Prologue and Chapter 1

The Messenger
By
James Dillingham




 
Once again, I find myself dying too soon. I suppose the curse of life, any life, is that death haunts us with its insistence. Such is the nature of the Grand Design; immortality without end, excepting of course, the need to die from time to time.

Don’t get me wrong. Death is not a bad thing, at least to the dead. Death is only truly suffered by the living. As for the recently departed, it’s as we all know, at least “knew” before we forgot. Death is an opening of infinite doors to infinite possibilities.

Death is easy and requires little or no oversight. My concern is with the infinite possibilities offered to the living.

Every now and then, a realm of existence begins to fade; its infinite possibilities diminished.

My job is to keep that from happening.

To do this, I must manage probabilities and outcomes. The Grand Design is just that and I am but a simple servant working within the parameters of that design. I can’t do magic. I don’t perform miracles. But I can nudge. Like anyone, I can make a difference. In the end, that difference can be significant.
Sometimes I tire of nudging. I nudge and fail then I nudge and make a minor gain before failing again; always I learn so the next time I can do better; but still, it’s tiring. Sometimes I want to give up. “Why not let this one fail? What is one out of infinity anyway?”

Alas, the Grand Design has other plans for me. I must succeed in this no matter how many tries it takes: one last experience to be had before I can move on. One is no less important that the infinite so until I succeed in this, I will continue stacking my lifetimes upon themselves.

I do know the task. I understand it with great certainty. The irony is, my best chance of success comes only by first forgetting.

JD11



Chapter One

“Where am I?”

The thought blinks out of my head in a flash, pushed aside by the searing pain that becomes my entire world. Nothing else exists but a pain; that infinite pain. Moments drag into an eternity. I’m unaware of any time before or after. It’s as if this has always been. I fight to keep from losing my self. I struggle for either control or escape.

An idea, borne of desperation, takes shape and I begin working quickly; portioning off sections of my awareness. The shelter I am constructing will be both a prison and a sanctuary; but I must hurry. This singleness of purpose pushes back the distractions of my physical self, if only for the moment.

My body is on the verge of a fatal decision.

“How about we just toss in the towel,” it says. Maybe it’s right. Maybe I’m right. This cannot be the right path forward. But I know it is…alas…

Looking inward, I find the pathway of synapses that carry the fiery signal to my mind. It’s me against my body as I block one pain signal only to have my own nervous system reroute the signal ensuring my brain gets the “Danger Will Robinson” signal that will supposedly spark an appropriate reaction from the body to avoid further danger. “I’m working on it,” I think trying to reassure myself while blocking yet another pathway.

I struggle to create my mental “safe house” but it’s hard to concentrate

“Shall we give up now,” my body suggests from the sidelines. I’d love to accommodate but there is too much as stake.

“Too much at stake?”

“What does that mean?” I ask myself, momentarily distracted by the fact that I seem to know something that I didn’t know I knew.

There is no answer as I swing my efforts back to fighting the battle I know that I cannot, and yet must, win. There is too much damage; too much harm has been done. I look at the “future” paths and see only darkness…except for that one small thread of light.

I mentally grasp at that thread as I complete my mental escape pod. I climb inside and shut the door. Darkness becomes my world.

-----

Off the grid at ninety miles an hour.

Jack smiled at the thought. No obligations. No family, debt or any of those things that had been holding him back his entire life. Now there was just him and the open road ahead. Highway 50 had the well-earned title of The Loneliest Road in America. Perfect for a man intent on running away from everything.

Slowly, the smile became more of a fabrication as Jack’s mind insisted on butting in with things like “Wherever you go, there you are.”

“You can’t run from yourself, Jack.”

Jack knew this. Still, a change of venue couldn’t hurt.

Meanwhile, he pretended to be happy and pressed just a little harder on the gas as his Jeep struggled to keep its oversized tires on the road. In the end, maybe it was the speed; maybe Jack just lost track of driving or maybe, the Jeep had just had enough pavement and sought a path more to its liking.

One minute he was screaming down the empty highway; the next, he was flying off the road and into the endless sagebrush and gully-ways that made up the high desert of Nevada east of Reno.

The Jeep landed hard as Jack’s mind raced through the obligatory “life passing before one’s eyes.” Military service – Special Forces in Afghanistan; Love and a Wife. Job and success. No wife, no job…betrayal aplenty. He saw the final scene before it happened as the slow-motion reel played out. He saw the Jeep’s tires blow as sage and sand kicked up over the windshield. A sharp pull to the left started a roll that seemed to go on forever. There’s the ground, now sky, now ground again. He rolled and rolled before finally coming to a stop at the edge of a cliff overlooking a small gully. The Jeep teetered for a moment as Jack watch from the edge of his seat in Subconscious Thought Theater. The, predictably, it toppled over the edge followed by an obligatory explosion and fireball.

“There’s always a fireball,” he thought.

An instant later, Jack flashed back to the real world, the one where he was still in his Jeep albeit a bit more airborne than the off-road vehicle had been designed for.

The Jeep landed hard and then…it just sped off into the desert with a slack-jawed Jack somehow still clinging to the steering wheel, and to his new-found extra minutes of life.

Having survived the landing, one might expect an application of the brakes followed by a thankful kissing of the ground. Never happened. The car continued to speed ahead as if it had never left the highway. Jack white-knuckled the wheel and tried his best to miss the larger ditches, boulders and smallish desert trees. Seconds became minutes and Jack’s brain had yet to mentally throw the “stop car” switch. Then the change began to happen. In an apparent high-speed death charge through the desert, time slowed down. Fear began to morph into something new. Jack began to feel the rhythm of swerving, braking and accelerating as he rode the Jeep bronco-like across the raw and untamed terrain. He saw safe passages before they entered his field of vision. His grip loosen and his heart slowed from the “holy shit!” setting to something akin to a “sipping tea on the porch” mode. Without noticing it, Jack had become one with the undulating desert. A barreling train wreck became a series of swoops and swishes as he banked this way and that with poetic ease.

Jack had bought the Jeep a week earlier as part of his “break from society”. He had no intention of ever actually leaving a nice paved road. To him, Off Road was some sort of reality show on the History channel; certainly not part of his experience to date. He had no idea how he happened to survive the first fifty feet of his detour off of the highway, much less how he happened to be doing so well a good mile into the ride.
Nor did he understand why he kept going.

“South. I need to go a bit more south,” he told himself and he swerved around a boulder that came and went faster than his mind could register its existence.

“Faster. I must go faster or I will be too late,” he thought.

A rational part of his brain interrupted with “Too late for what?” only to be pushed aside by the urgency to get somewhere as quickly as possible. Where that might be, Jack had no idea.

With the highway long gone from his rear view mirror, Jack felt it was time to seek normality. The urge to push faster and farther into the desert left him like a long-held breath finally being granted its freedom. His foot backed off of the floor and the Jeep eventually slowed to a stop. Sweating and suddenly thankful to be alive, he killed the engine and stared into space; too dazed to contemplate what had just happened. Instead, he looked to the west where the sun was preparing to drop down below the mountains.

“Gonna be dark soon,” he said aloud to no one. A shiver shook his body. It could have been from the recently sweat soaked shirt he was wearing as the last of the day’s heat pulled at the dampness. It would have been the hint of a night chill that he could feel pushing the day out of the way with a “It’s my turn” attitude.

Or it could have been that he knew he wasn’t done for the day; not by a long shot.

Jack climbed out of the Jeep and instinctively began to walk towards the setting sun. While he didn’t understand what had brought him to this particular point, he was surprisingly accepting of the fact that he was “here” and needed to go “there”, wherever that might be

It didn’t take long for him to figure it out. He could smell it.

Jack took a long slow inhale through his nose. Fire! That was the smell. Something was burning nearby. He scanned the horizon for smoke but saw only clear skies in the fading light of dusk. Without hesitation, he continued heading west. The strengthening smell told him he was heading in the right direction.

An internal tug urged him forward even faster. He began to jog but was soon running as fast as he could. He had to get to the fire. Someone was in danger. He could feel it.

Minutes later, a pack of coyotes brought him to an abrupt stop. There were six of them and only one, unarmed Jack. His first instinct was to freeze, knowing he had no time for this. He was no match for a pack of six coyotes. As his mind flipped between “fight or flee” options, he caught something out of the corner of his eye, to the left. Just past the coyotes, in the midst of all the cactus and sage brush, was a charred patch of blackened soil about five yards in diameter. As the coyotes growled their warning, Jack paid them no mind. He could only stare at the apparent source of what he had smelled earlier. It was a circular plot of land with clearly defined edges; out of place in a landscape defined by its cluttered irregularities. A movement and a few growls from the pack brought him back to the priority of the moment – not getting eaten.

Once again he gave serious thought to running away but something told him he was in no danger. The animals had stopped threatening him and instead, became quiet. As one, they all moved a few yards off to the right, exposing something that had been hidden behind them up to this point.

That was when he saw the body.

From his position about ten feet away, Jack could see the upper torso of a man, angled up out of the desert floor as if it had been carelessly planted there. It had been severely burned. There was no hair, ears or even eyelids.

As Jack realized what he was seeing, he felt the need to vomit rising up in his chest. Turning away, he fell to his hands and knees as his body heaved over and over, trying to rid itself of the most improbable of images.

After a few non-productive heaves, Jack turned back to the body; the coyotes remained nearby but were now completely forgotten. He could see there was no hurry so far as medical aid was concerned. This was more of a “protect the body from the elements/animals and let the police figure it out” type of situation. Something had gone down here that Jack wanted no part of.

“Call it in and then just walk away,” he told himself; knowing it wouldn’t be that simple. Life was never that simple for Jack.

He pulled out his cell phone and checked for a signal. He had one, not strong but it would have to do. He started to dial 9-1-1 when “it” caught his eye.

Jack watched in stunned silence as the ‘dead man’ slowly raised his arm a few inches off of the desert floor. Its mouth moved just slightly and uttered a barely audible, “Help me ... Jack.”

Chapter 2  (13+) Dr. Marchall is excited to find a subject to trial her new burn treatment device. #2035109 by Hyperiongate