Project HEARD presents DIMENSION OUT OF RANGE VOLUME TWELVE: AFTERTHOUGHT 06 FEBRUARY 2001 1210 Jay hung up the phone as Brianna came back from her shopping trip. He got up to help her unload the truck. "I'm still quite capable of doing things by myself, you know," she told him. "You just take it easy, and I'll handle this," Jason insisted, as if he hadn't heard her. "You need to start resting more often." They'd had the argument dozens of times; in her heart, she knew he was right, too. A nearly-seven-months-pregnant woman wasn't supposed to be hauling heavy bags of groceries around, so the "experts" said. Jay wasn't up for an argument, and Bri' wasn't about to prolong it, so she leaned there against the workbench, watching her husband empty the truck. "I talked to your sister this morning," his muffled voice came out from under the bags of groceries as he carried them to the kitchen. She followed him, saying, "And?" "And she'd called solely to remind me of a promise she thinks I made to her in December '99." "A what? A promise? About what?" "Bio-implants," he told her bluntly. "Oh," she said, stopping in the kitchen doorway. "She called you on that one, did she?" "Most certainly did. She even played back a recording she'd made. Damned eerie if you ask me." "Uh-huh.." "You not going to ask me what I told her?" "I figured you were going to tell me anyway, so I wasn't wasting our time." "Oh. Okay. Well, anyway, I told her I'm a man of my word." "You did?" "I did." "You're saying.." "I just got off the phone with Tolum General Hospital when you got home," he said. "I'm scheduled to go in on the twenty-sixth of April." Over the month-and-a-half or so that followed, lots of well-wishers called up and paid visits to Jay. Invariably, they told him how great it was going to be. "Yeah, I know," he'd say dismissively. "You get to secretly talk to your friends, and you can open doors automagically." No--MUCH more than that, they told him. Things like controlling any computer- operated equipment just with a thought, for one thing--not to mention that it greatly enhances the experiences experienced in places such as Mitch's history center. When he pushed for more information, as in, "What ELSE can it do?", almost every person he talked to couldn't provide an answer with any material value. "It's.. just great," they'd tell him. "You'll see." One question that was asked by Mitch, speaking of her, was "When is Brianna going to get hers done?" "Well, we haven't decided yet," Bri' spoke for the two of them. "They tell us I can't have it when I'm in my present condition--something about such surgery being too dangerous for pregnant women--" "Understandable," Mitch nodded. "Uh-huh," Bri' went on. "And besides, we think it'll be better to do it one at a time anyway." "That does indeed make sense," Valsen said. "You WILL be giving up the chance to learn these new things together, but on the 'flip side of the coin', as one might say, Brianna will be able to help Jason if he has trouble adjusting--and that sort of thing isn't unheard of, I should add." "Geez, you think I needed to hear that?" Jay said with a tone that conveyed a tinge of anger in amidst apprehension. "Still havin' doubts, huh?" Mitch said knowingly. "Yeah," Bri' answered for Jason. "Doesn't help that Bri and Gina keep teasing him with so-called 'horror stories'.. plus, Jason keeps renting all these weird movies." "So you're bringing it on yourself," Mitch directed at Jay for clarification. He waggled his hand in place of a shrug. "There's nothing to worry about," she told her lifelong friend. "Bri and Gina and I all had it, and we're fine, right?" "Yeah," Jason said as if someone was forcing it out of him (which they were). "But you KNOW my phobia about it, Mitch.. you remember what Zoner was like after he got all cybered up, know what I mean?" "It's nothing like that," she said to him, voice softening. "Zoner did a LOT more than a simple implant, too, in any case. In fact, if I remember correctly, ReRob once mentioned that fridge magnets stuck to Zoner when you threw 'em at him. Trust us--you'll be okay." The conversation eventually ended, and Jason turned back to PCzilla to play about some more. Brianna went off, just before the computer bonged softly at Jason to let him know someone was coming in over the Internet for him. He read the message: *** Mitch@tolum.gov.earth requests private chat - accept? (Y/n) *** He selected Yes immediately, of course. Hey Hi.. Can you talk for a minute? * Jay shrugs. Sure.. You told me something one time about what 'I' asked of you in the 44th century.. Jason shivered, figuring he knew what was coming. Shoot You told me that the Mitch you were with (Goddess, that sounds so weird!) asked you to let her learn all about Kylie's death via your cyber. * Jay nods. Yeah.. So.. the question *I* have is.. are you this apprehensive about the bio-implants here and now because they remind you of Kylie? Jason sighed, closing his eyes. 'Cause I'd understand, and I'm sure everyone else would too. What I'm saying is, if you don't want to do this, it'll be OK by me. And if anyone has a problem with it, I'LL handle 'em. ^_^ * Jay smiles broadly and chuckles, despite his feelings. No, it's not that - I'm OK with that, it's just.. well.. I'm not sure WHAT it is. I just don't like it. Then don't do it.. Right? Maybe that was too strong a phrase - how about this? I'm skeptical about the benefits, and I'm unable to get past all the things that might go wrong. Put it this way.. do you remember when I went in to get my eyes lasered the first time? Dave Barry had just before that done a column joking about it, of course, and he said the laser had settings of 'vaporize bulldozer' and 'trim the cornea' - and he said "What if they forgot to switch it back from 'vaporize bulldozer'?" - I KNOW that's not the case, but that's how I feel now. * Mitch nods hehehe - I get your point. Well, there's no 'vaporize bulldozer' setting on the bio-implant. K? Ok, you got me. I won't complain about it any more. Hey, YOU do whatever YOU want to... okay? And you can even come stay with us the night before if you want Thanks for the offer - I'll submit it to the Boss. * Mitch laughs See ya then, then! ^_^ Jay leaned back in his chair, smiling, most of his apprehensive feelings gone. TWO DAYS PRIOR TO SURGERY "Okay, I gotta ask. Why are you taking all this stuff??" "'Cause it's the hospital, Bri'," Jay answered her as he tossed the two bags into the back of the truck. "You take stuff to a hospital, for when you're recovering." "But you'll only be recovering for eight hours," she pointed out. "I can read a whole BUNCH of books in that much time," he countered. "And have a lot of time left over to do other stuff." "Like this? What IS this, anyway, a pocket computer?" she asked, pulling a bulky grey device out of a side pouch on one of his bags. "No, it's the Guide." "The Guide? What, you mean, THE Guide?" "Turn it over," he said. She did, and saw the legend DON'T PANIC on its cover. "Where'd you get this?" "It was in the stuff that we found at the D-Team's house in Australia. I can only assume that one of our members, in this reality, went to a dimension where the Guide was real and brought one back." He smiled. "That one must be a few hundred updates off by now.." ONE DAY PRIOR TO SURGERY Jay was seated in an office in Tolum General Hospital, with Bri' at his side. This was a last-minute meeting with the doctors that would perform the surgery, so they could tell him precisely what they were going to do, and how long it would take; what the aftereffects would be like, and all that. The doctors came in one at a time, both late; Jason didn't mind, knowing how hectic a medical professional's life can be. Dr. Franklin would be the lead surgeon on the job, and Dr. Sheridan would be assisting. Franklin was Tolumi, and Sheridan was from elsewhere on Earth, having just finished learning how to do the procedure so she could take it to other hospitals around the world. "I gotta ask," Jason interrupted when Dr. Sheridan entered--the later of the two M.D.'s to arrive--"Have you any relatives by the names of Mike, Beth.. Keya?" As an afterthought he added, "Sarah?" The young woman shook her head. "Not to my knowledge, no.." "Sorry," Jason said, sitting back again. "Something from my past, that's all.. one of my friends was named Mike Sheridan and ended up being an ED doc." "Shall we continue?" Dr. Franklin said. "Go on, please; sorry," Jason apologized. "No problem. Anyway, as I was saying, you can expect to be well enough to be discharged sometime the day after tomorrow, though I wouldn't recommend travel using things such as light-gates and PTs until a week later. You'll probably have a pretty big headache for a few days, too--you can cut it down somewhat using something like Tylenol 3's." "Okay," Jason nodded. "After that, it'll be smooth sailing," Dr. Sheridan said. "And I'll have the wondrous chip inside my head," Jay said unenthusiastically. Dr. Franklin eyed Jason. "Sir, if you're not--" "No, I'm here of my own free will," Jay cut the doctor off. "I made a promise to a friend, and I intend to keep it. I just don't see the benefits of this device, other than to open doors and be able to send your private thoughts into other people's minds." "First of all, it's nothing like telepathy, or a Vulcan mind-meld, or anything else you've ever seen on TV," Dr. Sheridan piped up. "The ability to converse silently with someone is simply an added bonus, if you will. In my time here in Tolum researching this, I've found that they use this biotech to run almost all of their day-to-day equipment. For example, as you mentioned, doors. Nearly every type of door in Tolum has a receiver in it that can accept commands transmitted from a bio-implant." "But as well," Dr. Franklin added, "you can use devices such as our Personal Teleporter, that allow us to move about within a limited region--roughly the size of Tolum--simply by willing it." "And imagine never having to type on a computer keyboard again," Dr. Sheridan thought to add. "They said that very same thing to me when they first put a mouse on my PC, Doctor," Jason replied. "Didn't work then, either." "Well, in any case, there are many, many things that you'll be able to do once you're out of surgery that haven't even dawned upon you yet," Dr. Franklin said. "And it doesn't occur to us to mention it, because it is instinctive to us to be able to do these things. So I can't really explain to you what all the benefits will be, other than to say you'll like them." "I'm sure I'll get USED to them, Doctors,.. as to liking them, I'll have to get back to you on that." Brianna and Jason left soon thereafter, with specific instructions about what Jay could and couldn't eat for the next 24 hours. The two of them went to Mitch and Valsen's place, as invited, to stay over for the night, to await the surgery early the following evening. SURGERY DAY 7:56PM Jason was lying on the OR table, looking up into the inert operating lamp, and thinking of his mortality. He had been left alone in the room----awaiting the arrival of the team. Just then, he heard the door open and a single set of footsteps. The anaesthesiologist leaned into Jason's field of vision and smiled. "All ready, are we? Good. Let's start." Jason watched as the intravenous line was opened. He didn't feel the effects of it right away; knew he wouldn't, too--even though he hadn't been in any kind of surgery--other than the laser treatment for his eyes--for hundreds of years. "Jay, do me a favor, will you?" the anesthesiologist said. "Count backwards in threes, starting from a thousand." "Okay.." Jason said, noticing that his voice already sounded far away and slowed down. "One thousand.. nine ninety seven.. nine ninety thr--um, four.. nine ninety one.." When he got to 982, he needed to take a rest; he closed his eyes for just a couple of seconds. A few moments later, he heard the 'gas man' asking conversationally: "Got any kids?" Jason opened his eyes and said slowly, "Two on the way.." "Good for you. Well, we'll get them and your wife in here to get this done as soon as possible." "When they're ready," Jason corrected the man. "Don't sweat it," the intern said as if he hadn't heard Jason. "Once your implant is in, you'll see things our way.. and you'll help us bring in your family so we can work our 'magic' on them, too." "What?" Jay said, feeling much more lucid all of a sudden. "What did you say?" "Relax--the anaesthetic is impairing your rational thought processes. As soon as the implant's in, you'll be thinking all the right thoughts again." Full of energy, Jay leapt up from the table. "Screw that!" he hollered. "What in the nine hells do you think you're going to do to me here?!" The gas man looked surprised. "Really now, you knew all about this before you came here." "Brian and Gina got the implants, they're not under mind control!" Jay pointed out. "Mind control?" the tech smiled slowly. "We're not controlling your mind; we're just making sure you don't have any.. improper thoughts." "You can forget that, pal!" Jay headed for the door. "I'm outta here!" Without listening to anything else the anes tech had to say, Jason ran out of the room and down the hall. Two security guards stepped into the corridor near the exit. Jason realized. Well, he was going to have nothing to do with that, in any way, shape, or form. He vaulted clean over the first guard, and grabbed hold of his upraised arm, using the momentum to pull him into the second guard, knocking them both out cold. He burst out into a cool April late-evening in downtown Tolum, and wondered what to do. Who could he trust? Mitch awoke with a start. It took her a few seconds to realize what had awakened her, when it happened again; someone banging on the apartment door. She accessed the hallway security cameras and saw Jason there, wearing only a hospital gown. She got up, hurried to the door, and helped Jason inside just as the door opened for him. "Thank Goddess you're home!" he blurted out, sitting down for a breather. "This is REALLY nuts, I've.. it's.." "Calm down, calm down," Mitch reassured him. "What's the matter?" "I was on the table," Jason said, still catching his breath, "and the anaesthesiologist was talking to me about the whole thing.. and he.. and he was saying something about making me think the right thoughts--and I said enough of this and got outta there! This was real weird, mind-control-type stuff! I mean, I.. I--it's just--" "Easy, take it easy," Mitch said, helping Jason to his feet. She walked him into the living room, sat him down on the couch. "Take a rest here, and we'll go down there in the morning and sort it all out." "No way am I going back to that hospital," he told her forcefully. "Not if that gas man is representative of the way the rest of them feel.." "Relax. Lie down and rest. You need it." Mitch gently set her friend down on the couch in a horizontal position. "Just relax here, and we'll deal with all this in the morning." Jason sat up rapidly. "What about Valsen? Where's he?" Mitch looked upset that Jason was that paranoid. "Jay, he's just working tonight. He'll be back in the morning, and I can talk with him about this too." "Okay, I guess." He laid his head back down again. Mitch smiled and rested a hand on his shoulder briefly. "I'll still be awake in the bedroom for a while--I've gotta finish something up." She left, and Jason lay there, staring at the ceiling. The lights of Tolum came in, albeit muted by the tinting, through the living room window. He watched shadows flitter back and forth, and he tried to figure out what the hell had happened. Why didn't he get up and try to phone Brianna, to let her know what was going on? This came to him despite the fact that he A) had a telephone on the table beside him and 2) had had no qualms at all about waking Mitch up. He laid there for over an hour, by his estimate, until the front door suddenly slid open. In came Valsen, flanked by two of Tolum's finest. Jason leapt to his feet as the threesome turned to face him. "Geez!" Mitch came in from the bedroom. "Jay, relax," she repeated, in the same even tones the gas man had used. "I don't beLIEVE this!!" he yelled. "You're in on this too?!" "Calm down, Jason, and come with us," Valsen said in a semi-menacing tone. "We don't want to have to take you down." "I'd like to see you try!" he shot back. To Mitch, he added, "After all we've been through, over bloody CENTURIES.. it all comes down to this?" She sighed, as if Jason didn't know what was best for him. "Jay, we're doing this for YOU, you know.." He was being backed into the corner, literally. He turned around as he bumped something and realized he was at the table that sat right in front of the living room window. "I've changed my mind, I don't want it!" "Not possible," Valsen shook his head, still advancing with his cops. "You've already started the process, it has to be finished." Jason looked over his shoulder, then back to Valsen. "And finish it I will." He made a move as if to rush them, but then he reversed his course abruptly and dove at the window, crashing through its frame and glass like they were Hollywood pieces. That was exhilirating, but the realization that he was 9 stories above the street wasn't so much. Around about the fourth floor, after he stopped screaming, he realized he had something slung over his right shoulder. It was one of his packs, like Gina's. He yanked the lever, and the pack inflated; his descent was arrested quite forcefully, and somewhat differently than other times he'd used the pack, because he only had one strap over his shoulder. He turned halfway over, and was surprised to note that the pack was actually RISING, carrying him back upwards past the second floor. He swam through the air, flailing about as best he could, and grabbed onto the end of a light standard, the pack still tugging him upward. he asked himself as he shrugged the pack free. He watched the pack continue its ascent towards the heavens, going straight up at a lazy rate. He slid carefully down the light standard, reaching the ground just as Valsen and the two cops did as well. As soon as his feet touched the sidewalk, they were moving, propelling him as fast as he could go in a westerly direction. He didn't have any particular destination in mind, just away from where he was. he railed. He could understand Valsen coming after him, but NOT Mitch's betrayal of him! After all they'd been through together, through their insanely long lives, she'd turned him in like a petty criminal. he told himself. He looked around, and, even at two in the morning, Tolum was bustling with activity. Mitch and Valsen lived near the city center, which meant he had an average of 250 kilometers of travel, no matter which direction he chose, before he could get out of the city. He couldn't stay still like this for long, though; Valsen and his men were still on his tail, and to boot, they had teleportation technology. He had to get away and lose himself in the maze of streets like Lendo did when they all first visited Tolum. "Hello," he said aloud, but quietly enough to not disturb the person nearby whose bike he had his eyes on. It was a street racer, parked at the curb while its owner ducked into the 7-11 for a second. The spare helmet was lashed to the back seat, and Jason threw it on his head just before he leapt on the bike and started it up. He ignored the shouts and screams from the young man rushing across the parking lot, and the shouts and screams from Valsen and the policemen, rushing across the intersection. In seconds, as the bike reached 120 kilometers an hour, they were fading memories. It was easily capable of double that speed, but not in the traffic that existed on the streets of Tolum. Still, he was leaving everyone else in his dust, blasting through red lights, jumping curbs, and all that sort of thing. A blur of blue-and-white went past on the left, in the opposing lanes; instantly, the gravcar ramped up over traffic, turned on its blue lights, and did a U-turn to give chase. Jason sighed and shook his head. "No time like the present, I guess," he said to himself, and wrenched the throttle. << Motley Crue "Kickstart My Heart" _Dr. Feelgood_ >> The car briefly turned into a speck in his mirrors, but then, as the thrusters on its back end lit up, it grew rather large again. "Damn," he muttered, jumping on the brakes and turning left. The police missed the turn, going down to the next block. At once Jason realized why they'd missed the turn, on purpose: the street was one-way, the wrong way, and it was packed. He swerved onto the sidewalk and raced up it; at least there were few pedestrians this early in the morning. He caught a glimpse of the police to his right at the next intersection, but they didn't turn; they seemed to be ahead of him, too. Had he lost them? Did they figure he was farther ahead than he was? He skidded to a stop at the next intersection, parked on the curb, and waited to see what would happen. He knew the police had already been through that intersection, and if they were going to follow, they'd be passing the next next intersection in about two seconds. <..> On cue, the car slewed to a halt in the middle of the road, headlights aimed right at him. He froze, unable to will himself to flee; he was a fairly poor fugitive, and a just-plain-terrible quarry as far as pursuits go. He'd never done anything wrong, and he had no experience getting away from the law. For three millennia, he'd BEEN the law. He-- He watched the passenger in the police car bail out and run over to the curb, still a block away. He had an animated conversation with someone, pulled out a couple of large-denomination dollar bills, and from the looks of things, slammed them into the other guy's hand. Then the other guy handed him a helmet. Jay realized, seeing the police officer run over to a nearby bike. Jason was barely able to keep the two cops at bay; the car was easy enough to elude, but the one who'd bought or rented the bike was nearly impossible to shake. "Too bad I don't have any ride armor," Jason muttered, glancing at the red switch just to the left of the throttlegrip. How come it'd taken him this long to notice he was riding a Cyclone? For fifteen minutes, he and the other bike raced through the streets of Tolum. Unbelievably, Jay found himself almost back where he started--actually, in a park about ten blocks away from Mitch and Valsen's place. Something else that could also be categorized as unbelievable happened when he felt the bike beneath him start to cough and sputter. The main, auxiliary, and reserve fuel gauges all read zero. "What? How the hell--" he began. Whether it could or not, it did, and he was forced to bail off of it and run into the park. The cop also dumped his bike and gave chase. An electronics store had set up their display of outdoor TVs in the park, to prove that the rising sun couldn't wash out the image, and as Jason rushed past the bank of hundreds of televisions, he heard and saw Mitch. She described his escape, after which she had some more words, delivered in a robotic sort of monotone: "He is not armed, but he is considered dangerous. He has not yet received the bio-implant and is therefore a threat to all Tolumi and our way of life. I urge all Tolumi to be on the lookout for this man and apprehend him upon sight, taking him alive back to the hospital so that we can help him think straight." Images of his flight from Mitch's place flashed on the screen, one after another; it didn't occur to him that they were taken from an impossible angle-- one that would've required the cameraman to have been right beside him all the way--until he saw a shot of himself, in a hospital gown, looking at a bank of TVs. He spun around and there was nobody there. Well, nobody with a camera; the early-morning visitors to the park were strolling about, though, and more than one group laid their eyes on him. he decided. He ran across the narrow, paved path, and dove into the water. He hid under the surface for what seemed like several minutes; when he got up enough courage to poke his eyes up above water again, everyone had turned away and seemingly forgotten him. He ducked back under when someone turned to look his way, and as soon as he made it underwater, she turned away again. He bobbed back up, and someone else looked; he ducked under, and they looked away. If it wasn't such a serious situation, that might've been something to explore; instead, he went under the surface of the water again, surprised to note that the lake bottom was entirely made of concrete. he wondered. He looked around in the water, and saw to his disbelieving eyes an aluminum plate set into the southern wall of the pond, or reservoir, or whatever it was. In any case, it had a sign beside it: SECRET ESCAPE HATCH AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY He swam over to it, trying to keep himself below the surface of the crystal- clear water so he wouldn't be seen, and found that there was a large wooden lever beside the sign, between the sign and the hatch. It looked for all the world like the same levers that were in the underwater portion of the Tomb Raider game. He reached up and grabbed the lever, placing his feet against the wall just like Lara Croft did in the game, and yanked; it refused to budge. He saw that there was about half-a-foot of space in between the handle of the lever and the wall, so he wedged his torso in between the two and used his hands to push against the wall with all his might, trying to shove the lever out with his back up against it. All at once, it flipped over, making the same sort of sound that the levers in Tomb Raider did, and he heard a clunk. The aluminum plate swung away from him, revealing a small tunnel. He was about to swim for it when all the water in the pond rushed to it, sending him tumbling into the mouth of the tunnel at a frightening rate. It, too, was concrete, though considerably darker since it was closed on all four sides and had no light coming in from anywhere; still, he could make out signs every now and then, despite the fact he was travelling at a rate that he didn't really want to think about. The signs were beside darker squares, and after two or three of these, he realized they were branches of the tunnel, coming from other areas of northern Ontario. The first name he recognized after figuring out what the signs were for, was one on his right: KILLARNEY 67KM -> In a flash, it was gone; he barely had time to realize what he'd read when another flashed by, this time on his left: <- FRENCH RIVER 300M HOME OF KAWARTHA DAIRY BEST ICE CREAM ON THE BAY he wondered. Then he remembered where he remembered the names from. he said to himself, Sure enough, the next sign he saw (he'd missed a few) was for Parry Sound, and the tunnel wasn't a straight tee-type branch from his tunnel, it looked more like an offramp of sorts. he told himself as he passed by Gravenhurst. Suddenly the tunnel widened, or rather, ended, and he was in a huge body of water again, still rocketing forward at an unbelievable rate. He continued south, unable to change his course even if he wanted to, and just as he plunged into another tunnel on the south side, he saw yet another sign: THANKS FOR INCLUDING LAKE SIMCOE IN YOUR ESCAPE FROM EVIL SWIM BACK SOON! he decided, but his speed was picking up, and there was no way to slow back down. He didn't feel hypothermic at all, though, after several minutes completely submerged; he was lucky his clothes were thick and warm. The new tunnel was similar to the old one, with signs and exits all over the place. They were more frequent, though, and usually on both sides of the tunnel. Regional Road 74, Stouffville, Dixon's Hill, Rouge River.. he recognized them all as they whipped past. As if to answer, he next saw Major MacKenzie Drive, Ninth Line, Highway 7-- --McCowan Road, Highway 401, and then a series of Burma-Shave style signs on the ceiling as he tore by them: DISEMBARKING IMMINENT HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE RIDE IF YOU LOOK UP WHEN YOU EXIT, YOU MIGHT BE ABLE TO SEE BUFFALO YOUR ENTRY INTO LAKE ONTARIO WILL NOT BE GRADED FOR NEATNESS He wondered who had the warped sense of humor, then there was no time to think of anything else, as the tunnel abruptly ended, and the water fell away below him, as he continued on a grand arc high into the air above Lake Ontario. "YAAAHHH!!!" he hollered, a couple dozen feet above the water and still going rather fast.. and now falling. He soared entirely over a couple of windsurfers, the local fire/rescue boat, and half a million seagulls before crashing into the choppy water of the lake. He tumbled a few hundred times, much like the pilot of a racing boat when he gets out at full throttle. When he finally came to a stop, Jay shot to the surface, gasping and inadvertently taking in some of the lake's near-toxic water. He blew it back out again and looked around, treading on the surface. he thought, looking at the American shore a few kilometers south, and the Canadian one further north. Still, he swam back northwards, into Frenchman's Bay, where he'd had his unceremonious eviction from the water-jet tunnel. When he swam past PARU--the Pickering/Ajax Rescue Unit--the crew of the fire boat didn't even pay attention to him. Same for the myriad of pleasure craft in between PARU and the shore. It was as if someone swimming in from the middle of the lake, thirty-odd kilometers out, was commonplace. It was midmorning by the time he got back up to White's Road and Highway 2. He walked east on 2, ducking and hiding every now and then when a police car went by. he asked himself. Still, he carried on, getting up to Liverpool Road--one block away from the Sheridan Mall, the ScotiaBank, and The Bus Stop, all very familiar landmarks, when he decided to turn north and take a back route of sorts. Brock Road, the main road heading to Brougham, was far too heavily-travelled for him to risk walking along. So, north of Liverpool, he met up with Taunton Road, and after crossing it, found what he was looking for: the Seaton Hiking Trail. The hiking trail went for 10 or 15 kilometers along the northwestern part of Pickering Township, and Jason used every last centimeter of it, finally emerging at the north terminus, just east of Green River, only four or so kilometers from Brougham. he said. He realized, walking along the ditch of Highway 7 to keep out of sight, that not only had he not eaten that day, he'd not had any sleep, either--he'd arrived at Mitch and Valsen's place in the late evening, and here it was, late afternoon the next day. Finally, he made it home, coming into Brougham through the fields north of town so as to not be seen. He went up to the back door of the house and used his key to open it, then descended in the elevator to the complex itself. Brianna looked up as he arrived. "What're you doing here?" she said. He stared at the sight before him. Brianna was tending to a pair of rabbits. That in itself was odd, but the part that was really disturbing was the other sets of pairs--twins, by the looks of things--that littered the house: dogs, cats, birds, iguanas, snakes, fish, and so on. "What the hell is going on in here?" "What do you mean?" Brianna asked innocently, standing up and letting the rabbits hop off to another part of the complex. "When did Noah stop by and let his cargo off the Ark?" he said, continuing into their bedroom so he could get some dry clothes. "Oh, my pets, you mean? Well, I got them to keep me company while you were gone." "For two days??" he wondered. He looked back around at her; she didn't look seven months--or at all--pregnant any more. "What happened to YOU?" She looked at him, looked at herself, and shrugged. "I give up.. what?" He shook his head. "Never mind, there isn't time right now." He tossed the soaking-wet tracksuit on the bed and found a pair of jeans and a T-shirt in the closet. "We gotta get out of here. All of us, meaning you and your little animal farm back there too." "What? What for? Why?" she said with a tone of surprise. "Because the implants aren't what they seem to--" he trailed off, walking from their room into the Bay, to get the truck. Which wasn't there. He spun around and looked at Brianna, who shrugged. "Sold it to get the little ones," she explained, gesturing to the animals clustering around her. "This is crazy!" he railed. "What in the hell's going on here?" "What were you saying about bio-implants?" she asked. "They're not what we thought they were at all," he said. He told her all about the encounters with the anaesthesiologist, and with Mitch and Valsen, and his escape. "Well, YEAH," she said, speaking to the part about what implants are really for. "Everyone knows that--that's why I was against you getting one." He stared at her for a moment; she was serious. "Oooooookay," he said slowly. "Listen, we are getting out of here, period. I think we should go back to Atlanta and try to talk some sense into Brian and Gina." "Okay," she nodded after a moment. "We'll have to go rent a car, though." "So I NOTICED," he shot back, gesturing to the empty parking spot in the Bay. "What in Goddess' name were you thinking, anyway?" This carried on all the way to the rental agency, at Bradshaw's Corner, halfway between Brougham and Pickering. They climbed into the car, and Brianna took the controls. "You should get some sleep," she told him. "You look exhausted." "I suppose I am," he agreed. "But Georgia, Bri', remember we're going to Georgia, ok?" "You just take a break and let me do the driving," she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Okay?" "All right," he said, slouching in the seat. Only a few minutes had passed when he awoke again. "Hey, do me a favor?" he said. "Hm?" "Turn your sunvisor down--it's coming in your window and hittin' me right in the face. I can't sleep." "Okay." The setting sun was momentarily blocked from his eyes. Something didn't quite mesh in his mind with that particular incident, and he replayed it a couple of times before realizing that the setting sun was streaming in through Brianna's driver's side window. On the left side. From the west. Meaning, they were heading north. He sat bolt upright and looked around. "Where the hell are you going?!" he hollered. "Easy,.. easy," Bri' said, trying the calm-hand-on-the-shoulder trick again. "Rest up, we'll be there in no time." "Like hell we will, unless you're planning to hit Atlanta from the Gulf of Mexico side!" he shot back. "You're taking me back to Tolum!" "It has to be finished," she said plainly, "once it's been started. And it'll be for the best--you KNOW that." He took on a pained expression. "Bad enough that Mitch was in on it, but.. you, TOO?" His hand crept to the door-release handle. Brianna suddenly wore a sour look. "Jason, get away from the door." "Go to hell," he snapped. "Set the car down and turn it southwards." "Take your hand off the door!" She went for the power door locks, but he already had the door open and his seat belt off. He bailed out the right side of the car, instantly knowing it was a bad idea. In an effort to prevent him from escaping, Bri' had taken the car up to a height of about 30 feet. He fell those thirty feet, or at least sixteen of those thirty feet, before landing on the roof of, ironically, the old fire station. He climbed down the side of the building, looked up, and saw the car, right- side door still open, circling around to come in for a landing. He burst into the firehall, ran down the ramp into the Bay, and powered up the light-gate generator. "C'mon, c'mon, quick!" he urged it. He punched Atlanta on the list of saved locations, hoping he'd have better luck there than in Brougham, and stepped through the portal just before it closed. Another few seconds passed, and the roll-up door activated; Brianna drove the gravcar, now in surface mode, into the bay and parked it, then got out and went to their room to gather some things. An arm stuck itself out of the car's passenger-side window; in the hand at its end was a large black gun, always aimed at Brianna. "Make it quick," the menacing voice said to her. No sooner had Jason arrived at the Diggers complex in Atlanta, via light-gate, than Genn rushed up, all out of breath. "You're too late!" the shapeshifter hollered, pausing briefly to stand before Jason. "Save yourself!" "What?" he said, caught off-guard. The opposite door opened; Genn looked back at it with a worried expression. "Forget it, just RUN!" Genn rushed through the nearside door, and Jason looked up to see Brian and Gina walk through the far doorway, stiffly, with pale skin and expressionless faces. "What the h--" Jason began. "Capture mode," Brian and Gina monotoned, slowly advancing on Jason. "Subject at twelve o'clock--capture in progress. Stand by." Jason said nothing more, rushing out of the room and into the adjacent lab. Nothing of use there. He ran into the next lab and it was the transporter room. He looked back at his slowly nearing friends, still zombie-like in appearance, and said, "I'll come back for you once I figure out how to fix--ah, hell with it!" He turned to the transporter pad. "Computer, emergency override, prepare to send me to the light-gate platform. Light-gate computer!" "Acknowleged," the transporter computer said at the same time the light-gate computer declared, "Active." "As soon as the transporter pattern's fully received, send me to.. to.." He snapped his fingers. "To Asrial's place." "Confirmed." "Energize!" He vanished off the transporter pad and the light-gate opened and closed briefly just after that. He awoke a few minutes later--he thought--to find that he wasn't in the Atlanta complex, which was a relief. He felt badly about leaving Brian and Gina there, and Brianna in Brougham, but it was either him or them, and he had to make a tough choice. he said, standing up and looking for Asrial's ship, The ship was nowhere to be found. Come to think of it, he wasn't in the gravel pit where Asrial's ship was at all. he wondered. "Excuse me. Sir?" someone said from behind him. "Do you do well this day?" He recognized the phrase, but thought it sounded out-of-place for some reason; he slowly turned and said, "Yes, I'm fine, I think--" He was staring into the face of a Salusian police officer, from the city of Taupal. "I don't understand, sir," the constable shook his head, speaking in Salusian. "You were lying here on the riverbank for six minutes--are you all right?" Jason shook his head as if to clear it. "Yes, yes.. I'm, um, I'm fine," he told the cop, using Salusian instead of English this time. "I'm okay." "Then move along, please," the officer said. "This isn't a public park, you know." "Of course. My apologies." Jason climbed up to the walking path at the top of the bank, while the cop went to patrol the rest of the riverside. Jason looked and realized it was indeed the Jaxia River, the one that ran through downtown Taupal, on Salusia. "Why the hell am I here?" he muttered in English. "Now I'm REALLY screwed up." He wandered around for a bit, realizing that the light-gate computer took him too literally when he'd asked to be sent to Asrial's home. he realized. He looked up and saw that he was at Median Street; he would turn either left, and head northwards to the Palace Imperial, to try to find Asrial or her parents, or he would turn right and head for Thonderr Road. he said to himself, heading south. He slowed to a stop, one kilometer down Thonderr Road. The house was exactly as he remembered it, albeit a bit newer-looking, the grass more neatly trimmed. The road, however, was another story. All the time he'd been living in what he called the Spilogale house, the road had dead-ended just west of his driveway, crossed by a barbed-wire fence, behind which lay a large field that was part of roughly 5000 acres that belonged to the Soandsos. Today, as he stood there looking at it, not only did the dirt road carry on past the Spilogale house, but it was paved; a dozen or so houses lined each side of the 'new' part of the road, to the point where it disappeared over the hills to the west another kilometer away. Jason looked down to the lawn he was standing upon, suddenly realizing he was technically trespassing, trampling on someone else's front lawn, and generally meandering in the direction of their front porch. As he looked up, thinking he should formulate some sort of excuse, and knowing because he was an alien on this world that nothing would work, the door opened and a familiar face stared out at him, mouth open. The sight of the person stopped him in his tracks; he, too, wore a slack-jawed expression of surprise. For what seemed like forever, he couldn't bring himself to say the name, for he feared she would vanish like a ghost if he spoke. Finally, he whispered, "..Kayla?" "Jason!" she shouted joyfully, speaking in Salusian, of course. "It IS you!" As she ran down the steps and onto the lawn, embracing him, he realized she was in Humaniform, as she'd been the last time he'd seen her--two hours before her suicide, in the year 4373. He returned the hug of greeting nonetheless; feeling his sister-in-law--his OTHER sister-in-law--in between his arms was a thrilling sensation, as if he'd reached back into his past and plucked her out of it. "I thought I'd never see you again!" the younger Spilogale daughter gushed at him. "Um, yeah.. I know what you mean," he said hesitantly. "Say.. this might sound weird, but what's going on?" "Hm?" she asked him, holding him at arm's length to regard his expression. "What's all this?" he said, pointing to the houses to the west. "They weren't here the last time *I* was.." "Things change," Kayla shrugged with a smile. "A lot's happened since the 50th century." Jason did a double-take. "The what?" "The fiftieth.. that's when you were last here, no?" "Well, YEAH, I guess," he said as she led him up the porch steps and into the house. "But how did--" "You get here?" she finished for him. "You asked to come to where Asrial lives, didn't you? Well, that's where you are!" "How'd you know about that??" he blurted out. Just then, as they were entering the house, he heard footsteps coming down from upstairs. His heart and everything else above his bladder jumped instantly into his throat as his mind made the "logical" (?!) connection. A very familiar voice filtered down the stairwell: "Hey, sis, what're you yelling abou--" A loud THUD was heard as the laundry basket was dropped; its carrier, one Kylie Spilogale, screamed in surprise and as it faded, she grinned and screamed again for joy, working Jason's name in there somewhere. She leapt over the upturned basket of dirty clothes and rushed for Jason, yelling his name again and hitting him with a hug several times more forceful than the one he'd had from Kayla. The two of them struck the wall beside the front door, and a nearby picture fell down. "You're here! I didn't believe it, but it really happened, you came!" Kylie said, squeezing him tight, her face buried in Jay's shoulder. She, too, was in Humaniform. "He doesn't believe it either, sis," Kayla grinned. "He keeps asking what's happened and why he's here." "What? You don't know?" Kylie said, holding him out to look at him much as her sister had moments before. "No, PLEASE, someone fill me in," he blurted out. "I'm DYING to know where you think I came from and why I came here." "Well," Kylie smiled, releasing him so she could count on her fingers, "First and foremost, you came here from Earth, more specifically, from the basement of a house in southern Atlanta. You went to Atlanta from your own house in Brougham. And you're here to get help in winning it all--beating the bad guy, saving the girl, and going home for Miller Time." "Huh?" was all he said after a few moments. "You've gotta rescue Brianna, don't you?" Kayla asked. "What?" "Look, enough of this right now," Kylie said. "We'll talk more of this in the morning. Tonight, we need to celebrate your coming back to Salusia!" They ushered him into the living room, and he went along with them, partly because he was stunned by all the events of the past hour or so, and partly so he could be there in the morning when they explained everything. THE NEXT DAY "These tunnels will lead us right to your fighter," Kayla told Jason as they walked along. "I know," he nodded. "It's the same route I took when.. um.." "When what?" Kylie said after he'd trailed off. "Ok, listen," Jason said. "This is just all too weird to me. You two act like you know me--and you should, in one way, since I was MARRIED to one of you and a very good friend of the other, for a few thousand years--but that was in another reality. And both of you, in my pasts, have.. well.. you've.." "Died?" Kylie said with a smile. She nodded when Jason looked at her. "That's precisely how it went. And now you need help, and we're here to give it to you." "So is this real or not? OW!" This last part because Kayla, taking up the rear, had reached forward and pinched Jason in the small of the back. "Seem real enough to you?" she said. "You know what I mean," he countered. "If you two are the same two that I knew.. and you know that you died in my past.. how can you possibly be here today?" "The universe works in strange ways," Kylie smiled enigmatically. "PEOPLE work in strange ways.. especially those who can do this sort of thing." "What? Who do you mean?" There was a pause while Jason thought. "Is.. is HE.. part of this?" "'He'?" Kylie smiled again. Jason turned and threw his voice at the rock walls surrounding them. "Edison! Are you listening somehow? Are you involved in this?" Kayla laughed. "No, Mr. Bell isn't here," Ky supplied, also with humor in her voice. "So what is this, then, a Qism?" "A what?" "Right, you never heard about that," he said. "Remember in Star Trek, when Q took a crewmember on a fantasy-trip or something, he told them it was real, and not a hallucination or time-travel or anything like that? THAT'S a Qism." Another round of laughter from the girls. "No, not that either," Kayla said. "Exactly what happened, Jay," Kylie said slowly, helping boost him up into the crawlspace that led to the fighter, "is simply this: you needed our help, and you came here using the light-gate generator to get it. And you'll go home in your very own, brand-new fighter, with which you can combat Ian in." Jason's head poked out of the horizontal shaft. "Combat WHO?" "Ian," Kylie said. "Scoot in so we can join you." "Ian who? Not as in.." "No, not Ian Who; Ian Lang, of course." "You're kidding!" "Let us up in there and we can talk about it," Kayla prodded. He shuffled backwards, and momentarily the two ladies were up in the tunnel with him. "Are we talking about the same Ian Lang I once knew, the GM in all the RPGs I played in high school, the disruptive force in my Science Fiction English Literature course.. THAT Ian?" "The very same," Kylie said. "Keep moving, it's cramped in here." "What the hell does he want with Brianna??" Jason blurted. "He said he's getting back at you," Kayla put forth. "He 'said'??" "Well, he DID broadcast it yesterday morning on GNN; where were you, underwater?" "Funny you should mention that," Jay deadpanned. "Unless I miss my mark, I'll bet we're here, right?" "Good memory," Kylie smiled. "Should be a ladder directly ahead of you." Jason stepped into the vertical shaft and remembered it well. It was a bit cleaner and newer than the last time he'd been there, but it was familiar just the same. He went up the ladder and pushed aside the storm grate, and that's where the familarity ended. Instead of opening into a small twelve-by-twelve room, as the previous one did, this access hatchway was the main entrance to a very large official Royal Salusian Space Marines hangar. Ships of all kinds were arrayed in the mammoth building, and people were milling about in all areas. "Great," Kylie said as she climbed from the hole and dusted off her hands, "looks like they've just finished. This way." As he followed Kylie and Kayla, Jay was surprised to see a pair of maintenance techs, appearing to be going home for the day, walk to the hatchway and climb down the ladder into the tunnels he'd just vacated. "Okay, I gotta know something," Jason said to Kylie. "How did we arrive at 'rescue Brianna'? 'Cause when I, um, left Earth, she had just finished trying to capture me and take me back to Tolum." "Nononono, you've got it backwards," Kayla filled him in. "She was trying to escape from Ian, by having you take her away." "Having ME take HER away?!" Jason protested. "Look--first of all, I wasn't driving, SHE was--and secondly, she wasn't captured by anyone, she was alone at home with two quadzillion animals when I got there!" "She'd gotten him to allow her to go home to feed the pets," Ky said quietly, as if Jay had committed a grave faux pas by bringing up the topic. "What kind of kidnapper lets their captive go back home?" Jay wondered aloud. "Okay, never mind that then--what about Mitch and Valsen?" "What about them?" "They chased me, and had the entire Tolum Police Department out looking for me, to take me back to the hospital, and--" "No, again, you've got it wrong," Kayla said. "They WERE out looking for you, but only to steer you in our direction, to get this fighter so you can take care of Ian." Jay looked around; they'd walked for almost the entire length of the building. He wondered how Kylie could've seen that they were 'just finished' from where they'd climbed out of the tunnels. "Okay then, what about the gas man, and Brian, and Gina?" "Them?" Kylie said. "Oh, they were genuinely trying to get you." She stopped in front of a bay in the hangar. "Well, we're here." Jason looked up and gaped at the vehicle before him. He'd never flown anything like it, unless you counted time in arcades back on present-day Earth. Still, there it was in front of him.. "..a Starfury?" he said. "Does it not suffice?" Kayla asked. "What? No.. no, of course it does," he said. "I just never thought I'd actually SEE one outside of Mike Sheridan's fleet." "Here's your flight suit," Kylie said, holding out some white-and-green cloth to him, and he did another double-take. It was indeed his flight suit--the same one, or at least the very same style and color scheme, that he'd used from the day he entered the Wedge Defense Force right up until he left it a couple thousand years later. After taking the flight suit, he turned to Kylie and put his arms behind her neck. "Thank you," he said. "Welcome," she smiled back. "You know, I never ever forgot about you. I lit the candle every year on your birthday, just like tradition says. And I mean EVERY year. Salusian." Kylie continued to smile. "I'm honored." They stood there for a moment, holding on to one another; Jason was still trying to believe that it was his wife of dozens of centuries that he was actually standing there in front of. "I meant what I said that last day, in Pickering," she went on quietly, still with a smile on her face. "I've always been glad that you followed me that first day we met." He smiled at the memory of their first meeting, then faltered when he caught up with what she'd said first. "Um.. thanks." "Still uneasy with this?" "Forever," he admitted. "Well, you won't have to worry about it for very long," she said. "If you return, we won't be here." "How so?" "We're here to help you," Kayla piped up. "After that, well.." "Listen," Kylie changed the subject. "Are you sure you want to do this alone? We could call up the WDF, and the SDF-17 would be at your disposal in--" "No," he said with a determination that came out of nowhere. "I have to do this by myself, to prove myself worthy of her, to prove that I'm capable of protecting her." "Okay," Kylie smiled. "Like the commercial says.. have it your way." Suddenly two people he had only ever seen in photographs stood beside Kylie, and Jason's eyes widened. "Admiral," he said in a whisper. "Please, call me Arken," Kylie and Kayla's father said. "All those who have gained my respect call me by my first name." "Thank you, sir. Arken." "No, not Sir Arken," the elder Spilogale smiled, "I was never a Knight- Defender like you were." "My apologies, Arken," Jason smiled back. "We came to wish you the best of luck," Alia, Arken's wife, contributed. "You are.. how does one put it in your tongue? 'The bravest of the brave.'" Jay smiled again and tried not to be embarrassed. "Thank you too, Alia. I had a wonderful time with your daughters, all through my life. I wouldn't trade it for anything, ever." "We know," his former mother-in-law beamed, nodding. "Jay," Kayla said, standing by the open cockpit, "it's time for you to go." As he was climbing into the flight suit, finding to his astonishment that it still fit perfectly, he idly wondered why he hadn't gone to HIS parents for help earlier, when he was on the run. He got up into the cockpit and belted in, then slipped his helmet on. The Spilogale family gave him a wave from the hangar floor, then moved away so he could close up and start the fighter. Momentarily, he got his approval from the ramp handlers, and he did just that. As the engines were spooling up, he heard a noise in his helmet's headset. He at first thought it was feedback, until it was followed by three drum beats and a guitar riff. He looked around and saw that his old DigiDisc player, which he'd lost at the time of Sonset, was hooked up into the Starfury, with a scribbled note from Kylie: "You're my hero - now and always [heart] --k." He looked down through the canopy and saw her standing there, with her family, out of the path he'd take to leave the hangar. She smiled and waved, and he did the same, trying to prevent the tears from flowing. << The Wallflowers "Heroes" _The Godzilla Soundtrack_ >> To his amazement, the fighter handled exceptionally in an atmosphere, and provided more than enough boost to reach orbit. Once there, Platform Kilo was on the air, giving him clearance to "go home and save the day". "Roger that," Jason said. "Grey One is enroute to Earth." He half-expected to see a jumpgate forming before him, but it never came. So he started looking around, both outside and inside the cockpit, for the answer, and found it, in the form of a large red button in the center of the dash. It looked like it was part of the ship's normal configuration, but he couldn't believe that it would be, because it had the words "Warp Back To Earth And Save The Day" stencilled below it. Also, on top of the big red button, was a PostIt note, with Ky's handwriting. "This is probably the best button to press." He chuckled and pushed the button as far down as it would go. Suddenly, without any sense of transition, instead of a Salusian orbit, he was in Earth orbit. The planet filled the canopy, and in seconds, he was in reentry on a course that would take him right into the northeastern portion of North America. "I have GOT to get me one of THESE!" he quipped as the fighter soared over south-central Ontario seconds later. Astoundingly, no one challenged him, and there wasn't so much as a peep from air traffic control or the military. Jay decided. The tracking had locked on to some sort of signal in southern Pickering, on the border with Ajax, and Jason followed it right in. he told himself, watching the plot on the heads- up display. Pickering Village--which was, as mentioned (and curiously enough), in Ajax-- held not much of note. It was more or less the buffer zone between Pickering and Ajax proper, containing only a half-dozen strip-malls, a 7-11 store, a car dealer, a recreation complex, and.. "PHS?" he said as he watched the plot reach its terminus. It was pointing directly at his old "stomping grounds", Pickering High School. He set the fighter down on the football field south of the building, again meeting no resistance of any sort, and more to the point, encountering no one at all. There wasn't even any traffic on the road. He disembarked from the fighter, and instead of hearing the canopy whine back shut, he heard a brief zzzt! sound. He turned just in time to see the ship flicker and then wink out of existence. He shook his head and ran a hand down his face. He entered the school by the cafeteria doors. It was entirely unlocked, and he went back a few centuries in his mind to the last time he'd set foot in the building. The cafeteria had two levels, and full floor-to-ceiling windows all along both the school-side and street-side (or rather, parking-lot-side). He exited the cafeteria on school-side. Dead ahead would be the doors for the library, or, as the PC movement was just coming into effect when he left high school, the 'learning resource center'. To the right was the bookstore, and a single classroom right across from the office. For whatever reason, he'd chosen to go right first, and he was directly in front of the main office when he heard Brianna's scream, clear as a bell. "Jay! Help me!" He jumped, startled, and spun around looking for her. The shouts died off in an echo, and he realized that the acoustics had gone nuts on him, what with the building being empty and all. He burst into the offices, searching the desks-area in the main room and then the four satellite offices arrayed around its periphery. Nobody there. "Brianna! Can you hear me?!" he shouted when he got back out into the hallway. Even as his words were echoing back at him, hers rang back out: "Help!" "I'm coming!" he shouted back. "Where are you?" There was no answer. "Bri'! Where are you?" he repeated. A male voice cut through the air, a condescending laugh filling the halls. "Ian!" Jason hollered. "What are you doing this for?!" "You should know!" came Ian's voice. "I tried my best to get you worked down to nothing when we went here! You weren't supposed to have any confidence in your life! You weren't supposed to get all the fame and fortune, you were supposed to be a NOBODY!" "There's no 'fortune', Ian!" Jason shouted back, moving north through the wing of the building, searching classrooms to try to home in on them. "If you're after my money, you can take every penny of it--just give me back my wife!" "No way!" Ian answered. Jason turned right at the northernmost end of the school, checking the north gym and its accessory rooms, but there was nobody there. The sound carried equally no matter where he was. "I've suffered all the time you were out getting it all--all the news, all the fame, and even the girls--isn't that something, YOU getting all the girls, huh?" Ian laughed some more and Jason ignored it; he backtracked into the hallway again and tried the electronics lab adjacent to the gym. Nothing. "There's only one girl I'm interested in right now, Ian, and God help you if she's harmed once I find you." "Oh? Just one? I thought you were expecting twins?" Ian said mockingly. Jason searched the north foyer, but it was empty; the stairs to the second floor were passed over, to be checked out later. "Or are you possibly hoping they'll both be boys? What, can't bear to think of having a daughter?" "I've had two daughters already, Ian," Jason said calmly, thinking of Paige and Alison suddenly. "They turned out exceptionally well." "So what is it, then? Afraid of having to bring up another girl or two, into this world full of madmen?" The wood shop was empty, and as Jason reentered the hallway, he saw the classroom across the hall, a computer room that faced the big courtyard. Aside from being his second home for three years, the computer lab in question was also where he--and Ian and Derek and Greg--played RPGs for those same three years. He shouldered the door open, breaking the striker plate right out of the jamb; the room was empty. "Hey, what's up?" Ian called out. "Cat got your tongue?" Jason went back in the hallway and carried on. Beside the wood shop was the autobody classroom. It, too, was devoid of people. "Maybe a werecat," Ian hazarded. "Better wish against a full moon.." "Save me some time, Ian," Jason said, looking out the windows opposite the big courtyard. "You're not hiding in the portables, are you?" "Oh, you're actually LOOKING? Hell, no, we're not in there," he said with the same condescendent/mocking tone. "Cold. VERY cold." Jay carried on past the portables, though he didn't really believe Ian; still, the sound wouldn't carry from the small mobile classrooms through the outside air and into the main building, so he was probably right. He got to the four-way intersection in the hallways; to his left, the office and front foyer; straight ahead, the upper caf; right, the remaining six or eight classrooms. Jason remembered as he passed the empty yearbook office. The typing rooms were empty; so were the science labs. That left only a handful of rooms: the south gym and music room, tacked on to the end of the upper cafeteria, the upstairs, and the library. "Awfully quiet," Ian observed. "You didn't get caught in the Coke machine in the caf again, didja?" "I never did that, Ian," Jay countered, heading for the gym, "that was Art." "Oh, right. Art. I had a hard time keeping you losers straight." The changerooms were empty. The south gym was empty--Jason even checked under the folded-up bleachers. No luck. The music room was empty. He went back to the LRC. The doors, as always, squealed when he opened them. "Oh, reading up on a few topics?" Ian said brightly. "Try 'I Lost My Wife To A Lunatic and He Killed Her And My Unborn Children'." "Go to hell, Ian," Jay said, though he suddenly realized he hadn't heard Bri' in a LONG time. "I think I've already got a reservation," Ian countered. "How about you?" Jason screwed up his expression. "That made no sense at all," he muttered, and to his surprise, the echo came back as loud as if he'd yelled it. "Yes, I know; just testing!" Ian responded cheerfully. Jason left the library by the back door, having found nothing yet again. He turned right and went for the stairs. The second floor would be easy--only five classrooms on each side, and one long hallway, and that was it. She HAD to be in there. He quietly cleared each room, ignoring Ian's taunts again, and in two minutes, felt a huge pit of despair digging its way into his stomach. The rooms were empty. He'd checked everywhere, and they were nowhere to be found. "Ian, where in the hell are you?!" Jason snapped. "Oh, still looking? I think you're cold again." "Fuck off! Lead me to you and I'll rip your kidneys out through your nostrils, THEN we can settle this like gentlemen." "Nasty! Checked everywhere yet? I mean, everywhere?" Jason looked around as he landed on the first floor again. Yes, he had. "Everything with a door has been searched?" Ian went on. Jason felt a chill. From the central staircase, by the front foyer, he could see down the two longest hallways in the school, and he saw close to 250 lockers lining each. "Goddamn you, Ian!" Ian laughed again. Jason told himself, slightly satisfied to note that his thoughts weren't being broadcast as his mutterings were. "Give me a hint, Ian." "No way! You made all your money and became famous by sleuthing these sort of things out! Or maybe the truth is that all your victories have been on the backs of people like Brianna and Gina and Brian, hm?" "Screw you!" "Oh, come now. I put you down so incredibly badly, and all your retort is is 'Screw You'? You can do better than that!" Jason had an idea, and headed back to the area of the south gym. "Even today, you couldn't do this by yourself, you couldn't even walk FIVE MILES from your house to the school on your own! You had to get help, not just from someone here, but from another PLANET, just to find me!" "Hold that thought, Ian; I'm gonna feed it to you in about five minutes." "Oh, you think you're getting close, do you?" "I know it." Jason went to his old locker, number 1368, five away from the entrance to the south gym. They were alphabetical; Ian's was fifteen to the left of Jason's. "Say, Ian," Jason said conversationally, "What's your locker combination?" "OH! BRAVO! You figured out where to go! I am in AWE, Jase!" Ian instantly returned to his taunting tone: "I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours." Jason thought. Suddenly he remembered feeling something jutting into him from the upper left pocket of the flight suit, all the way back from Salusia. He unzipped it and pulled out a Leatherman. He unfolded the screwdriver bit and went to work on the door. Five minutes later, he had the skin of it off; all that remained was another eighth-inch piece of sheetmetal and a single iron bar lock. Anger got the best of him, and he kicked the bejeezus out of the door; the racket surely could be heard for miles, judging by the echoes. "Temper, temper!" Ian told him. "All you had to do was ask--open sesame!" The door swung, but inwards. Instead of a locker, Jason found a set of stairs, descending below grade. "Welcome to the jungle," Ian intoned slowly. It was a concrete maze. Everyone jokes about hidden, secret subterranean tunnels beneath their work, school, etc., right? Well, that's precisely what these were--hidden, secret subterranean tunnels, and from the looks of things, they stretched under the entirety of Pickering Village, not just the school. "Goddammit, Ian!" Jason shouted again. "Oh, don't worry, I'm sure you'll find us,.. eventually.. but if you take more than another couple of months, I'll be sure to help your wife out with the birth of your children.. hey, maybe I'll imprint upon them as their daddy, wouldn't THAT be something?" "Ian!" "What?" he said innocently. "Don't you goddamn touch her!" "What? I wouldn't DREAM of it.. at least, not until I defeat you. Isn't that right, Brianna?" "Jay!" she instantly called out. "Hurry!" "I'm coming!" he hollered back. "And I'm just hot and bothered!" Ian cut in with yet another laugh. Jay literally ran through the tunnels, lit only by the occasional incandescent bulb. Every now and then, steam would hiss out of a vent, making Jason think of the SegaCD game "Fahrenheit" he'd played centuries before. "Oh, now you're getting warmer," Ian suddenly said. "Wow, warmer!" Jason checked the pockets of the flight suit while he ran; other than the Leatherman, he was weaponless. He unfolded the knife blade and felt fairly silly. "Hotter, hotter!" Ian called out. Suddenly Jason realized that the tunnel he was in was a dead end. There was only one room, right at the hall's terminus. "Ooh, yer boiling now!" Ian laughed as Jason went into a dead run again, shoulder forward and down. BANG! The door crashed open, the small glass window in it shattering as it smacked the cement wall. Jason came to a stop and found a stereo tape deck plugged into the wall, sitting on a table directly below a fluorescent lamp. "Ha ha! Sorry, I thought you knew," Ian said. "No, we're somewhere else entirely. Better luck tomorrow!" "AAAH!" Jason screamed, and picked up the radio. "Not so fast!" Ian shouted, his voice now coming from above Jason's head as the latter had the stereo held high. "Smash it and it's all over--as soon as the radio dies, so does your wife!" "aaaaAAAAOWWWWWWW!" Brianna exclaimed. Jay felt silly again as he brought the stereo down to face level and screamed into it. "DAMMIT, LANG, I WARNED YOU!" "Good, you're getting angry! Just what the doctor ordered! Now find your way out and try again, Jason--come save your family, if you think you CAN!" Jason pounded back up the stairs once he found them, half-an-hour later, and emerged from a small door ..under a stairwell?.. in a place that was familiar, yet wasn't PHS. "Whatdahell?" he muttered, looking around. He stepped out of the stairwell into the hallway, and figured out that he was in the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology--SAIT. For years, he'd worked, sort-of, at the post-secondary school, trying to get a credit in Computer Technology. When that panned out, he'd switched streams into Emergency Medical Services.. or so his parents said. For Jason, as in the Jason we know and love, he simply dropped out of CT and was drafted into what would become the Robotech Defense Force. In this universe, though (if this was the same universe he thought it was, of course), he'd taken medical training here as well. He was in the basement of J-wing. To his right, a cafeteria. To his left, J3-- a computer lab that dwarfed everything at PHS put together. It was in J3 that Jason hacked a hookup to the Internet, and first found Undocumented Features (again, so his parents said--'our' Jay had never heard of UF before he started living it). He decided, for whatever reason, to go to J3 first. Inside there were a handful of students, on the PCs and Digital terminals, from XTs and VT100s to Pentiums (Pentia?) and DS3100s. There were even a row of Decwriters in the back that people never used. That was beside the point, he was supposed to be finding Brianna, he told himself. Still, he stopped short when he saw a particular person back in the back of the room--a tall, thin, dark-haired student, maybe a month younger than Jason himself. he told himself, striding to where Visor sat. Ryan looked up. "Hey! Long time no see," he smiled, reaching out to shake Jay's hand. "Hi," Jason said. "Listen, are you busy?" "Not really, just tweaking Dmail, and trying to crash the VAX again." "Oh, yeah.. um.. listen, I--" "So what've you been up to lately?" "Um.. not a hell of a lot." "Still building weird contraptions? I think there's one or two PCs left over on the other side of the room with your signature mucking-about-ness on 'em." "Uh-huh.. as a matter of fact, I used your COBOL bomb idea a few years ago and put it to a real-life application.." "No shit? Wow. Hey, do I get credited for it?" "Yeah.. yeah, you do," Jay said. "Listen, can you give me a hand? I'm--" "Jason!" Brianna's voice came wafting into range faintly. "Help me!" "Hey, are you ever gonna do something about that, by the way?" "Huh??" "Y'know, Brianna, your wife; Ian's still got her, you gonna save her or what?" "Well, I was just asking for--" "Damn, I gotta get to class," Visor said. "Hey man, nice talking to ya again, and good luck with saving the wife, eh?" "But--" Jason sputtered as his former classmate got up and left the lab. Jason spent another day running around the SAIT campus, trying to find out where Brianna was being held. There seemed to be no way to get back into the tunnels--the door he'd exited from was solidly locked--and she wasn't in any room he could check. There were no city police around to talk to, and the campus commissionaires were hopeless in his past experiences, so he kept searching frantically for a way into the tunnels. Ian wouldn't even answer him, no matter how loud he yelled. The second afternoon of his return to SAIT, Jason was very depressed, seated in the so-called Atlantis Lounge, in the Campus Center building. People joked that the reason the lounge was named as it was was because it was built on sandy soil, and the center part of the floor had sunken. The humor was lost on Jason as he sat dejectedly in the sunken part, looking out the windows and trying to figure out what the hell to do. Every now and then, Brianna would scream for help off in the distance, and everyone would look at him. After a while, another acquaintance of his, Roger, came up and sat down. "Hey," he said. Jason mumbled a greeting. "Just out of curiosity, did the Tolumi ever get you back in and get the bio- implant done?" Jason just about swallowed his tongue. "Oh! Um, yeah,.. yeah, they did. Feels GREAT." "That's good," Roger nodded. Brianna shouted for help again. "I guess that's why you're feeling down, huh?" Roger said, pointing to the ceiling, where the sound seemed to be coming from. "Yeah," Jason said. "I can't find her. I even tried looking up there--no luck. Ian's really got her squirreled away somewhere." "Well, why don't you try the hallway?" "What?" Jay said, looking at his friend as if he had two heads. "Rog, I think I'd SEE her if she was in the hallway." "No, I don't mean that, I mean this--c'mere, watch." Roger got up and left the lounge, and Jason followed. He walked to a wall, in which was set a panel that looked much like a wall from the set of Star Trek: TNG. "Computer, personnel locator mode," Roger said, and the wall lit up. Jason stared. How come he hadn't noticed that before? Thirty minutes later, Jason was at a grate that was set into the quad, at the northeast corner, near the old building. The grate was padlocked, but he'd been able to procure a set of bolt cutters, and the janitor insisted on knowing the real reason. When told, he smiled and said to Jay, "About goddamn time you finished this!" So anyway, Jason stood at the gaping hole in the ground, the lock in two pieces and the grate tossed aside. There was no ladder and no way of knowing what was down there--he had memorized the layout plotted by the wall-computer, but what was down there in terms of junk and sludge and debris? And things Ian'd cooked up? Jay checked the flashlight he'd bought at the bookstore. In the dimming dusk, it looked fairly bright, as if it'd help out immensely, but when he shone it into the hole, it was as if light itself was swallowed up by some beast. "Brianna," he said aloud, "I'm coming--hang on a few more minutes." He jumped into the hole. "Okay," he cried into the darkness once he hit the floor, unable to resist letting loose with one of his signature quotes, "the situation is totally under control as of this moment in time." "Glad to hear it," came Ian's voice bluntly. A light winked on in the distance, illuminating two people. Jason peered in that direction, and then his eyes involuntarily widened as he realized it was Ian standing beside a tied-up, seated Brianna. "Bri'!" Jason shouted. "Hang on, Bri', I'll be right there!" "You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Ian shouted back across the seemingly endless distance. "But first you have to deal with some of your 'old friends'." "Whatever--I PROMISE you, I'll make you suffer, Lang." "I wouldn't doubt it, if you can get to me. Go ahead, try." Jason roared and lunged into motion, running at full tilt towards the pair. They didn't seem to be getting any nearer. "You play by MY rules, Jay," Ian said, suddenly losing the jovial tone he'd had all along. "First match." The ground before Jason burst open as he skidded to a stop. Something HUGE was looming up before him. He spun his flashlight around just as the thing spoke. Jason gaped as Khyron the Destroyer stood before him and laughed. "So, puny, insignficant Micronian.. we meet again." Jason thought about the Leatherman in his pocket, deciding it would be useless against a Zentraedi giant, and then realized he didn't have it any more--he'd lost it somewhere along the way. "Shall I let you choose your demise?" Khyron proposed in his sneering voice. "Would you prefer to be squashed like a bug or crushed like a ripe fruit?" "I'd prefer a fair fight," Jay shouted back. "You almost always fought dirty, and when you didn't, you attributed your defeats to your superiors' meddling and your wins to triumphing over the enemy's inferior mecha." Jason found some pent-up anger and let it loose. "Well, guess what, you purple-skinned asshole, I don't have a Veritech now. If you had the nuts to Micronize--which, I don't believe you ever did, did you?--you'd do so and even out the playing field." "Duly noted," Jason heard Ian say. Khyron smiled as he shrunk rapidly, without the help of a sizing chamber, to Jason's size. "Let's get it on," Jason said. He swung his fist, but the Zentraedi warrior wasn't there. Jason was knocked to the ground from behind; he rolled over, caught Khryon with his feet, and tossed him aside. Jay sprung back to his feet and spun around, finding Khyron again, who grinned evilly, as always. "You should give up now, Micronian," he said, circling Jason. "You are a failure. You will never amount to anything. You couldn't save your wife in the timeline from which *I* came--by the way, did you know that that was one of my ships, and I always boobytrap my weapons lockers for the very reason you and your team demonstrated so colorfully?" Jay threw a punch which missed its intended target but hit another one; Khyron reeled. "Blast! You DO pack some power, I'll admit. That didn't rile you up, though, did it? You expected something like that to be the truth, I'll bet. Try this, then: Why did it take you several hundred years to remember that you'd left a four-year-old son on the bridge of the SDF-3 as it tossed you through time?" That was too much; Jason was all over the Zentraedi warlord, who did keep fighting back, but evidently not enough. In a few moments, a bruised and bloodied Jay had knocked Khyron completely senseless, unconscious, and possibly lifeless. "Jason! Don't let him get to you!" Brianna shouted out, horrified at the rage she'd seen from her husband. Ian laughed at her. "On the contrary, dear--if *I* don't get to HIM, HE doesn't get to YOU. Go, Jason!" Jay looked up and saw Ian laughing at him. He ran forward, spirits heightened when he saw he was gaining ground, but suddenly another person stepped out before him: T.R. Edwards. "Khyron was right," Edwards said. "You're history, old man. Why, even--" He had to pause while he ducked a punch Jason threw. "--Even when you were younger I broke both your legs and blinded you in one eye! I damn near KILLED you, old man, and I broke up your treasured Skull Squadron with my double-agents while I was at it! It may not have been your blood family, but I sure as hell wrecked your extended family! You're a joke, a--" Finally one of Jason's punches landed; he knocked Edwards' faceplate off and exposed the injured side of his head. After that, Edwards was dazed, and it didn't take long for Jason to put him down to the ground. He certainly hadn't killed Edwards; perhaps he'd knocked him unconscious, but not likely either. Still, the body before him vanished, as did Khyron moments before. He looked up at Lang. "Never thought you'd see an Edwards and a Lang in collusion, huh?" Ian joked. "Well, there's more where that came from, I promise! C'mon, now, keep trying!" Jason knew full well that Ian was throwing these people at him only to wear him out, so that he would be unable to fight Ian at the end. He tried to keep something in reserve, but Ian's plan, for the most part, was working. Jason stopped as another figure appeared before him. The man wore an annoying smirk, and shrugged his shoulders while tossing his hands out in a similarly- engineered gesture. The Gryphon Buma-clone said, "Should I even MENTION Kylie?" Jay simply laid into the Buma for all he was worth; he knew he didn't stand a chance, especially against this particular 33S, which he knew full well to have razorclaws in its wrists. Peculiarly enough, they didn't enter the equation. He got a lucky kick in and scored a field-goal with the robot's head. "Give it up, Ian!" Jason shouted. "Cut the crap and let's go one-on-one!" "YOU give it up, Jason!" Ian hollered back. "Everyone you love is either dead or lost to you--you always fail to save your family, and you'll never have one again!" Jay inched forward, fighting enemy after enemy, fairly easily dispatching them all, but tiring himself out bit by bit. Every time he vanquished someone, he got only another five or six feet closer to Brianna. He fought Tharl--the alien time-traveller who'd been the primary cause of Earth's destruction (and Jay's amputation) in Jay's D-Team days. Interestingly enough, he went up against the drunk driver who, in one reality, plowed into Mitch's car one night on the highway and killed her. Jay reflected as the battered body lay at his feet, Suddenly, Edison Bell was standing there. "What?" Jason said to Ian. "Are you serious?" "In a way," Bell explained with a shrug, "I've prevented you from having untold trillions of relationships and families, what with my travelling around, plucking other you's out of one dimension and tossing them into another." Jay shook his head. "No way. It HAD to be done, to counteract deltaReality." Edison smiled. "Finally. THANK you." He vanished. Jason looked up and jumped with a start. He was five feet away from Ian and Brianna. Ian grinned as Jason stepped forward one last time. "Hang on just a second, Jay," he said, producing a sword and dropping another at Jason's feet. "This's gotta be different than the other ones." Jason was at first surprised, then broke into a huge grin and shook his head, making a tch'ing noise. "Ian, Ian, Ian, Ian, Ian.. the mother of the young lady you're holding hostage there is the best swordswoman on or off the planet.. and she taught ME everything she knows. She makes the Highlander look like He-Man." "We'll just see about that," Ian said, lunging forward. << Queen "Princes of the Universe" _A Kind Of Magic_ >> It was like watching the most climactic sword-battles of all the Highlander movies and TV episodes (discounting Highlander II and the Raven, both of which sucked) on high-speed repeat. Ian and Jason clashed back and forth hundreds of times a minute, throwing sparks that lit the area better than the fluorescent lamp overhead. Jason tried desperately to use the maneuvers that Julia had taught him, but it was always like Ian was one step ahead. He only managed a little cut to Ian's right hand, and Ian winced slightly, then looked up and smiled. He tossed his sword into his left hand. "One of the most important lessons," he said in a tone that mocked a teacher, "is to learn to be ambidextrous." Jason slowly passed his own blade to his left hand as well, also grinning. "That was lesson two, skill four on Julia's list." The fight was back on. They continued to hack away at one another for a long time, each gaining and losing the upper hand many times, but not landing a single decent hit, only nicks and scratches. Jason had an idea, and went for it: he jabbed in towards Ian, then reversed his blade's course and instead slashed at his opponent's left wrist. Ian's sword clattered to the ground as his hand involuntarily opened, and Jason's boot landed firmly atop the blade, despite the fact Ian had no way of holding the sword any more. "Assume the position," he said flatly. Ian fell to his knees, more out of shock from the defeat than obedience. He looked up at Jason with a smile. "You don't have the guts." "I promised you," Jason said very slowly, "that if you harmed Brianna in any way, I would finish you. I heard her scream in pain at least a thousand times over the past three days. I keep my promises, Lang--whether they be to defend my family, or to exact revenge upon those who would harm them." "Then let's get it over with." Jason swung the blade, thinking not about Brianna or Kylie or Aileen or Mitch or any other people he was close to, nor about the revenge of which he'd just spoken. He was thinking about how long it'd been since he personally took a life. His distraction caused him to not notice for a few seconds that Ian was still kneeling there with that stupid grin on his face. "Oop. Missed." Jason thought. Ian leaned closer and raised his head, exposing his neck. "There's just five words I wanna hear from you right now, eh, Jay?" Jason got it almost immediately. He looked back at Brianna, who was watching in some sort of shock, and then looked back at Ian. He raised the sword high once more. "Always wanted to say this." "Wrong five words, moron," Ian sneered. "There can be only one!" Jason hollered and slashed away again. This time, it was a clean cut, and it was all over. He started to run for Brianna, to cut her loose, but he realized that this had more similarities to Highlander than he'd figured. A mist was filling the air, and suddenly lightning arced from Ian's body and slammed right through Jason's skull. He was rooted to the spot for over a minute, as the bolts hammered away at him again and again; he screamed as loud as he could, remotely aware that he was still at least partially conscious throughout the whole ordeal. When it was finally over, he staggered a bit, but remained on his feet, his lungs trying to suck more air in than he could get. He dropped the sword, and failed to notice (due to his exhaustion) that it vanished without clanging to the floor, as did Ian and the other sword. "You won!" Brianna squealed, running up to Jason and leaping into an embrace with him, even as the remains of the Quickening dissolved away. "You did it! I'm so PROUD of you!" Jason smiled and hugged his wife back, giving her a kiss. "It was nothing," he said. "I'd do anything for you." "I know that," she smiled, looking him in the eye. "And I think that YOU do, too. You need never be afraid of whether or not you can protect your family.. you're more than capable of the job." He was confused; it sort-of fit, the way things had gone for the past few days; it was a valid explanation for all he'd been through. "Wait a minute--do you mean this was all a TEST of some sort?" "You tell ME," Brianna smiled. "You made it up, after all." "Huh?" "I'll let you figure it out," she said, pulling out a stopwatch. "Time you." She pushed a button and it began to beep, but the beeping sound seemed to be coming from just above his head to the left, rather than the stopwatch itself. "What are you talking about?" he asked. She smiled. "This was all your doing, Jay. You brought this on yourself." Beep, beep, beep. "How did I manage to bring all this on myself?" "What's the first thing you remember that brought on this current crisis?" Beep, beep, beep. "I dunno," he said, studying her. "How come you don't look pregnant any more?" "That's part of it," she urged him on. "But answer my question." "I.. well.." he thought back a few days. "It was what the gas man said while he was putting me under." Beep, beep, beep. She snapped her fingers. "Bingo!" she said, with a smile and a wink. * * * There was an incessant beeping going on beside Jason as he opened his eyes. he wondered. He had the worst headache imaginable, ten times worse than a migraine. He groaned, and it sounded like he was inside his own respiratory tract, the noise was so loud. "He's awake!" a voice thundered through his ears. Someone grabbed his hand and squeezed. "How you doing?" "Unh?" he said, the sounds still echoing in his head, but slowly subsiding. "What's.. goin' on?.." "Here, let me turn that monitor down," came another voice, and footsteps so loud Jay thought the person was walking on his eardrums. Suddenly, the beeping abruptly ceased. "Open your eyes, Jay. Look at me." This was from whoever was squeezing his hand, he figured, because she squeezed it harder while she said it. He forced his eyelids to rise up again, and there was Brianna, looming over him. Beyond her head-and-shoulders image he could see light green tile on the ceiling and the walls. "Whuh?.." he said. "He'll be disoriented for a moment or two as the anaesthetic wears off," came the second voice. "Go ahead and talk to him, help him get his bearings. I'll be back in a few minutes." "Thank you, Dr. Sheridan," Brianna said, then turned back to face Jay. "Have a nice nap?" she smiled. "What's happening?" he managed. "You're coming through recovery, that's what's happening," Bri' said. "It's over." "I know," he nodded, feeling some pain (and electing to remain still for a while yet). "I beat Lang. Took his head. He's finished. It's all over." "Who?" Brianna said with a bemused, questioning look. "Ian Lang. The guy who had you. Remember?" "Jay.. do you know where you are?" Brianna said, raising her eyebrows. "What do you mean?" "Do you remember why you came up to Tolum two days ago?" "TWO days?" he echoed. "It was SIX days ago.. or five.. I can't rememb.." "No, only two," Brianna said, shaking her head with a smile. "You had the surgery yesterday evening, and you're just waking up now. It's just after ten in the morning on the 28th of April." "Um.." Jason let his mind catch up with all of that. Then, once it was all processed, he figured it out. "You mean.. I really had the surgery?" "Well, YEAH," Brianna said, with that raised-eyebrow look again. "I didn't jump up and run out, and Valsen didn't send the cops after me, and I didn't go to Salusia and find Kylie.. and..?" "None of that happened," Bri' shook her head. "It was very basic--you went into the OR, had two hours of surgery, and came out into recovery, and I've been here ever since. You didn't go anywhere, and I didn't get captured by anyone. It's okay." Jason slowly smiled. "I.. think I had a bit of a dream," he said. "I would say so," Bri' nodded, with a smile of her own. "Were you victorious?" "Uh-huh," he answered. Distractedly, he added, "I'll tell you.. about it.. sometime.. Do you hear that?" Brianna's ears twitched as she listened closely. "I don't hear anything other than the normal sounds of a hospital. What is it?" "A voice," Jason said. "Two voices. Sounds like.." And as he trailed off, he figured out where it was and how he could 'hear' it. [Hey! Are you conscious yet?] Brian's voice came to Jason. [Yeah, wake up,] added Gina with something that equated to laughter. [You've been out of it for fourteen hours already.] [Is this how I do this--just 'think' it?] Jason wondered out loud. [Yeah, that's it!] Brian enthused. [So how do you feel?] [Better than my dream self did,] Jason sent back. [Where are you?] "Right here," Brian said as he came through the door. He and Gina entered the room with smiles on. "Hey," Jason said, holding up a hand. Brian gripped it, and Gina gave Jay a hug. "This ain't so bad after all." "Well, you knew that, didn't you?" Gina asked, straightening up. "Like I said, not as far as my dreams were concerned. I guess right when I went under, I started dreaming.. in my dream, the anaes-- an-- gas man told me about how the implant would make me think all the right thoughts, or something like that.. anyway, it was all a mind-control thing going on, and I ended up fleeing from everyone--including all three of you, and Mitch and Valsen, and everyone else I met here on Earth--for a while, and then for the second act, I had to rescue Bri' from an evil Ian Lang." "Ian Lang? As in..?" Brian trailed off. "Yeah.. strange what your subconscious'll dredge up, huh?" "I never knew you saw him that way," Brian shook his head with a smile. "But anyway, yes, it WAS all a dream.. no one's going to control your mind, and everyone is okay." The images Bri and Gina were sending Jason went contrary to what Brian was verbalizing. However, immediately after, Gina sent, [Just teasing, Jay.] "It's gonna take some time to get used to this," he said. "Well, you can do that at home," Brianna supplied. "They say you can be discharged by this afternoon and come right back to Brougham." "I would be very happy to be out of the hospital," Jason answered. "In fact, I think after all my mind has put me through, I'd prefer to be in Brougham for a good long while." "Well, once you get up to speed," Brian said, "we'll take you and your barely- ambulatory full-term wife out to the Tonka Truck and get you guys back home. So start recovering and recuperating, okay?" 29 APRIL 2001 2248 Jason climbed into bed with Brianna, pulling the covers tight over the two of them. She stirred briefly as he put his arm around her, and then all was silent again. Jay realized he'd left the hallway light on; it was spilling into the room, illuminating his face and keeping him awake. He concentrated for a moment, and the door slid shut, blocking out the light. He smiled as he turned back over and tried to will himself to sleep. He had almost completely gotten to sleep when he was jarred awake again by a sharp gasp from Brianna. She shuddered briefly as well, and he sat up briskly. "Whatwhatwhat??" he asked urgently. She turned over to face him, a strange look on her face. "It's.. happening," she finally whispered with a smile. The two of them got up and stumbled around for a few moments. Jason had the presence of mind to turn on the light, and they then found their clothes and the pre-packed overnight bag. Jay helped Brianna to the door, pausing long enough to phone the hospital and make sure they were ready for them. As they got to the bay door, Bri' put her hand on the jamb and halted their progress. "Hold on," she said. "What?" Jason asked, turning around to see what Bri' was looking at. Then he realized it. She was gazing at all of their belongings, at the complex itself, realizing that it was the last time there'd be just the two of them. "I know, I know--I'm acting just like Jamie did on Mad About You," Bri' said. "Sorry." "Don't be," Jay said after a bit. "I was thinking the same thing." He guided her around to face the other way again, then took her to the truck, assisting her in and then getting aboard himself. The roll-up door at the top of the ramp opened, and Tonka-1 headed off into the night, aiming in the precise direction of Ajax-Pickering Regional Hospital. EPILOGUE Jason stood before the door, staring at it, unable to will himself to move his hand, put it on the doorknob, open it and pass through. The room beyond sounded rather noisy, in stark contrast to the quiet halls and other rooms in the institution. He couldn't accept that he'd been a willing contributor to what was going on on the other side of the door. That he'd voluntarily agreed to be a part of it, that he'd in fact initiated the events that led him to this day.. was just too much for him to wrap his brain around. "So now you've got an implant, you forget how to open a manual door?" came a voice from his right. Startled, he jumped and twisted to see Brianna and the kids approaching from around the corner. "No," he retorted, good-naturedly. He bent down to the stroller and greeted his year-old twins, George Adam and Julia Helen, who giggled and laughed at his antics. He answered Brianna: "I don't know if I'm ready for this." "I think it's kinda too late now. They're waiting for you. Most paid great big gobs of cash to be here." "Uh-huh, yeah, I HEAR all that," Jason nodded, still playing with the kids. Looking up at Bri', he added, "I just never got around to planning what I was gonna do or say." "Well.. it's your forum," Bri' said. "I'd bet that you can do and say whatever you darn well please." He smiled. "I guess you're right about that." He stood, picked up his packsack from the floor beside the door, and leaned over to kiss his wife. "Well, I'll see you around four, then." "Okay." She bent down to their children. "Say bye to daddy, kids," she suggested. Both George and Julia looked up at Jason, and flopped their hands around in a sloppy wave. Jay laughed, waved back, and then watched Bri' turn the stroller around, give a smile and a little wave herself, and walk away. He realized his hand was resting on the doorknob, and it was now 8:09, and he was significantly late for what was going on within the room. He took a breath and turned the knob, pushing the door open. "Good morning," he declared as he entered the room. He walked to the desk at the front. "My name is Jason Low, and I'm your instructor for this course-- Dimensional Sciences 100--although I understand that it's already well-known by its nickname, 'Project HEARD'." He set the pack down on the desk and looked up for the first time. He'd seen chalkboards between him and the desk as he'd entered, and knew the room was a lecture hall with stadium-style seating, the most common type of arrangement in the university. He'd expected, because of the course's subject matter, that he'd have five or six people in attendance, and two or three of those would get up and leave right away, having blundered into the wrong room. Instead, he was stunned to find a packed house before him--nearly a hundred and fifty students, sitting attentively, ready to hang on his every word. After a moment, his face broke into a big grin. "Shall we get started?" THE END and yet, perhaps not..