Here is Elsewhere

The Center: A Feedback Loop

They come in the evening after the watercress soup has been drained from his plastic dish, after the anti-inflammatory medication--ingested with a bit of bread, dipped in low-fat milk--settles like a paving stone in Ulysses Harrison’s stomach. An apparition from his past arrives, hovering on the periphery, shoulders raised, a look of solemn indignation on her face. There are others, though they are disinclined to reveal themselves, content to glower from the corners in silence. Others menace him with blank expressions then dissipate with the fading light of the evening sun. Most are merely vague recollections, a series of out-of-focus images.

The room grows dim as the sun slips below the horizon.

Karen, Harrison’s dead wife, hums the melody from “Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed,” an old Burt Bacharach tune made famous by Linda Scott as she glides around the room, tidying things.

She had passed, over a decade ago, without warning, silently in her sleep.

Her voice is soulful. Distant. As if broadcast through an old AM radio. Karen, blurred by the haze of memory, regards him with a tilt of her head, furrows her brow, finds a mote of dust between them to scrutinize.

Tears well up. The force of gravity pulling moisture from the dam of his eyelid sends a wet, glistening line down his cheek. Harrison’s throat constricts; overcome by nostalgia, he turns his head toward the open window, catching whiffs of Eucalyptus, desert sage, heat-released scents reinforcing his disorientation. The spot-cleaned Venetian blinds vex him as they whistle in the evening breeze.

Smells, distinctive ones, trigger memories.

From his window, the center’s manicured lawn buttresses a copse of eucalyptus trees on the border of the property. A man in beige coveralls sits astride a riding mower with his baseball hat’s brim curled around his eyes, a pair of hunter-orange mufflers closing out the engines drone. His room fills with sweet fresh mowed grass, oily 2-cycle exhaust.

There’s the industrial-strength cleaner, effectively canceling something out. Aging and declining smells. Harrison shuffles his pale, spotted feet in the cloth and cardboard slippers, moving closer to the window. He stares at the canopy of eucalyptus swaying, fingering the window armature. The metallic arm restrains the frame from opening fully.

Getting old, it’s the shit. He paws at his cheek with the back of his hand.

An incessant pulsing sound—an immediately unidentifiable white noise—issued from the earth shifting in the day’s fading heat, echoes in the air above Harrison’s pneumatic, remote controlled bed. A honeybee lands on the window ledge, nudges the stained flakes of alabaster pigeon droppings, takes flight and hovers around the screen. Harrison places his open palm against the screen in greeting.

The air in the room churns. Above the bed the fan blade edges are caked in gray dust. Moving air. The skin of people.

Harrison is old but not nearly as old as many of the other residents. At seventy-nine, Harrison is one of the youngest on the floor. He is also the most secretly famous.

Not old, according to Nurse Sarah, but “aged, like a fine wine.”

Craning his neck to watch the groundskeeper navigate the mower out of his line of sight, he flexes his arthritic hand and winces. Forehead resting against the window hand on the immovable lever, he studies his reflection. A man, older in appearance than his age, rings under his eyes, a white gown hanging loosely from his boney shoulders, stares back.

Bursts of maroon and fuchsia form a line of color along the chain link fence overgrown with bougainvillea. It marks the edge of Greenbrier’s property.

My brain is a neighborhood of cul-de-sacs.

On the border of the property stands a row of evenly spaced billboards, interrupted by ivy-choked palms-- palms reinforcing the legacy of Southern California’s Mediterranean littoral. Each of the anorexic trunks is topped with a crown of feathered-leaves like vituperative exclamation points, punctuating each marketing message: Greenbrier Commons – Assisted Living; Something Significant in the Air – Agile Airlines; Have It Your Way – Burger King.

Palms bend in the Santa Ana wind toward an upholstered Pacific horizon. Palms, Southern California’s emblems of the illusion state. Land of imagineers… ten-lanes of bumper-to-bumper artery clogging queues.

Blanketed in that lush, white noise, Harrison scans the traffic stalled on the freeway below. Each are illuminated by ribbons of serpentine gold, reflection of sun on chrome as radiant heat dances above SUV’s and sedans. Motorcyclists split lanes, weaving between cars accompanied by the thud-thud of Botts dots pavement markers. They navigate soft-tails, shovelheads and crotch-rockets. All languish in this inconvenient drama, stranded between white lines.

You’re all wasting time.

The bee, a drone, buzzes furiously outside the screen again, looping and twirling, landing then launching aggressively off the ledge into another flight of loops and whirls. This lasts for several minutes; Harrison watches, rapt. Each time the bee lands it seems disoriented, stopping and resting its wings or marching an indeterminate, circuitous route until it bumps against the aluminum edge of the window frame and is born aloft by its wings again.

Harrison pads to the edge of his bed and flips on the reading light, slides between the paper thin sheets and folds his hands over his chest.

The sound of his own laughter startles him and he is stuck by a recollection.

* * *

The Incident: Data Measured, Captured and Stored

The airplane lost altitude and dropped out of the sky for 20 seconds—twice.

Moments after the pilot of Agile Flight 713 switched off autopilot, one of the Airbus A330-303’s air data inertial reference units (ADIRUs), “started providing erroneous data,” spiking the instrument panel in a flurry of flashing greens and yellows. It was later determined that the primary ADIRU was subject to glitches. The remaining units functioned accordingly. Flight control diagnostics failed to filter the erroneous data related to the “angle of attack,” a term relating to the pitch of the wing parallel to the horizon.

The plane pitched nose down and dropped by nearly forty meters, sending unsecured passengers and luggage into the aisles, injuring dozens. After the flight crew corrected the initial problem, the plane pitched yet again, this time only dropping a couple of meters.

When questioned on the ground at Jakarta International Airport, passengers reported a brilliant burst of an azure light on the starboard side of the aircraft prior to the initial, extreme drop in altitude.

When the plane landed emergency response teams were stunned to find a gaping hole of approximately 2.74m in diameter in the starboard side of the baggage compartment. They were shocked further to discover that the hole extended laterally across the lower deck to a nearly identical opening on the port side.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, in conjunction with additional resources from their American and Indonesian counterparts, investigated the onboard computers’ software, flight records.

It was reported that even with the extreme loss of pressure, only a few small pieces of luggage were lost. The purported “bluest of blue” burst of light was subsequently disregarded in the ensuing investigation as an inconsequential, unknown factor.

However, the captain was later overheard in the airport bar describing his view of the incident. Top buttons of his dress shirt unbuttoned, tie loose around his neck, he described the incident as something indescribable, and it seemed that the more he attempted to relate the details of the incident, the more difficult it was to articulate.

First, the captain drew a simple image of an airliner on a cocktail napkin.

“Or,” swinging his body dangerously over his stool to the two men seated at the table behind him, “It was like, I dunno, God’s flashlight or…no, that’s stupid. Okay…a loaf of bread punctured by a steel rod. Add wings, copilot and 7 tons of steel and fiberglass and you’ve got yourself a jet with a big fucking hole in it.”

He swung back to his drink, laughing in short mechanical bursts, tapping his wedding band against his glass.

The Captain’s increasingly strange comparisons continued as the night wore on. Each permutation became more absurd and dramatic after each scotch on the rocks.

Shortly thereafter, two unidentified airline representatives escorted him out.

* * *

The Relevance Stage

Today, Ulysses finds himself at the window of his room at the Greenbrier Commons Assisted Living Home. Neck bent and staring, lips slightly parted. Across the lawn, elderly patrons glide on walkers toward the dining hall. Windows—his—only open sideways three inches before the bolt in the window track catches with a passive aggressive ‘I don’t think so.’

He shuffles from the window to the bathroom in his too-thin slippers, biting at the soft flesh on the interior of his mouth, flips the light switch, illuminating toilet and sink. Everything is ergonomic, including the seat, as is the brushed steel support bar on the wall. The fan in the bathroom sputters to life noisily.

Harrison sits to urinate, laughing quietly, he pulls the ergonomic lever to flush and finds himself marrying the sound of the water sluicing noisily with memory of the space opening below him on flight 713.

Karen’s ghost smiles approvingly as he lowers the lid of the toilet, clucking his tongue against his teeth.

He is a slow and methodical hand washer, glancing furtively at his reflection in the mirror above the sink. Who is that old man washing his hands?

Harrison slides across the tile, slippers scraping softly.

Every day, at this same hour, Harrison exercises his mind to keep his spatial differentiation sharp. When he closes out the phantoms of the past to concentrate on the banal rituals of the present, he makes a scratch in the paint behind the bed frame with his fingernail. A reminder in Braille, notched in paint, to account for each day.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish time. How rapid it spirals away from him. There are blank spots on the wall, notches missing—and they are increasing.

* * *

Super Position: Evidence Stage

Had the bulkhead separated along the riveted lining ejecting Harrison from the opening at 30,000 feet, he could have died--suffocated by the immediate loss of pressure, frozen by the atmosphere. The rupture and his death were to manifest only in the space of dreams and imagination.

He never spoke to his wife Karen about the incident. Fearing that in giving voice to the entire phenomenon he would admit his own guilt at having been responsible for near deaths of several hundred. It was the almost that haunted him: turned his hair white while he was in his mid-thirties.

This recollection of a past event permeated the white-tiled room.

* * *

Keyword Cipher: Action Stage

Doctor Heer enters the room: a pigeon-chested man who speaks in a pleasant glissando, with streaks of gray at his temples followed by a shock of dense blond hair pulled into a short tail banded with a black ring of elastic. Without affect, he blinks at Harrison from behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. He wears white, hip-length lab jacket, beige Dockers, dull leather shoes with white tube socks.

Harrison notices a slight limp in the Doctor’s left leg.

Doctor Heer asks him a few pointed questions about his health, jotting several notes using a plastic stylus on a handheld tablet in a reinforced Naugahyde sleeve.

Harrison is perched on the edge of his bed. The doctor holds out his hand. Harrison stares at it. Small scars crisscross his knuckles. It is a firm yet ambivalent two-shake pump.

“Good to see you again Mr. Harrison. I’m Doctor...”

“Heer. Yes, that much I remember.”

Pleased with himself, he offers his hand. It feels clammy and weak, the olive skin peppered with freckles, compared Heer’s firm, gentle grip. Self-conscious, he wipes it nervously against the rough material of the gown. The tip of Heer’s pinky is missing. Only the nail remains as a broken atoll of opaque keratin encircled by scarred cuticle. Heer sits in the chair opposite Harrison.

“Not a surgeon I take it?” Harrison huffs, testing the chinks, seeing where he may gain some leverage. He’s suddenly unsure, from the lack of response, whether he might have already made this joke.

Doctor Heer nods, seats himself in the metal chair across from Harrison who remains slouched on the edge of the bed. Heer holds out his right hand, pen between first and middle finger like an ex-smoker –he grins but doesn’t laugh.

“No. Didn’t ever have the stomach for that kind of work.”

Harrison lifts his arm, palm open, hovering over the touchscreen tablet perched on Heer’s knee. “Steady right? I was always good with my hands. But my vision cut my ambitions short. They found I was more useful in research and development.”

Doctor Heer turns his hands over, shifting the tablet to balance more securely on his knee. “As for me. I was always fascinated with the kind of precision work one could perform without ever having to open up any part of the body.” He points his pen at Harrison’s head.

Harrison exhales through his lips. Both men are silent for a moment, inert.

Finally Harrison speaks. “Excuse the pun, Doctor Heer, but why am I here?”

Heer tilts his shoulders forward, eyebrow raised.

“Ah. The million-dollar question,” the whine of traffic coalesces with the ascending and descending tonality of Heer’s voice.

Neither of them speak. Their silence extends beyond a comfortable pause.

“I’m not much of a trivia buff. Always found that type of topical inquiry tiresome,” says Heer. He sits back, resting his hands on his knees. “Though, to your credit, the staff’ve spoken reverently about your uncanny ability to recall even the most obscure bits of information. I hear you are quite the wiz at Jeopardy.”

“Karen used to say, had I not spent my life working in intelligence and working for intelligence we’d be a fraction ahead of the game.”

“She was your wife, correct?”

“A wonderful apiarist.”

Heer flips through his notes, frowns. “Aneurism? So sorry.”

“…Bees. You understand?”

“Uh huh. I see.”

A semi-truck’s air horn echoes along the interstate.

“Painless they told me.” Harrison nods, pauses. “Happened in her sleep. She seemed…peaceful. My only hope is that I can follow with as much grace.”

Concerned, Heer shifts his hips into the curve of the metal chair, glances at his wrist. “So, why do you think you are here Mr. Harrison? Aside from the obvious reasons, that is.”

“Well, my family, my son-in-law, they have…I have a granddaughter, Abbey. Wonderful girl. And Claire—my daughter--is running the company in my absence.

They have lots of responsibility. Too much, I suppose to give me the care I need, nor can I properly care for myself.

I told you about how I rode the bus to the edge of town didn’t I? Yes, well I tell you what Doc, getting old…it’s the shit.”

Heer smiles sympathetically.

“You did indeed.” Heer swipes at the screen of his touchpad. “Bouts of acute dementia. Macular degeneration, in both eyes.”

“Going blind. Losing my mind.”

“However, you are one of our youngest clients here at Greenbrier.

Harrison shakes his head at the door. The volume of his voice increases slightly. “I understand the reasons for the door being locked. What I don’t understand is why I’ve been confined to my room? Why the security measures? I want to go outside and sit in the sun and feel the breeze on my face…”

“The night terrors you suffer from are legendary among the other patients, so are your nocturnal wanderings. This measure is standard operating procedure for our clients with unpredictable symptoms, which is to say the symptoms are unpredictable by nature.”

Harrison blinks, incredulous.

“You understand? These are precautionary measures. This is the way we ensure the safety of our clients, Mr. Harrison. Can’t have you picked up by the sheriff wandering about in the wee hours of the morning, trying to cross the interstate. No, that wouldn’t reflect well on our reputation as one of the premier senior care centers in the city. Nor, because of your elevated celebrity, can we chance your abduction by some foreign power, or by a group of terrorists.”

“There is something shifting in the climate of consciousness on this planet today, stealing an old man isn’t a priority,” said Harrison, his back rigid, eyes blinking in a semaphore of excitement. Yet he know that to rendition the enfeebled founder of the worlds largest private security firm and surveillance network was not beyond the realm of possibility.

Harrison thinks then of the brief, idyllic time spent with his family. At some point, in this room, Claire was beautifully backlit by the light of the sun, framed against the window, inhabiting the best of her mother’s features.

The image of the confused bee on the sill of the window of his room flashes in his mind.

Harrison covers his mouth as a cough blooms in the petals of his chest, extends outward and up.

“Mr. Harrison. I’m recommending we increase the dosage of your medication.”

“I feel like I’m getting better. More lucid, you know? The dreams aren’t as…well not nearly as bad as when I was living with Claire and Talbot.” His argument was weak but he had to make the effort.

“If we improve your sleep health, the rest will follow.”

Both looked toward the closed door.

“Seems a bit much, is all.” Harrison shakes his head, thinking again about the bee on the window ledge. That strange and delirious flight pattern and landing, on what seemed an endless loop.

“To properly cope and organize your thoughts and memories, your quality of life will improve. Avoid unnecessary aggravation. Stress. Make new memories Mr. Harrison. We can be a team, you understand. Working to alleviate your discomfort.”

Harrison’s mind wanders, thinking of a man he knew only as the company lawyer. Hanes was his name. Recommended by one of the company’s board members, Hanes was formerly a representative of New Jersey’s Second Congressional District who since retired to the thrumming seven-figure consigliere at Agility Inc. Retirement? Old singers retire to Vegas and ex-senator’s join think tanks.

“You’ve lived forty years at the highest security clearance ever given to a civilian by our government. Confining you to your room is not only for your safety but for ours.”

Serious, Harrison looks Heer in the eyes, “Are you saying I’m dangerous Doctor?

Hanes was also a member of the U.S. Senate Select Subcommittee on Terrorism, HUMINT, Analysis, and Counterintelligence. Agility hired him because of his connections. With whom to work with and also appeal to for government contracts. Both Doctor Heer and Hanes shared a similar robotic detachment. Zero affect. Functionary doppelgangers.

The doctor stands to take his leave, the corner of his mouth upturned slightly. A tic Harrison catalogs. “Look Mr. Harrison, we are here to help you. I’m certain you understand.”

Harrison grins.

“Is there something funny?”

Heer moves toward the door, swipes his card, hovers on the threshold waiting for Harrison.

“You remind me of someone.”

* * *

Under the Drone

An Agile Air passenger plane disappeared from radar while traveling from Sidney to Hong Kong. There was a brief transmission from the flight crew before losing contact with the ground. Heat lightning was feared the cause. The Airbus A330 hit rough skies above the Banda Sea though the lack of corroborating reports only served to flummox the investigators. The Australian Civil Aviation Safety Association scrambled emergency units to mount a search of the area but was called it off when the plane reappeared forty-five minutes later.

Christopher Hanes, a former representative of Agile Air, told the Subcommittee on Terroism: “There is not sufficient radar coverage over Banda. It is too far from radar stations and, of course, that region is contested. Therefore, mounting a full investigation is a matter I’m not currently at liberty to discuss. However, the fact that the plane didn’t appear on radar when it neared land gave us all a bit of a scare. Normally, aircraft crossing bodies of water are in constant contact with traffic control, updating them with details of their route information or location.”

When pressed about the mysterious loss of contact, Hanes repeated, “Our first priority was to find out where and when it was.”

Though they may have been reporting the plane’s position by satellite, neither the data nor the pilots had any documentation of that missing chunk of time.

Finally, gripping the knot of his tie, “This was an unfortunate confluence of coincidence.”

* * *

Deciphering Subtext

Harrison has grown skeptical of the food.

He’s unsure whether to believe he is slowly being poisoned—slow death by dioxin, or if that they’ve managed to put a tasteless, colorless psychoactive in his yogurt in an effort to keep him docile. The blonde nurse Sarah is a cipher to Harrison. He’s determined to find out more about her and how she fits into the tableau of the Greenbrier Commons.

Occasionally, he ciphers a bit of Intel from the nurse as she patters through the door. Whenever that little red LED on the security pad changes from red to green, Harrison deliberately positions himself in a new configuration on his bed, moving an arm, bending his knee, exposing his foot while attempting to find the correct geometry of his body to pacify her enough to let something slip; some consequential piece of information; hints about the outside world--anything.

Today, Harrison manages to get her to drop her guard. He approaches from her flank.

“Afternoon Mr. Harrison.”

“Ulysses.”

“Sorry?” Tray balanced in one hand, nurse Sarah reaches for the table attached to the bed.

“Ulysses. It’s my name. I’d like you to call me by my first name.”

She pauses in mid step, lifts her chin and recites, “Speak memory: tell us of your cunning hero.” Bending elegantly toward him and kneads the pillow behind his head. Harrison smells lavender, crisp linen, a cigarette smoked quickly in her two-door import, windows rolled down on her way to Greenbrier. She draws the table with the plate of food to his chest.

Harrison is buoyant. “Say, that’s pretty good.” His own memory of the Odyssey now resembles Swiss cheese, holes in the plot and who said what or when.

Her mouth flexes into a half-smile, lifting his spirits.

“Product of a lit undergrad.”

“And I’m smitten.” His response is accompanied by a violent burst of wheezing.

Blushing, she swings the hardened plastic bed table closer to him, positioning a plate of white yogurt and berries in front of him. Harrison makes no motion towards his meal, suspiciously eyeing the single-serving container of honey resting on the paper napkin.

He remains rigid eyeing the honey packet with suspicion.

“Ulysses, are you uncomfortable? You don’t like yogurt and berries?” Her breasts shift under her white shirt as she touches her palm to his forehead, a line of freckles tattooing the inner arc of her cleavage.

“Will the honey make me forget about my home?”

She pauses, following his sight line to the container of honey. “You’re not allergic, are you?”

Harrison shakes his head and continues to scrutinize the items on the tray. How neatly they are arranged, from the translucent plastic cup of juice on the top left to yogurt container in the center, a slight depression in the creamy surface excavated by the spoon with tips of dark violet berries breaking the yogurt’s surface in clusters, bordered by the contoured napkin folded into a triangle to the right of the plastic container.

Her lips form a pout as she holds the spoon several inches from his mouth. “How do you like it here, Ulysses?”

Satisfied, Harrison opens his mouth.

She studies him playfully as she lifts the spoon. Grasping her elbow gently, Harrison guides it in. “Mmm.”

“See. Not poisoned.”

Shrugging, he takes the spoon from her. “Force of habit. In my line, I should say former line of work. In any event, I was always cautious about food.”

“You mean your work for the government?” Nodding, he notices the flag pinned to her white lapel.

“Physicist. Inventor. Micro-processing. Artificial intelligence.” He paused, searching for the correct phrasing, realizing he was talking in fragments as his resume played out in his mind. “Nano-tech. I began my career at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Spent thirty years there. Fifteen of those working with the intelligence analysts in the tech division. We developed new ways to observe people from long distance.” Sarah nods politely as he continues. “’Innovation and imagination transcends political function.’”

She looks down briefly, preoccupied with the dosage, and relaxes her shoulders, “Interesting work?”

“Decidedly so. And the government always paid on time. When I retired, the wife and I bought a place in the valley. Kept bees. Best damn honey you ever tasted.”

He finishes the container of yogurt relishing the last burst of tart crispness from the blackberry. Sarah clears his plate. She fills in the blanks for him as she moves around the room, reorganizing the scant items she had reorganized the previous evening: Born in Baltimore to Sonny and Maxine Altaire; attended Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, specialized in geriatric care.

“Time for your medication.” She hands him a small plastic cup with a pair of pills: one green, translucent capsule and the other solid yellow with black piping in the center, both roughly similar in size, ovular in shape.

Harrison reaches out, downs the pills--chemical Eucharist.

Sarah brushes an errant strand of blonde from her shoulder, backing slowly out of the room. She leans in from the doorway.

“It’s a good name, Sarah. It was my mother’s name.”

He feels the stiff bulk of the pills settle in the pit of his stomach like an anchor.

She exits the room quietly.

* * *

With a Push of a Button, the Future Was Assured

The room is stark and similar in color to Harrison’s own. A table, two chairs, slate gray walls, checkered vinyl flooring. Approximately twelve feet square with an entry door topped by an opaque transom at one end and a large floor to ceiling mirror spanning the length of the room opposite the door. To the left, a trio of medium length windows. The setting sun burns brightly through the thin, translucent curtains. The room is furnished sparsely with a wooden table and two aluminum chairs.

Harrison’s back is to the door. Ulysses smiles uncomfortably at his reflection, certain he is in an observation room. Familiar with the two-way mirrors used in police procedurals and convinced this mirror was one of those.

A man enters. His head is down, obscured by the screen of a tablet computer.

Harrison cranes his neck, recognizes the man. The company lawyer, Hanes.

“Where’s Doctor Heer?”

“Elsewhere. Mr. Harrison, please.” He nods at the chair opposite and they regard each other across the opaque gloss of the table.

Hanes is wearing a tailored suit; his hair is cut conservatively, parted on the side. His nails are manicured. He carries an older model tablet computer, positioning it from his right hand to his left and tapping the screen with a small plastic stylus.

“Been waiting long?” Hanes eyes narrow.

Throat constricted, Harrison grunts, looks around the room.

“This chair is relatively uncomfortable.”

“Mr. Harrison I want to ensure that all the angles are studied thoroughly. We can’t afford to leave any margin for error regarding the incident of Flight 713. You understand, I’m sure.” Hanes lips stretch across the perimeter of his square jaw like a cat basking in sunlight.

Harrison feels the heat crawling up his neck, spreading across his cheeks. Palms sweating, he wipes them against his legs. “I’m sorry, but I don’t see what that has to do with my incarceration here…”

Hanes chuckles hollowly. “Incarceration? That’s a bit melodramatic don’t you think?”

Hanes leans forward, touching his chin with the tip of the stylus.

“With respect, it seems that there has been some sort of…error. I am a veteran in good standing. I served my country proudly. I can certainly provide you with the proper documentation with references. I could put a call in to my son-in-law who would certainly…”

Interrupting, Hanes clears his throat and shifts in his chair, looks over and beyond Harrison’s shoulder, prompting Harrison to follow the gaze to the door. Its surface is flush with the wall so that there is only an outline, an indication of an opening. Meanwhile, the sun descends, its rays violent, enveloping the room in golden fire.

“I can confidently assure you, your patriotism isn’t in question Mr. Harrison, nor your legacy with the company or your service to this country. We’re merely covering for all contingencies. I’m sure you can understand our position.” Looking at Harrison directly again, he points his shoulders inward, drawing his body toward the center of the table, giving him the appearance of a rodent preening.

Harrison makes to leave. Hanes reaches out his hand, palm outward. “Relax. We can discuss your special circumstances at your leisure. Speak freely in this space.”

Harrison glances at the surface of the table, swipes his tongue across the roof of his mouth. “Special circumstances?”

Hanes taps the stylus against his lower lip. He is now backlit by the sun. It consumes his face, now a swirling mass of darkness. Nose. Eyes. Teeth. Ears. Chin. Cheeks. Dimples. It was if someone had dipped a brush in acetate, twisting the bristles inward then outward, leaving a blurry swipe.

Suddenly, Hanes face becomes a vortex, an approximation of a gravity well and Harrison is stuck in the pull of the lawyer’s event horizon.

“I should affirm our company’s curiosity, is really in the extended symptoms of trauma and what you experienced on flight 713. You are the sole survivor of an incident that was by any account, harrowing but not deadly.”

“I’m just lucky I guess. I get to spend my last days in paper shoes, drooling.”

“You don’t find it strange that all the other passengers and crew have died? For instance, we are investigating the possibility of a connection, however tenuous, to the accelerated aging you’re experiencing.”

Harrison thinks of the bee on the sill, kicking its legs out, spinning its thorax in a circle.

“It’s harvest season.” Harrison interrupts. His reflection is a blur in the surface of the table.

Hanes makes a note, swipes at the screen with the pad of his finger, crosses his legs at the ankles under the table, leaning forward. “What’s that, Mr. Harrison?”

“Honey harvest season. When we kept bees, this was always our favorite time of year. The honey of the fall wasn’t always my favorite. Used to be Karen’s. Or rather it was. Not that death negates preference, mind you. So it was her favorite and then it was mine, before she died my favorite was the honey of the spring. But she said it was too sweet. Said the honey of the fall had a subtlety to it.”

“Well enough. Now, I know you’ve already been through this Mr. Harrison, but if you could please explain to me, as precisely as possible, the events which occurred on Flight 713.”

“What do you know about Colony Collapse?” asks Harrison.

Hanes leans back into his chair. His mouth twisted slightly, inquisitive. “Not much. However, I’m assuming it has to do with bees and not colonial Algeria.”

Harrison smiles perfunctorily. “Bees, yes. Essentially a hive collapses and all the bees either leave or die. The queen will languish along with the food stores and the unhatched brood. Other bees avoid this abandoned hive.”

“What causes such a phenomenon?”

“There is no single, determining factor attributed to colony collapse, but rather a series of factors. Neonicotinoid insecticides, draught, pollution, parasites, pollen from the flowers of genetically modified crops. The economy of fear. Bees, Mr. Hanes, offer us a glimpse into our own fragility. Our place and our function as it correlates to the global organism.”

Hanes runs his fingers through his hair. “And what of the catastrophe that awaits us? If we were to correlate colony collapse with our own species.”

Harrison pats his head with the fleshy part of his left palm and rubs his belly with his right.

“This is happening now.”

* * *

The Space Between

In Harrison’s dream, aboriginal etiquette rankles. White-haired safari parasites stumble from the commons, swaying their replacement hips to the beat of the sprinklers chattering across the wet expanse of grass. This dream-shrouded tapestry of Greenbrier exists on the periphery. Rising above the mustard colored stucco buildings is the outstretched hand of an invisible sentry. On the interstate, an endless array of white billboards, stretching beyond the horizon, filled with the name of God in large block letters.

Nurse Sarah morphs into Karen and then becomes an indeterminate assemblage of steel, glass and wings. A mound of wreckage spills from the pink curtain across the tarmac that is his room. Spiral swirl of the jet engine turbine cone in rotation, a dissonant whistle in the distance. Along the periphery, the fleshy curve of a woman’s neck--Karen’s? Her face in profile is difficult to distinguish. She marches backward from the window. Harrison is puzzled. How is it that this vision of flesh creates a triangle of points—chin and spurs of collar bone—through to the shoulders, a rectilinear pathway to sternum, breast.

Karen’s voice is warbling, distant like the whistle as she glides across the tile.

The energy used to move an object through space. The same can be used to move from this place to the next.

Harrison is mumbling aloud into the space above his bed. “Our process wasn’t perfect. Only worked with you, dear heart. Need an anchor, something to tether myself.”

Suddenly, Karen’s face is next to his. They share the pillow. Her eyes are tender, probing him across what seems like miles of cotton and fabric.

A colonization of the mind. Unable to think. Unable to process.

Harrison looks down, heat rushing to his cheeks. Shame? She comforts him with a smile. They share this pain of non-memory where his arms appear young again and the blood pumps through his limbs unobstructed. But he looks away, resolving his gaze on the popcorn acoustic tiles of the ceiling.

Karen moves her hand over his heart. She is dead--an afterimage. Yet, he feels the pressure of her palm against his breast. The sensation is reassuring.

Harrison peers out the window. It is open. Freed from the locking armature in the frame. The glass shakes violently. Reflections dissipate across its surface. An entity without shape or form enters his room. A palpable mass shifting and moving toward him.

Harrison in a voice both soft and plaintive, “Please.”

Somnambulant, restricted by the weight of this unseen entity occupying the room, his voice doubles, creating a Doppler effect. “Some covers, please?”

Soft hands pull the rough sheets up and over Harrison’s white belly, covering the mottled skin.

He hears a voice utter this sequence of words: “Looks like a bloated Koi fish…all white and spotted.”

Suddenly recognizing the voice and inflection as his own, he’s embarrassed.

In the hallway, light illuminates the silhouette of a woman as the door of his room closes.

These are the minutes, after dreaming that the subtle mysteries of Harrison’s life emerge and reveal themselves in the coded sequences of his subconscious.

* * *

Everything Man Touches Becomes Untenable

Sarah is holding a clipboard against her chest, as her other hand gently kneads his shoulder, drawing him from his torpor. Her neck bends toward him, sloping from the curve of her shoulders, immediately recalling in Harrison an image of a heron fishing in an estuary. There is a somber quality to the way her chin brushes her lapel.

He removes his hand from the sheet, covering her hand with his and clears his throat, “Morning.”

She thumbs the remote on his bed, bringing him upright.

“Ulysses.” His name sits ergonomically in her mouth.

Outside the window, Greenbrier is encased in darkness, the flicker of lights from the freeway flash across the ceiling of Harrison’s room and bounce jaggedly from the blades of the fan turning above his bed.

“I was…was I dreaming again?”

“Doctor Heer seems to think it’s the medication. A side effect.” She pulls a chair to the edge of the bed and sits. “We can discuss alternatives. Lower the dosage.”

He shakes his head. The alternative wouldn’t be any better, only different. They both know this. “Hanes, my interrogator, has similar concerns. Afraid our conversations won’t be as substantive, I imagine.”

Had he told Sarah about Hanes?

Harrison rubs his temples.

Sarah watches him from the chair. They sit in silence for while.

Sarah sets the clipboard down, shifting into a more comfortable position on the metal chair.

“Karen, she was a whiz with the bees. She could tell you what field they were gathering from and what types of flowers. In the fall it was alfalfa. Said it reminded her of growing up in Missouri.”

Sarah’s elegance encourages him. “Taste and smell are critical to a person’s memories,” she smiles. “Remembering, Ulysses, is good medicine.”

“I remember my mother whenever I smell lilac.”

Sarah pulls the chair closer, the muscles of her arms lengthening and tightening as she grips the bottom of the seat between her knees.

“Spruce and cut grass always evoke memories of my wife. When my vision started to fail, they moved me to an experimental research division. Take basic human abilities and amplify them using technology—that was our charge. “

Sarah glances furtively at her watch.

“Time for my medication?”

She nods. He infers something unequivocally somber in her expression as she hands him a small paper cup with two pills: one green and one yellow. Both hands tremble.

“These would be a lot more palatable with some scotch.”

She laughs at this, her stomach tensing and chest rising.

A triumph he relishes.

From somewhere, a subtle buzzing.

Nurse Sarah fishes a chirping mobile from her hip pocket, glances at the screen, darkens for a pico second. A wave of emotion sweeps over Harrison.

She smiles conspiratorially at Ulysses, “Hanes is here.”

* * *

Articulating Decoherence

Hanes is seated across from Harrison. A pair of massive fingers snaps in front of the old man. The sound of the pop is bright and arresting like a piccolo snare drum.

“Dose does seem to be a little too much, Mr. Harrison; if you like I can request an adjustment. Walk me backwards through the events that day on Flight 713. We would like to have a full understanding of what transpired.”

Was he merely thinking these things were being said or was he giving voice to Hanes’ thoughts?

Hanes remains rigid, back against the steel chair. “Again, we would like to have a better understanding of what happened that day.”

What Harrison knows, intuits, is action. Actions and the impressions they provide.

Harrison’s tongue presses against the roof of his mouth. The backs of his teeth offering no reassurance. He studies Hanes for some sign of understanding, of humanity. But Hanes isn’t a man--he is a behemoth, a hulking mass of formality. He towers over the table, whites of his eyes as oppressive and blank as the billboard panels bordering Green Brier Commons.

The answer, not the answer to Hanes’ query, but an answer nonetheless builds in Harrison like a wave starting at the base of his skull. It moves through his consciousness, gathering inertia until it assembles itself into an impermeable mass.

“I was piloting the drone over the coast from aboard 713 on my way to Hong Kong. A new drone,” his voice, anemic and thin.

“Piloting a drone from aboard a passenger plane? Flight 713?” Hanes interrupted.

Harrison nods, the lids of his eyes growing heavier.

“An experimental, long endurance drone controlled remotely, telepathically. Aided by satellite.” Using both of his hands, Harrison makes a circular motion for emphasis.

“But something occurred.”

“The incident. Flight 713. If you can control the hand with the eye in the anywhere of the world then vision and tactility is limitless.”

“Wasn’t even approved.”

“Of course not. I just did it. Without prior authorization.”

Hanes broad chest is canted in his hand-made suit from Kowloon. The suit employed similar stealth geometry but instead of being radar absorbent, it absorbed the empathy from every pore, leaving Harrison drained.

“But to what end Mr. Harrison?”

“Because we could Mr. Hanes. Why develop the atom bomb? Why build the Hadron collider? Curiosity. Our discovery was informed by spatial intelligence. Aerial navigation through space, utilizing visualization. Virtual technology. We are conjurers.”

Hanes drew closer, arching his back.

“Your children’s movements are recorded on their gaming system, or their movements are documented by the GPS in their mobile phone then used, some years away, to determine, no, predict their movements in a crowd of starving civilians.”

Hanes rises slowly and strides across the tile floor to the rear of the room in two determined steps then leans his shoulders square against the door, barely containing his anticipation of additional edification.

Harrison’s teeth throbbed dully. “Years passed and that scene replayed in my mind. It aged me. Quite possibly, my obsession with what happened contributed to Karen’s…health. Her loneliness was insurmountable.”

“Wasn’t it the drone that caused the incident Mr. Hanes?” Hanes breath passes arduously through his partially opened lips where the tip of the stylus rests against the crisscrossing lines of flesh.

In a whisper, Harrison looks toward the floor: “No. It was me.”

* * *

Genesis

Dawn. Low earth orbit.

The satellite’s photo voltaic cells mirror the curvature of the earth’s atmosphere inducing a chiaroscuro of its fuselage and telemetry antennae array. As it moves incrementally from darkness to light a bay door opens and an innocuous mechanical assemblage emerges from its darkened recess.

The onboard camera resolves in a resolution of 25cm. producing an image of stunning clarity from approximately six hundred kilometers in the sky. When commanded it can focus grid-like on any given location: a city street; the sequence of numbers on a license plate; wing coverts of a pigeon perched on a wire. The sequence of flight identification numbers on the tail rudder of Flight 713.

It has established a complete photographic documentation of the earth.

Ignition…

The eleven rings of the Bessel beam push the cells into a protean chorale. Cellular harmonics lift the spectrum into new verticalities of energy.

They also push.

They pulse and plush.

It is immaculate, rigid, and unbroken. A perfect, self-healing cylinder.

The azure ray extends downward. Earthbound.

On the planet’s surface there is silence as the simulation renders. The illusion extends laterally and medially across continents and oceans.

God’s bated breath.

* * *

Getting Solvent

Alone--the last thing he remembers Sarah saying to him, before he came clawing up through the white gauze, through the violet haze of eyelids, focusing pupils—faintest hint of morning sun crackling like polystyrene packing foam.

He battles from sleep.

Finally, an armistice of waking, escaping a bombardment of memories.

He is so unsure every night, when he clicks off the reading light next to his bed and wonders if he’ll wake in the morning in that same drab room with those same drab blinds vibrating in the breeze. Hum of the wall-mounted air conditioner. Fan's blades collecting pieces of him.

* * *

Through the Haze, the Landscape Looks Like Set Pieces, Cardboard curiosities

Harrison knows he is no longer alone.

“Dad?”

“Claire?” Harrison blinks at the woman standing before him.

“Hey Dad. How you feelin’? Give your grandfather a hug Abbey.” The woman gently nudges a young girl with blond ringlets forward.

His granddaughter is bigger than he remembers. She wears a pink sweatshirt, white coolots. Somehow, Harrison finds it humorously plausible they’ve managed to replace her with this child who stands before him.

He blinks, feints recognition.

They embrace: he on the bed, she leaning over the bulk of the mattress. Her blond hair smells of lilac. The curls soften in the fold of his arm.

Though it is brief, there is warmth, like the rays of the sun through thin cotton.

For a moment, Harrison is convinced she is Hanes or even Doctor Heer in a little girl suit.

Unsure, the girl slides her fingers into her mother’s hand.

Claire tilts her head, concerned. “Dad?”

Harrison shakes his head. “Sorry.”

“We’re here.”

“I know. You look different.”

Then, the little girl peeks from behind her mother, “Mommy cut her hair.”

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