Glimpse

He falls again.

Baseball mitt-sized leaves slap his face and neck. The bullet-shredded combat sack digs into his kidneys. Suction from the mud holds him flat. Cinders and flaming chunks of foliage rain down upon him; somewhere above in the dense canopy unknown animals make hasty exits. Debris hisses audibly as it plops into the viscous brown stew. Rained today; air's the consistency of bread pudding. The vines he tripped over hug his boot like a happy airport terminal reunion. Acrid smoke blitzkriegs his nostrils as he struggles to turn on his stomach and protect his head. Soldiers criss-cross and cover each other in the open battle-scarred field ahead. At first he counts twenty-five, thirty men; at least before they merge into two armed and focused individuals.

I have a frickin concussion, he spits in his mind. Funny. You get one goodie-good girl and now you're castrating your own thoughts.

There are now two soldiers scanning the charred brush. Carter doesn't have enough time to come to grips with the incredible scenario unfolding before him. It's remarkable how they move in unison, almost as one. Like a clueless lover, his brain is having the hardest time letting go of the false idea of a head injury affecting his sight. Lucky for Carter, fair-weather friends Logic and Reason happen to stop by to borrow a cup of sugar.

But that was impossible...?

Just to make sure, Carter risks gaining a few ounces on the Bullet Diet by arching his neck up to see through a break in the bushes. He turns his head an inch or so more than it could possibly turn, wanting to, needing to see other soldiers. Good ole Irony. The idea of a moderate head injury gives him much more comfort than being able to trust his eyes. When the full compliment of troops was after him, he felt confident he could escape. Somehow they seemed simple, nearly learning disabled. These two are vicious and intelligent. If the troop was a pack of green, second day recruits, then these two are veteran Navy S.E.A.L.S.

Carter's gloves slip on the safety buckles; the mud has invaded every crevice of the uniform. He itches all over, like he has been swimming in fiberglass. Whatever this material is, it sure isn't for comfort. It doesn't help that he is naked underneath, not even socks.

They're scanning.

Small trees are ripped from the earth, saplings crushed under reinforced combat boots. The one to his left turns in three-fourths profile and Carter finally gets a good look at who has been chasing him all morning. The eyes and nose of the soldier are covered with an opaque visor that seemed like it would be right at home in a George Lucas flick. Under that looks like a mouth made of marble. Somehow Carter couldn't imagine this guy just lighting up a room. At least not with his smile.

He scrambles.

A mud caked shoulder slips out from under the stubborn straps and the pack lands with a watery thud. Like the family dog caught nose deep in daddy's dinner, the two adversaries freeze. More cautious now, the mercs cross the threshold between the bomb blasted barren field and the dense dark jungle. Various flora and fauna compose calls, alerting Carter to the position of the men in the bush.

Panic calls ahead, making a reservation in his mind. Occasionally he neglects to control his breathing, and periodically loses sight of the men. The jungle floor is both a gift and a curse. They can't see him, but he can't see them always either.

I think they can't see me...

Slowly, he unhitches the pack, looking for something, anything to even this up. His fingers wrap around a tube. The shape reminds him of his favorite cologne. He slips it out of the bag as gingerly as possible. It's a reflective cylinder with warnings written in about six languages on the base. The surface is smooth with no breaks in the casing. He doesn't know what it could be; just that it's no help to him now. Although alien in appearance, it feels strikingly familiar. In fact, he feels oddly in his element. As an anchor on the University of Houston 4x400 relay, Carter's main obligation was to run fast and hold onto the baton. That was a lifetime and almost two days ago.

He's no soldier, and they know it. The operatives' foray into the wooded area begins to lose some of its caution. They finger the disturbed branches and analyze the poorly concealed footsteps. With only his track knowledge to go on, he guesstimates they are about fifty to sixty meters in front, closing in slow and deliberate. He tries the sack again. Various objects fumble over and under his shaky hand. Nothing feels like what he was looking for.

Not even a damn mean thought, he breathed. In the greatest case of false advertising this side of American politics, Carter finds himself in possession of a combat sack that is utterly useless in combat. No guns, knifes, or even dirty words.

Forty meters.

His brain is racking a tin cup across its cell bars. His nerves heard the starter pistol almost two laps ago. He figures they will keep wide unless they spot him. The dense greenery provides only a paltry obstacle between them and their quarry, but it's alive and teeming with movement, therefore they have to check out every twitch, rustle, and disturbance. The sun is peeking through the misty evening. Lines of light give a low glow on the base of their necks.

More questions...haven't even figured out what it was he escaped from. Were they ALL pregnant?Somethin-

From ten thirty, a subtle crackle redlines his heart rate. It isn't particularly loud or aggressive. Rather, it is too quiet, like it's supposed to be silent.

Way less than 20 meters.

What the hell is wrong with me? He sighs. No time for torturing myself, I'm sure they've got that covered.

Now from the other side. To his right the soldier adjusts the shoulder strap of a machine gun with a surreal look to it. Carter knows, for some nagging reason he can't explain, there're after the cylinder. He secures it in the side pocket of his BDUs. He drags the skin off of his middle knuckle against some imperfection in the pocket lining. Sensing a checkmate, they gesture in his general direction. The civil war rages inside him. Run! Stay put! Run! The sweat, past waiting Dali Llama and docile at the hairline, is all shock and awe impatient, assaulting his terror-widened eyes.

Searing pain rockets a sledgehammer from his brain down to his mouth, causing him to clamp down on his dry tongue. He won't figure that out till later. Right now, his priority is the violent collage of images and information karate chopping his brain. Somewhere, way back where his conscious mind was banished, he figures this is a seizure. Carter's muscles and tendons contract, turning his body rigid and harder than a Calculus test. His eyes roll, no, barrel back through his head under fluttering eyelids. The mercs narrow their approach. They don't know why, but it seems like he's trying to get caught, damn near signaling them. Sigma notices his comrades' almost imperceptible hesitation. Conversation ensues without a word.

"A trap?" Sigma half raises one eyebrow.

"Not likely. Too weak." Sampi cracks a smile.

Weak civilian prey or not, Sigma still makes a full scan of the steamy brush. This is always when they get you, he thought. A thin whine in his ear, like when a T.V. is turned on in another room, precedes Sampi's whispered transmission.

"Twenty says he's pissed himself, double if he brown-bagged it."

The two men grin and creep forward in crouched firing positions. Almost noon; jungle's too hot for thermal imaging. Their visors clear like two mid-western storm clouds parting from the middle. Coordinates and circular computer symbols animate around emotionally empty eyes. They can see his outline flapping around like someone threw a toaster in his tub.

II

Carter feels submerged. Not the panicky community pool near-drowning kind. This is pleasant; the neck-high-under-three-blankets-in-January-type. There is a severe contrast between his internal and external states. His body is a wooden rollercoaster, shaking quite a bit too much and always seeming an atom away from completely collapsing into toothpicks. His mind floats in what he distantly thought the womb must feel like, weightless and warm. A noise, a voice...a something pulses toward his conscience. It billows like satin curtains in a mid-Fall breeze. A whisper across an acoustically perfect galaxy slowly comes into its own, akin to the gradual warming of an electric stove top. Carter can't make out the sounds, even as it swells to a near painful level.

Babies? Sounds like my 1 year old nephew lettin' us know his basement needs a garage sale. Now I know I've gone batsh-

The babbling voice sharply shares it's disapproval at being misunderstood. The gargling squeal could have been cute; except Carter isn't sure he's ever going to hear again. It is so loud it seems to be simultaneously coming from inside and outside of his skull. Like a spring shower, it was all at once here, full force, then leaving with the house and a good chunk of Carter's sanity. As sudden as the siren, there is pure silence. Now he's as frustrated as the voice seemed to be.

Tiny marble-sized balls of thick liquid begin to appear and coalesce in front of his mind's eye. They are co-mingling, becoming one. It's as if oil paint unionized, took back their birthright, and created their own masterpiece. Carter is caught between two immediate emotions. The one he's trying to hold onto springs from this crystal clear non-verbal communication. The other not so favorable emotion festers and boils over from the understanding that he is completely lost as to what Baby Voice is trying to say.

The transmission is lost. Carter's body or being or whatever feels yanked away like the return trip of a bungee drop from Heaven. He awakens with a nostril full of mud and fatigues full of urine. In other words, he's having a great time. As soon as his vision returns he jams his arm into the pocket with the lump in the lining. Fingers fight with the seams. Carter doesn't know what he is looking for. He's only following what the living picture showed him. His hands tear into the hidden hole. Inside the pouch he finds a chrome egg-shaped ball with a depression on one side, maybe for a thumb. Don't have much time, He thinks. Need to figure out what the hell this thing i-

"Up! Slowly! On your knees!" Sampi explodes. "Hands up and behind your back!"

There's something to be said about machine gun motivation. Carter wasn't sure he could sit up, but here he was, thinking this a full ten seconds after his body made its decision. The soldiers stare silently. Rapid moving graphics skim across their faces. The one on the right begins talking into what Carter figures is a transmitter.

"Visual Confirm...." Symbols slide and survey the captive. "What's priority? .. Understood."

They both must be receiving the same transmission. As soon as the one who used the radio trained the gun on Carter, the other approached.

"Make me chase you in this bullshit!" Sampi yanks Carter's arm by the wrist and twists completely the wrong way. The pain is legendary. Tears barge their way through anguish-welded eyelids. He can barely scream. By pure instinct his fists clench. The bulb he found in his fatigues hums to life and Carter drops it when the merc puts a pause on the pressure. Somewhere in the distance he feels the soldier positioning his arms to cuff them.

They're gonna be too tight this guy is getting off on this I'm gonna die keeps chasing each other in his mind. What do they want from me?

The sliver of oxygen he's found is stolen with the sudden squeeze of one of the shackles; then something strange happens. A bright light hits Carter's closed eyes. Even through the lids it seems like the sun is ice skating on his iris. Over his back the vicious one slumps against him, all shouting and HD colorful cursing. When he opens his eyes, the whole world is fuzzy, like a Monet seen from too close. He can make out two groaning dark lumps on the forest floor. Carter gropes for the combat sack, stumbles, and blows through the untested bush. His heart is near deafening, punctuated by the staccato spurt of hot iron blasting from a blind and angry Sampi.

III

Brush cracks. Birds register their startled voices.

Carter runs.

At every individual inhale Carter is doing his best to deprive nature of all oxygen. The jungle provides the soundtrack for his rapid fire panting. He's over fallen trunks and swinging on branches and hopping chasms and getting cut by everything possible. His muscle memory is peak, Carter isn't even aware of all that he is doing. Running is his Zen. He hasn't heard the Starship Troopers behind him in a while, so his brain has been working again recently.

First things first, he's thinking. This is nuts. All of it. Why am I running from the Terminator's? Why is there an insane infant in my head? Seizures? Naked in some dark room about to be tortured? This is usually when they return from commercial and get ready to answer all the episodes' questions in a neat tidy package.

Carter slows his full-out pace. I don't even know what question I need to answer first...Where am I? Don't know. Why am I being chased? No clue. What the hell is in my pocket? All of a sudden a glacier forms in his veins. When they got me I was going...Cheryl...

No.

Carter arches his back to determine where the sun is. Through the lush canopy he can't really tell what time it is or which way is west. Getting nervous, he paces a small revolution, disturbing a dense line of army ants fresh from their latest pillaging. He jerks his eyes upward again, then whips them in the direction of his would -be captors. He decides to run away from the sun.

The greenery isn't getting any thinner, but he is starting to feel reassured. A constant roar is building in his ears.

The interstate!

All this time he must've been in some rich sicko's backyard in the Woodlands. He barrels through the last green wall to the inters—

Whoa!..?

Sigma uses his custom made machine gun to prop his swimming head up with. Sampi is spitting a stream of stomach acid and equally caustic obscenities. Small primates and different birds share this time with them. Everything with eyes within a thirty yard radius is just coming around from the experimental stun grenade that hopped out of Carter's hands. Rhesus monkeys and a rainbow of winged things lay scattered on the flattened muddy ground. Their bodies twitch erratically, some regaining partial consciousness.

The flash must've fried their little brains, Sigma thinks.

In fact, he isn't sure it didn't do the same to him. His vision is in triplicate (A flash of memory: "Hit the one in the middle!"), and his head seems to want to constantly lean to the left. He glances across to Sampi. His face was thermonuclear. You could melt steel in that mug, Sigma sighs. He has to regain operational command immediately. This kid has to be kept on the shortest leash.

"Form up by five! Stay on point! Sigma barks. "This is your shit storm, so get your galoshes on and get that stupid look off your face!"

Sampi's eyes betray his professional programmed response. His visor clouds over the mass murderer stare. They both check their suits. Eight air disturbance pockets centralize around Sampi and Sigma. Within these pockets the air waves and shimmers like the atmosphere in an Arizona summer. Seemingly out of the ether soldiers self-create like Play-Doh paramecium; amorphous lumps become upright two-legged beings. There are now five Sampis and five Sigmas. They line up shoulder to shoulder, Sampi, then Sigma, then Sampi, and so on. They press on swiftly, knowing he couldn't have gotten far.

I don't think this is Texas.

Carter stands dumbfounded. Before him lies a vast opening in the jungle. He was expecting to have to duck and dodge a couple of semis, but still be in the city by nightfall. Instead of horrific Houston traffic, he is faced with the largest waterfall he has ever seen. The deluge overpowers all ambient sounds. Carter crouches to his knees and carefully peers over the drop. Millions of gallons of water race to the void below. The ponds' surface, which is no doubt studded with water-sharpened rocks, is obscured by thick mist. He leans back on his haunches; heights give him headaches. He looks around, really seeing his surroundings for the first time. This also the first time he truly feels freaked out and worried.

This looks nothing like Texas, and there were monkeys that fell out of those trees, I know it. I could be anywhere.

He slides a muddy finger across a muddier watch face. He assumes he smashed it somewhere when they were transporting him. He looks up toward the s—the second hand moved. Carter yanks at the end of the uniform to fashion an impromptu towel. A more complete cleaning reveals the worn brushed steel of the face dial and another question...A big question.

How the hell did we get so far from Texas in less than two hours?

Now that he is paying attention, Carter surmises that he is somewhere in Central or South America. His brother posed for pictures in front of jungles just like this with his wife on their honeymoon in Belize. He swings the combat sack onto the ground in front of his knees. He searches again in vain for a weapon, cell phone, smoke signal or something. No dice. It's just a government-issue paper weight. To his rear the steady Swish! Crunch! Shoosh! of multiple large living things blazing through the tropicalforest starts the seconds sliding away. Carter fills his lungs and...

The yell was so unexpected Sigma actually thought for one super insane second that this kid had grown a pair of Gibraltars and turned around and attacked them. His Nano-Dupes share his sentiment. They all assume various combat-ready stances and form a perimeter. A distant plunk! sound plays between the medley of machine guns and mean men. Sigma instantly knows what's going on.

Waterfall.

"Double! Recover the target!"

They charge ahead, destroying all in their path. Some eighty yards later, Sampi hurdles through the copse into the expanse. The spray of fresh water mist tickles his chin. The waterfall turns Sigma's barking into a whisper. Maybe I'll push him in, he conspires. I know he doesn't respect me.

"Over here." The Nano-Dupe grates over the headset. Sigma walks over to his Dupe. He is crouching over a set of mud-cast boot prints. Sigma twirls his finger above his head. All troops converge on his position. They file out two by two along the fresh tracks leading away from the waterfall edge and back into the jungle. Sampi wants this little bastard. The bugs are starting to get to him, and that's bad considering he has been training here for the past six months. Sigma, older, grizzled, assesses the situation.

He tried to fake us out. This is getting out of hand.

Carter is slipping. The rocks behind the waterfall are slick with algae. He isn't climbing down per se, more like controlling his freefall. He takes his time, confident the misdirection was holding. The dank cool is refreshing. He can't hear the soldiers above him. He figures that's a good thing. His grunts and fear-yells are decimated in the face of the ear shattering torrent of life force walling him in.

Even if they do come back they won't look here. They don't think I could ever do this. Hell, I didn't think I could ever do this.

About twelve feet for the bottom, Carter loses his grip and does his best Plinko Disk from "The Price Is Right" imitation. He lands lengthwise. His shoulder screams and his hips howl. Oxygen eludes his desperate efforts at capture. His eyelids quiver from being shut so tightly in pain. As he sits up his back bawls and threatens to go on strike. He landed on the side where the cylinder was strapped in. The rock floor had naturally eroded away, removing any sharp peaks. All that is left is the cool air shuttled into the enclosure on the back of raging water. A fairly thick layer of lichen and algae carpeting the floor kept his brains in his skull. Content blue-green fish float aimless in the calm pond formed behind the falls' terminal point. If not for the I-don't-wanna-die-alone- in-the-jungle-two-killers-chasing-me-blues... this place could be beautiful.

Carter removes the cylinder from his hip pocket. He winces, imagining the tie-dye bruise he must be sporting by now. It has lost some of its luster and allure in the grim cave light. Under the base he feels a small area where a rough spot his appeared.

A fingerprint!

He knows it wasn't there before. Overlaying his thumb, Carter closes his eyes, anticipating the same outcome from the egg-thing in his pocket. He couldn't have been more off.

That same underwater water feeling emerges, this time without the Grand Mal. Carter can feel his body going away, the roar of the water growing distant, yet he still feels in control. He can faintly hear Baby Voice wafting in and out of reach. Every pulse the voice grows louder and, strangely, more understandable. It is like the rapid growth of a toddler to a man in language.

The cylinder is tuning the frequency. No, it feels like it's tuning me...

"Can you understand me? Am I clear now?"

Every single word Carter possessed fails to show up in his brain. He can only mutter human-esque sounds .

"That will have to pass for a 'yes'. I know this is overwhelming. There has been too much shock to even be shocked, but I need you clear and focused for what I have to tell you."

"Ok. I'm ok." Out of nowhere, this assured, steady voice climbs out of his startled mouth.

"The day is young...When did all of this start for you?"

"I don't know...Like two, three days ago." his mind speaks. Carter's mouth mimics the dialogue.

"Were you passed any information? What happened? Have you been in contact with any light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation?"

"Stimu-who?"

"Lasers!" Impatient.

A thought crosses Carter's mind so silly he decides to just throw it out there.

"I had LASIK surgery about a week ago...Oh, and I and my roommate were playing around with out presentation laser pens like we were in Star Wars. Are you serious?"

"This is much worse. They want you. Listen... I can't explain everything, it's too big. What you need to know now is you have very vital information, and through a series of pure freak occurrences this info and this link between you and I was transmitted through that laser. You have to get to Colonel Albright at DARPA. Say to him "Seven Marys", and he'll know what to do. I cannot stress enough how much danger you are in. I will try to guide you when I can, and the tube will keep a steady transmission between us, but don't expect any more Deus ex machina moments."

The flood of images dilates his mind and pupils, overwhelming Carter with the impossible task ahead of him.