Hacker: The Outlaw Chronicles, page 20
“Don’t leave me.” My voice cracked, barely a whisper. “Please.”
“I’m always with you. And so are Dad and Tommy. You’re loved—cherished more than you can ever imagine. I know that what’s happened to you, to us, seems random and pointless and cruel, but it’s not. I’ve seen it. I see it now. Everything had to happen as it did. It was the only way.”
“No,” I said. “It wasn’t the only way. It didn’t have to happen. It shouldn’t have happened.”
“But it did.” She answered with a gentle smile.
“It destroyed our lives,” I said. “How is that beautiful? How is that fair or right or good?”
“Sweetheart, there’s a truth that’s so large and beautiful and perfect that it holds everything together. It’s hard to see it now, but it’s true.”
The entire world seemed to stall around me. “How? How does it hold it together and make it better?”
“It’s a mystery too big to know, but it exists and it’s truer than anything else that ever was because it’s more real than what we think of as real. I know it. I’ve seen it . . .” She was quiet for a moment. “I want to tell you something, and I want you to hear me.”
I grew still.
“After the accident, the world changed for me. Physically, I mean. It looked different. It was transformed as if I had a new set of eyes or a pair of glasses that allowed me to see what others can’t—a reality that is part ours and part . . . something else, something just out of sight. Both together, entangling one another. I began to see patterns in everything, intricate shapes and connections that flowed from one thing to another—events and people and circumstances—weaving them together in beautiful ways that only I could see.”
“Your artwork—all of those designs and shapes. That’s what you were drawing and painting.”
She nodded slightly. “Yes. I was catching glimpses of the life that’s just beyond what we can see. You know what I’m talking about.”
“I’ve seen things. Visions.”
“No, sweetheart, visions are dreams. These weren’t dreams. They’re more real than you or me. More real than can be described with frail things like words. Art was the closest language I had to express what I saw, but even then it fell so short, like trying to write a symphony with only a few notes or pen a novel with a handful of words.”
I knew she was telling the truth. I was experiencing it right then, in the hack. There was something else to the world—something other that our brains filtered out, that existed around us if only we knew how to hack into it.
In my mind’s eye, it became clear. Austin had tried to explain it, but at the time I didn’t have the ears to hear. The hacks that Austin and I were doing relied on shutting down the brain, not enhancing it. Only when we did that, when we silenced the brain’s incessant processing, could we access reality in a new way. It was our thinking that got in the way.
Austin had said it himself, the brain was like a computer running software programmed to handle one layer of reality, but not all the other layers of reality. There was a firewall that blocked the way, but our hacks had shut down the firewall so that we could see.
Mom’s brain damage must have done the same thing for her, only naturally. She could see the world differently, more clearly, because her firewall, her mind, had been stripped away, leaving the Reality behind reality exposed. Her firewalls had not only cracked, they’d crumbled to dust.
She continued. “With time the patterns and images became clearer to me. I saw other beings—lights and shadows—moving through the patterns. I began to understand that things we would see as terrible or tragic, while they brought unbearable pain, were transformed into something new. They had to be transformed because that was the plan all along. It’s how God works. I realized that life was beautiful, perfectly ordered, and death and suffering can be as well, in its own way.”
“Suffering’s not beautiful,” I said.
“Necessary. Without it, growth would be impossible. There would be no opportunity for our hearts to unfold, to blossom, like they were meant to. The only thing that truly crushes our hearts is our unwillingness to let go. Let go of our need to control. Let go of our need to know the answers to our questions. No amount of suffering is truly heavy enough to crush us completely unless we let it. It only has the power that we give it.”
Let go.
My head tingled.
“Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies it remains a lone seed,” she said. “All things that live eventually become the soil in which new things can take root. Things that would otherwise not exist.”
She paused and her smile softened. “Sweetheart, everything that’s happened to our family has left so many unanswered questions. Yet, life will eventually blossom into something beyond imagination—if we can let go and allow it to happen. Do you believe it?”
Let go. It’s what the girl had told me on this very street. She’d been right. For a moment, however brief, the girl had helped me let go. I had let go of my need for a scar—my belief that it was the least I deserved after what happened to the rest of my family. I’d let go of those things, and I’d been healed.
“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t let go of you.”
She ran her finger over where my scar once had been. “Yes, you can. You’ve done it before.”
“That was . . . different.”
“No, it wasn’t.” As her finger grazed my skin, a jolt of energy shot through my head and into my body. I gasped and took a step back. The sensation converged in my chest and my heart began to ram hard. My legs were unsteady.
“You’ve sat in darkness too long,” Mom said. “It’s time to leave it behind. You have to let go of everything.” She paused. “You have to let me go.”
Her words were like a stone landing on my heart. “No,” I said. “No, you can’t die.”
“When God calls his children home, there’s no death, no sting. There’s only new life. Resurrection. That’s the life that I want, dear, not the rumor or shadow of it I’ve been trapped in for the past year.”
“The girl said I have to save you.” I heard the desperation in my own voice. I could barely choke out the words.
“You already have. By bringing me to Austin’s you saved me.” She took my hand and held it gently in hers. “You saved me. When you wake up you’ll see that I’ve already passed. I died and I wanted to die. By taking me from the hospital you gave me what I most wanted, the ability to pass in peace. It’s what I want.”
Tears flowed from my eyes, but it wasn’t simply from sadness or loss, but release. I could feel myself letting her go, and in that was the first glimmer of hope.
“Don’t give up on life,” she said. “You’ll find joy again . . . and peace. And love. I’ve seen it. I promise you, it’ll be okay. There’s nothing to fear. Open your eyes. See . . .”
She touched my head and the energy that radiated in my skull felt like two hot coals behind my eyes.
“Every moment of your life, every choice and every circumstance, has carved a path to this very moment,” Mom said. “You’re always exactly where you’re meant to be at precisely the perfect time. You can trust that always. When it’s dark and when it’s light. In those times when you scream at the sky or when you turn your face up to catch the warmth of the sun—you can trust that.”
I felt every muscle in my body ease. I drew a long breath and let it out slowly. I didn’t want to fight anymore. I was too tired and my soul felt so crooked and brittle I knew it would break if I kept going the way I had been.
“You are always in the perfect place and the perfect time,” she said again. “Do you trust that?”
“I . . . I want to.”
“Then do. Let go of your pain. There’s no need to cling to it anymore. It’s not you. It happened to you, but none of it is you. Don’t just believe it, know it.”
“Know it,” I whispered and closed my eyes. “Yes . . .”
Before the word left my mouth it set something in motion, something that I couldn’t see or hear or feel. My word, a simple act of surrender, triggered a seismic chain reaction that would change everything. I just didn’t know in what ways yet.
“Do you want to live?” Mom said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Then live. You’ll forget, but then you’ll remember again. It’s okay. Don’t be afraid, there’s nothing to fear. You’re always exactly where you’re meant to be, and there is always something you can do. Even now. Even with Austin.”
“Austin . . .” My thoughts zeroed in on him and the image of his dead body lying on the apartment floor. “What do I do?”
“Save him,” she said. “There’s still time, but you must hurry. Save him.”
“I want to, but I can’t. How do I save him? If it was the tumor that killed him then there’s nothing—”
“It wasn’t the tumor,” she said. “It’s what he put into his veins. It was far too much.”
The world was shifting around me. I shot a look at my watch as the second hand nudged forward. My time was nearly gone. The hack was ending.
“Restart his heart,” she said.
“I tried that!” I screamed as the street and everything around it crackled and began to burn away at the edges. “It didn’t work.”
“Put something else in his veins,” she said and pushed upright. “You already know where to look.” She stood from the wheelchair as dust swirled around us and took a step forward. My mom pulled me to her and held tight. “I love you, Nyah. I love you and I promise I’ll see you again. Don’t be afraid.”
Desperate to hang on to her, I pressed my face against her chest. “I love you too. I love you . . .”
With the roar of wind in my ears I let my mom go. I let her move on and live in that place that I knew existed so deep that no hack could go far enough to tap it. There was only one door to that reality and all of us would pass through it at some point, whether soon or when we’re old. It’s where she wanted to go and it’s where I would see her again someday.
“I love you,” she said, a whisper in my ear, and she took a step back. “To the moon and back.” Light gathered around her, swirled and engulfed her, swallowed her.
She was home.
4.4
DAY 3 - 11:59 pm
STONE CIRCLED the block slowly, headlights darkened as he scanned the streets and deserted warehouses for signs of life. It didn’t matter how far the girl ran, he would eventually catch up to her. It was simply a matter of when.
He suspected that she would come back to this place even if she intended to eventually flee the city. Something in the warehouse or the nearby building was important to her. Something or someone.
The building from the satellite image came into view, rising from the shadowy streets, ahead and on the right. High on the top floor a sliver of light, barely perceptible, bled through a painted-over window. It was the only trace of light for blocks. She was inside.
He parked a block north and approached the building, staying to the patchwork of shadows as he walked the perimeter. On the building’s back side he found the garage entrance and, just inside, a shattered gate arm that had likely been smashed in the girl’s haste.
No sign of movement as he entered the garage. Two caged bulbs, ancient looking and glowing dirty yellow, clung to the ceiling and cast dull circles on the pitted concrete floor. Ahead, a minivan was visible in the anemic light of a third bulb, this one centered above a black metal door that undoubtedly led into the building. The lone vehicle was parked crooked, a few feet from it.
The lack of cars confirmed his suspicion that the building itself was abandoned, a half-finished development, judging by the stacked pallets of building supplies along the far wall.
A quick search of the van revealed nothing more than a cell phone, which sat in the passenger’s seat, and a clump of crinkled registration and insurance paperwork in the glove compartment. The engine still tick-tick-ticked from the heat, but that was the only sound in the deserted place.
After slashing the van’s tires as a precaution—he couldn’t afford a second escape—Stone’s eyes leveled on the door and he stepped toward it. The next time he came out, the girl would be with him. One way or another.
* * *
THE BLINDING WHITE light vanished. Electric-blue sky stretched above Austin and a jagged spine of snow-capped mountains reached toward him from far below. With the roar of wind in his ears, he soared over the top of a saw-toothed peak and the rugged mountains gave way to a vast plain of multicolored grasses and trees.
He gasped. Never before had he seen such vivid colors. There were no words to describe them, nor were they colors that were limited to the sense of sight. He could hear the colors and feel them in his chest as surely as an ocean wave crashing into him.
He looked to his left and a child gripped his hand. It was the boy he’d followed through the jungle; the one who’d led him to the hut. To Outlaw. The child’s hair lifted on the wind and his olive skin glistened in the light, which came from everywhere at once. The sun was nowhere he could see.
The boy turned his head and smiled. Hello, Austin. The child had not spoken, but his words—complete with inflection and the pitch of a child’s voice—came instantly into Austin’s mind. It was similar to his experience in the hack, only faster and more complete.
Where am I? Austin said, though he too didn’t speak with words.
The child remained silent.
“Am I dead?”
“Dead?” The boy laughed. “No one dies. Not ever.”
He was young, no older than twelve, but his voice seemed ancient. Austin didn’t know the child, not like he knew Nyah or other people, yet he felt a familiarity that was unexplainable; the child emanated a presence that Austin had always felt near him.
He looked down as they flew over a vast forest. They swooped in wide, lazy arcs over ridges and between thick groves of trees twice the height and thickness of any sequoia tree he’d ever seen on his hiking trips through the Northwest.
This is Earth, he thought, but the beauty was also something other than Earth, more than was possible on Earth. In fact, everything was somehow more than what he knew in his experience. The world felt more substantial, more real.
It was as if he’d spent his entire life hidden deep underground, dwelling in darkness, mindlessly watching shadows on the wall that someone had told him were reality. Only now, he’d stepped into the sunlight and discovered that reality was vastly more.
As they sailed over a patch of iridescent flowers that shimmered in the light, the entire field exploded with color in motion. The flowers weren’t flowers at all, but millions of hummingbirds that took wing with a loud rush of sound. The birds darted into the sky as one and trailed behind them.
It was all unexplainable, completely illogical to the part of him that needed to know where he was and how he got there. And what “there” actually was.
“Home,” the boy said. “It’s home.”
Home. Austin—being an orphan, alone in the world—had no familiarity of the word’s deeper context; it was utterly foreign to him.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
The boy pointed ahead, to a rise in the land. “You’ll see.”
Seven waterfalls thundered into a valley below and fed a vast lake that was as emerald as glacial water. Thick mist billowed across the lake far below and the water spilled over the rocks and split into seven tributaries, the beginnings of rivers that flowed in many directions.
They sailed to the lake, so close to its surface their passing left ripples in the water. Before they reached the waterfalls they pitched steeply upward into the mist, rising nearly vertical. The water spray was cool on his face and tasted sweet on his lips. The wind blew through him as they climbed higher, through the billowing cloud, and high into the sky.
Soon they were miles above the ground and punching through a skim of clouds they ascended into an ink-black sky alive with glimmering lights, though not stars. The lights were like comets and they streaked from one horizon to the next in countless numbers. They were of different colors and as they moved the sky shimmered with deep, resonating sounds. Austin marveled at the spectacle and wanted to know more.
The boy remained silent and pulled him higher into the darkness. They slowed to a gentle stop. Silence pressed in on them.
Austin looked around him, feeling weightless. In the distance, the streaks of light crisscrossed the darkness, and he understood they were beings of some kind. As they moved, the thunderous booms reverberated through the expanse and after several moments he realized the booms were reminiscent of voices shouting . . . singing . . . laughing.
He turned to speak, but the child was no longer by his side. Still, he felt the same presence as though he were. Austin looked below him and the earth had disappeared as well, replaced by the sight of distant star spirals and blazing suns.
An overwhelming sense of comfort embraced him. He was suspended in a void, immense and infinitely deep and wide and long—the dark waters he’d been rescued from paled miserably in comparison. Here, light enveloped him. God. The fabric from which all things were cut, seen and unseen, and he knew that it wasn’t an “it” at all.
The presence that streamed through him and held every part of him together—every atom and thought—was infinite, far too vast to be described with any word or concept or idea. All of those things that he once considered real and concrete seemed pathetically one-dimensional now—shadows of shadows and nothing more. Words like infinite and omnipotent and unconditional love could never begin to capture even the slightest notion of what he was experiencing, like comparing a spark from a dying candlewick to a supernova large enough to swallow the universe.
I made this for you.
A tide of infinite warmth and compassion washed over his awareness and went to the deepest corners of him. It wasn’t a voice or even a thought that had come to him. It was something else that was far more personal. It was a Presence and it knew him entirely and accepted him without judgment.
