The Annihilation of Foreverland (17 page)

“The boys call this the Nowhere,” she said. “It’s outside… the eyes of Foreverland. Outside the reach of he who… is Foreverland.”

“Those are memories?”

“In a way…” Her cheeks suddenly matched the color of her hair and toenails. “I know you have questions and I’ll answer them the best I can, but the truth is… I don’t know much and we don’t have much time…” She wrapped her arms around her chest like she was hugging herself. “I’m sorry. It’s just… he hurts so much… and you’re our only chance… and I never…”

She trailed off. She had difficulty finding words, like she had to search for them.

“You mean Reed?” Danny asked.

She nodded, hugging herself again.

“Who are you?” Danny shook his head.
That sounded rude.
“I’m sorry, I just don’t know much about Reed. Or you.”

She thought, staring blankly. “I don’t really know, Danny Boy. I just woke up here…”

Danny remembered the confusion of waking up on the paper-covered table and Mr. Jones staring at him with his white lab coat. He didn’t know anything before that moment. She had the same experience, only she woke up in Foreverland.

Is she real?
Definitely rude.
But is she a memory? Reed’s memory? But she’s here, alive. She had to be something other than a memory, right?

“If you’re in here, how do you know about Reed?” Danny asked.

“I see the boys’ thoughts. I see what they bring in from the island… I know the suffering they go through… before the needle.”

That’s how she knew about the half-pipe at Christmas. She saw it in my thoughts.

“Then you know Reed is—”

She began shaking her head and rocking in her self-hug.

Damn.

She was still muttering about Reed. Danny stopped her. “How can I help?”

Her oversized eyes were glassy. Her brow furrowed when she pointed at the chair.

“Sit.”

Danny went to the chair. When he sat down, a desk appeared from the floor and circled all the way around him. Several keyboards appeared.

“You don’t really need the keyboards or the monitors… but you’re familiar with that medium… so that’s what you’ll start with.”

She glared at him.

“You need to understand… I’m as much a prisoner in here as you are out there.”

“But Foreverland is a computer program.”

“I don’t know what this is, Danny Boy. You need to help us find out… what it is.”

“How?”

She lifted her arms and the walls flickered like the entire room was a monitor. The walls were blue with white puffy clouds, like the wallpaper of a computer desktop. Danny brushed his fingers over the keyboard and felt something for the first time since arriving.

A familiar thrill.

A bead of sweat trickled down his cheek. Strange, this was an illusion but his body believed it.

It took several minutes to get familiar with the 360-degree monitor and multiple keyboards, but the keystrokes were the same as any computer. He accessed the mainframe and was soon sneaking around the security firewalls. The system was like one he’d never encountered. The code seemed to evolve like a living organism. Maybe it was a program that believed it was alive, just like he was sweating.

He synchronized several programs and let them run like digital wrecking balls smashing holes in databases and security code. He spun on his chair to unravel the next layer of the firewall. The security system operated like a virtual vault that continued to change the combination. Danny learned its tendencies and began to solve the complex code. His fingers blurred across the keyboards but it wasn’t fast enough.

I’m inside my head. I don’t need the keyboards.

He began to call out commands instead of typing and they were executed just as if he’d pecked them on the keyboard. He swiveled around to watch geometric shapes of computer code connect, shift and reconnect like organic chemistry. He stopped seeing the numbers and letters and began to see the computer language in three-dimensional objects that began to float off the walls. He shouted at them, made them change direction, change form, merge or divide. He was looking for the arrangement that would open the door to the system that was driving Foreverland.

Still, he was behind the evolving firewall that was always half a step ahead.

In the mind.

He focused inwardly, forming his next command into a sharpened thought instead of a spoken word. Then he created another one. And another. The shapes began to move again. Silently, Danny looked around the room and sent the thought-commands out. The room was in continuous movement, washed in morphing shapes and colors. Danny stopped looking at what they were doing so that he wasn’t limited by his eyes. He connected with his mind; he began to construct the code, predicting outcomes, glancing only to verify what they were becoming. He was in the center of another universe that operated on numbers and formulas and colors, looking for the right combination—
The room went black. Something clicked.

A spot of light hung over his head.

“What is it?” the girl said.

He’d forgotten she was there. “The firewall cracked.”

“What’s that mean?”

More clicking, like blocks were stacking and pieces latching and uncoupling. The spot of light shrunk to a pinpoint and began to dim. The clicking ended. Something fell into place like a key sliding into a lock. And turning.

The point exploded in blinding light.

And then they were flying above planet Earth.

“We’re through,” Danny said.

“Where?”

Danny stood up. “It’s the outside world.”

It exists
.

There was an outside world. The desks and keyboard had disappeared. Danny walked on clouds, looking at the blue ocean thousands of feet below.

“We’re seeing the world through satellites,” he said.

“Where’s the island?”

Danny put together a few thought-commands, requesting the location of the portal he’d just hacked. The view spun like the planet rotated below. They were in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean, halfway between South America and
Africa
.

Nothing but water.

[Enhance,]
he thought.

The view zoomed toward the water and two tiny islands came into view. The southern one was very small and narrow. There appeared to be an airstrip the length of it. The larger island to the north was shaped like
South Carolina
.

“That’s it,” Danny muttered. “That’s where we are.”

“It’s in the middle of nowhere.”

“Exactly.”

He began pacing around, observing the two islands. The details were sharper than what he’d seen in his flying sessions in Foreverland. There was the Yard in the center of the larger island and the horseshoe-shaped dormitory and the top of the Haystack nestled in the trees.

That’s where I am. Right now.

He scrolled the view to the south end, over the Mansion. He enhanced the view until he was walking right over the roof. The area behind the Mansion was a resort with swimming pools and lounging areas. There was a large pier attached to the shore with a yacht.

He looked at the smaller island, now off in the distance about five miles.

“They must fly into that island.” Danny took a few steps and the view scrolled beneath him until the airstrip was just below their feet. There was a hangar at one end and an empty pier on shore. “And then bring people over on the yacht.”

The girl stood next to him. “What do you think they’re doing?”

The view returned to the Mansion. Someone was swimming. One of the Investors was taking long, smooth strokes to the end of the pool before turning to backstroke in the other direction.

“Looks like they’re on vacation,” he said.

After scrolling over the rest of the Mansion yard and finding nothing unusual, he began to look at the rest of the island. The view – directly overhead – looked like a privately owned tropical island. If someone flew over it, there would be nothing out of the ordinary.

“There’s not much time.” The girl had been walking along Danny’s side, looking where he was looking but watching for his reaction. “Is there anything here that helps?”

He grunted. “Not really.”

Danny continued walking, looking for anything that would be of interest. The Yard had a few people in it. The Chimney was highest in the sky, the stovepipe quiet. The waves were crashing violently on the north shore. The beach was empty, of course, because Reed was still in the Haystack with those vicious looking things on his hands.

Danny turned.

The girl was standing in the middle of the room, her hands clutched in front of her. She saw his thought and her eyes were big but not glassy this time.

“How do you know Reed?” he asked.

“It’s hard to know… my memories…”

“They’re mixed up?”

She shrugged.

“But you’re stuck in here?” Danny asked. “You can’t get out of Foreverland?”

“I don’t know… I just remember suddenly being here… something was after me when I woke up…”

Danny waited, but she seemed more confused than before. “So you escaped into the Nowhere?”

Quick nod, again. “No one can come out here. Not even him.”

The Director.

“You know that Reed dreams about you. He thinks you’re telling him not to come, that he has to—”

“I know… I just… want him to be okay.”

She turned away so Danny couldn’t see her face. Her shoulders tensed. He thought she might be weeping, but when she turned back around, Danny thought it was anger fading from her expression.

Her fists were clenched. “What are we going to do… to make all this end?”

An old man was getting out of the pool. He wrapped a towel over his shoulders and waved to someone back at the Mansion. A young man ran down the wide, curving steps off the balcony.
Parker.

“I’ll figure something out before the next round,” Danny said. “Can you bring me back here?”

“Yes, but it’ll have to be like the last time… just look for a fight and I’ll get you back.”

Danny looked across the island at the Haystack where Sid’s body was twenty feet away from his. “That shouldn’t be too hard.”

The random voices began penetrating the walls and the grainy mist twisted across the floor, obscuring the view below.

“There isn’t much… time. You need to figure something out… fast.”

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

The light began to fade.

“Goodbye, Danny Boy.”

The fog swirled around him. Her red hair faded to pink. “Wait! What’s your name?”

The voices were louder, one after another. The gray fog thickened, wrapping him in a cocoon of
silky
darkness. The voices got farther away. Danny slid back to the space between Foreverland and the Haystack.

Just before he felt his flesh and the hard concrete on his back, he heard one last word from far away.

Lucinda.

ROUND

Real Estate Tycoon Missing at Sea

LAS VEGAS
,
Nevada
. – Local real estate and business billionaire, Franklin Constantino, 82, was reported missing after taking his yacht for a solo excursion out of San Francisco into the Pacific Ocean.

Constantino had been diagnosed with lung cancer two months before his disappearance. According to one of his staff, he rarely boarded his 70’ yacht without a captain and crew, but insisted on a lone journey for some “soul searching”.

The Coast Guard received distress calls about fifty miles off the coast but were unable to locate the ship. Evidence suggests the ship may have sunk but nothing has been confirmed.

The top floor of the Chimney hummed as the electric motors began winding up the shades. Evening light – diffused by the window’s tint – filled the room.

The Director was stretched out on a comfortable recliner. His lips began twitching before his eyes fluttered open. He stared vacantly at the black ceiling for a few moments before reaching up. He slid the needle out of the stent. He quivered. The sensation of the lubricated needle was a queer one that tickled the inside of his brain.

He rubbed salve over the hole and sighed while the Foreverland world faded. It would take a few minutes before he felt all the way back in his body. He drummed his fingers on the cushiony armrests while the chair’s internal rolling pins massaged his back, legs and buttocks. Circulation was important after lying still for so long. When the tingling faded, he put his feet on the ground and slowly stood.

He hadn’t eaten since he’d gone “inside the needle” (another term the boys invented) but he wasn’t thinking of food. He was thinking of what he just saw.

He found her.

The Director mixed a drink.