Ames

The two police had been asking Parks questions since arresting him at the school. Their questions told Parks that they didn’t have a clue about him. They probably didn’t even know why they’d arrested him. Their orders were to deliver Parks to the Hall of Justice—the Feds were waiting—that’s all they knew.

Parks was in the backseat of the cruiser with one cop sitting next to him. The cop who’d arrested him was driving. Parks’ skateboard rested upside down, under his feet. Not that having it close did him any good. With his hands cuffed behind his back, he’d have little chance to use it—even if he could escape.

“Kid, you got someone to call when we get to the station?” The cop next to Parks was playing friendly—acting concerned.

Parks said nothing.

“Suit yourself,” said the friendly cop, pretending to be hurt. “I just wanted to make sure you’d be okay. But what do I care—I’m a cop, right?”

Parks knew, even if the cops didn’t, that they were bringing him to his death. Whatever his learning limitations during the Reveal so far, he’d understood that danger. The plan for the Feds was to wipe the Dissimulants out. He’d have to avoid them, fight them and survive them. These two cops were only a situation. Like all situations, the mind could overcome them. Finn had taught him this.

The police stopped the questions for a while. In the new silence, Parks allowed his head and body to relax. He dropped back into the car seat. The handcuffs dug further into his wrist, but he could let that pain go. Outside the window, the speed of the passing scenery slowed; the car moved less than half a mile an hour; the people walking on the street had all but stopped. Inside too, the physical motions of the police occurred with slow, deliberate precision—a simple eye blink seemed to take minutes to plan and execute. Parks’ own movements were equally slow—seemingly just as deliberate. But his brain didn’t slow at all. Functioning at normal speed, it was processing thoughts at a rate that seemed incredibly accelerated in relationship to the reality of the sloth-like world around him.

It was the only certain reality Parks knew how to step into, alone—the dark world he’d escaped to before. But he was scared to go back. Both Angie and Finn had warned him about dangers that existed in that world. But then again, under the circumstances, Parks couldn’t imagine the dark world as any greater risk than where he was at that moment.

Parks moved the tips of his shoes toward the wheels on his skateboard, squeezing them against the trucks to get as tight a pinch on them as he could manage. The police, the car, the slow-moving scenery outside, all began to fade from his vision. He felt disoriented. Behind his back, the cuffs slipped through his wrists—falling to the seat with a metallic rattle. The sick feeling grew inside his stomach. Then, he stumbled into a fall.

He hits pavement. He’s in his other world. It’s dark. It has a different scent, a completely different sense or feeling from where he has just come. Now that he’s here, it doesn’t feel alien to him in the slightest way. The world he’d just left seems odd, surreal, out of place.

A number of people surround Parks where he’s sprawled on the sidewalk. One man, thin, in his late thirties, bends down to look into Parks’ face. His eyes are the same color—vibrant tangerine—that Parks’ green eyes turn to in the dark. The dilated eyes are friendly, but with seriousness behind them. The man’s face shows someone who’s lived a rough life. Yet, the suffering and revenge that it shows is in stark contrast to the reality of his age. Just as he had with Angie and Geli before that, Parks feels comfort and safety when he looks at this man. But the feeling is different in some way; a difference that Parks can’t recognize. It holds an overwhelming presence in the face. This man has the aura of raw truth, unedited by optimism, unencumbered by hope. But Parks can see a determination to prevail.

The face pushes toward Parks, the lips brush against his ear. “Hello Parks,” the man whispers. “My name is Ames. You belong here with me—with us. Things meant for you are much greater than what they want. Grab my hand and I’ll keep you here—protect you and train you.” The man sits back, not grabbing for Parks, but offering his open hand for Parks to grasp.

The hand looks good to Parks. It will keep him here. It will save him from returning to the place where the police are waiting. It will take him from ones who were trying to kill him. Parks reaches his own hand out toward the one offered. But the feeling of disorientation and nausea is returning.

“Hurry,” the man says. “You’re stepping back. You need to grab my hand now if you want to live.”

Again, the need to be with Geli drives Parks’ decision. He’d found someone to live for. If it means he’ll have to leave Geli, then he isn’t willing to save his life this way. Parks lets his hand drop to grab his skateboard. The world pulls away.

“I won’t give up on you Parks,” the voice echoes from the darkness. “You’re in danger with them. Don’t be blind with your trust—ever—with anyone.”

New Priorities

The polished floor cracked and echoed from Poppers’ evenly paced steps, as she briskly made her way down the brightly lit corridors of the Department of Justice. The walk from her office at the Department of Internal Security—past the office of her department’s chief, past the offices of several other departments and those respective chiefs—ended at the DOJ offices of Attorney General Anders. She paused at the door to take a moment to gather her thoughts.

When the attorney general had just now summoned Poppers to his office he’d used her first name. Calling her Commander Paulsen or Ms. Paulsen would mean some trouble over the outstanding Parks matter. Using Nancy was an indication that he needed something from her.

As of last week, Nancy Paulsen was forty-five years old. From her birth at Munich Army Hospital in cold war Germany, she’d been army down to her socks. For the first forty-two years, she’d never considered any career path outside of the army. She was the final child of three—all girls—sired by Colonel (Retired) Samuel Paulsen, veteran of one war, one conflict and one police action. Nancy’s mother, Victoria Riemann Paulsen had been the dutiful and diligent officer’s wife throughout her husband’s productive career. Though she loved her mom and admired her sacrifices, Nancy never had a desire for her mother’s life of tea with the Chaplain or coordinating charity bazaars. In truth, she never really knew much about what her mother did do with her long days; she didn’t spend them on her kids.

Poppers had accepted, if not embraced, the informal lines of command in the civilian branches of government. It was the unofficial way of expressing civil servant intentions—talking around an issue, not dealing with it directly. In the army, if a colonel ordered a lieutenant to secure a road, a sergeant down the line didn’t interpret policy objectives based on the nuances of the language used. Military orders given were followed and accomplished. In contrast, civilians protected themselves with a complicated mix of written orders, assumed understandings and intangible encoded phrases to express objectives.

If a civilian plan fails, everyone wanted to shift the responsibility to any of the offices lining the halls, except their own—and one other. Fault could never land on the policy, or more accurately, the policymaker. Anyone in the government, except one, was open for sacrifice; at times, the blame goes very high. But it could never make it to the Oval Office—not if everyone in these halls did his or her job.

As a military brat, who worshipped and then followed in her father’s choice of career, Major Paulsen was always dismayed at the lack of courtesy and discipline in civilian life. Once she’d left the military to join the DOJ’s fight against terrorism, Commander Paulsen found it easier than she expected to adjust to civilian ways.

Seated in the large waiting area outside the AG’s office were a few people Poppers recognized and some she’d never seen before—all presumably waiting for a chance to meet with the attorney general. A different group of men and women, whom Poppers guessed to be reporters, were sequestered to the side—chatting away with each other behind the glass walls of a conference room. One of the executive assistants to the attorney general greeted Poppers as she approached. She immediately led her to the AG’s office. The assistant knocked twice on the door before opening it. She delivered the formal announcement of Commander Nancy Paulsen’s arrival to the four men in the office.

In addition to Attorney General Anders, Tom Weise— Poppers’ boss—was in the room. He was standing next to the U.S. Secretary of the Defense, Mike Pritz. Pritz was in a discussion with James Wells, the Vice President of the United States. Everyone in the room was standing; the vice president had not yet taken a seat. Poppers may have expected a casual conversation about the Parks matter, but now she instantly reassessed those initial expectations. This was a meeting of people with more on their mind—a lot more—than just the fate of one kid. She knew that the reason the vice president was there, and not President Landry, was because the discussion would be too controversial for the President to be in the room. Wells didn’t set policy; everyone understood that. But he’d be the one on the record for this meeting.

After a round of unnecessary introductions—because they all knew who was who in the room, VP Wells took a seat; the others followed his lead. The AG spoke first.

“Thank you all for coming on such short notice,” Anders said. “Our discussion today will be in two parts. The first part is unclassified—although the information is for official use only and general DOJ guidelines apply. The classification for the latter part of the meeting is Secret. Those of you without proper clearance will need to leave before the second meeting begins.”

Because of certain aspects of her military history, Poppers had maintained Top Secret clearance—although her boss, Tom Weise had only Confidential clearance. This was the first time the rather awkward situation had come up. Her boss would have to leave for the later meeting.

Now, the VP took charge of the meeting and his immediate focus was the Parks matter. Commander Paulsen answered his questions directly. Her boss, and the others in the room, just listened as she explained that the police who’d apprehended Parks had softened their report to state that he’d escaped, rather than vanished at the scene. Of course, her department had been covertly observing the arrest and escape at the time it occurred. Her agents confirmed that Parks had physically left the scene, as indicated in the original police report. This meant that the target now had at least some control of his abilities. The target returned one minute later to the exact same spot. But since the vehicle had moved half a block before the officers realized anything, Parks’ return was to the outside of the squad car. The police saw him, but his disappearance still confused them. They gave him the time to manage his escape. He ran down an intersecting street and then rode his skateboard away from there. Poppers suggested it was more than likely that Parks was now aware of his identity as a Dissimulant. He’d probably been in contact with at least one of the Dissimulant organizations.

“Commander Paulsen,” the vice president interrupted, “how many of these organizations do you estimate to exist?”

Poppers explained that there were at least three large organizations operating in the United States and Canada. She suspected that as many as fifteen hundred informal, smaller groups existed as well. Not even the Dissimulants themselves knew the exact number of Dissimulants or Dissimulant groups. The groups had started informally over the years; there’d been no contact between them until recently.

“For whatever reason, the groups began to communicate with each other about two years ago.” Poppers explained.

“About the time you took your trip to South Carolina,” Wells said.

“About six months after, yes sir.”

“Is their any relation between the papers you brought back from and their sudden awakening to the issue?”

“There might be, sir. Or, it’s possible that our activities alerted them, and forced them into action.”

“Cause and effect?” Wells asked.

“I’m afraid so, sir.”

“Before we continue down that road, let’s finish with the boy,” he said. “Where do we stand with—what was his name again?”

“Parks, sir. When he reappeared a minute later, our enforcement team followed him on a chase through the city. We don’t think he knew we were watching, but he was taking extraordinary precaution. He eventually lost us in one of San Francisco’s neighborhoods—Cole Valley. But we’re certain he didn’t leave the area after that—he must be living there for now.”

“Isn’t it possible he just did another vanishing act?”

“No sir, we don’t think so. He’s inexperienced. He’d have to return to some point close in time from when he left. We don’t have any information to indicate that they can leave a location permanently.”

“I see, so you’re confident you know where he is?”

“His exact location—the specific flat he went to, or the identity of any others he may be living with, was not able to be determined through standard means: phone service, contracts, public records. That information is however expected by the end of today.”

“What’s your plan once you have this information?”

Poppers paused to consider her response. The DIS-200 issued for Parks hadn’t included any associates. Legally, the preferred method of dealing with the situation applied only to Parks. “Given the level of threat and their abilities to escape, I see it necessary to terminate anyone that we discover in the building.”

The vice president raised his hand for Poppers to stop. “It would be better for the moment to maintain surveillance but not act,” he said.

Poppers had been pushing for this since she’d taken over the Dissimulant issue. She’d long argued that it would be better to watch suspects for a while before taking action against them. Her boss, Tom, had ignored her and insisted that policy dictated fast execution of the enemy over prolonged intelligence gathering. Now, from high up, Tom was overruled.

“I agree,” Poppers said. “Putting surveillance ahead of enforcement could really benefit the long range goals for this program.” She glanced to Tom, who avoided eye contact with her.

“Fine, we all agree,” said the vice president. He too, shot a glance at Tom Weise. Although it wasn’t a disapproving glance, it indicated any debate over the matter had ended. He addressed Paulsen again, with another question. “What are your plans for the police officers involved in the Parks escape?”

“Yes sir, that’s a tricky one,” said Poppers. “It’s possible to argue that they conspired on their written report involving the disappearing nonsense. But they were sensible enough to realize that the truth of the situation was unbelievable and changed their report. In the end, they do know the truth about his disappearance—it puts us at risk.”

It was unnecessary for Poppers to put words to the most obvious plan of action. The action that would cleanly end any risk that the officers would talk about what they’d witnessed. Killing police officers was not something anyone in the room favored unless necessary as a last resort. Poppers own review of the officers’ profiles indicated them to have potential as candidates for her organization. She suggested they recruit the two police into the Club. Until they completed their training at Langley AFB, she’d withhold further discussion about their experience with Parks—just in case they washed out of the program.

The vice president agreed once again with Poppers’ assessment and course of action. He thanked everyone in the room for their attendance and then excused Tom Weise from the remainder of the meeting. As Weise left the room, concern was clearly visible on his face.

Once again, the Attorney General spoke. “For the record, this meeting has been classified: Secret. All attendees hold a classification of Secret or Top Secret, and their involvement in this discussion is vital to National Security. In attendance: Vice President of the United States, James Wells, Attorney General Pierce Anders, U.S. Secretary of the Defense, Mike Pritz, and Commander Nancy Paulsen, Department of Internal Security.” Anders paused to allow a clean break between his opening statement and the start of the discussion. “Mr. Vice President, the meeting is yours.”

“Commander Paulsen,” the VP began, “as already discussed earlier, the situation involving these Dissimulants has become more than a security risk to America. The switch from their acting as individuals to larger and larger collectives makes them the highest priority threat for the human species.”

Poppers nodded her head in agreement.

“The president is prepared to authorize a new department, one whose sole focus is the Dissimulant problem. Understand that this department will not only continue with finding and ridding the country of the enemy as your team has already been doing; it will additionally be in charge of educating the American public about the threat. The president knows that we can’t openly declare war on these—people—without first educating our citizens as well as our world partners.”

“We want to stop all the Dissimulants,” Poppers confirmed what she’d understood him to be saying. “Not just those who we believe are becoming a threat.”

“They are all a threat, Commander,” the VP said. “They will all need to be dealt with.”

“I understand.”

Vice President Wells then said, “You’ll have an undisclosed budget for your department. Use whatever’s required for good Intel, manpower and public education.”

Now clear to Poppers—this was an offer for promotion—she realized that her department was moving up the DOJ food chain. This further explained why the vice president had left Tom out of the loop. Poppers would no longer be reporting to him.

“As I said,” Wells continued, “President Landry believes the threat and is prepared to act on it without Congressional approval—if he has the sufficient grounds to do so.” He paused a moment to emphasize the last point before continuing. “The president is waiting for a call from you. If what you tell him makes the case for an all out war on the Dissimulants, then it will be within his duties to act decisively on that information.”

Poppers knew only the president could create any job offer of this size. She understood that he would need a strong reason for circumventing the powers granted to him by the Constitution. Above all, she knew that the president and everyone in the room with her were unofficially aware that the evidence for such a reason did not exist yet. If she were going to get the promotion and form the new department at all, she would have to go on record with a lie to the president. What the VP had said made that clear to her.

Wells picked up the handset to the secure phone. He spoke a few words into it, and then handed it to Poppers.

“Commander Paulsen?” A woman’s voice on the other end of the phone asked.

“Yes,” Poppers replied.

“Please hold for the president.”

After no more than three seconds, the president’s voice came on the phone. “This is President Landry.”

“Mr. President,” Poppers voice was shaky. “This is Commander Nancy Paulsen, Department of Internal Security.”

“Yes, Commander Paulsen. I’ve been told that you have urgent intelligence for me.”

Poppers told the president, in the words that she felt he wanted to hear, that she had extensive evidence that the people known as Dissimulants were planning major attacks on locations in the United States. That there was further evidence that they were growing in substantial numbers and would soon pose an immense threat to the country if they were not exposed and dealt with.

President Landry’s voice was calm. “Is it your finding that they pose a threat that is now substantially larger than what we previously suspected?”

“It is sir. We need to act immediately or risk our nation’s security.”

“Very good, Commander. Are you willing to head these efforts?”

“Yes sir. I’m honored sir.”

It went exactly as the Executive Office had wanted. Paulsen’s report was enough for the president to establish the department his administration had planned for months. The president informed Commander Paulsen that he was establishing the Department of Dissimulant Affairs and appointing her as its Chief. She was to report directly to the Executive Office, through the vice president. She had the authority to coordinate her efforts with the attorney general and the Secretary of Defense, as she saw necessary. Vice President Wells would work with her to outline the details of the new department.

Poppers’ blouse clung to her body with sweat. “Thank you Mr. President.”

“Put the vice president on the phone,” he ordered.

VP Wells took the offered handset and listened for less than a minute. After hanging up the phone, he turned to Poppers and said, “Congratulations Chief Paulsen, and thank you for your service to your country.”

Poppers shook hands with each of the men as they offered. Not all of the handshakes were equally warm.

The Past

The stairwell of the Cole Valley flat is dark as Parks shuts the door behind him. Rather than flip the light switch, he decides to fumble his way up a step at a time. It’s too early for everyone to be in bed, but the apartment is dead silent. It isn’t too early for Parks; exhausted from his escape from the cops, he’s ready to crash.

Not wanting to lead the cops to the flat, after his escape Parks kept himself on the move throughout the city for several hours. If they were somehow tailing him, he’d lost them by the end. He’s sure of that.

At the top of the steps the silence remains. At the least, this confirms that Finn isn’t home. When he’s awake, Finn makes enough noise—when he’s asleep, he makes even more. A bathroom, Geli’s room, the hall closet—four walls plus air space—separate Parks’ room from Finn’s; he’s heard Finn’s snoring every night since the first. The first night he was too exhausted to have his sleep interrupted by anything less than a motorcycle in the room. Finn’s snoring was just under that threshold.

Parks leans his skateboard against the wall next to Geli’s, behind the kitchen table. He’d talked her into buying one and has been giving her lessons as time allowed. She was catching on fast; landing her first ollie two days ago. Getting a deck airborne like that is the critical skill for any newbie to master. Parks liked being the teacher for a change.

The green LED on the coffee pot lets him see well enough without turning on the kitchen lights. He grabs a glass from the cabinet and fills it from the faucet. Pretty much all he drinks is water, and he prefers it straight from the tap; the bottled stuff tastes flat and dead to him. As he walks out of the kitchen, he absentmindedly reaches up to switch the light off—chuckles when he realizes his mistake.

The big couch swallows him as he sits in it. Staring out into the dark living room, he takes large sips of his water. He tries to remember Ames’ face. As it’s been every time he’s stepped into another reality, the event was so real while occurring; after, it begins to fade like a dream. Finn says this is normal at first. His brain has been dissimulating a human brain—imitating it for so long—that it needs to relearn how to function to its potential. It frustrates Parks to know that everything that’s happened since he accepted the Reveal is locked somewhere in his head, but he doesn’t have the key he needs to open it. Right now, he’s not sure if he ever will.

The water’s gone. Parks is too tired to get up. He decides he’ll lie on the couch for a while before moving into his room. It feels good to close his eyes. He can see the outline of Ames’ face just at the edge of his mind’s eye, but little more. Regret—that he didn’t grab Ames’ hand—is beginning to set in. Maybe it’s the fear, exhaustion, and loneliness that have him second-guessing. But he wonders if he made the right decision. Something about Ames seemed comfortable—and something didn’t.

There’s an odd sensation at the back of his ears—whispering? No, it’s wind. The room has gone cold. Parks feels bile churning in his stomach. He’s going to throw up. He knows the feeling, but it won’t matter. It’s all going to go away.

His body shakes, as if trying to catch himself from a fall in a dream. As he completes the step, he hears his own voice.

“I accept,” he said. The forest was gone. Parks was in the yard of the beach house. The loud traffic noise was familiar. The morning sun was bright. He’d just been somewhere else—dark—but he was confused. Then he remembered. He’d been in the forest with Angie. He’d just accepted the Reveal.

His eyes fought to adjust to the light. In the yard, sitting on an iron bench, were two people. Parks knew one was Geli, and the other—was Finn.

“Welcome Parks,” Finn’s voice was deep and friendly. “Welcome to the Reveal.”

Parks had that feeling again—like he’d been through this all before.

Geli looked different to Parks somehow. Her clothes looked like nothing he’d seen her wear before. She jumped from the bench and ran over to hug Parks; it was the warmest embrace he’d ever received—creating a warm, exciting tension in the center of his stomach. It wasn’t sexual exactly—maybe slightly. It was a feeling that an indescribable thing, something he’d never been aware of, had suddenly come into being—and yet, had been with him all along. At this moment, Parks felt like somebody—he existed.

“I knew you’d accept,” Geli whispered in his ear.

“I hope you’re okay with just a handshake from me, Parks.” Finn grinned; offering his hand after Geli finally released her grip on Parks. “The name’s Jake Finney.” Then, in a Cockney dialect, he added, “Better known among me more hint-a-mint friends as—Finn.” This, by his reaction, seemed intended as an impression of some sort. It failed to get the expected response from Parks; he had no idea who Finn was imitating.

“Loose—very loose—Dickens reference,” Finn volunteered. “The Artful Dodger—oh, never mind.” Finn had one of those firm handshakes—as if he’d known you all his life and he was exceptionally glad to see you again. And, although this was his first look at it, Parks could tell that the grin was a near-permanent feature on Finn’s face—he was just that kind of guy.

After the welcome, and another impromptu hug from Geli, the three set off on foot toward the direction of the zoo. When they got to Sloat Boulevard, instead of crossing the street, they turned right; Finn headed them for the beach. “I think the beach is the best place to talk about things,” Finn said. “Not so easy to be overheard, and there’s just something about the roar and expanse of the open ocean.” And Parks quickly found out that Finn could talk almost non-stop. He would give occasional pauses, opportunities for Parks and Geli to answer a question or ask one of their own to keep them involved, but for the most part it was a two-hour monologue—delivered by a master of gab.

Finn would’ve been a good teacher. When he said something they didn’t understand, he noticed it. He’d step the thought back effortlessly and restate it in a way they could get. Expectedly, Geli didn’t need this service as often as Parks did, but at least Finn managed it without making Parks feel like an idiot. Finn wasn’t trying to get them to understand everything at one time, he was using this first meeting to open their minds and introduce them to just a basic understanding of what he called the realities. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry either. It was a quality of Finn’s; one that Parks and Geli would experience repeatedly as they began to know him better. Even though this was the first time either of them had been with him, they just assumed leisurely delivery was his way of making a point.

“In my opinion,” Finn explained, “the future is no harder to remember than the past. The further you are from either, the less you remember—the closer you are, the more you remember.”

“I’m not sure I understand.” To Parks’ relief, Geli was asking the question. “What do you mean? When you say ‘remembering the future,’ is it seeing things—things that’ll happen in the future? Isn’t that only something Dissimulants can do? I mean, humans don‘t see the future do they?”

Finn confirmed that only Dissimulants seemed able to remember the future, but left room for doubt. He explained that both Dissimulants and humans existed in the same space, a space containing past and future events, but humans could only exist in one fraction of that space at a time. “And, of course they can only step in one direction—the future.” He added this as an after-thought, in way that suggested he wasn’t sure how informed Parks or Geli were on the ways of the human world.

“So what—” Parks had it blurted out before he could stop from embarrassing himself, so he just finished the question. “Are Dissimulants supposed to be time travelers?”

Both Finn and Geli looked at Parks as if he’d just showed up at a funeral wearing a clown suit. Geli recovered quickly, as she remembered that Parks had—at least consciously—left his reality only once, twice if you counted the visit to Angie. No surprise that he didn’t understand, this was a completely new world for him.

Embarrassed by his own overreaction to Parks’ question, Finn recovered in a way that both legitimized the question, and lessened the sting of humiliation Parks was feeling. “Sorry, I was jumping ahead a bit. It’s not so much a matter of traveling in time as it is traveling between events.” He paused to make sure Parks was catching most of what he’d said. “I think it might help to review the idea of the time concept before moving on.”

If Parks had ever heard any of this in school, none of it had stuck. But the way Finn explained it made it seem as though it was all common knowledge—that there was no doubt whatsoever about the mechanism of how time worked in the universe. But really, Finn’s actual point was that time didn’t work at all in the universe—it was a flaw. He pointed out that the universe is very large, and waited for Parks and Geli to agree—they did. Then, using the events of last night as example, he made them again agree to the obvious that everything that had happened at the Slot, had occurred completely within this universe. Again, Parks and Geli agreed—although Parks was afraid of getting lost again at any moment.

“If those events did happen,” Finn said, widening his grin, “and they happened, in this big, big universe, just yesterday—where did they go?”

Parks could see that Finn was convinced that he’d scored a home run on that one. That he’d made his point clearly, and in a way that evoked a clever paradox as well. (He would later notice that Finn used the word paradox a lot. Along with conundrum, it was one of his favorite words.) Unfortunately, the paradox was there, but the clear point was missing. Looking over at Geli, Parks could see that she was once again ahead of him in understanding.

“Because,” Geli said, “nothing escapes the universe; it still has to exist somewhere.”

“Right!” Finn agreed. “To escape the universe it would have to travel at least forty-six billion light-years, so there’s no way it could do it, even if the universe had an edge—which in all likelihood, it doesn’t.”

“Hold on a second,” Parks decided to speak up. “You two are talking like the past is some sort of object, like a ball or something that’s suddenly disappeared.”

“In a way, that’s as good an analogy as any,” Finn smiled. He pointed out that because the ball had no sense of time, it would recognize no difference between yesterday, today or tomorrow. Because humans have a limited sense of time, they’re aware of a difference, but their limits stop them from seeing anything other than a single moment in a single reality. Even memory is only an experience of the present. Humans remember yesterday only through today’s reality.

That was when things suddenly became clear to Parks. The memories he had—what he’d always called memories—weren’t partial, they weren’t just incomplete images of thought. His memories felt the same—exactly the same as the present. When he thought back to first meeting Geli, it just happened again—all of it—in just the same way. The same: his nasty hotel room, the smell, the lighting, the words they both said—all occurred like a stage play where he was the main character. Apparently, human memory wasn’t like this at all. “What about the future?” He asked Finn, excited now that he was catching on.

“Ah, the future,” Finn sighed. “That’s—just a little different.”

Amanita Muscaria

It wasn’t until they stepped onto the property that Parks noticed any sort of path, or even enough of a break in the mess to provide a way to the house. It’s not that the house was completely blocked; it’s just that there didn’t seem to be an obvious way to approach it from any direction. He couldn’t even find a spot empty enough to walk into the yard—until he just did it.

Parks thinks he’s trampling into the center of a patch of red daisies, but when he looks down, the flowers have mysteriously parted to either side of him. Now that they’re in the yard, Parks notices there are several paths all around. The paths lead directly, and some indirectly, to the small front door of the house.

“Which path do you want to take?” Geli asks.

Her voice seems excited, as though holding expectations of something great to come. Parks, still recovering from the assault on his senses from looking at the place, doesn’t grasp any real sense to her question. He looks again at the paths. None is more than twelve inches from another, and while some might take a few extra seconds to walk, they all end at the door of the house. How to respond to her question—something Geli seems to be expecting—has him stumped.

“This one?” Parks suggestion becomes a question, as he points at a brick path lined by purple and white flowers.

“Oh, really?” Geli’s disappointed. “I took the petunia path just this morning.”

It isn’t clear to Parks if another response is expected, or not. He’d prefer that it not be, because this one aspect of Geli’s personality makes him the least comfortable. No matter which option he ever chooses, his inability (in her mind) to see the obvious merits of the other choice always frustrates her. He can see by her stance that he’ll have to make another selection.

Trying to hide his lack of enthusiasm, Parks points at a cobblestone path. “How about this one?”

“You’re not taking this serious,” she pouts.

“Look,” he says. “You asked me to pick a path—I picked two. Does it really make a difference?”

“I wouldn’t be asking if it didn’t,” Geli says.

“You pick then.”

To Parks’ relief, she agrees. As far as he’s concerned, if it does make a difference—which he can’t see how it will—better not to have a bad choice hanging around his neck for Geli to bring up later. In general, Parks isn’t much of a leader; he prefers others to make choices, which he can then opt to follow or not. He really isn’t even a team type of guy. Except for Geli, he’s mostly preferred to maverick things out on his own. The facts are that Parks doesn’t give a damn which choice she makes, or understand what possible difference it will be. He’s just ready to get this meeting—and the night—over.

“Get ready for a surprise,” Geli says. Then she steps onto a path of reddish wood chips, bordered on either side by clumped groups of red mushrooms with white polka dots. “Amanita muscaria,” she says, pointing to the clumps.

Parks has seen this type of mushroom before, but only in books of fairytales; until tonight, he’s never even thought they were real—maybe they aren’t. As he follows Geli onto the path, stepping in next to her, he isn’t certain anymore that anything is real: the house, the gnomes, the imprisoned windmills, or the dark figure, a person—who Parks notices just at that moment—standing in the shadows on the street.

For a second, his stomach feels queasy. It’s as if an elevator’s suddenly dropped him several hundred feet. The background of city noise, that since leaving the train had constantly surrounded them—is gone. Soft, muffled sounds of a damp forest have replaced the hum of traffic from The Great Highway. The old lady’s house, the neighborhood, everything that had just been there has disappeared from sight. The entire yard is now nothing but dense wood. It’s still dark, but it’s no longer night. Where it can, sunlight pushes through cracks in the branches that create the darkness from high overhead. It’s enough light for Parks to see that the two of them have somehow stepped from the front yard of an assumed lunatic, deep into a forest of giant redwoods. In every direction, as far as he can see, living trees reach far into the sky, rotting trees cover the ground, and tiny foot-high saplings start their own quest toward the heights of the forest ceiling.

He probably wouldn’t have believed her even if she’d said something—about what he should expect—but Parks feels that Geli could have given him a better warning than she did. He’s not even sure what the right words would’ve been, but just telling him to get ready for a surprise—well it wasn’t nearly enough.

Considering the events of the last twenty-four hours, Parks figures that he’s taking the current situation fairly well. A car recently tried to run him down on his skateboard, but he escaped. Then fled from his room at the Slot, seconds before people he didn’t know busted in to kill him. He had to outrun flaming pieces of car missile from an explosion. Finally, he finishes the night by stepping from a residential street in San Francisco into the middle of a dense redwood forest—a forest somehow hidden on the property of an old lady who is supposed to know why someone wants him dead. Considering all this, a break seems reasonable. Parks sits—or rather, drops—onto the trunk of the nearest fallen tree.

Catching his wits up with his breath and elevated heart rate, Parks notices something else; he still hears the ocean. Adjusting for the noise of the forest, he realizes that the sound of the ocean hasn’t changed at all. The ocean is neither nearer nor farther than seconds earlier. To the west, two hundred feet of open road—the Great Highway—and the wide, sandy beach have gone; they’ve transformed into the densely packed forest in which he and Geli are now standing. Parks, Geli, and the ocean haven’t gone anywhere. The rest of the world has left them.

“Isn’t it amazing?” Geli asks.

Fragments

In the turmoil an hour after the explosion, Poppers, angry and barking orders to her own agents, was still battling to bring the local services chiefs—police, fire and rescue—into some sort of manageable control, but no one relinquished authority. It was pointless. But as she could, she answered inquiries, and hoped things might fall into place. Most of all, she wanted to make sure that none of the evidence was gathered by others outside of her own staff. She certainly didn’t want it getting lost in the bowels the city forensics office. The last thing she needed was to have the scene contaminated by local mishandling.

Communication with local authority was always tricky. All she could divulge to them was that the dead were Federal agents and that her office came under the Department of Justice. The specific section of the DoJ it was had to remain classified; that the SFPD captain on the scene didn’t like this answer was tough luck. The captain’s attitude was not that of a smart political beast. His demands for answers were more aggressive and less perceptive than Poppers had ever seen before. He seemed to have no idea how powerless he was in a federal situation such as this. However, she remained diplomatic, feigning concern as she listened to the police captain’s petty issues, and buying the time for her team to clean things up behind his back.

As the passing minutes widened the target’s lead, it seemed to Poppers that the chase would now have escalated to a new level. The torn bits, strewn along the street, of the mutilated men in her command didn’t affect her as much as the dangers she saw for the future. The terrorists were desperate. Both sides were in a race to gain control first. Right now, the law had the numbers and the power; as the terrorists organized, their special capabilities could shift that. Things could quickly move from insurgency to civil war. Poppers was beginning to change her long-held views as well. She was beginning to accept the President’s plan as unavoidable. It would not be enough to kill the threats as they surfaced; the department would actively need to seek them out before the terrorists could.

Advisors to the President had begun to advocate the use of internment camps to separate the Dissimulants from the human population. At first, in part because of her own father’s history with the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp, Poppers had argued against these measures. She believed that if killing off its leaders successfully destroyed the Dissimulant organization, selective rights restrictions could control the bulk of the remaining Dissimulants. Now, Poppers was beginning to see the merits of forced internment. At the least, it was time to bring the nation’s population in on the threat the Dissimulants posed. Of course, until Washington made that decision, she’d continue to skirt the issue with the locals.

Across the way, Agent Ross made eye contact. Poppers stopped nodding her head in false response to the captain’s complaints. She excused herself from the conversation, and went to speak with her agent. The captain looked bothered by the interruption, but overall he was pleased with the impression he felt he’d made on Poppers. Then, turning to rejoin and supervise the investigation of the explosion, he noticed that only his own officers remained on the scene. The federal agents had quietly disappeared.

“We should be able to get a read from the technology of the bomb.” Ross reported to Poppers as they drove back to their headquarters. “It will take some major luck to make an identity though; there were few fragments left at the scene that were large enough for a fingerprint.”

“Let’s find what we can right away,” Poppers said. “I’m positive that explosive didn’t come from here—not now.”

“Are you worried about that captain interfering?” Ross asked.

“Not yet. But we may need to do something about him; nothing drastic, just get him reassigned for awhile.”

“I’ll look into it.” Ross said. “Irish cops, eh?”

“Careful,” Poppers warned. “I’m a quarter Irish.”

Angie

Even though everything about this situation—this place—is like the most bizarre of dreams, there’s no question in Parks’ mind that this is not a dream. Unless he’s crazy, what’s happening to him is real.

He’s now a half-mile into the woods—hiking alone—to meet with the old lady. According to Geli, the old lady insists that Parks come by himself. Geli stays behind. There’s no path this deep into the forest—no real path. Random accessible areas—open spaces free of fallen branches and the other natural debris—offer the only way for Parks to move forward along the forest floor.

The light is weaker here than where he and Geli entered. Parks is barely able to see a hundred feet ahead. The reality of where he is becomes less fantastic, more credible, with each minute. He continues forward—scanning each new patch of ground before stepping onto it. He’s adjusting to things as they are here. None of this seems as strange as it first did. It’s become hard to remember exactly how things were outside of this forest.

Subtle curves to his path make changes in direction practically unnoticeable. For all he can tell, Parks’ current heading is any point on the 360—maybe even returning to the tree trunk where he left Geli. He realizes that in a panic—something like a hurried run—he’d have a hard time finding his way back. This makes the risk of a trap seem even more likely; it’s a possibility to which he’s resigned himself. In his current state of mind, detached from the outside world, the threat doesn’t matter much. If that’s how it turns out, then that’s how it is. Besides being lost and confused, he’s exhausted. It feels as if he’s been in here forever. So, if it is a trap, Parks is just about willing to give in.

A woman appears in the path. She isn’t there earlier—he’s sure of it—but now she’s no more than fifty feet in front of him. It should’ve been a shock for Parks—one second she’s not there; then she is—but he barely considers it at all. To him, her appearance is merely a matter of fact. It’s the old world rules, the world outside this one, that are now harder to accept.

If this is the old lady, she isn’t all that old—definitely not as old as Geli made her sound. Somewhere in her forties—something like that—she’s wearing green work pants, a loose, oversized purple shirt, short black boots, and a floppy straw hat. There’s soil on her clothes, as if she’s just taking a break from gardening.

“Hello Parks,” she says. She has a nice voice—soothing.

“Hello—.” Here he stops himself, not knowing her actual name, and realizing he can’t call her by the one Geli used. His face turns red.

“Call me Angie,” she says, smiling. “I’m sure you were expecting someone older.”

“Not really,” Parks lies. “You just surprised me—I didn’t see you standing there.”

Angie knows the truth. “Geli sees me as ancient,” she says. “I remind her of someone she knows—someone younger—to whom by comparison, I seem like a great-grandmother.”

Parks doesn’t see Angie this way. She’s more like someone’s kooky but favorite aunt, a person to tell the real stuff—maybe not everything—but more than most adults could handle without a lecture. Right away, Parks likes her. “Do you live out here?”

“No,” She laughs. “I’m not a hermit, Parks.”

At this moment, something unusual happens. For a second, Angie seems to leave, not physically—her body stays. Yet somehow, it’s obvious that she’s not there anymore. She’s not sleeping; she’s gone. It’s like waiting for a glitchy DVD to skip a bad sector. She’s frozen right in front of him, and for that second it’s as if he’s absolutely alone.

Then she’s back, continuing as if nothing had occurred. “Actually, I live in a lot of places. This forest is a place I come when I need to think things over.”

She’s pleasant looking; like someone in the middle of a happy life. Definitely not the usual, tight-faced middle-agers who glare through closed car windows at him on his skateboard. Angie has a comfortable way about her—natural. The long, silver-gray hair, which reaches halfway down her back, looks just right for her face. Even her wrinkles, small ones at the corners of her eyes, and a few around her mouth seem a perfect fit.

At first glance, she seems tall, with an upright posture and a confident presence. Only when Parks gets closer can he see that she’s really no larger than Geli. Despite what he’s been through, immediately Angie’s wonderfully warming smile puts Parks at ease. Even his fears of a trap leave him. Feelings of calm, trust and openness take over. Something about Angie is—it’s the same word again—familiar.

With a nod and a motion of her hand, she indicates for Parks to follow her further into the forest. As they walk, she instructs him to listen very carefully to what she has to say. This doesn’t seem a problem for Parks—he loves the sound of her voice. Despite her verbal insistence that they have very little time, she doesn’t actually seem to be all that rushed.

“I imagine that you’re confused right now,” she says. Laughing aloud she adds, “If you’re not, then you should be.”

“Yeah—I am,” he says.

“You’ve been through so very much, and all sooner than expected. I’m sure that you’re ready for a rest. But Parks, we don’t have time for that rest right now.”

There’s urgency in the words. It’s as though she’s anticipating something to happen soon. Not that Parks expects a Crown Vic to come barreling through the redwoods, spitting bullets. If one did, he’s not sure it would surprise him. The way he feels right now, not much of anything would be a surprise. However, except for Geli—waiting somewhere down the path—as far as Parks can tell, Angie and he are alone in the forest.

Angie begins with a guarded introduction. “What I need to tell you is fantastic, hard to believe, and deadly serious. When we’re finished, you’ll better understand—at least something of—what it is that’s happening.”

She pauses.

To Parks, the way she’s tilting her head makes it seem like she’s listening to something. That’s only a guess. He can hear nothing more than the sounds that have surrounded him since entering the forest.

She continues, but now with a monotone voice. It’s as though she’s dismissing the sentence because something else is occupying her mind. “The rest of what you need to know will come later—depending on choices you make.”

Again, she’s gone—only for a moment; returning before he’s barely recognized her absence. Her voice is back to normal. “Right now, the critical thing is for you understand the threat so you won’t be killed.”

The words don’t affect him much. Parks already knows that someone is trying to kill him—it’s why he’s here. While it had him shaking on the train, the power of this place has reduced it all to a simple statement of the situation.

“You’re not alone Parks, we can help you.”

He’s not alone, true; he has a seventeen-year old girl and a middle-aged gardener on his side. This isn’t much comfort for Parks—not against what he saw over the course of the last two nights. He can see she means well; he doesn’t want to hurt her feelings by giving into the temptation of a sarcastic response. He hopes that she just gets to the point soon, so he can figure out what to do next.

“As scary as this may feel right now, it can actually be the beginning of a new life for you.”

What he wants to find out—who’s trying to kill him, how to stop it—has nothing to do with this psychobabble. “Let’s say I’m not finished with my current life yet,” Parks says. “Can you do something to help me save that one?”

The smile on her face disappears. She’s not angry—just serious. “Parks, that life is over.”

Her last comment—the grave expression in her face when she said it—should have him tweaked. The surrealism of this place, and the absurdity of all that’s happened, makes his reaction no different than if she’s told him that he’s wearing his shirt inside out. It hasn’t tweaked him; it’s numbed him. Geli’s warning that the old lady would sound crazy was not exaggeration. She definitely is coming across as intense—even a little nutty. But since everything happening seems nuts, Parks isn’t sure that she is. He decides that he might as well hear her out.

Clarity

“Parks!” Angie sees him drifting. “I really need you to concentrate.”

That last comment—a little bossy—annoys Parks. She sounds too much like Geli. “I’m listening, but how about getting to the point? Maybe start with who’s trying to kill me.”

“Fine. I suppose it’s easiest to say that the government is trying to kill you Parks—or, at least some levels of the government are. Thirty-five agents of a covert department are—were—assigned to your execution. Those killed in the explosion you saw, dropped the number by four—but they’ll be replaced.”

Angie knows about the explosion; confirming to Parks that in some way, she must’ve been involved with it. It’s been only about an hour; there’s no other way for her to know about it. Parks decides not to mention this; letting her do the talking, while he stores the information for later.

Angie asks a question, going back to the night when this all started for Parks. “What happened just before you blacked out on your skateboard?”

Here again, she seems to have information that she can’t possibly know; Parks hasn’t told anyone—including Geli—that he blacked out that night. He considers lying, holding to the original story he gave Geli, but decides instead to play along. If she knows the truth, which seems to be the case, then there’s no point in his denying it. “I thought I was dead meat,” he says.

The answer doesn’t satisfy her. She stares directly and deep into his eyes. “Something else, Parks. What else were you thinking at that very moment?” Despite his height advantage of more than a foot, for this moment, as she asks this, she appears to tower over him.

A renewed sense of dizziness—not as severe as earlier—comes over Parks. Memories start to form in his consciousness. Something, forgotten almost immediately after he got away that night, now returns. It was something simple—a feeling—more than a thought. Parks closes his eyes and draws a long slow breath. As he releases the air, he remembers. “I wanted—no; I needed—to be somewhere else.”

“Good. Where was it? Where did you go?”

“I blacked out.”

“Think about it,” Angie says firmly. “You did go someplace—where?”

“What do you mean?” Even as he asks this, he understands that she’s right. Like having a name on the tip of his tongue, Parks can feel the answer hiding somewhere in his head.

“You can remember this Parks. Think back,” she insists.

He now clearly feels the memory—the thought—that he used to escape. When he came to, he was stumbling on his skateboard—the Crown Vic was skidding across the intersection. In the middle of that, something happened; he knows it now too. Small details return—feelings. Sensory memories from the night—smells, emotion and vision come flooding back to him. Then a flicker; for a second the forest disappears and he’s on his skateboard—the Crown Vic is brushing against the back of his legs. Parks feels himself falling under the car, but just before he does—the memory stops. “A dream,” he whispers. “I had a dream when I blacked out.”

“Where was this dream, Parks? Where were you in the dream?”

Parks closes his eyes. “A town. A place I’ve been before. Not for real though—only in dreams. It was like an old movie: dark, and shadowy. Nothing moved there—everything, including me—frozen. It lasted a second, that’s all. Nothing happened. Then I woke up, fighting to stay balanced on my deck.”

Angie gently touches his shoulder. Her voice is comforting, but the seriousness remains in it. “Listen carefully Parks. I need you to understand that despite what you think, or feel, what you experienced was not a dream.”

He believes her. Something in what she says feels right to him.

“You were in trouble—real trouble. You knew that you needed to be somewhere else to survive. Your mind pulled you away—it physically delivered you to another place.” Angie pauses to gauge his reaction.

Parks shows no obvious reaction at all. She’s explaining something he already knows. That night he felt it; it just didn’t make sense. Her words, here—in this strange forest—are somehow more believable than in the real world. He’s able to know each word almost before she says it. He waits, wanting her to explain more. He needs her to tell him what it means.

“We’re different Parks; you, Geli and I are different from the people trying to kill us. Yes, they’re trying to kill Geli too, and me—and others.”

“What about the people who blew the cars up? Are they terrorists? Are they like us? Are you a terrorist?”

She doesn’t say much to this, only that it’s a complicated situation; one that he’ll understand later. “They’re trying to stop the killings too,” she says. “I just believe they’re going about it the wrong way.” As Parks hears it, she’s implying that she shares their objective, just not their methods.

He doesn’t know why, but Parks is relieved that Angie isn’t directly involved with the explosion. The explosion probably saved his life. The people it killed were trying to kill him. Logically he should be grateful for the explosion. Still, for some reason he doesn’t want her to be involved; it doesn’t seem right for her.

“But you know them?” He asks.

“Yes. Most were friends—one, I was very close to.”

“They’re not friends anymore?”

“I don’t really know, Parks. Our paths are different now.”

The memory upsets Angie—he can see that. She tries to hide this by returning to the previous topic.

“You were right in thinking that you’ve been to that place before,” she says. “Probably many times—when you thought you were asleep. It isn’t sleep. You aren’t dreaming when you’re in this other place—you’re experiencing a real, but different aspect of your life.”

Whether or not he can buy, or even understand what she’s saying, he does know that the Crown Vic was real, and it had tried to kill him. He escaped that somehow. Did he travel to another place? It sounds crazy even to have the words in his head—to consider it at all. It also sounds crazy to say a car passed through his body. Whatever the truth, something weird did happen that night.

“Why that particular place?” He asks. “What does that creepy town have to do with me?”

“This isn’t something I can explain to you right now,” she says.

Parks rolls his eyes. She isn’t exactly willing to explain much to him.

“You just won’t understand it.” The words—the way she says them—don’t seem intended as an insult—just a statement of fact. Then she adds, “There is a way for you to understand everything.”

“How?”

“I’ll explain it to you Parks—it’s the reason I asked Geli to bring you here.”

A chill comes over Parks. Something about this specific moment makes him nervous—as if he’s known all along what he’s about to be told. Yet he doesn’t feel it will necessarily be bad news—only something inevitable.

“But first, I need you to know that in this place to which you go, there’s danger as well as safety, Parks.”

It occurs to Parks that if they were out camping as part of a group, she’d be holding a flashlight, eerily lighting her face from below as she spoke. Words like these were usually just pretence to scare for fun. But that’s not how it feels at all right now—he wishes it were.

“I don’t mean death Parks; the dangers are bigger than death. As you, understand more of this, as these dangers become easier for you to see, they also become harder to avoid. Knowledge will defend you against them, but the other side of that knowledge is that you will realize that these dangers exist.”

The words stir within Parks—connecting to him in some way. He feels shaky. His legs don’t have the strength to support him. It’s not just the words, nor the threats that seem hidden in the words; it’s that he almost understands what her words mean. Somehow, in his head, he knows he should be terrified. Again, it feels to him like he’s been through this before.

Angie can see his reaction, but knows she can’t alter the course now. Her intention isn’t to scare him. These are just things he must understand. She can only present the option—the decision is his alone. This is his moment; the only chance he’ll have to recognize or ignore the Reveal.

Choice

“We have a process to explain things—this new reality—to you, if you’re willing. It’ll help guide abilities within you; ones that you may have suspected, and others you never knew existed. We call this process the Reveal. For everyone who chooses to go through it, it becomes a deeply personal process. It will be for you too, Parks. After the Reveal, the universe you see will change forever.”

Parks has doubts. “Why not just tell me what I need to know now?”

Angie just ignores his question. “I’d like to be the person to guide your Reveal but—” She pauses, considering whether or not to finish. She decides against it. “The reasons I won’t are complicated.”

It seems to Parks like everything is complicated with her explanations. His trust in her is faltering—again. There are no details. It’s the way cults recruit members: just come to a meeting, learn for yourself. It’s an old game; one that Parks knows enough to keep at a distance. He’s learned what he came to find out; maybe it’s time for him to bail. Now, at least he knows who’s trying to kill him even if he doesn’t understand why.

One thing is certain for Parks, he has absolutely no interest in cults—religious or not. But he also figures that Geli’s not likely to join a cult any more than he is. She brought him here. He trusts her. That could be stupid, he realizes; after all, he just met her. Still—he does trust her.

It’s possible that Geli will not know what to believe either. Maybe she’s as reluctant as he is. It could be that she hasn’t even made her decision yet. Is she waiting to find out what he thinks? But in his gut, he knows that for Geli to be undecided is unlikely; she never is. That puts him back to trust, finding out what she thinks, then deciding for himself.

Lost in thought, Parks doesn’t notice Angie’s absence again. It’s only when she returns that he notices. She seems to be recovering from a laugh.

It’s the first time Parks gets it—he’s supposed to understand that she’s going somewhere when she does this. But he wonders if maybe this isn’t just part of the big con. Her body isn’t leaving the forest; she could just be standing still. He has to admit, as a fake—if she is one—Angie is good. She doesn’t even acknowledge her little acts, just picks the conversation up where she left off. But what if they are real?

“The person I’ve asked to be your guide is in many ways better equipped for the task than I can hope to be. His name is Finn, and I think you’ll like him. If you and Geli choose to accept the Reveal, Finn will train you to find the natural abilities within yourselves.”

Geli hasn’t taken the bait, or at least that’s how Angie is making it sound. On the surface, this admission is unlikely for a con. The normal purpose to separating marks—in the way Angie required Parks to come alone—is to make each believe that the other is already going along with the pitch. Angie’s not playing it this way. Once again, Parks gets a feeling that Angie could be on the level.

“These abilities aren’t new,” she continues. “You’ve had them all your life, but kept them suppressed—hidden even from yourself.”

Parks can’t understand what’s happening to him. His emotions keep switching back and forth between trust and mistrust. He feels as though he’s both participating in this conversation and disconnectedly watching it from somewhere else. He wants to reject what she’s saying but he can’t. Uncontrollable feelings inside make him want to trust Angie. An internal sense of belief, enthusiasm at her words, is overcoming his doubts. Something tied to the rhythm of her speech gives him a strong desire to believe. It’s supernatural—spiritual—nothing in which Parks has even a shred of belief.

“He’ll educate you on dangers and guide you to eliminate them. But more importantly, he’ll prepare you to explore and live your potential.” Her voice is soft and speaks only the truth to him.

Parks looks back down the path, thinking he’ll see Geli—hoping she’ll pull him from the moment. She’s not there.

Angie can see what he’s thinking. “Parks, understand that you’ve a choice to accept or not accept the Reveal. Whatever you choose, it is your decision; Geli can’t be a part of this.”

Parks doesn’t see the need for choice. Any doubts looping at the back of his mind bore him. He only wants to listen to Angie.

“You both have the option to return to your previous lives—to proceed, exactly as you would have. How it would’ve happened, the life that you were to have, is just how it will seem to continue.”

He can’t think straight. He wants to fight—regain control, but he craves to accept every word she says.

“For your protection, if you choose against the Reveal, you won’t remember this night as anything more than a dream. You’ll just go on, living what you would call a regular life.”

Whether he’s in some sort of trance—as it feels to him—or something else has him disoriented, questioning is a strain. It sounds crazy—all this garbage. Regular life? As opposed to what exactly? Parks considers turning and taking a rapid hike back down the path; find Geli and ask her directly. He doesn’t do it. Something tells him that she’s not there.

“Okay, what happens if I decide to do this? Do I just disappear?” The spell seems broken, he’s able to think critically—ask questions.

“In a way, perhaps. The world still goes on around you. It’ll just look different—even more dangerous at first.”

“That sounds great,” Parks says.

Angie hears, but ignores, the irony in his comment. “Even if you don’t accept it, the world goes on. The dangers still exist—you just won’t know about them.”

To Parks, this suggests very little actual choice. Whether or not he accepts, someone is still trying to kill him—according to what she’s claiming anyhow.

Angie corrects him on the point, explaining that he’s a threat to the agents trying to kill him, only until he makes his choice. If he chooses not to accept the Reveal, they’ll no longer bother with him. Without the Reveal, he can remain hidden within the shadows of humanity.

“So, if I go back, everything goes back to normal.”

“From your point of view, yes.” Angie carefully chooses her next words—holding back on giving too much detail. “Reality isn’t how, or what you think it is Parks. Instinctively, the mind filters reality to help us cope in the universe—it’s a holdover of the human brain. The universe is much more than humans can see—so much, that it would be impossible for them to function without filtering most of it out.”

Parks hears her next words very clearly. It’s as though every thought in his brain has stopped just so he can. Even the background noise fades away.

“You are not limited by the human brain, Parks. You’re not human—you’re Dissimulant. You can choose to remove those filters forever.”

On some level, what she’s saying makes sense to Parks. It could explain certain things he’s seen—experienced.

“The enemies—our real enemies—are not humans. They’re not even living. They don’t exist in the human world, but just outside it. Their purpose is to lure life away—out to where they are.”

“Did you say they could be filtered out?” Parks asks.

Angie shakes her head. “The filters of the brain stop you from seeing them, but not them from finding you. They skirt the edges of reality until they detect life, then they begin to lure it to the other side”

“So they may never find me?”

“They haven’t found you yet, but they will. Without the Reveal, you’ll never be able to see them coming. Whether or not you choose to see them, they will continue looking for you. Someday, and it could be a long time away, they’ll find you. Then, you will no longer exist.”

“Dead,” Parks says.

“I can’t—,” she interrupts herself. “It’s more than what you think of as dead.”

Angie leaves again, but this time her body goes with her. She flickers away completely before returning to the same spot three seconds later. Parks has to believe that at least this much of her act is real.

“I wish I could tell you that the choice for you is clear, but it isn’t my life to choose. If you’d prefer to stay in hiding, alive but only partially, then deny the Reveal. The end may take a very long time to occur—you could live to be a very old man.”

“What about Geli?”

“I’ve told you Parks, this is a decision you can only make alone. I promise that once your decision is made, Geli’s choice—if different from yours—won’t matter to you at all.”

“You can’t say that,” Parks says. “You don’t know what we mean to each other. Anyway, she must have said yes. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have brought me here.”

“Don’t try to second guess this Parks. Your own logic may misguide you. Geli cares for you; that’s certainly true. She brought you here because you needed the opportunity to accept or deny the Reveal for yourself. It’s possible she brought you here to say yes; it’s also possible she did it so you can say no. Don’t make assumptions about how she decided. Even I have no knowledge of that, and will not, until your decision is clear.”

Parks is frustrated. “I don’t get why you won’t give me real answers.” He wants to trust what Angie is saying; his gut tells him it’s true. He needs more information.

Should he choose to live as a human, then too much information could be dangerous; Angie knows this. This is why anyone denying the Reveal has no other chance to accept. With only this one contact, if Parks denies the Reveal he can forget what has happened. Forgetting is critical for those who choose the other path. Hidden in the shadows, living as humans, it would be terrifying to retain even a little understanding of what exists around them. As it is, Angie feels she may have said too much.

“We need to separate for now Parks; it’s time for you to make your decision. You have all the knowledge you need to take a leap of faith, or to choose not to do so. If you deny the Reveal, we will never speak of this again.” She knows this suggests that even if he doesn’t accept, he might see her again.

That relieves Parks, who doesn’t realize the lie. He doesn’t want to make the decision right now. He’s sure he can charm his way in later—when he decides. It’s not that he’s decided against accepting eventually—he’s just cautious. Maybe he’ll go for it after talking to Geli. For now, he’s ready leave. Letting Angie think he’s ready to decide gives him the opportunity to get away.

“Continue heading along this path,” she tells him. “You will come to the place where you entered. Geli will be gone. While you walk, think your decision over carefully, but don’t stop along the way. By the end of the path, you’ll need to have your mind made up. It has to be before you step back into the yard.”

She pauses, then satisfied that he understands, continues. “If you’ve chosen to accept, you’ll find Finn waiting for you on the street and the Reveal will have begun. If you’ve chosen to deny, Finn won’t be there.”

“What about Geli?” Parks asks.

“You’ll both only know that your decisions matched if you see each other when you return to the yard. If each of you decides differently from the other, you may not see each other for a long time. But remember, it’s your decision Parks.” She turns her back to him and walks away—in the direction from where they just came.

“I couldn’t tell you everything Parks,” she calls back. “Consider the things I didn’t tell you when you make your choice. Don’t be controlled by what you heard—trust what you feel.”

Parks wonders who these people are, and whether he is what they think. A menacing world that exists in dreams, enemies you can‘t see; it means nothing to Parks. What right do they have separating him from Geli, the one person he trusts? His doubt grows. Suspicion and anger replace the warmth and trust he felt earlier. He isn’t interested in any of this stuff and if Geli is—maybe that’s just too bad. He’s determined not to worry about what Geli did or did not decide—and this isn’t easy for him. His emotions are in turmoil. How can he trust what he feels, when he has no idea what his feelings are?

Home

Geli’s bedroom looks like the room of a fourteen year old. More accurately, it’s the room of a seventeen year old, that—years ago—stopped linking her identity to her room’s décor. Too much purple and a fair amount of blue overpower the room. Posters on her wall idolize groups she hasn’t listened to in years. The phone on her nightstand, shaped like a slice of pizza—which she thought was so hilarious when she bought it at a yard sale five years ago—connects pointlessly to the jack in the wall. She has a cell; she never uses the pizza phone anymore. Her room has become a time capsule from 2K4. There’s the old notebook PC, hooked up to her dad’s old printer, both on the—ugh—white desk. Neglected stuffed animals, flopped all around the room, wait patiently for the day when she finally packs them up for good. A micro-stereo—with a dead-battery generic MP3 player in the dock—sits next to her small, square, battery-operated alarm clock. The clock says it’s six-twenty when Geli reappears on her bed.

Geli’s proud; only fifteen minutes ago she disappeared from her home reality to the one in San Francisco; now she’s back again. She’s improved her timing by a lot. An active week in San Francisco; lived out in the time she normally takes for a shower—it’s actually very impressive! Of course, the old lady does it in such a short time that a person would have to be staring in slow-mo just to catch her flicker in and out. Geli knows she has some improving to do to get to that point; but obviously, she’ll get there.

Old lady! She needs to stop calling her that. The name isn’t from disrespect; it’s more of a defense mechanism. The old lady—Angie—understands why Geli says it; only now, it’s starting to bother Geli a little.

Thinking about Angie makes Geli think about Parks, and the conversation going on in the forest. It’s hard to know what he’ll conclude. On numerous occasions, when Geli tried to find any hint that Parks had some awareness—if he’d ever consciously experienced even a simple alternative reality—she failed to learn anything.

Whether he hasn’t a clue about the hidden worlds or anything outside his own daily reality, he’s made it clear he doesn’t believe in things like ghosts or parallel worlds. But Parks often likes to counter things Geli says just to wind her up. It’s hard to know what he really believes, and what he says only for the reaction. Whatever his views are, it’s entertaining for Geli to imagine his reaction as he hears what Angie will have to say. Of course, since Angie knows Parks is clueless, she’ll probably not be as candid with him as she’d been with Geli.

Scaring Geli, is the fact that in this case what Parks believes won’t matter. He’ll have to base his choice on faith, and will have to make that choice today. Angie made this clear when asking Geli to bring Parks to the beach house.

Geli tries to convince herself that Parks will choose correctly. He’s smart—more than he lets on—and has a core of faith in his soul, despite the negative act he puts on. She senses that he feels more to the world than he admits. He’s learned to bury the feelings from himself as much as from anyone else. But she also worries that she’s only seeing what she wants to see. Maybe he won’t believe what Angie tells him—even just enough to make the right choice. He only needs to trust in his instinct—that’s all. He’s lived his life by it so far. Geli’s sure he’ll make the right choice. He has to, so everything can go forward.

Her memory is fading. She’s ready to let it go for now. It’ll be much later when she learns his decision anyway. For the next few hours, there’s dinner, then watching a DVD with her brother and parents. The DVD is some kid-friendly movie from the 70’s that her dad loves. Geli likes the movies her dad picks; even the kid’s stuff is always good. Fluff will be a nice change of pace. According to Angie, after tonight the pace will be rough.

Having now fully adjusted to her shifted location and time, Geli gets up from the bed. Rummaging through her closet, she pulls out a sweatshirt, jeans and clean underwear to change into. The stuff she’s been wearing is pretty rank. In her backpack and suitcase, the odor isn’t any better. Since she’s now substantially improved her timing, and dragging around a suitcase will be a burden on the run, she figures she only needs to bring her backpack on the return to San Francisco. So, she unpacks her gear and stores the battered old suitcase at the back of her closet.

It’s been a full day, with lots of running since she took her last shower. That was in the common bathroom at the Slot, where showers never give much hot water or time. The person before has always just used up the hot water, and someone else is always waiting—rushing you—so they can get in. Geli looks forward to standing under the nice warm spray from her own shower. She grabs her clean clothes and walks to her personal, private and very girlie bathroom.

A Path

“The United States is trying to kill you Parks.” The words are doing some serious loops inside his head since Angie sent him on his way. Now, here Parks stands, in front of the little groups of red and white polka-dotted mushrooms that edge the spot where he and Geli first stepped into the forest. Since leaving Angie, he’s been thinking over the same arguments repeatedly. Parks feels if it weren’t for Geli, there’d be no decision for him to make. Except that he’s ninety-nine percent sure about what Geli’s going to do, Parks can’t find another reason for him to accept the thing that Angie called the Reveal.

He still has no idea why the government would be trying to kill him. Although admittedly, everything that’s been happening lately makes it plausible. Angie said Dissimulants were targets because they were different; it’s true enough that he’s felt different before. He’s had some weird feelings about things that were going to happen—that, and crazy stuff he saw that couldn’t possibly exist. To explain these, he’s always told himself that everyone had these feelings from time to time; like nose picking, they just never talked about it. People know about nose picking and joke about other people picking noses but never talk about picking their own nose. It’s normal to keep some things private. Doing this doesn’t make Parks different—not enough to kill.

Just because Parks has never heard anybody talking about them in the way he’s experienced memories, doesn’t mean they aren’t normal for others to have. Anyway, there’s also the idea of déjà vu. Déjà vu is supposed to be a feeling that you’ve seen or experienced something before, even though you know you are experiencing it for the first time. For Parks, there’s always been such a strong feeling of reality attached to his type of memories; what others describe as déjà vu never really seems an accurate match. His memories are of things he absolutely knows to have occurred—even though a number of them are blatantly impossible. False memories are the obvious and only sane way to explain this sort of thing—false memories planted by the subconscious. Parks never looks for the supernatural explanation. A reasonable explanation, one based in reality, always existed—until today. There’s no reasonable explanation for this forest. There’s nothing reasonable about what he’s contemplating.

Facts—that are all he wants to consider at that moment. Someone, maybe the government, is trying to get to him—probably to kill him. Weird things have been happening all his life, but lately they’re become ridiculously insane. Geli is smart and it looks like she believes in this stuff. At least she seemed to believe in it when they’d talked. Geli wanted Parks to meet Angie, so she must trust her. Parks feels trust for Angie—safe with her as well. He absolutely knows that a car passed right through his body when it should have killed him. No matter how odd it seems, with a single step, he’s gone from the front yard of a beach house in San Francisco to standing deep inside a forest of redwoods. He’s certain that nobody knew about these feelings he’s had all his life. He’s never told anyone about the dreams, the visions, the out of body experiences—not even Geli—not even the six psychiatrists he’d been forced to see. But Angie knew about it; he saw it in her eyes. Her few words described exactly what he’s always felt; that there is always something near to him, even when he was alone.

Minutes earlier, he’d already made up his mind to run—to ignore it all and just step back into the real world. Now, as he’s beginning to take a step, returning to what should be the front yard of the beach house, a new feeling overwhelms Parks. Because belief includes some chance, at least a remote chance of being wrong, it isn’t a simple sense of belief that overcomes him. It isn’t a sense of knowledge or realization either. He doesn’t have any more knowledge about the truth now than he had before. It’s simply faith overtaking him, as he steps forward onto a path he can’t even see.

“I accept,” he whispers.

The forest no longer existed. Once again, Parks was standing on a path in the overloaded front yard of the beach house. The returning traffic noise had multiplied since he’d been away. It felt like less than an hour but it must have been much longer that he’d been in the forest —it was now the middle of the morning. A bright sun was a third of the way across the sky. His eyes fought to adjust to the sudden increase in light.

In the yard, sitting on an iron bench that Parks hadn’t noticed before, were two people. Parks easily recognized one as Geli, and so assumed that the other was Finn. Finn was a little taller then Geli, and several times bigger around.

“Welcome Parks,” Finn’s voice was deep and friendly. “Welcome to the Reveal.”

The Agents

Because the anticipated impact of the collision with Parks didn’t occur, it put Agent Lehr in the situation of over-controlling his cruiser as it sped full-throttle—across the intersection. The combination of over-compensated steering, speed, and surprise, all contributed to the collision of the black Crown Vic into an illegally parked hybrid.

Just two hours earlier, the ill-fated owner of the hybrid—tired of hunting for a space—had given up and left his car blocking the bus zone. The two-hundred and fifty dollar ticket tucked under the wipers would now seem less significant for the scofflaw owner when he saw the damage from the crash.

The cost of repairs—over a grand—was something the owner of the hybrid would be paying, not the government. Exposing their identity here, in an official capacity, wasn’t anything the agents were prepared to let happen—especially not doing what they were doing. Lehr backed the cruiser away from the dented hybrid, fleeing the scene of the accident and heading for their San Francisco office.

“You don’t want to finish this?” Freelyn asked. “I just saw him take off, so he can’t be very far yet.”

Actually, Lehr would’ve preferred to finish the job that night. As the senior of the two agents, he’d have to report the failure to their commander—and take most of the heat from her. But he knew that someone in the neighborhood, hearing the accident, would likely call the city police. Security was too tight an issue for the department to allow police involvement and risk public exposure.

“He’ll be watching for us now—so will SFPD,” Lehr said. “If we leave him for a bit, he’ll think it was some lunatic or drug-related—a mistaken identity.”

“What if he ends up going to the police?”

“Same thing applies—they’ll figure drugs, won’t they? But, I don’t think a runaway will risk going to the police.”

“So we wait to get another chance,” said Freelyn. “You think he’ll try to figure out what happened—how he pulled that escape off?”

“It’s hard to imagine what he would think. On the other hand, he may not need to figure it out; he could know more than we think he knows.”

Freelyn considered this possibility for a moment before rejecting it. “If he knew how to do it, he’d have pulled that stunt sooner—instead of leading us in that chase through the streets.”

“Yes—,” Lehr’s tone turned slightly sarcastic, “but don’t you think it’s possible he could suspect—maybe even know—some things, without having the conscious ability to act on them yet?”

“Well, maybe—assuming he hasn’t been contacted,” said Freelyn.

“That’s exactly right partner; if the terrorists haven’t been in contact with him. Otherwise, everything changes.”

Refuge at the Slot

Shaken from his encounter with the Crown Vic, Parks took his time. Weaving his skateboard through the streets in the lower Haight, he headed toward Market Street. Rather than blow through the intersections—the way any street skater would normally do—he slow-rolled each one, checking for the Crown Vic. Other than a couple of cabs, the streets were quiet. It seemed they had given up the chase; he was safe. He crossed Market, and headed for the Slot.

“The Slot” was the nickname given by its transient tenants to a shabby little residence hotel, not too far from Mission Dolores and Dolores Park. The real name, posted on the brick wall outside, was Manor of the Mission—nobody had called it the Manor since 1980. The Slot was a building inhabited by people who struggled from week to week to pay for their room. Most of the people living there were either very old or very young. Tenants were supposed to be eighteen to rent a room, but management at the Slot wasn’t too fussy about the age rule as long as the rent was at the front desk first thing on Tuesday morning.

Parks climbed the creaky wood stairs to the floor he’d been occupying for two weeks now. It was his second month living here, and already his third room. The hotel manager moved him to a new room every three weeks.

“It’s to avoid rent control issues,” Steve—the pint bottle of Gateway brand vodka drinker—told him when it happened the first time. “If you stay for a full month, it’s harder for them to kick you out legally,” he explained.

Parks didn’t always trust Steve’s explanations, as he was prone to some really weird stories by the time the afternoon rolled around. In this particular case, it made some sense. It didn’t matter for Parks; moving between rooms wasn’t much of an issue. Since his first foster home, he’d never owned more than a few things he could stuff into a bag and carry on his skateboard. From eight years old, he knew he was only waiting for the chance to get away on his own—it took him another eight to make it happen.

On his last room switch, Parks winded up on the third floor—the same floor as Geli. She was a cute girl, with wavy darkish-blond hair and eyes a color Parks had never seen before—they were almost golden. He’d noticed Geli many times around the Slot, had a serious desire to introduce himself from the very first time he saw her, but could never find a comfortable chance to meet her.

When they did finally meet, it was Geli who made the introduction. She was walking past the open door to Parks’ newest room—which he left open because the rooms at the Slot smelled of a hundred years of cigarette smoke—and she just stopped at the doorway to introduce herself and say hi.

It amazed Parks that anyone had enough self-confidence to just go up and introduce themselves to a stranger, without any sort of pretense or manufactured excuse—even an “eighteen in two months” year old like Geli (she was already practically as bossy as an adult).

It was ten days ago they met, but one particular first impression he had of her hadn‘t changed since then; Parks realized right away that her aggressive nature was a way of life for Geli. She didn’t subtly hint at her opinions, issues, or problems; and she didn’t ask her embarrassing questions coyly. She unapologetically forced her tiny body inches into his personal space, focused her eyes directly into his, and said whatever she had on her mind. Although their friendship was only a friendship—and a short one at that—Parks felt as if he’d already willingly exposed every inch of his mind and body to her relentless questions and open scrutiny.

So, after having outrun a car trying to kill him for no reason that he knew of, it wasn’t to his own shabby room that Parks was now heading, it was two doors down—to Geli’s.

A Crazy Connection

Geli’s room, a good reflection of her personality, was orderly but not obsessively neat. Despite the transient nature of living at the Slot, she made it seem as close to home as she could. She’d hung two framed pictures on the wall, scattered the odd stuff she owned around the room, and had even unpacked her clothes to the limited shelves and drawers provided by the meager furniture in the room. She kept the five hardback books she owned displayed upright on the well-worn top of the dresser. Next to her own books, she normally had at least four library books on display as well—sometimes more. Her bedding, always hospital corners in the morning, was bunched and falling halfway off by late afternoon because that’s where she did most of her reading.

In addition to her personalized touches, some obvious things made Geli’s room different from Parks’. There weren’t any crumpled fast food bags on the floor, no dirty and semi-dirty clothes piled on a chair, and carelessly wadded bills and coin mounds were absent from her nightstand. It was a clear difference between Parks and Geli; she liked the feeling of home, he didn’t know what that was.

And there were things that made Geli different from other girls Parks had known. Geli had no body marks: tattoos, piercings—not even her ears. She never wore anything with writing on it—no logos, no concert or band t-shirts. She’d said it was her personal fashion statement not to make one. But she made plenty of other statements—oh God, yes. Geli had an opinion about everything and enough knowledge to back those opinions up. Like everything else about her, Parks found Geli’s intelligence attractive to be around—although it sometimes made him nervous.

Parks tried to predict Geli’s reaction now. Would she think his story about the Crown Vic was crazy—or that he was lying? Would she believe him, but try to talk him into going to the police for help?

He might’ve just kept quiet about the whole thing—he didn’t say anything for the first fifteen minutes—but eventually Geli figured him for something. Once she started in with her routine of relentless questioning, Parks began spitting it out—in as much detail as he could remember.

He told her about first noticing that the car seemed to be everywhere he went. “It couldn’t be coincidence,” he said. “Not that many times.” He told her everything, up to the final point where the car tried to run him down. What he left out—there was just no way to explain this—was how he survived because the car drove through him. He didn’t know how it happened, and he wasn’t even sure what happened. He knew for certain what didn’t happen, but telling her that, sounded far more believable.

“I jumped into the only opening—between two parked cars.” he lied. “I landed and took off down the sidewalk before the Crown Vic could turn around.”

Geli just sat there, unnaturally quiet. Parks could see she was processing the information. But there seemed to be something more on her mind—as if she was weighing the story against something that she already knew. This puzzled Parks for a couple reasons. For one thing, the story was outrageous—a person would expect at least a little surprise or tension from anyone hearing it. The other thing, if there was some sort of knowledge or whatever she had about what happened—a reason someone tried to kill him, or who it was—he wondered why she had to think about telling him.

“Okay, here’s the thing,” Geli finally broke her silence. “I know this old lady—I met her about a month ago—I think you might need to meet her too.”

Parks covered his eyes with his hands and dramatically rocked his head back and forth—as if hitting his head against an invisible wall. “Maybe I’m confused,” he said. He paused a few seconds before continuing. “What could this old lady possibly know about someone in a car trying to kill me?”

His reaction miffed Geli a little. “I don’t know if she knows anything specific—about this car, or the people in it—but I think she might know something that could help.”

Parks made a lame attempt to pull more information from her, but she was clearly resolute in her decision to hold out giving him anything more. She wanted to talk to the old lady first. Parks gave up.

It was late—too late for anything right now. It was decided—by Geli—that she would first go alone in the morning to visit the old lady. If Geli had it right, that some sort of connection existed, she would come back to the hotel for Parks. Then, together they’d go meet with the old lady.

This time, Parks didn’t even bother to ask why he couldn’t just come along in the first place; Geli had laid out the plan in a way that clearly left no other options open for discussion. So basically, by not offering any objection, he’d agreed.

It was late. Both kids, who’d been fighting their eyes for a while, decided they needed to get some sleep. Not wanting to be alone, Parks stayed in Geli‘s room. They fell asleep, cuddled together on top of the bed.

Waiting

At the San Francisco office for the Department of Internal Security, the DIS commander battled with her agitation. Poppers, as everyone—except the Attorney General—called her, had been surprised at the previous night’s failure by her two agents. Completely unaware of his situation, the target should‘ve been handled without issue. There was no reason for the difficulty; he was just a kid.

Poppers disliked the idea—killing an innocent kid. But he wouldn’t stay innocent for long, not once the terrorists recruited him. They didn’t care that he’s just a kid; she couldn’t afford to care either. The stakes were too high. Stabbing at her keyboard, Poppers brought the Parks profile on screen for the ninth time that day.

Parks had no close relatives known to be living. He was without standard associations or friendships. In fact, the report showed a middle-aged drunk from that fleabag residence hotel as the only person in San Francisco with whom he’d established any kind of personal connection. She’d profiled the drunk—as a precaution—but this was no clever cover; he was simply a bottle tipper from morning until he passed out however many hours later.

Poppers understood drunks, her father had been one—few people outside her family ever knew. He’d managed to keep it hidden for as long as she could remember. It certainly never affected his career. Sam Paulsen joined the army as a raw GI and after one war, one conflict and one police action ended as a retired colonel. Her dad had seen a lot, Poppers knew that. She never questioned his addiction once she was old enough to understand. Soldiers see terrible things in war—sometimes it’s necessary for them to do terrible things too. She paged down to the middle of her notes in the target’s profile.

Three foster homes in nine years. When Poppers showed up looking for the kid at the last one, the foster parents were obviously shook up. Having failed to report Parks as missing, they probably assumed Poppers’ appearance was an end to the state maintenance checks—criminal fraud charges were a threat as well.

She clicked a link to the interview audio files in the report—then to the only useful clip she’d recorded with the foster parents. Throughout the interview, they’d lied about most of the details, including the actual date of Parks’ disappearance—by two weeks. But they’d given Poppers something in this particular clip.

“You must have some idea where he’d go,” Poppers said.

“Not really.” Rob Russell’s voice was nasally and had an annoying whine to it. “Parks didn’t talk much—not really.”

“Well, he did mention New York sometimes.” This voice on the recording belongs to Doris, the other half of the foster parent team who—except for some time he spent in juvenile hall—Parks had lived with since he was ten years old.

“That’d be terrible,” Rob says. “I hate to think what would happen to him in New York. You know, he had a hard enough time staying out of trouble here.”

Poppers doubted his concern, but said nothing. At the time, she only wanted to finish the interview and get out. How these two had become and remained foster parents was impossible to understand.

“What about San Francisco?” Doris suggests. “He talked about San Francisco sometimes.”

“Oh? How serious do you think he was?” Poppers asks.

“I would guess, about as serious as anything else he talked about doing with his life.” Rob didn’t attempt to disguise his ill will toward Parks. Poppers had no trouble seeing that now—however they may have started—Rob held few, if any, positive feelings for Parks.

The foster dad’s voice seemed to have gotten more annoying in the time since Poppers last played the recording—and no more informative. The remainder of the recording went on for about ten minutes. Poppers painfully listened through it, hoping for some missed insight into the boy—something she hoped to use tonight—but there was nothing.

At the time of the interview, her ability to narrow the search down to New York and San Francisco did benefit Poppers. Troubled kids usually head for urban centers, and it helped to know which two cities might attract Parks. Even though the information—coming from two people who seemed to know little about the boy who’d lived under their care for six years—was often suspect, it paid off in the end.

The New York files were next in the Parks report, but Poppers just tabbed past them. Despite some promising police reports from the NYPD—petty department store scams, matching Parks’ juvenile record—her team eventually ruled out New York. Wherever he’d been living for the first four months as a runaway, by June, Parks was living in San Francisco. Greg Riley’s police citation exposed that. Poppers broke attention from her computer screen to glance at the large clock on her office wall.

At that moment, alone in Geli‘s room and drenched in sweat, Parks stirred from a rough sleep. The dream—from what he could remember—mostly had him running from marked and unmarked police cars. The monster-like cars tried to run him over on streets, sidewalks and even inside the Slot. The dream felt familiar to Parks—a recurrent nightmare from his past. Yet he couldn’t actually remember having had it before.

Suddenly it occurred to him, looking out the window he realized that he’d slept through the entire day. Geli had left before ten in the morning—which seemed like only an hour ago—now, outside it was getting dark. The streetlights—their sensors no longer detecting sufficient light—were flickering to come on.

Once, when Parks was twelve, Rob showed him a trick with streetlights. It was when Rob tried to give up booze. Taking walks to fight the urge, he’d sometimes bring Parks along. On one of those walks, Rob pulled a boxy piece of plastic from his pocket and showed it to Parks. He said it was the flash attachment to an old camera. It took a few minutes to charge up after he turned it on; then he aimed it toward the top of a streetlight. The flash made a loud popping sound and a bright light—nothing like a weak digital camera flash—splashed against the streetlight, directly from the front, and indirectly as it bounced off the building from behind. For just a second, the bright blue flash lit the sky like lightening, then the streetlight went dark—it was cool. But the walks stopped; Rob found the bottle again.

Despite the apparent fact that Parks had slept nearly eighteen hours, he didn’t feel ready to get out of bed yet. He turned his back to the window and slipped into a sort of waking dream. This one he knew well—it wasn’t just a dream, it was a memory.

The store is empty when the owner of the market—a creepy man, with several brown pea-sized growths on his red face and neck—stops Parks at the door. He gropes the smokes from Parks’ pants pocket and decides to administer on-the-spot punishment for the attempted crime. Holding the boy’s hand flat on the register counter, he rests the cherry of his own burning cigarette against the inside of Parks’ wrist, it creates a quarter-sized welt.

Half-awake, Parks’ left thumb casually covered and uncovered the marks on his right wrist. The charred welt from five years ago had healed to an unusual scar. It resembled the world-famous silhouette of a beloved rodent and theme park ambassador. Though Parks now rather liked the funny little scar, he also enjoyed knowing that worms and maggots had long since made a feast of the storeowner’s decayed body. It was one year after the cigarette incident, that someone shot the puffy pink man in front of his house—DOA. Parks wasn’t involved in the killing; just the same, he appreciated it. He even imagined watching it happen from time to time. He’d been to the house after the fact; he’d read the gory details in the news; it wasn’t hard for him to pretend he saw the shooting go down.

Parks wasn’t sleeping anymore; he was just laying there—thinking.

Poppers had four minutes until her enforcement team would arrive. She hoped this was the last briefing she’d ever need to schedule on the Parks matter. It didn’t look good politically for cases to remain open this long.

She turned to the traffic stop notes on her screen. The skateboarder, stopped for riding on a city street, didn’t have picture ID. He gave a name and address, which the officer used along with a physical description to confirm the kid’s identity over the radio. It could’ve been some kid named Greg Riley—but one detail said it was Parks.

Parks was also thinking about Greg Riley. Greg’s parents would demand an explanation when the Failure to Appear in Court letter showed up in their mailbox. Poor Greg wouldn‘t know why he got the ticket, so he‘d have nothing to tell them. He probably didn’t even own a skateboard.

Greg Riley—the real Greg Riley—might remember that day he was filling out his license paperwork in the Department of Motor Vehicles. At the time, he may even have noticed the other tall teenager standing next to him. But it’s doubtful he ever had a clue what was happening. Greg looked something like Parks—a lot, actually—but with a vacant stare. The obvious similarities between them—hair, eyes, height, weight, and even birthdays less then four months apart—were a good physical match; mental didn’t matter.

Parks duplicated the personal details from Greg’s registration paperwork onto his own. Misusing the handy form provided by the Department of Motor Vehicles, Parks simply filled in the blanks; copied item for item, from the information Greg filled onto his. Unlike Greg, who joined the long DMV application line after completing his form, Parks stuffed his copy in a pocket and walked out with a second identity. From experience, he knew that in a police situation, he could use a name, birthday, address, mother’s maiden name—all that crap—to appease a cop without showing ID. It wasn’t hard to fool cops. A guy just had to be prepared. At the time, Parks had no idea how soon his advance planning was to come into play.

The black and white had been following him with flashing reds for a block and a half before Parks bothered to pull over. Parks knew it was back there, but always got a kick out of playing with the cops a little—just a little—before stopping and pretending to be surprised. With the wrong cop, this sort of thing sometimes got him into trouble. He didn’t care; it was fun. On the second order to stop that blasted through the police PA system, Parks could hear in the cop’s voice that a third one might get rough—so he turned around and feigned surprise.

It took about three minutes for the radio dispatcher to confirm Greg Riley‘s identity: a seventeen-year-old white male juvenile, six foot one inch tall, a hundred fifty pounds, with brown hair and green eyes, living at 1351 Fell Street. Almost perfectly matching the over-the-air description the traffic cop gave; one exception was the hair. The difference being that Parks had dyed black hair. This wasn’t a criminal investigation; the match was enough for a skateboard ticket.

For Parks, at the time, things seemed to work out just fine. He had no concern about the cop’s over-the air description of his scar, because he had no idea that anyone was looking for him—certainly Rob and Doris wouldn’t be bothering. Parks forged Greg’s signature to the ticket, agreed with the officer to have a nice day, and waited for the police cruiser to turn out of sight at the corner. Then he jumped back on his board to finish his street ride.

But the file on Poppers’ computer told a different story. The traffic stop was routine; it could easily have gone unnoticed by the DIS agents who monitored police broadcasts. Instead, something got their attention. The officer included an unusual physical feature in his radio description of the faux Greg Riley—a cartoon-like scar on the kid’s wrist. The scar wouldn’t show up in a DMV record, and Greg Riley had no juvenile court files—but Parks did. The one-of-a-kind scar was more than casual information for the Department of Internal Security; it was proof that their target was living in San Francisco under an assumed name—a name the DIS now knew.

It was a big break for Poppers and her crew. Finding the kid in less populated San Francisco was already much easier than it would’ve been in New York. By having a name, they tracked him to a residence hotel in the Mission district in less than a week.

Two weeks of surveillance brought them to last night‘s embarrassing event; the poorly executed enforcement action that could have seriously complicated things for the secret organization. It was crucial that no one outside a small government circle knew about the Dissimulant threat that existed, or the department charged with eliminating that threat—the President hadn’t wanted the information to go public. Luckily, throughout the screw-up, the DIS had remained in the shadows; they still had a chance to get the job done quietly. Poppers closed the window on her screen.

Parks rolled over to check the wind-up clock on the nightstand; it showed a quarter ‘til eight. The oversized clock belonged to Geli, who, when Parks first commented on it, said she preferred the older wind-up things to the newer current ones and then burst into a long spasm of laughter. It took Parks a couple minutes to get that the word “current” was a stupid electricity pun; this sent her into another—only slightly shorter—fit of laughter. Geli could be corny. The clock was just a part of her collection of dead-school junk—old things, with no possible use in the modern world.

Not that books were dead school—not completely anyhow—but she had a lot of them around. Many of them were library books. Parks never knew anybody who went to the library as much as Geli did. He hadn’t been to one—outside of a school—in five years.

She had one of those cigar boxes, made of darkened wood—Spanish cedar—with a small brass latch to keep it closed. Inside the box, she kept a porcelain thimble, a candlesnuffer, some foreign money and an old TV remote. The remote had only five buttons, pressing any one of them gave the same loud clicking sound—like a snapping bottle top. There was something Geli called an egg topper. Apparently, if you needed to cut the top of the shell off soft-boiled eggs, that‘s what you‘d use. (Parks seriously doubted that Geli ate very many soft-boiled eggs.)

In other places around the room, were a number of similarly old and mostly useless things she’d collected; including the dial—just the dial—from an old telephone. The kind of dial you’d spin with your finger to make a call, if the dial attached to a phone—this one attached to nothing.

When Parks once asked why she collected all these things, Geli didn’t give much of an answer. She brushed him off—saying that they brought back old memories. Park’s figured they’d have to be very old memories, since most of the stuff was from at least thirty years before she was born!

Target: Parks

Poppers thought about the time already wasted on just the one target. If the estimated number of threats were anywhere near accurate, there were at least half a million Dissimulants—in the US alone. Once the terrorists recruited enough of them, the nature of the Dissimulant problem would change. In a war, her department would need to be much larger. She had to make sure her political image had the executive qualities necessary to run a big department—she had to whip her team into shape.

Poppers opened a new window, bringing a file labeled “DIS-EA200” on her screen. Then she turned to acknowledge agents Lehr and Freelyn, who had been hovering outside her office door for the last few minutes. She motioned through her office window for them to enter. The partners came in and took the seats offered by their commander’s gesture. No one spoke for thirty seconds.

“This,” Poppers snarled at last, “is now a total mess.” The two agents locked focus on her face and nodded in agreement. “I don’t like stupid mistakes or the situation stupid mistakes put us in.” The two-person team gave no verbal response, just continued to nod their heads as she continued the scolding.

“Good agents make the decision when to expose their intent. Once they do, they’re supposed to finish the job—that‘s their training. Experienced agents like you don‘t start actions if even a small possibility of an abort exists.”

“We know—” Lehr started to explain.

Poppers signaled her disapproval of his interruption by raising her eyebrows and pressing her index finger to her lips. She continued, “Now we have to act in a big and potentially risky way. We’re out of time!”

She gave a pause, to let the previous statement sink in. “We have to complete the job—your job—and get it done tonight.” Poppers was doing everything in the book of management to make her expectations clear.

To some degree, Lehr had expected this balling out. Freelyn was more surprised. She’d expected a reprimand but nothing to this level of intensity. Her boss’s face had made it to purple before she seemed calm enough to continue.

“From the report the two of you filed last night, I gather you believe he still has no real reason to suspect himself as the actual target; that he’ll think this was an identity mix-up.”

“That’s right,” said Lehr.

“Fair enough. Based on what I read in the report, I agree.”

Two other agents, Sterling and Atkins appeared at the office door. Poppers signaled them into the room, continuing with what she was saying to Lehr and Freelyn. “Up until now, he’d have no reason to suspect anything else. This would all change if we fail tonight. After that, it’s certain he’ll know he’s a target.”

The two men entered, nodding to their colleagues as they took seats in the chairs that rested against the office window.

“Our last chance before it becomes difficult—truly difficult—is tonight.” Poppers was calmer now. “If they’re watching him, he’ll become a prime recruit for the terrorists. Once they know he‘s marked he’ll have nothing to lose; convincing him to join them becomes easy.”

Poppers clicked her mouse. The huge screen on her office wall displayed a satellite photo of the Slot, at a zoom level that included details of the surrounding streets within three blocks. Atkins, Sterling, Lehr and Freelyn turned their attention to the screen, as Poppers activated the speaker on her desk—bringing Carey and Adams into the briefing by phone.

Agents Adams and Carey were already at the target location, recently arriving in advance of the night’s enforcement action. They joined the conference through a secured wireless line via BT Specials—high range blue-tooth devices—connected to the cruiser’s built-in communications system. The BTS’s were comprised of a tiny earpiece—small enough to be worn and remain undetected from as close as two feet—and a separate input device, one function of which was to act as a microphone. The input device most often clipped to the shirt collar or inside a jacket, behind the lapel.

The car’s communication system included a dashboard which dual-purposed as a computer display—in this case, synced with the image from Poppers’ computer. The two men kept an occasional eye on the screen, but their focus was on the front door of the Slot and the street front window of the target’s floor in the hotel. The log showed that Parks was in the building, although not detected in his room since the agents arrived.

Bored of playing with his scar and with looking around Geli’s room at her various oddities, Parks decided to get out of bed for a quick shower. Geli would soon be back from her visit with the old lady. Parks was anxious to grab some dinner with her and find out what—if anything—the old lady had to say about his situation with the Crown Vic. He slipped his jeans on.

Poppers confirmed that the computer‘s remote display was up. “One Papa-one, do you have the visual?”

“Papa-one, Romeo.” The confirmation—Carey’s voice—came through the speaker.

“Alright teams,” Poppers began, “here will be our set-up for tonight.” She guided the mouse, moving the on-screen pointer to each of three marked locations—black rectangles—on the satellite map. The rectangles represented the opening positions for the partnered agents and their cars.

“On the street in front of the location: a vehicle at each end of the block—here, and here. The third car starts on the street behind the hotel—dental offices, with access to the rear of the hotel.”

The display changed to a drawing—a simple interior plan of the hotel’s third floor. Doors for the rooms connected along a common hallway. The main staircase was in the middle. Next to the bathroom at one end of the hall, was the internal fire stairwell. At the other end, a large window with folding fire stairs that dropped to the street. All of the little blue-line boxes, representing the hotel rooms, were exactly the same shape and size—one was shaded in pink.

From the hall, Parks made a stop at his own room to grab a towel, shower gel, and some cleaner clothes. He pulled his towel from its drying spot on the back of his room’s only chair. Rescuing a near-empty shower gel bottle from the trash can—he meant to buy a new one—to shake out what he could for one last use. He still had new underwear from the pack he liberated from an understaffed, overpriced department store—that was good—but he had to select the best of his jeans, hoodies, and socks by sniff test.

Although different from how he’d left it yesterday, in his hurry Parks didn’t catch the subtle changes to his room. Even on a normal day, they might’ve gone unnoticed: slightly repositioned bed, replaced table lamp, minor shift in the power outlet cover—none obvious. He shut the door and headed down to end of the hall, to the bathroom for the third floor tenants.

Through the speakerphone, Agent Carey announced Parks’ movements in his room, confirming that the newly planted motion detector was functioning properly. Poppers reminded her crew that the device would be critical to confirm that Parks was in his room at the start of the scheduled enforcement action. Then joked, “We don’t want to move in to his room if he’s out in the toilet taking care of business; then have him walk up behind and catch us waiting around with our weapons in our hands.” Poppers threw a smirk at the members of the team in the office.

Most of the details were standard, dry and boring, but the agents kept focus as Poppers continued. Poppers, Lehr and Freelyn would comprise the enforcement crew—the others, street support for the enforcement. At 2100 hours, with the target confirmed in his room, Poppers would give the command to execute. The three member EC would leave vehicle one to enter the building and head for the target’s room. Minimum exposure inside was key; at no time during the action would they announce their identity.

As usual in these cases, Poppers was choosing her words carefully, voicing what she needed to say, and leaving certain details to the common understanding of the mission. Specifically, she avoided legally compromising terms regarding the nature of the final action.

“Once in the target’s room—if it’s determined he’s a physical or flight threat—the authority to kill is granted.” Understood but unspoken in the statement, was that even if he was asleep, the members of the EC would consider the suspect a threat—killing Parks was the purpose of the enforcement.

“Weapons, remnants of drugs and drug trafficking paraphernalia will be left at the scene of the shooting as an aid to local authorities in their investigation of the incident.”

These were items of evidence, which the EC would plant at the scene. As far as local police were aware, there was no such authority as the Department of Internal Security—so, it didn’t exist; it couldn‘t be questioned. The police inspectors who showed up to investigate would need to discover their own plausible reason for the hotel shooting. The drugs left behind would serve this purpose.

“Our crew will not remain at the scene, or be a part of subsequent police investigations into the matter.” There was nothing new in what Poppers was saying; the DIS always left it for the local police to sort out the details.

The rest of the plan—also routine for the DIS—had the Sterling and Atkins car pulling around from their position behind the hotel. They would pick the EC up and bring them away from the scene. Adams and Carey would split up, one would drive their vehicle, and the other would remove the original Lehr and Freelyn car—cleaning the scene.

“To enter, execute and exit will take five minutes,” Poppers said as she killed the wall display. “One Papa-one, did you copy all that?”

Poppers waited for a voice from the speakerphone to confirm. When neither Carey nor Adams responded, she repeated the question. “One Papa-one, did you copy?”

If things had gone as hoped by Geli, Parks would have never had the time to complete a shower. She’d have been back to the room already—rushing him out the door.

As Geli came within a half block of the Slot, she made a decision not to continue on her way into the hotel—to her room and the friend waiting inside. She continued instead down the sidewalk across from the Slot, heading toward the next corner.

Poppers’ office was dead silent as everyone in the room waited for some sort of response from their colleagues in the field. The terrorists had successfully identified and recently killed a number of agents as they sat on stakeouts similar to this one. While no one in the room wanted to think about it—it was all they could think about in the silence.

Geli’s redirected path brought her alongside the open window of the very thing that had forced her to change her direction and plan. It was a black Crown Vic, parked, and occupied in the front seat by two men dressed in suits. She could sense the men—aware of her—as she passed. But their focus remained on the front entrance of the Slot. This was the one place on the street, which Geli made certain her eyes avoided.

“Papa-one, Romeo.” Carey finally announced.

“One Papa-one, what was the delay?”

“We had a stranger—WFJ—walking past our ten-twenty.”

“What’s your condition now Papa-one?”

“We’re clear. She went on—turned at the end of the street.”

“Romeo, Papa-one. We’ll be on location at twenty-one hundred hours. This is Echo-one out.” Poppers released the speakerphone with a quick jab to her mouse, and then returned her attention to the agents in her office.

“Just under an hour to gear up and get out there.” She rose from her desk and started for the door. The four agents followed her out and down the hall, headed for the tactical weapons room.