H2O: The Novel Part 10

The hammer fell. I chose between a prolonged agony for the slick gray creature and a hasty death. A choice between misery and peace.

Standing at the water's edge at Seattle's downtown wharf, that rusty old ball-peen hammer fell again. I made a decision.

I am not crazy. That option must die tonight, in this harbor.

"Crazy" meant I'd lost all control. I swung the killing machine, eliminating the option that I might be nuts. I made the determination. I concluded the early diagnosis. I controlled the outcome.

Of course, that left only one other choice. If not crazy, then what? Visions?

I chose misery over peace, well aware of the implication: I had become my mother.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

THREE DAYS LATER.

I'D TIMED it perfectly. Jogging toward the front door of ISIP, I didn't even break pace as Hiram opened the door. I traipsed right in, his first customer on Sat.u.r.day morning.

"Early bird!" His bearded lips split into a wide grin. "You're pretty wired, Ms. Pepper. D'you win the lottery?" ISIP's owner asked, then pointed to a pair of piping-hot carafes on his "Blend of the Week" table.

I nodded, wagging a finger toward the Hawaiian Kona Peaberry selection. "Something like that." I unslung my backpack and pulled out my MacBook Air, ready to connect to ISIP's wireless web. It came up a dry hole, as if his Internet service had never existed.

"Hey, Hiram, what gives? The wireless has vanished!"

Hiram frowned, thumping a steaming mug down atop my table, then turned on a heel. " Tenth time this week!" he bellowed and stomped into the server room behind the counter.

Moments later my laptop pinged while I watched, steaming caffeine in hand. My screen sprang to life, filled with megabytes of fresh data to be allocated and a.n.a.lyzed. Digital Christmas. My spider script worked!

Moments later, as I bent over the new material, Hiram's voice snapped me out of my playtime.

"Kate, we need to talk." Hiram's smile had upended itself, a sour-faced parody of joy.

"What's up?"

"Your spider search, kiddo. It's choking my servers and cras.h.i.+ng my network." He shook his head. "You're the reason."

"I . . . I don't understand, Hiram. You know a spider couldn't do that. It's designed to-"

"Yeah, I know what it's designed to do. But I can tell you that whatever search this thing of yours is executing has choked my machines the way wet gra.s.s kills lawnmowers. The wireless ran fine before your spider script, but it's worthless without a network, and that crashes three or four times a day. Thanks to your program." He shrugged and laid a hand on my shoulder. "Sorry, friend. No more searches during normal work hours."

A hard edge lurked somewhere beneath the surface of that last comment. I'd affected more than Hiram's bottom line.

"I'll shut it down soon, okay? I promise. Just let me run it a little while longer, and I'll let you charge me double to make up for the possible loss."

"This is what I do for a living, Kate. I love this place and I want to keep it. You know as well as I do that word of mouth can make or break a place. If word gets out that ISIP's Internet is on the rocks, then it won't matter how much coffee I sell."

I nodded. He had a point. "Make you a deal, Hiram. You charge me double for the next week and I'll tweak the script to make sure it won't crash your servers. Deal?"

The bearded mug before me softened a bit, taking on a much more familiar likeness. Hiram chuckled. "Okay."

I took a sip of delightful Hawaiian brew and went back to my razor-thin laptop. All of the e-mail, forum threads, reader feeds, and other information my script had garnered aligned themselves in an orderly list. Ranked by their relevance to my search, the list stood arrayed like electronic soldiers ready to deliver their reports. A "10" rating caught my eye, a response to an instant message query my spider script had generated and pushed out to social media networks. The response came from someone with the pseudonym WRKRJC. It reminded me of a radio call sign, not a Facebook tag.

The t.i.tle reeled me in: "Have you considered the alternative?"

Hungry for answers, I dove at the keyboard. My fingers, honed from years of coding and secretarial duty, flew with a life of their own. "Okay, I'll bite," I wrote. "What alternative?"

Middle school girl-likes-boy b.u.t.terflies fluttered inside as I waited. Was I really this close to an answer? The spider script had to work.

My laptop pinged in reply, and words appeared on my screen like magic. "Excuse me?"

I arched an eyebrow. That wasn't the response I expected.

I typed an emoticon smile. "You sent a message in response to my search for information on visions."

The response was immediate. "Oh yeah! Sorry. How are you?"

More fast fingers. "I'm well. Right now, but not all the time. And you?"

"Better than I deserve. So, what's up? You said you're seeing things?" WRKRJC certainly didn't fool around. I liked that.

"Yes," I typed, then paused, steeling myself for the next words. "The available evidence says I'm having visions. But I'm not even sure that's possible. That stuff's for movies." I rested my forehead in my palms after hitting Enter.

I really must be nuts. Before long, I'd be standing on a street corner in a trench coat with a sign that foretold doom and apocalypse.

"People can have visions," came back the quick reply. "You shouldn't be concerned with that. It's the source of the visions that you need to unravel."

The chatter grabbed me, words that rang with confidence and a.s.suredness. No novice to the online world, however, I knew those characteristics could be counterfeit. I decided to test the veracity of my new friend, WRKRJC.

"How can a vision have a source? I mean, isn't the mind the source?"

This time there was a long pause.

"While it's true that a person's mind can 'see' things, like a dream or a daydream, a vision is a little different. Lots of people get caught up in self-created worlds and wind up drowning in a sea of self-induced experiences. Since you're questioning the validity of what you're seeing, I suspect you aren't headed down this path. Dreams and daydreams come from elements that are already inside your head-like memories. Visions, however, can contain messages and images inside them that you've never seen or experienced before. For visions, a person's mind is like an envelope. It holds and stores the vision inside it, but that's where the relations.h.i.+p ends. Just like the letter inside the envelope, a vision has to come from somewhere else. Then, there's the other alternative. Hallucinations. Those have a definite cause: drugs, fatigue, fever, psychosis . . . and spiritual possession. That kind of thing."

Impressive. This WRKRJC wasn't some New-Age flake spouting stuff about aligning with the cosmos, stroking crystals, and chasing chakras. I'd already waded through that drivel. I pushed the chatter a little deeper.

"Okay. That's believable," I typed. This felt good, to communicate with someone on an even footing. Xavier and I never communicated. We connected physically, even emotionally, but never mentally. No deep discussions and dialogue; he was a hunk under his s.h.i.+rt, but cotton candy in the mental department. I felt an immediate attraction to this I.M. friend, hoping I'd at last found someone with whom I could share my problems and my fears.

But was it a "him" or a "her?"

"I'm no druggie, I'm not sick, and I get some sleep. Scratch the hallucinations option for now. Let's talk visions. You said they come from somewhere else, like a letter in the envelope. Define 'somewhere else.'"

As if the chatter antic.i.p.ated my question, the next message replied, "Let's just say they either come from the 'good side of town,' or the 'bad side.' Which side of town are you on?" He followed his question with a winking emoticon smile, indicating that something akin to a private joke just pa.s.sed between us.

I had a feeling that WRKRJC and I would get along just fine.

"I hate to say this, Kate, but you've got to go home."

Hiram stood over me, his rain jacket thrown over a shoulder and keys jangling in his hand. I'd been so preoccupied that I hadn't noticed the time. ISIP stood empty, a sh.e.l.l of its busy self. I'd grown so engrossed in the web and talking to my new I.M. friend about my mental failings that I'd lost all connection with the present.

"What time is it?" I asked, caught in the middle of a great article about recent hallucinations among Seattle residents, a post that WRKRJC sent to me. Apparently, I had company; a vision virus had made its rounds here in the rainy city. Just like Dr. Lin had said. That was some comfort, but not much.

"It's nearly six-thirty, Kate. Sorry, but we close at six on weekends." He jangled the keys again and smiled, curly brown sprouts of his beard turning up on the corners of his mouth.

"No problem," I replied, packing up. Nothing Hiram could say could ruin this day, after the success of my spider subroutine and meeting someone with what seemed to be credible answers. I pulled my gear together. "Give me a sec."

"Glad to. D'you bring a raincoat? It's gonna storm tonight."

I froze, today's success forgotten in an instant. I really had lost my connection with reality. I didn't own a car and had jogged down from my condo for a quick cup of java. But I'd stayed all day. That was a first.

"No. Didn't bring anything but this," I said, pointing at my workout top and pants. They might stop a sprinkle but nothing more. In a full-fledged rainstorm, I'd get pummeled. My laptop, too.

"Can I stay and call a cab, Hiram?" I asked, my pulse quickening.

"Sorry, Kate, but I have a can't-miss date with the wife. We're barely going to make the show as it is. You can wait on the stoop, though. Okay?"

An uncovered stoop while I waited on an unreliable cab, a mad dash home with a bouncing laptop on my back, or hide out at Walgreens across the street?

This would be the great test. A vision now would be certain proof that water was the source of my anguish. Betrayed by my first love.

I decided to make a run for it.

Hiram let me out the locked door, and I checked my pack once more for keys and personal things. I was determined to not leave a pile of important materials at ISIP and lose them until Monday. He nudged me with a gentle push into the open air. Hiram had to go. I'd never seen him in such a hurry.

"See you Monday?" he asked good-naturedly as he dashed off.

"Yeah. Sure," I replied, not sure of anything. I stared up at the sky. Not typical Seattle; this looked like Wizard-of-Oz weather, a green-gray line of towering thunderstorms approaching from the Pacific. I didn't have long.

"See ya," he yelled when I dashed off the stoop into a brisk humid ocean breeze. I could smell it-the air laden with ozone. A cold front headed our way fast, and home lay ten minutes away at a jogging pace. A cab might take that long to show up.

Time to go.

Before I reached the corner, I heard the first clap of thunder. Like a rendition of the William Tell Overture, the storm let go a boom with a gut-rumbling crash. I cinched my backpack while I jogged, then ran faster, pulling the straps as tight as they'd go to prevent my feather-light laptop from bouncing in the cavernous pack.

Any day before the advent of my great "vision disease," I'd be loving this kind of weather. Bring it on, rain and all. I loved a storm, to be immersed in a downpour, and the wetter the better. A little hail made it even more interesting. But now, staring into the face of my mental disaster, a single drop might be an errant bullet, and a storm cloud an armed gang. Considering the last few days, and what I'd learned on the web, if I was soaked by this storm I might lose my mind.

My feet pounded twice the pace of my heart for block after block as I raced toward my neighborhood. At two blocks to go, within view of my condo, the first drops-big crocodile tears-slammed into a car winds.h.i.+eld at my left. The temperature plummeted ten degrees inside the span of five houses. More crocodile tears pelted the sidewalk, some of them whizzing past my cheek, another slapping into the street when I dashed across an intersection. A block to go. Frigid air blasted my face.

Two big sloppy drops. .h.i.t me on the shoulder and in the chest. My Gore-Tex sh.e.l.l knocked the water away; it was only a matter of time before I caught one directly in the face. I readied my hands, mentally a.s.sessing the pain I'd encounter if I fainted while running at speed. Road rash, torn-up palms, maybe a concussion when my head hit the pavement. It would be ugly.

Half a block to go.

I yelled at my door from as far as I thought the automated system would hear my cue. I owned the only voice-activated door on the block, a convenience for shopping days, not for escaping an approaching storm. Nothing happened. I yelled again, out of breath and fighting a pounding heart.

"Open!" Again, I yelled. "Open!"

Nothing. I was three doors from the condo, and I could see the sane freedom of a dry home beckoning me through the bay window on the front of my place. My stuff, dry and nestled away, waited for me.

"Open!"

Two doors away, my own portal started to swing. I would make it!

Then I heard the Devil himself, the cascade of rain that comes with a fast-approaching storm. A war zone raged only a hundred yards ahead of me, sheets of rain piling down on cars. The well-defined front stood feet away, and its early warrior drops blasted all about me. With a hand on my stair rail, feet on the steps, headed toward the safety of my open door, I took the first hit.

A cold monster drop slammed me in the face like a dragonfly smacking the winds.h.i.+eld of a speeding car. It wet my entire cheek. It was like being hit in the face with a baseball bat; the force of the water's imagery knocked me back that instant. I grabbed hard at the black steel railing along the stairs, desperate for some stability. Only one step to go. I'd s.h.i.+fted from full speed to some horror film-like slow motion, overtaken by the weather front. Pounding rain swept up the street. I got a hand on the doorjamb as sheets of water drenched me, a frightening ripping rain and windstorm knocking me into the side of my open door.

My mind swam with a jumble of images. Every water drop in this maelstrom packed a wallop of mental mayhem. Through it, somehow, I managed to fall forward instead of back down the steps. I landed on a wet wooden portico inside my condo and lost all connection with this world as the storm raged outside. Sodden, windblown, and cold, I was transported to someplace far from home.

To a place of perpetual wetness.

My feet were anch.o.r.ed in muck, a gray sticky mud-flat that stretched a hundred yards in both directions. I stood tall and straight, immobile but aware, a pithy stalk of green.

Ten thousand reeds like me stood to my left and my right. A broad shallow river stretched out to my left-cool, clear water flowing by me slowly as it coursed down the broad valley that hemmed us in. Ahead of me to the east, dry barren mountains of aged rock shot up from a salty desert plain. Behind me to the west, more mountains stretched to the sky-rugged stone, white and parched. Other than my sister reeds, I could see no green in any direction. A barren wasteland surrounded this blessed ribbon of water that I thrived in, my eternal home.

Loud voices headed my way, a crowd of people moving slowly, slogging into the mudflat and pressing down other reeds like me so they could reach the water. Somewhere within earshot, a lone voice rang out, crying aloud in the wilderness. The ma.s.s of humanity worked its way toward him, and mucky step by step, he slogged toward me. His voice carried far into the reeds about me as though amplified by some unseen force.

"You brood of vipers!" he yelled, stopping in a shallow bend of the river just downstream from me and pointing at someone on the bank. "Who warned you to flee?" He waved a heavy wooden staff at men who pulled their fine robes up about them to wade into the swamp. They feared the embrace of the mud.

The loud man wore a rough dingy robe, pulled tight with only a rope belt around his waist. While the finely dressed ones stood on the riverbank, flanked on all sides by my fellow reeds, he waded into the middle of the river with others who were dressed as he, a ma.s.s of common people who called to him. He welcomed these people into his arms and continued to wade upstream. He stopped abreast of me and dipped his hands into the cool flowing water that gave me life.

He cupped water and lifted it high above a boy, then let the water course over the lad's head, saying, "After me will come one who is more powerful than I." Another came to him, a woman weeping and holding her head down. He cupped more water and poured it on her, wetting her head and her shawl. "His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his thres.h.i.+ng floor," he cried aloud. His voice carried to the distant hills, to sheep grazing on scrubs of plants that eked out some existence in the desert climate.

The water that surrounded me surged with power, as if the ma.s.sive hand that guided it toward me and my sister reeds did so with a plan, a purpose in its existence. A hand moved the river slowly beyond my view, but brought it here for this very moment, for this man in the rough robes, for the men and women he immersed in its embrace. Each man and woman, every child, once immersed in the waters and wetted with his cupped hands, came out refreshed, a new creature.

The crowds parted and another Man approached, a citizen not like the rest. Although clad in common clothes, his dress was radiant-white and glowing. I felt his presence, as though the Man created or directed the river that flowed about me. He became One with us, part of our world of reeds. I felt I knew him, yet I'd never met him.

The loud rough-dressed man stooped, sinking to his knees in the water as the Radiant One approached. We embraced them both where they sank in the life-mud at our roots. The rough man spoke to the Radiant One in a quiet voice that I alone could hear. "No, Lord. I need you. Do you come to me?"

The Radiant One put his hand on the shoulder of the rough man, lifting him up from the cool waters. "Let it be so now." Then the Radiant One bowed his head, sinking to his knees near my roots.

The man in rough clothes cupped his hands, dipped, and lifted water toward the sky, then wet the head of the One who knelt in our flow. As the water poured over him, I felt incredible power thrum through our river, penetrating my roots and making me more alive than ever. His spirit became part of me, deep inside me somehow, part of my birth, an essential part of my inner being. I wanted to know this Man better, to be one with him.

As the Radiant One arose from the water, I watched in adoration and praise. A dove, s.h.i.+ning white in the brilliant sun and desert heat, descended from a cloudless sky to alight on his head. He put his hand out, steadying himself by holding on to me as he arose. Standing, the Radiant One caressed my smooth stalk and spoke to me alone. Out of a million reeds drawing life from this river and mud, he chose to speak to me.

"I am calling you," he said, straightening one of my twisted leaves.

"Who are you?" I asked. I felt his pull and wanted to embrace him. He spoke only two words in response.

"I am."