I was actually wielding a concrete slab myself, and used this to stop the newly enchanted block, which hovered weightlessly around my head, like a balloon attracted to static in my hair. My partner was scrambling now, and there was no sense of triumph in the fact that she'd been correct. She was working to counteract the effect of my spell, and before long the concrete block fell lifelessly to the ground.
An FBI investigation found my partner and me at an elevator. I came to know that it was not functioning because one of the double agents had, in trying to escape, managed to wedge himself in the shaft. This was no good for the progress of our investigation. Since there were no other agents around, I made it my business to try and figure out how the get the man out of the shaft.
We were in an open, abandoned area of the building, and the access to the elevator mechanism was to the left of the sliding doors, around the side of the shaft, in a smaller room attached to the front hall. The access panel had been removed already, it seemed, and the electronic guts within were revealed. I quickly got to work as my partner looked on.
I heard a voice from within, strangled, muffled. It was in a foreign tongue, but I took it to be a plea for help. The internals to the elevator consisted of a complex stacked array, but my fingers were familiar with the components. In fact, they looked curiously like a stack of old record players, dotted with multicolored LEDs. This was clear to me, but it didn't seem altogether unlikely either.
My supervisor had since appeared on the scene bringing with him a company of other agents, who made themselves busy milling about. Had the real technical expert arrived with them? I knew that I had a facility with machinery, but I was no expert - I was a field agent first and foremost.
As my fingers continued their nimble work, I heard my supervisor's voice behind me. To another agent he said, "Weren't you saying that you needed another technician?" He'd read my mind, right down to my secret fear. I wasn't regarded highly by him, and he'd been looking for just the excuse to take me off the team. I didn't react though, and went about my business. Several of the individual trays I'd been able to unlatch and slide outward, but I had to figure out how to slide the whole cage out so that we could access the shaft. There was something I had passed over though, so I went over each component methodically.
It was true that I was feeling pride in this unexpected display of dexterity, but the thought of doing this full time was not appealing. Rather, the prospect seemed suffocating. The supervisor was standing behind me now, and I worked with renewed speed, unclasping metallic arms, sliding out one turntable at a time. Aha, but there at the top, behind and to the side, was the master clasp. I flipped it and the entire cage was now free on its tracks. It slid toward me easily as I pulled, and at the end of its tracks I hefted it up and placed it on the floor to the side. The floor, I noted, was littered with bits of machinery. Had I done all that? I was surprised that the cage had come out so easily, as though it hadn't been attached to anything within, but as I set it down I saw a trailing cable that attached it to a cylindrical fan casing still in the shaft. It was loose too, as if it were meant to dangle freely.
I kneeled to take a break, and considered the unblocked passage. I really was good at this. To my right my partner talking casually with another head agent. Probably about her next assignment. I thought she was beautiful, but felt a sense of loss. I already missed her, and she had no idea about the feelings I felt for her. I wouldn't be able to tell her either, not for many years. Not until we had distance between us.
I stood with resignation, and went to the front of the elevator to perform the final task. Pressing the call button would lower the elevator car and free the man inside. As I waited for the car next to my supervisor, I regarded my reflection in the chrome doors. I was shirtless, just like an engineer, and my skin was smudged with grease and soot. Perhaps this was my lot after all. Suddenly feeling self conscious, I pulled my stomach in before going back to the side opening. The formerly trapped man was there, blueprints spread open on his lap, looking up at us with a helpless grin. I felt contempt for him.
Dave and I walked purposefully down the brightly lit, product choked path through the department store. We'd just completed a mission of some sort, judging from the sense of accomplishment I was feeling, and were now making our retreat. We were in the women's department, and I found the mountains of cosmetics supplies and mirrored walls somewhat unsettling. I avoided my own reflection. What an odd pair we were, I thought. Or rather, what an odd pair I made us. My pale, greasy skin next to Dave's tanned, weathered countenance. My thinning hair to his thick mop. I felt ugly, but at the same time, I was matching his pace, and very much a part of this team. That must surely count for something. Perhaps with him then I would be seen in a more favorable light, if at all. Then again, I thought, perhaps it's all in my head.
I was aware that our brisk pace was drawing the eyes of the saleswomen as we passed, and I was careful not to make eye contact. But in fact there was a reason that we were here. We entered the dressing area, which was a maze of mirrored stalls. It was here that we would make our egress, and I began to search for the exit. Dave soon shouted that he'd found it, and I came around to his booth to find him stooped by the tiny door in the wall - an opening through the mirror. There was some undefined preternatural quality about the opening that excited me. It was as if we'd be the only ones able to perceive it. Or rather, that this was some kind of portal that would lead somewhere nowhere near the dressing rooms.
I was preparing to leave, but Dave stopped me and told me there was something he had to do first. He crouched by a stool next to the open doorway, and there made busy with a small pile of coins on the floor beneath it. They looked like pennies and nickels to me, or nothing worth very much anyway. Still, it seemed important to him. The pile, apparently, had been left by Tulley on an earlier outing, and was part of an ongoing game between the two of them. And my presence now, it seemed, somehow put the odds in Dave's favor. He counted and sorted the coins in a practiced, methodical way that was utterly lost on me. My interest was divided between the short door and the coins. I sensed the ritual was reaching its conclusion when Dave started looking beneath some of the coins, as if expecting to find prizes beneath them.