Authors: Thomas Davidson
"Public Service Announcement."
"Bingo."
"Perhaps you've seen me on TV?"
The Phantom kept his eyes on Tim. "No, but I'll stay tuned."
"Do you know how many people have been doing PSA's?"
"I can only guess with my limited insider info. I have a feeling that the PSA's are quite recent. How many? At least a half dozen or so, but maybe more." His eyes flicked side to side again, scanning the area like a searchlight.
Tim could feel his stomach clench. "Do you know if—"
The Phantom tapped Tim's knee with his fingertip, cutting him off. "Hold on a second. In case we're suddenly interrupted, let me say this. First, you need to replace your headgear. You're too exposed. You've seen the drones, yes?"
"Sure."
"They're equipped with facial recognition software, or capability, or whatever. I'm not a techie. But it's been mentioned here in the media. The drones scan faces as they sweep the streets, looking for jumpers."
"Holy shit."
"Holy shit, indeed. Your disguise is a bit thin. I don't know how sophisticated that kind of program is, but you don't want to press your luck. Besides, it's Halloween. Use it to your advantage. Tim, my boy, get a fucking mask."
"Duly noted."
"My name is James Carney, but call me Phantom. It amuses me," he said without conviction. "And amusement is hard to come by as of late."
"Nice to meet you, Phantom."
"As you've already ascertained, we are in massively deep shit. We are in the Mariana Trench of Deep Shit. You can find it on the map. It stretches across Dire Straits, located off the Gulf of Gone. Questions?"
"About a million."
"Me, too. Listen, there's a drugstore up the street. You can buy a cheap mask or costume there. They're right by the Halloween candy when you go through the door. Get a mask, and get out of the store. For the time being, keep your head down until you put the mask on."
"Last week you and I may have passed each other on the street. And now here we are, the Phantom of the Opera and a landscaper, far from home."
"The key is the theater. In the front, it appears to be shut down. Whenever I've gone in back, the rear door is locked tight. It's solid, metal, and doesn't budge a fraction of an inch."
"Last night in the alley, there was something overhead…"
"Drones. Small drones. I think someone is watching the alley. Maybe it's a group. Who knows? But I think the alley is under surveillance. Or let me put it this way: assume the alley is under surveillance."
"Why? And what's with the drones?"
"Take what I say with a grain of salt. I'm basing everything on limited information. Things I've read, or things I've seen or heard on the street. Anything and everything is in play."
The Phantom spoke more quickly now. Tim sensed that the conversation could abruptly end.
"There appears to be two companies that make drones. They're in competition. One is called DR1 Corporation. The other is EyeSoar Unlimited." The Phantom spelled the name.
"EyeSoar," Tim echoed. "That's fabulous."
"Both companies seem to be using very advanced technology. This isn't something I followed back in my…ah…previous life. Until very recently, I was in the hospitality management field. An event planner—oh, the irony." His eyes flared as he spread out his hands, palms up. "This is an event I never planned on. And there appears to be very little hospitality out here. Evidently I'm now a caped crusader in the hostility management field. I'm sensing a lot of hostility, and I can barely manage it."
Tim managed a weary smile.
"I digress. As I said, these two companies make drones, which I know very little about. The only drones I ever saw were on the nightly news, usually flying over some godforsaken terrain halfway around the world."
"The ones I've seen here, so far, are…" Tim stopped, shrugged.
"I know, I've never seen anything like it myself. Each day I'm on the set of a science fiction movie."
"What's the deal with hunting down jumpers? I hear them called 'Mad Doctors Without Borders?'"
"I'm not a marketing genius, but I used to write ad copy. So here's my take. The two drone manufacturers are in a battle for market supremacy, for total dominance. Think of it as two corporate giants, say Verizon and AT&T, slugging it out to be the biggest wireless phone company. Except this competition is ultra cutthroat—a cross between business and a drive-by shooting. The way they measure product superiority is determined by which company can find and capture a jumper first. That's how they keep score. Jumpers—you, me, and whoever else—are labeled 'terrorists' or 'dangerous aliens spreading infections.' Or maybe we're 'foot soldiers for the antichrist.' Out here, who knows? But we're portrayed as an extreme threat to society."
"In other words," Tim said, "we're homicidal lepers."
"Yes, and it works. This is a staple of modern advertising. The pitch 'fills you with fear' in order to 'sell you freedom from something.' If you don't, say, buy our soap, you will smell. Stinky people don't get laid. Sexual frustration erupts into violence. So choose: soap, or prison and the electric chair."
"The two companies target the jumpers," Tim said. He paused for a few seconds, collecting his thoughts. "I can see how they get away with it, why it works. We're aliens, we're from another world. What they say is true. And they can spin it any way they want, because, what? We have no rights, no protection. No friends, family, the list goes on. We're totally isolated. We may as well have arrived from a distant planet, and dropped down from the sky."
"That about sums it up." The Phantom put one hand in the air and flicked his fingers. "I don't think the ACLU will be coming to our defense."
"Out here," Tim said, "that would be the Alien Civil Liberties Union."
"Nonetheless, at some point soon one of the two will corner the drone market. In the meantime, they're the headhunters and we're the heads."
Tim sat in the sun and pieced together all the information. He saw himself caught in a sudden storm, a driving downpour of hard facts and cold speculation, with no shelter in sight. "This sounds like it's private sector, not military. Or some gray area in between. What's the commercial use of drones?"
The Phantom's cape whispered against the bench when he shrugged. "You're not sitting beside a high-tech wizard. But so far, the only thing I see is surveillance. They fly overhead and keep watch on everyone, looking for Mad Doctors. A warm and fuzzy name, no? Mad Doctors Without Borders. Imagine the marketing department guru who came up with that? What lunacy. But the drones, yes, all I can see is constant observation. Lethal snooping. For us, it's a deadly cat-and-mouse game."
"We're mice with masks."
"Yes, you might say we're mice in a maze. I've been here for three days now. It seems like three years. The first day, after I calmed down enough to think, I got a newspaper."
"That's what I did."
"A good source of information. You can read in private while you piss your pants, instead of asking strangers revealing questions, such as, 'Excuse me, sir—where am I?' Well, one article said the two companies were ready to launch their next generation of drones. After three days in this hellhole, I shudder to think what the next generation must be. You have to wonder if EyeSoar's engineering department is headed up by Doctor Frankenstein."
Tim absently tugged down his hat. His head felt like a hand grenade with the pin pulled. If his brain exploded into red cottage cheese, it would solve everything. No more concern over drones, jumpers, mobs, masks, and Harvard students pissing out of windows. He would in fact be…gone.
Gone.
The word of the week.
"My picture on TV," Tim said, "I think that was taken as I left the theater."
"I came to the same conclusion—the angle of the shot, the dark background. In the newspaper, I saw pictures of other jumpers. Same shot, same set-up. That's the point of passage."
"So what's the link between the theater, the exit photos, and the drone companies?"
The Phantom shook his masked head. "Don't know. But this much I
can
see. You and me, and the other jumpers, we're providing a critical need for their products. We provide fear, they sell safety. Boogie men are great for business."
"So we're boosting sales?"
"Plausible, right?"
"Seems so."
"DR1 and EyeSoar whip the public into a frenzy, at our expense, and it drives up a killer business. We're mice in a maze, and at the end of the maze is a drone zooming in. We're—"
The Phantom stopped. The eyes behind the mark were focused on something over Tim's shoulder.
"What is it?" Tim asked.
"The Harvard Boathouse, you know it?"
"Yes."
"Nearby, a bike trail goes into a small tunnel, an underpass beneath the street."
"I know the one."
"Meet me there tonight when it's dark. Seven or eight o'clock." He stood and said, "Go," as he walked away.
Tim resisted the urge to turn around. He didn't want to be seen looking. Trying to appear casual, he rose from the bench and stepped across the grass to Mass Ave, in the opposite direction taken by the Phantom of the Opera. No time to waste. He kept his head down, forcing himself to walk, not run. After reaching the drugstore, he propped the rake against the brick wall facing the sunny parking lot.
Later that afternoon Rayne returned to the theater. The empty box office would be opening soon. She peered through the window, seeing the empty stool. She thought about Tim for the thousandth time that day. Still no phone call. Not a word, a sighting, nothing. He seemed to have disappeared off the face of the Earth. She glanced up at the marquee:
Gone
.
Was there a darker word in the English language? Four letters, one syllable. Straight to the point. Merciless.
She took a deep breath, trying to reduce tension. Her stomach felt like Anxiety Central. When she turned toward the street, her muscles stiffened and she froze. A busker in a burgundy jacket and black hat set her guitar case on the sidewalk. She knelt down, an afro-haired priestess at a rock-n-roll altar, opened the case and removed a six-string chalice, strapping on a Martin. Rayne watched her strum the guitar in front of the small church, tuning it. Finally, Rayne stepped over the curb and crossed the street.
"Hi," she said.
"Hey, what's up?"
Rayne stopped in front of the young black woman, a human rainbow of colors. She appeared to be a few years younger than Rayne. "How's it going?"
"Well, it's going." She gently strummed a chord, made more tuning adjustments.
"You play here very often."
"This spot? Lately, yeah."
"Were you here last night?"
She stopped playing. Silence now except for the wind in the trees overhead. "Uh huh," she finally answered. Something in her eyes. Suspicion?
Rayne reached into her purse, pulled out a ten-dollar bill and dropped it into the open guitar case. "You sound fantastic."
The girl said, "Uh…that's called tuning. I haven't played anything yet."
Rayne said, "You look like a female Jimi Hendrix. You've got to be good."
“Thanks.” The musician grinned, reached down into her guitar case and took a sip from her bottle of Blue Bull. “I need an energy drink to keep up my energy. ‘Cause I sure don’t get it from the zombies stumbling by.”
Rayne advanced a step. The two were about the same height, five-eight, lean. Rayne dug into her purse again, producing a photograph. "Can you indulge me for a minute? I'm looking for someone. He may have been here last night." She flicked her thumb back at the Gateway.
"Last night?" The musician put the bottle down.
Rayne showed the photograph. "Do you remember seeing this guy? I think he may have come here last night and saw the movie."
The busker examined the picture. "I'm not sure. Maybe. People walk by all night. Is something wrong?"
"I'm a little worried. He missed his doctor's appointment today. I'm trying to—"
"Doctor?"
"Eye doctor. He had eye surgery."
"Let me see that picture again." She tilted it toward the streetlamp. "Eye surgery," she whispered.
"Yeah. His eye shut down, almost lost it."
She looked up at Rayne. "There was a guy last night, standing in front of the box office. I was right here. I saw him tilt his head back and hold something up, over his face."
"Eye drops maybe? A bottle of eye drops?"
"Could be." The busker demonstrated.
Rayne took that as confirmation. She was on the right trail, the right theater. "He put drops in his eye and then went inside the show?"
"I think, yeah. How long he gone?"
"Last night. Disappeared."
The busker's eyes narrowed. "What's your name?"
"Rayne Moore."
"Shay," she said, holding her hand up. They bumped fists. Shay hesitated for a moment, then asked, "Have you been inside the Gateway?"
"Not recently. Not in a few months. Why?"
"You're gonna think I'm crazy."
"Try me."
"Last week I was inside there." Shay's eyes flicked, focused on something over her shoulder. "Me and a friend. We saw ‘Gone,’ which is a really strange movie."
"And?"
"At the end of the movie, my friend Reggie said the movie messed him up and he wanted to smoke some weed in the alley, relax, and he'd meet me at my car. He went through the exit door in back. The alley connects to the street. I went the other way to the restroom in the lobby, then through the front. I bought a pack of cigarettes next door and headed back to my car."
Rayne waited, feeling something dark ripple through her. "And?"
"I never saw him again. Reggie wasn't at the car. I went back through the alley, nothing. No sign of him. It's been over a week."
"So, what do you think happened?" She absently ran one finger along the photo's edge, back and forth, then dropped the picture of Tim back into her purse.
Shay shook her head. "I ask myself that every day. It makes no sense, except maybe for one thing."
What a night
, Rayne thought.
"I don't know how to explain it. You might have to go inside and see it for yourself. That movie? It's eerie. But wait till you see the coming attractions. They're really, really messed up. Something happened last week. But what?" Shay stopped and gestured with one hand, passing it over her head.
"Got it," Rayne said.
"Something really strange is happening in there. I saw Reggie open the rear exit door and leave. So I know he went outside. Beyond that"—Shay shrugged, and, for a moment, looked ghostly under the streetlight—"he vanished. Like the marquee says, ‘Gone.’"
"What are you doing out here, Shay? Have you been here each night since?"
"Uh huh. I set up here and play, and watch the theater from this side of the street. That place is off the hook. I know it, but can't prove it."
Rayne thought about that. "Has anyone else approached you?"
"No."
Rayne turned to the theater, seeing a light inside the box office, and the silhouette of a cashier.
"That witch there," Shay said. "Inside the box, have you seen her? Candle and tarot cards? She's visiting here from Mars. That whole place is stone crazy. Theater? Try asylum."
Rayne studied the brick building, half expecting to hear a piercing fire alarm or air-raid siren, followed by terrified people flooding through the doors. Shay’s information darkened everything. Worse, Rayne noticed something entirely new regarding the marquee. She rocked back on her heels. How could she have been so blind? How? It had been in front of her all this time, but she never noticed until now. Big, bold, mocking. Her breath stopped for a moment. In large letters, the theater’s name was bannered at the top of the marquee, above the current movie title. Read in sequence, the marquee announced:
Gateway Gone
.
There for all the world to see. Where was the venerable, decades-old Gateway? Answer: Gone.
Gone where?
Enter and discover
.
What replaced it?
Enter and discover
.
Enter.
Rayne snapped back to the present. Her breath returned, as if she swam up and surfaced from a dark pool of water. Finally she turned back to Shay. "I need to get in there and see it for myself."
Shay eyed her with curiosity, seeing Rayne appraise the box office, the theater. "If you have to go inside, be careful. You know, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Reggie got abducted behind the theater by three bums. Maybe the bums vacuumed the crime scene. That explains why I didn't see shit in the alley when I went back there."
"Shay, you're making me nervous."
"I
am
nervous. Be careful in there.
Very
careful. I'll look for you. Come back here on the way out. If you don't show up…" She fell silent, but her eyes widened.
Within the hour, Rayne was sitting in the dark beside Alex on the left side of the theater, near the middle. Rayne couldn't shake off the image of the costumed cashier—the woman never said a word when they
made their donation
and got two tickets.
"This movie is even depressing
me
," Alex whispered in her ear, "and that's not easy to do. I'm a miserable, unrepentant devil worshipper 24 hours a day."
"Shhh
…be quiet." Rayne concentrated on
Gone
, intrigued by its storyline regarding a parallel world very similar to her own. Her eyes kept straying to the left corner in the back of the theater.
The movie ended with…a warning? These words appeared in the middle of the screen:
COMING SOON
to a theater near you
Shay's voice sounded in her head.
Wait till you see the coming attractions
. Rayne stiffened in her seat. Full concentration on the silver screen. Undivided, unblinking attention on the trailer.
The screen darkened and an image emerged: the interior of a dark theater. The scene was shot in black-and-white, except for a single red exit sign in the left corner that offset the gloomy hues. Yes, Rayne thought, the theater looked familiar. The picture changed. The camera was pointed down, a street scene. It looked familiar. It looked…like Cambridge. Sounds exploded on the speakers. Shouts, car horns, engines. A large crowd rushed along a street. A stampede of citizenry in the sunlight. Cattle in clothes. An angry, animated mob chasing someone. Screams, cries. And what appeared to be…
Shadows on the pavement from objects flying overhead. Shadows moving in a strange geometrical pattern.
Rayne leaned forward, drawn to the screen, both arms draped over the seat in front of her. Her heart pounded, an internal soundtrack to what she was seeing.
A voiceover broke in. A weary tone filled with dread.
"They are coming. They are here. Each week they invade our world. Some say each day. They walk among us. They look like us. Exactly like us. The invaders are coming and must be stopped. The lines are drawn. The battle has begun."
Alex's hand flew up in the dark, pointing at the screen. "Look to the far right side."
Her eyes flicked, focused. And saw a man standing within the crowd on the sidewalk.
"The guy with the rake," Alex said.
The guy wore a baseball cap, sunglasses, and a towel or undershirt wrapped over his head. He wore a green army jacket. A very familiar army jacket with a small picture taped to its front pocket; a rectangular image that could have been a medicine cabinet mirror. He appeared to be about the right height and weight. The face behind the sunglasses appeared to be—
The picture changed.
The soundtrack stopped. Silence. Deathly silence.
A single word flashed on the screen. White letters superimposed on the image of a theater with a dark, empty screen.
EXIT
The trailer ended. Yellow lights came on, dimly glowing in the wall sconces. In the shadows, Rayne rose from her seat. She could hear a dozen people head up the aisle, shoes whispering on the floor.
Something snapped on. A bright spot in the dark caught her eye. A red light appeared in the far left corner. The exit sign glowed for the first time.
Alex started to speak but she cut him off. "Wait. Don't move."
Rayne had one final test. Make it or break it. An acid test. She could settle all of this once and for all in the space of ten minutes. Or less if she hurried. What happened from this point forward would determine everything.
Rayne touched Alex's arm, as if communicating with a dog
"to stay."
She held onto the strap of her purse and walked down the sloping aisle. Straight for the exit sign. She was seconds away from the alley, thinking of Shay's story.
She stopped just under the glowing red sign. Red letters against a black rectangular background. She reached out, hit the crash bar, and pushed with angry energy. The heavy door creaked open onto a dark alley. She stopped for a moment, feeling the chill air invading her space. She saw nothing moving in the dark. Then she dug into her purse and pulled out the photo—she and Tim, side by side—and let it drop.
The door closed with a thud.
She rejoined Alex and they quickly moved out of the viewing room, through the lobby, outside into the fresh air.
"That," Alex said, "was the strangest movie I ever saw. I mean, not just the movie, and that flipped-out trailer. The whole experience was a fucking freak out."
"Stay right here. I'll be back in a few minutes." She looked across the street. She and Shay exchanged a knowing glance. She held up a finger, and Shay nodded. Then she hurried over to the mouth of the alley and entered. She withdrew a penlight from her purse and raced up to the rear door. With a beam of light, she carefully scoured the ground in a widening arc. The corridor had no wind. Everything was still.
Her photo was gone.
Gone.
It was about half-past seven. No time to lose. She had to make a plan, move fast. Circling back to the street, she introduced Alex to Shay. Then she told Shay that she'd see her later that night. She and Alex went back to her car. He lived nearby and she drove him home.