Total Immersion, page 32
“New York was everything I hoped it would be,” she continued in a brighter tone. “It was the fresh start I so desperately needed. For the first time since that terrible Christmas Eve when those animals, who should have died for their sins, stole my father and basically murdered my mother, I was happy. The thoughts of suicide faded, and I could finally, after so many years of darkness, begin to see the light. My second month there, I met this wonderful man. He was ten years older, but we hit it off. I’m convinced he was meant to be my soulmate. My one true love. He was a director for a small Off-Broadway repertory company. He encouraged me to get out and meet people and take acting lessons and dance lessons and singing lessons . . . God, how I loved him.”
Sam closed his eyes; her story poisoned his spirit. There’s so much unnecessary pain in this world, he thought. So much pain heaped upon good people.
Gwen paused as her eyes glazed over, heavy in thought, heavy in remembrance. “In twenty-five years, there hasn’t been an hour of the day I haven’t thought about him. I can still smell him. Still see his face as clear as the first time we met. He was a good person, a very decent man, and I miss him terribly. He has grandchildren now.”
She paused, once again staring at Sam with those dark blue, penetrating eyes, and whispered, “I’m so very sorry about what I did to you. God help me. God help all the terrible hate inside of me.”
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“This is heavy,” Buzz said, as all eyes were locked onto the screen.
Kathy just wanted it to end. She felt physically sick. Something was telling her this would end badly. That something terrible was about to happen.
Ruth felt Kathy’s hand tighten around her own, her nails digging into Ruth’s skin.
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“I was living in a studio apartment on the Lower East Side,” Gwen continued, her voice deepening. “It was a hot night. A Tuesday night. One of those muggy New York summer nights where the sweat pours off of you. You take a cold shower, and you still sweat. I was starting rehearsals the next morning on my first show. It was an Off-Broadway revival of Cabaret. I was only in the chorus, but I was so excited. My first play in New York. So, there I was, burning up, and around ten o’clock, I decided to take a walk. It was cooler outside than it was inside. I threw on some shorts and a t-shirt, and headed for a coffee shop a few blocks away. I was going to get an iced coffee. An iced blended mocha latte with soy milk. I got about a hundred yards up the street when a car—an old, black Cadillac—pulled up alongside, and started keeping pace with me. I wasn’t scared, just a little nervous. I didn’t think much of it, and then suddenly, I felt something smash into the back of my head. I think it was a hammer. I don’t even know where they came out of. It felt like I had been hit by lightning, and everything went black.”
Several kids ran by, kicking up the sand as Gwen smiled. “I like kids,” she said.
“Me too,” Sam whispered.
“I would have liked to have had a daughter.”
“Yeah,” Sam said with a heavy sigh. “Me too.”
Gwen rolled right back into her story. “I woke up ten hours later in a dark basement. I was naked, and I could smell I had shit and pissed on myself. They had chained my left ankle to the side of a stone wall. I had the most intense pain in my genitals. The worst pain I ever felt in my life, and I knew I had been raped repeatedly. Every pore in my body felt violated. I didn’t cry. I never cried once. I was numb. In shock, I guess. I just laid there trying to understand what was happening to me, and why I was being made to suffer like this.”
Sam swallowed hard and glanced away as her words cut through him like a thousand knives.
Gwen shook her head, staring at Sam’s stricken face. “I didn’t send this to sicken you with the grotesque, inhuman details of what those monsters did to me in that fucking hole. I don’t even try to understand it myself. All I know is Kim died a slow, agonizing death in that horrible, wicked place, and Gwen was born. They turned me into a freak, Sam. It’s almost impossible to imagine the evil that exists on this planet. The kind of pure evil that could pour acid on a young girl’s face, mutilate her breasts, slice her open with razor blades, and watch her bleed until she passed out. The kind of evil that could chop off part of her hand and work tirelessly to keep her alive like some caged, tortured animal. What kind of demented, psychotic, twisted hate could someone have burning inside them to do such things to another human being? What the fuck is wrong with this world, Sam?”
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Gannon turned away from the screen as Buzz, Kathy, and Ruth stood frozen, trying to keep their emotions from getting the best of them.
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“Why are some people touched by evil more than others?” Gwen asked. “Most never encounter the kind of horrors you and I have had to endure. They never see the dark side. The terror of what men are capable of. The inhumanity. The atrocities. Why is that? Why does evil reach out to some, and not others?”
“I don’t know,” Sam whispered, pondering the question that had haunted his entire adult life. “I think maybe we were put here to suffer. That’s our destiny. I think God must hate people like me, and you, and Kim, and Travis . . . and Jenny.”
“I know if God does exist, He most certainly hates me. He must hate so many to allow the kind of savagery to continue without remorse. He must fucking despise us all.”
Sam was brought up in a religious, Catholic home, and didn’t want to believe that God could hate innocent people with such a fury, but as he grew older, the thought of a vengeful God, or, for that matter, no God at all, weighed heavily on him.
“I’m not asking for your pity, Sam,” Gwen continued. “I don’t want this to come off as an excuse for what I did to those men: a vigilante serial killer’s rationalization of her dirty deeds. I just want you to understand where I’m coming from, and why I must continue, no matter what the cost, no matter what the consequences.”
“What happened to the fuckers who did this to you?” Sam asked, his understanding of her mission growing disturbingly clear.
“About six months . . . I think it was six months later—it could have been a year, maybe two, I don’t know—they blindfolded me and shoved me into the trunk of a car. To this day, I have no clue where they were planning on taking me or what they were going to do to me, but there was a terrible accident. It was snowing, and the car swerved off some one-lane road in the middle of nowhere and crashed into a tree. Upon impact, the trunk popped open, and I was thrown out. The younger brother, who was a nurse at some hospital, was decapitated, and the older one, the devil himself, had smashed through the windshield and landed, unconscious, twenty feet from the wreck. Thankfully, he was alive, and for three glorious hours, easily the best of my life, I slowly and methodically skinned that motherfucker with shards of broken glass. I cut up that evil beast like a fucking pig. I mean, I tortured that son of a bitch, Sam. He begged for his life. Begged to be spared. Calling out to God to end his pain. Screaming to Jesus Christ to be forgiven for his sins. The power of redemption, of revenge, of true justice, should never be underestimated. It saved me. It healed me. I know you understand exactly what I’m talking about.”
Sam desperately wanted the monsters who murdered Jenny and his daughter to pay with their souls. He wanted them to die in front of him. He wanted them to die by his own hands. He wanted to move on.
“Just know that things do change,” Gwen said. “Sometimes from places you’d never expect.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself.”
Gwen smiled an all-knowing smile. “When I started programming the Total Immersion discs, I began to grasp the power of this technology, and how it could be used to exorcise the demons inside me. Not only for me, but for others whose lives had been destroyed by a cold, uncaring justice system that coddles murderers, and rapists, and child molesters. It’s a fucking failure. The whole justice system in this country is an abortion. Everybody knows it, but nobody has the guts to do anything about it.”
Sam knew there was no point in arguing. She was going to say whatever had been programmed onto that disc, and for the most part, there wasn’t much to argue against.
“Was Travis the first?” he asked, hoping to glean as much information as possible.
“No,” Gwen said with an accomplished smile. “There have been others, but Travis was the most effective, and he won’t be the last. Human beings are weak. So easily manipulated. Men especially. God, they’re the weakest. It’s frightening what a pretty face can accomplish on the mind of a lonely man. There are hordes of Travis Taylors out there just waiting for salvation, so desperate for love.”
“And Carl Tyler, what about him?”
Gwen slightly winced at the name. “I’m waging a war. A war of justice against injustice. Mistakes will happen. It’s inevitable.”
“And me? Would I have been another mistake?”
For the first time, Gwen’s haunting eyes looked away. “I regret that decision more than anything in my entire life. It’s the reason I sent this to you, and I’ve taken a great risk exposing myself like this, but I felt you deserved it. You were so close, and things were working out so well with Travis. I spent years perfecting these programs. Perfecting the AI systems that allow for such detail. I spent over five years on Travis alone. Once you have a sword like that, you don’t just throw it away. I was wrong, and it’ll never happen again. I’m not looking to harm innocent people. That’s not what I’m about.”
Sam knew Gwen was right. There was no way of stopping the advancing technology. Consumers around the world, desperate to escape the sad realities of their disappointing lives, were already buying in-home systems by the thousands, soon by the millions.
How long before in-home systems were as common as tablets, digital watches, phones, and televisions?
How long before the streets were empty?
How long before there would be no need to ever leave your house again?
How long before human beings completely gave up their freedoms, their interaction with one another, and handed over their souls to the almighty computer?
Gwen could program from anywhere and have the world at her fingertips. Kim was going to be very busy and very productive indeed.
“What do you want from me?” Sam asked.
“Nothing. Just forgiveness. I know you. I know who you are, and I understand your pain.”
“I’m not you, Gwen. I am not you,” Sam said, wanting hopelessly to believe it, but knowing all too well how much truth was buried in her statement.
Gwen smiled as that wonderful, sweet-smelling ocean breeze blew around them. “Maybe not, but I made a promise to myself, a promise to Kim, a promise to all the Kims out there, all the Sam and Jenny Knights, all the Brad and Nancy Farbers . . .”
Sam remembered back to Kevin Fields’ victim, and the husband she left behind.
“I made a promise that I would continue the fight, and as you well know, there’s so much work to be done. Any attempt to track me down would be futile. Your time is much better spent hunting down the real criminals. The real monsters. That’s what you’re great at. You’re a hunter, and the very best. I don’t expect you to agree with me right away, but locking me up would be of little use to anyone.”
Sam was torn between her valiant mission to bring justice to those who had escaped it, and her cold, heartless sentiments for the poor, inculpable saps who got in her way. She would accept the senseless deaths of five innocent men to torture one sick bastard.
Gwen Thompson would have to be stopped.
“Our time together is running short,” Gwen said, her eyes sparkling. “At the end of this program are instructions on how to duplicate the detail and characters contained on it.”
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Buzz glanced up at Gannon. “What the hell does that mean?”
“How much time is left?” Gannon asked, suddenly nervous.
“A little over three hours,” Buzz said. “This crazy bitch tries anything and I’m gonna pull the plug.”
They all nodded in agreement and continued to stare at the screen.
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Sam could only wonder why she would want him to duplicate the characters in this program. Not that a few nights with Kim would be so terrible, he thought, as Gwen reached out and took his hand.
“Like I said,” she continued, “I didn’t risk sending you this just to spill my wretched life story. I wanted to say I’m sorry, and I do hope, maybe one day, under different circumstances, we’ll get a chance to meet in person. I would love to get to know you. To become a friend. That would mean a great deal to me.”
“I’d like that, too,” Sam said, already imagining a face-to-face meeting with this intriguing, brilliant, frightening woman.
“Never underestimate the power of this technology,” Gwen said, still holding tight to his hand. “For all the damage it can wreak upon an unsuspecting mind, it can also perform wonders—miracles, really. It has the power to heal, and as I said in my letter . . . As long as you hold someone in your heart, you can never lose them.”
Gwen tightened her grip on Sam’s hand, and a bright smile cracked across her broken face. “I didn’t know how else to say I was sorry. To say hello, and goodbye, at the same time.”
Gwen leaned over and kissed Sam on the cheek. He felt her hand pull away as she took several steps back.
“Please understand that sometimes this world demands we content ourselves with artificial memories of what could have been . . . Goodbye, Sam.”
Gwen smiled, turned around, and walked away.
Sam watched her image slowly fade and disappear.
With a deep sigh, he turned back to the ocean, and gazed out at the setting sun as the tranquil sounds and smells of the beach flooded his senses.
Suddenly, Judy Garland’s voice poured out from a nearby speaker. “Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high, there’s a land that I heard of once in a lullaby . . .”
The song brought an ironic smile to his face as he continued to stare at that flawless golden sunset. Everything is simply beautiful in this wonderful place, he thought. If only life could be like this.
“Sam?” a woman’s voice called out.
Sam’s entire body stiffened as a jolt of electricity shot through his stomach. The voice came from directly behind him, and he was never so frightened in his entire life to turn around and face what he knew was standing there.
“Sam?” she said again.
Sam dropped his head and held back a rush of tears. “No, no, no . . .” he muttered, and began to cry. “No, please, no.”
“Are you okay, sweetie?” Jenny Knight asked as her hand gently dropped onto his shoulder.
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“No, no, no . . .” Kathy whispered. She watched in horror as Jenny Knight stood directly behind Sam. “Turn it off, Buzz! Fucking turn it off! Turn it off!”
Buzz looked up to Ruth, who had her hand over her mouth.
“Only if he pulled the trigger,” Buzz said, his voice cracking. He glanced over to Gannon. “Should I?”
Gannon stared at the screen, his eyes wet with tears, and uttered a simple, “No.”
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“Someday I’ll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me. Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops. That’s where you’ll find me . . .”
Sam buried his face into his hands, trembling.
Jenny’s voice was perfect. A local news station once interviewed her for a segment about detectives’ wives, and Sam knew all Gwen needed was a small sample to work from.
“Sam, you’re making me nervous. What’s wrong?” Jenny asked, concerned.
Sam stood frozen as she moved in front of him and gently pulled his hands away from his face.
It was as if she had never left, and those miserable, heartbreaking, lonely years instantly vanished.
She wore a pair of white shorts and a short-sleeved cotton shirt. A gust of wind blew her flowing black hair into her beautiful face.
He knew he would see her again. He knew she could not stay away forever. His prayers had been answered. He lifted his trembling hand and gently pushed the hair from her face. Her skin felt soft, and warm, and alive as she smiled that perfect, exquisite smile. That smile he fell in love with so long ago.
That smile he missed more than anything in the world.
Jenny reached out and wrapped her arms around him. “It’s okay. I’m here. I’m right here.”
Sam hesitated for a moment, his arms lying listless at his sides.
“I’ve missed you, Sam. I’ve missed you so much,” she whispered into his ear.
He felt her warm breath against his neck as he wrapped his arms around her, and he held her tight, never wanting to let go again.
“I’ve missed you too, Jen,” Sam said, trying to catch his breath between excited sobs. “I’ve been dead. Oh, God, I’ve been dead without you.”
Jenny leaned in as Sam closed his eyes, and their lips met. The fireworks he felt the first time they kissed, on the top of that skyscraper overlooking all of Chicago, exploded in his mind. There was nothing he yearned for more than her healing touch.
It fed him.
It made him feel alive.
As Jenny pulled away, Sam opened his eyes and stared at the stunning, picture-perfect woman that was his one and only. His best friend. His lover. His soulmate.
Sam Knight was the luckiest man on earth.
“Now, if that doesn’t make you feel better, holy shit, I don’t know what will,” Jenny said, keeping a tight hold of his hand.
“Yes,” Sam said, a bright smile lighting up his worn face. “Everything is perfect.”
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Kathy knew she had lost him forever. She turned away from the screen and quietly backed out of the room. She watched from the door as Ruth, Gannon, and Buzz sat transfixed, watching in silence as Gwen chalked up another victory.
