Gaia Dreams (Gaiaverse Book 1) (7 page)

The cat followed a muttering Mrs. Philpott into
the blue and white kitchen, bemused that she still wasn't thinking big enough.
Ice cream would be the least of their worries.

Fort Walton Beach, Florida

Stumbling into the kitchen, Lisanne didn't look
any better than she had before standing under the hot shower for twenty
minutes.

"Come on, let's see if I remembered to set up
the coffee maker--no, I can see that I didn't," Lisanne said as she yanked the
basket containing used grounds out of the machine to dump in the garbage. The
can of coffee clattered as it was almost dropped to the floor and then caught.
Coffee grounds flew across the countertop as her hands shook, measuring grounds
into the coffee maker. Pouring cold water to the ten-cup level was an endeavor
involving both hands to steady the pot of water. Finally, breathing a sigh of
relief, Lisanne pushed the ON button and sank to the black linoleum floor,
resting her head against the lavender painted cabinet doors at her back.

Merlin meowed.

"You actually expect me to stand up...you do, I
can see that...."

Standing in the center of the kitchen, Merlin
fixed a golden-eyed stare on Lisanne where she sat slumped in her black silk
teddy.

"You are a pain, you know that? You really are."

Merlin meowed and glared.

"I'm telling you I'm not getting up from here
until the coffee is done."

Merlin took a step toward her.

"I mean it. I'm too tired...." Merlin meowed. "Okay,
okay--I'm too hung over to move an inch, a millimeter from this spot."

The aroma of coffee wafted through the
air-conditioned apartment.

Merlin growled.

"Look, I don't even know if I can stand
upright--there are three of you in my sight right now and that can't be a good
sign. I'm probably brain damaged, you know. So much alcohol--so little time."
She laughed. "I crack myself up."

Merlin pounced.

"Hey, get off me, you jerk! All right already, I'll
get your food. You know, you have no respect for my still slightly inebriated
condition," she said, enunciating slowly as she pulled herself up, using the
counter's edge for balance.

The condominium apartment in Fort Walton Beach,
Florida, had been purchased by Lisanne with proceeds from her mother's life
insurance policy. Lauranne Locklin, the mother of all mothers as Lisanne liked
to call her, had died nine months previous from a fall. Lisanne still dreamed
of taking credit for the death, but Lauranne had managed to fall down the
stairs all by herself after drinking her usual quart of evening vodka. Lisanne
was the only beneficiary of the life insurance policy which netted $300,000.
The money was a shock, as Lauranne had never planned for anything, but Lisanne
finally decided that her mother probably kept paying the premiums each month
without realizing what she was paying for. The policy had originally been taken
out by Lisanne's father, who left five years after his daughter's birth.
Beauregard Locklin, Beau to everyone, departed after finding greener pastures,
namely a richer wife. Beau had been killed in a hunting accident a few years
prior to Lauranne's death, so Lisanne was alone in the world, except for
Merlin.

The condominium's living room contained a futon
couch covered in a floral print of predominantly purple colors. The high pile
shag carpeting was black, along with the desk and chair, which were situated in
front of sliding glass doors that opened onto the white sandy beaches of the
Gulf of Mexico. The room's only other ornamentation was a large lavender floor
vase filled with sea oats, spray-painted black, collected in defiance of posted
endangered species signs.

Lisanne stumbled across the living room to
collapse into the desk chair in front of her computer. Sipping coffee from a
mug emblazoned with the phrase, 'Don't even think of saying Good Morning,' she
positioned her chair to survey the rolling waves outside. As her alcohol fogged
brain woke up, Lisanne knew she was in trouble. This many hangovers in a month
were too many.

"Merlin," she called, "if you're through
stuffing your face, come in here so we can talk." Morning conversations with
the cat had become a way to think things through. She liked being able to think
out loud and not be judged for anything she said. Although lately, Merlin was
not always so tolerant. Recently, he seemed to growl or meow at the more
outlandish things she said, and Lisanne sometimes wondered if he actually
understood her...although she was usually drunk when she had that kind of
thought.

"That's right, Merlin. Another sign I'm losing
it--like you could really understand what I say. So what am I going to do?
Drink myself into oblivion? Guess I'm well on the way to achieving that goal.
It's good to have goals in life."

Lisanne shoved papers off her desk, scrounging
for her pack of Marlboro 100s. Lighting the cigarette, she dragged deeply on
it, and said to Merlin, "I'm pretty sure I would have slept with some guy last
night, some stranger, if I hadn't gotten so drunk I decided to just stumble on
home." Lisanne laughed harshly. "I'm a suicide waiting to happen, Merlin. That's
what all this is about and you and I both know that's the truth."

Because of her mother's pathological need to lie
to everyone, and to herself most prodigiously, Lisanne had grown up certain of
only one thing: she would never lie to herself. Sometimes she wondered if even
that decision was a part of her need to remain depressed because being truthful
with herself about her activities led inevitably to a black hole of
self-hatred.

"What is it that makes me like this, Merlin? Am
I trying to copy my mother's death? I don't want to be like that woman!"
Lisanne said forcefully. "I'm not stupid, so why am I doing this to myself?"

Merlin jumped up onto the desktop and sat facing
the distraught young woman. He knew she wasn't stupid. He'd found her papers
from college in the computer during his midnight forays into cyberspace. She
had majored in astronomy and appeared to be a mathematical genius, although,
looking at her now, Merlin wondered if he'd misinterpreted the information he'd
gathered about Lisanne.

Her drinking was out of control, had been since
her mother's death. She had dropped out of her doctoral program with an
impressive thesis three-quarters completed and seemed well on her way to
dropping out of life altogether. Merlin was determined to see that didn't
happen. He couldn't put his paw on why he liked her. Perhaps it was the
honesty, or her potential, but more than that he thought it was the sense of
abandonment that surrounded her like a mist, covering up who she really was.
She reminded him of his days as a kitten, dumped out of a car on the highway by
owners who didn't want to deal with a litter of kittens; he was the only
survivor of six. Lost, hungry, and terrified, he had managed to find the
minimum of food needed to survive as he wandered up the coast.

Lisanne had found him near death on the edge of
the highway when she had pulled over to throw up after a night of drinking. She
had saved his life and cared for him generously, and Merlin knew that he filled
a hole in her life. She was the lost one now, feeling abandoned, trying to
survive, and he wanted to return the favor. He meowed to get her talking again.
It seemed to help some mornings.

"Here's the deal. I'm 23 years old, alone in the
world except for you, still have some inheritance money but it won't last
forever, and I have a drinking problem. I don't have a real life. When I left
the university, I cut off contact with my friends. I have a love life which
consists of sleeping with guys who disgust me, but I've at least had the sense
to use condoms. I'm going to end up dead if I don't stop this. So the question
is this: Why not just go ahead and end it? Why keep torturing myself? Why not
show the world that I am just like my mother?"

Merlin growled at her.

"Oh, boy, is that it? Do I really think I'm like
her, or is it that I'm so afraid I'm like her, that I'll turn into her, that I'm
doing it on purpose just to get it over with?"

Lisanne sat up straighter and took a deep
draught of coffee. "Are you really a shrink in disguise, Merlin? I don't know
much about psychology, but I do know that parents have a major effect on their
kids--and my parents were lulus. Beau--you know he never let me call him
Dad--he thought he was the Stud of the South, a skirt-chaser of major
proportions. And Mom, good old Lauranne, was a fruitcake. A nut, psycho, you
name it what you want, but I know she was crazy. I don't know why she was nuts,
but it probably had something to do with her parents. It's all about cycles,
generations of screw-ups. So, am I destined to be one too? I tried so hard to
be unlike them--until they were gone. Then it was like I had to replace them or
something by being them. Oh, man, is this whacko or what?"

Merlin meowed and seemed to shake his head,
although Lisanne thought she probably just imagined the negative response. He
jumped into her lap and faced the computer. "Maybe you're right, cat. Maybe it
isn't whacko reasoning, but the truth," Lisanne said. "Now you sit there and be
quiet while I turn on the computer and put some of this brilliant thinking into
my journal."

Merlin quivered in her lap. This was it, the
moment he'd been waiting for since last night.

Lisanne didn't have to actually turn on the
computer since she left the CPU on all the time. Knowing it was always running
gave her the sense that it was another person in her life. But she did keep the
monitor turned off when not in use, so she reached up to click it on only to
gasp in surprise at what appeared. The monitor showed a screen from the word
processing program. Like everything else in Lisanne's life, she had configured
the colors in her computer to shades of black and purple. On a black
background, purple letters glowed with the message:

DANGER IS NEAR. WE MUST LEAVE THIS PLACE. GO AT
ONCE--TODAY.

"What the freaking hell is this?" Lisanne
whispered.

Merlin meowed happily. He was proud of his
message, typed with great care. He felt it said everything necessary and was
therefore quite dismayed at Lisanne's next response.

"Oh my lord, I really have lost my mind," she
said. Rubbing her face furiously with delicate pale hands, she looked again at
the computer screen. "When did I type this? And why? Did I have a blackout last
night? 'Cause I know it wasn't there yesterday. I've never had a blackout
before...that's like a sign of alcoholism or something, isn't it? What the hell
is going on? Oh, man, I need help, I really need help. I mean really, I really
need some major help here. Danger? What the hell kind of danger? And why would
I tell myself to leave this place? The condo cost a fortune, a big chunk of the
inheritance money. I can't leave here. And I sure can't leave today. Even if I
was thinking about moving, which I'm not, I wouldn't just up and leave today.
And why would I want to? Where would I go? Am I thinking things would get
better for me somewhere else? Is this some kind of subconscious wishful
thinking or something?"

Merlin leaped out of Lisanne's lap to sit next
to the keyboard and stare at her. How could she not realize the message was
from him? He growled in outrage, disappointed, and thoroughly fed up with her.
Meowing several choice phrases at her, the cat jumped down from the desk to run
out of the room.

Lisanne watched him in surprise, but quickly
turned back to the mysterious message on the computer screen in front of her. "Okay,
don't panic," she said in a shaky voice. "This is just some weird little mental
aberration, not the end of the world."

Los Angeles, California

"Maria, can you hear me?" asked Phoebe over the
cellular phone.

"Yes, just barely," replied Maria. "Thank God
for satellite phones. What's up?"

"Ok, Bob's in a meeting, so I'm to relay the
latest. The network wants you to go live at 8:05 a.m., that's Eastern time, on
the morning news with a backdrop of that new firestorm."

"What? Are you telling me those idiots are
trying to dictate what backdrop I use for my report? Do you have any idea how
hard it is to get around out here? There's hardly a street left anywhere that's
clear of debris. Besides, nobody is going near downtown. It's just too
dangerous."

"Look, Bob said he knew you'd flip when I told
you, but he said we had to ask. CBS got a shot from a helicopter of the fires
and now the head honchos want us to air our own dramatic shot so...."

"So the morons want drama, do they? Well, I'll
give them their fucking drama--tell them to be sure and tune in."

"Uh, Maria, what are you going to do?" Phoebe
asked in trepidation.

"Not to worry, kiddo, it'll be okay. Anyway,
what are they going to do--fire me? You and I both know there are no local L.A. TV stations left, and I'll bet they can't get anyone else in here to give them
live reports."

Phoebe replied, "Umm, actually, that's the other
reason I'm calling. They are sending someone out to replace you--Todd
Reynard--should get there tonight. They need you somewhere else."

"What?" Maria yelled. "Have they gone insane?
This is the biggest disaster ever seen in the US, or maybe anywhere, I mean, L.A. is destroyed, gone, finished, nothing left--haven't they gotten that yet from
my reports? This is lunacy, sheer lunacy--"

Phoebe cut Maria off. "No, wait a minute, they're
not crazy. Now listen to me--something has happened to Las Vegas."

"What do you mean? What could possibly have
happened to Las Vegas?"

"It's gone, we think. Nobody really knows. The
military is on its way out there and you need to be on a chopper today right
after your broadcast."

"Gone? What do you mean gone?" Maria asked.

"Wiped out--like I said, nobody's exactly sure.
There was a garbled report from a trucker on his CB radio and an airline pilot,
but it was dark when he flew over. No official reports yet," Phoebe replied.