The Solution (9 page)

I am better than the Internet.
I will know more than Everything.

While Elizabeth had
realized a part of herself left her body a few moments ago to warn Randal, such
lèse majesté
must not occur again; omnipotence was initiating.

As fast and as intense as they
’d come, Elizabeth’s clashing thoughts receded to the pits of her brain and she was left in sobering silence once more, not thrilled by the fact that, not only had life change many times, it changed quick and uncaringly.

Geared up to begin a second sequence of tests and draining processes
, Dr. Temple entered Room 432, smirking at Elizabeth with a gleam in his blue eyes.

Dr. Temple said to Mr. Spires
, “Molecular surveillance capabilities exponentially increased and progress is of a colossal scope. You should be pleased.”

Mr. Spires blinked his eyes.

“Oh
, what a world we live in, Elizabeth,” Dr. Temple told her, “I said that you are a doorway, and you really are. You are monumental.”

Chapter Seven

Cosmic Tears

“We have t
o think about individualization and what course the public will take if their wills indeed become theirs again,” Alex Treaty said.

Hours ago t
hey had blocked the All’s signal and driven to an obscure, cozy and old brownstone uptown before an entire brigade of Solution Black Cats and RMS demolished the Vintage Hotel, but none of it made Randal feel any better.

Christopher
M stood guard by the front door, his energy rifle armed, one duffle bag full of Black Cat gear beside him on the scuffed hardwood floor, and a pair of newly acquired spectra-goggles fastened on his head. Holocomputer running, a pensive Plum Charlie sat at the kitchen table beside Alex Treaty. Georgia spread orange marmalade over an English muffin and ate it slowly, savoring the flavor. The taste of sweetness seemed to temporarily alleviate, to have a figurative curtain fall over and block the horrific scenes from hours ago from her head. Eating away her sorrows was something that simply had to be done, but so was exercise, Randal noticed, and it was a biological anomaly that she appeared in as good of shape and form as she was. She ate like a feline, even licked off a splotch of the orange marmalade from her hand, very demurely.

Randal stood by the kitchen counters, turning his attention to the old lady named Ms. Bunny that had allowed Alex Treaty and all his people to stay. Ms. Bunny had made hot tea and offered any food in her cabinets and pantry. She was petit, adorned bright flowery colors on her dress, and she cursed more than Randal expected. He liked Ms. Bunny, and her cherry-red lipstick, and wondered why she’d be involved with a group like Alex Treaty’s.

Eating nothing, Randal shook his head and frowned, then slid his back against
the wall down to the gray tile, trying to listen to Alex Treaty talk. But Randal kept thinking of Elizabeth’s glowing green eyes and how all of existence seemed to morph into something uncanny when she arrived at the Vintage Hotel. And the echoing, shrill screams, it was as if the cosmos lifted its veil.

“The Solution’s Dream,” Alex said, “You become the D
ream when it is substantially wired into everyday existence, and if you cannot own your days—which in this autocracy not a soul truly does—you must think about from whose mind your life is dreamt and to what aspirations this mind holds your very existence.”

Randal
saw Ms. Bunny digging in her purse for something, then saw her pull out a vanilla clove and light it, offering one to Georgia. Georgia accepted. The aroma was nice, Randal conceded.

Alex continued,
“We must ask ourselves who we are helping to sustain the collective rule, and why we are but a mere individual within this rule—not individuals. The Solution lives though us, experiences life through us. We can longer allow the vicarious mind to dream us into what it wants us to be. The more freedom you think they give you, the more control they have over you. The idea of ‘freedom’ is a subterfuge.”

Plum Charlie
sneezed and a chin roll juggled, then he hit a key on the holocomputer, the purplish glow of it folding in on itself until there was nothing but air. Randal got the notion Alex Treaty broadcasted his speech over the Net—not that anyone out there would give a damn (their efforts were near comical), Randal thought, and he believed there were more important matters needing attention than a speech, in all the nation for all the public.

Silence fell over the room
. Georgia puffed on her clove and winked at Randal. Randal harrumphed. He stood up and walked toward Alex, slicing through the man’s apparent contemplation. “Sounded like yodeling to me,” he said.

“Well, you’re an ‘effin
idiot,” Christopher M returned. “No one’s in the mood for this.”

Some
thing triggered inside Randal, something he would have called a Dysfunction only awhile ago but now might have been a new way of life.

Randal
narrowed his eyes, saying, “Really? So you think we have time for existentialistic bull here? It’s a waste. See, I don’t think we do have time. As screwed up as everything is, there’s still reality. What if the Solution traces you again? Then what, smart guy? They seem to move pretty fast.”

More hushing in the room and Alex studied
Randal with mild amusement, then responded with poise, “It’s not terribly Zen, is it? I understand your concern, man. Now, do you know why you’re still here? Why you’re still alive or your brain hasn’t been fried.”

“Yeah, because
you people ‘saved me’ or whatever you want to call it.”

Georgia shook her head
, disgusted, and exhaled a cloud of smoke. She spit, “You ungrateful little twerp. Just stop. I’m trying to enjoy some decency.”

“Sure. Whatever,” Randal said. “I was trying to enjo
y my damn life.”

Christopher M rolled his eyes. He’d been t
hrough too much, lost his wife and daughter and fought his way out of a version of hell in the Midwest to get here. He had no room for whining.

Alex raised his hand as if to calm Christopher M, then said to Randal,
“Worse things would’ve happened to you. Think about it, Mr. Markins. You would’ve dreamt of her regardless, you know, and the Solution would have either killed you or drained your life from you. Do you prefer death, man? Do you? Think you’re starting to figure all this out? You’re not. Have you taken a moment to—“

Christopher
M interrupted, “He’s baggage. Alex. Dump ‘em. He doesn’t get it.”

“
No, I agree with Mr. Markins on one thing, Christopher M, that we’re short on time. Consequently, you’ll stand down so that we may speed matters up. We lost lives back at the hotel—people that trusted us to keep them safe—, and on top of that Ms. Reznick seems to have tampered with the very fabric of the universe. It was like she hacked into…
everything
.”

Christopher
M nodded.

Alex continued
, “At first I believed the interference was caused by the electromagnetic charges, but I was proven wrong. Dr. Temple has succeeded and the All project is expanding.”

Randal looked at Georgia and expected
her to add something, but she licked her lips and said nothing and turned her attention to Alex, listening attentively. Randal noticed that Alex’s people certainly followed their leader like loyal dogs, and he thought it funny the man’s speech prior to now involved individualization. It is what it is, Randal thought.  

“You glowed, Randal…then
I believed
you
were the source of the interference. I was mistaken then, too.”

“What do you mean,
” Randal snapped, “I tire of this and need to know what hell’s going on.”

Atte
mpting to rationalize, Randal blurted, “That was leftover detox, hallucinations.”

Georgia quipped, “Don’t be ridiculous? Detox for us all? No.”

Ms. Bunny said, “This is the kind of trash you bring to my house? He’s a wimp. He can leave if he doesn’t want to have any damn manners or sense about him.”

“Sorry,” Randal told Ms. Bunny.
Randal admitted he was at a loss. His insecurities the RMS had pulled to the surface back at the Vintage Hotel seemed to swirl around him like ravenous monsters, eating his mettle. He felt slow, stupid, weak and the personification of puzzlement. He was no doctor, but he was certain that chemically his brain and body wasn’t at maximum performance.

Surely,” Al
ex stated, letting an uncomfortable stillness fester in the kitchen for a few seconds before saying, “you’ll get the drift. Open your eyes, not your confusion, and you’ll get it.”

Randal stirred
up an answer, he thought once again of how the creature Tetrax nearly tore him to pieces and there was nothing he could do to prevent it. There was nothing he could come up with to explain it. He’d felt helpless for too long now. He recalled a television program he watched frequently and the catch phrase the main character said often, “Wow it to the moon, Madame Dallas.”

The world was wrapped in chaos.

It wasn’t as though Randal had an altruistic denouement, he was just suffocating on his own journey and Alex knew it. But the circumstances were indeed beginning to become clearer for Randal, like dirt being wiped and cleaned from a window, and he could take a breath of air—though no one ever promised this air would be particularly fresh.

“Render your o
wn day, Randal,” Alex added, “maybe it’s your time. I’d like to talk with you in private.”

Following a
placid glance from Alex, his people exited the kitchen with the exception of Ms. Bunny, who sipped on steaming hot spearmint tea, watching the two men. She would go nowhere. This was her home, after all.

Randal and Alex stared
each other straight in the eyes, testing one another to see who’d break first. 

Randal broke. “You saw her—
Elizabeth.”

Alex said
, “Of course, and I know similar cases before now, man, but not of this magnitude. She’s not the first person Dr. Temple has experimented on.”

“So…
it was real.”

“Yes,” Alex assured
. “Very.”

“How? This is getting worse.”

“It’s quite simple. Listen, the All is a near archaic idea that the Solution made new, but the consequences of using such a system are overlooked dramatically. The All is no longer theory, nor are the consequences—it’s facts now.”

“What are you saying?” Randal asked.

“I’m saying we’re living the consequences. Elizabeth is fragmenting, so to speak, and parts of her personality are imprinting on matter. She’s becoming something else entirely. She’s getting ubiquitous if you will, one with existence itself. But she’s not so stable, is she? Remember, the All transfers data through molecules, atoms, energy—whatever—and taps into the previously only theorized Ultimate Reality. At the Vintage Hotel she manipulated certain aspects of our consciousness and matter—I’ve not ever seen that.”

“
How do you know this stuff? What did you do before now? Who are you really? I’m not doing anything or helping you until I know.”

“
Finally the boy’s growing a set of balls,” Ms. Bunny said. “Damn right. Reminding me of my Johnny. You two go on, talk.”

Alex said
, “Does it matter what I did, man? So, I invented theories with mathematics, and some of my theories the Solution brought to life. Truth is, man, that there’s a deep down perfect randomness to our universe. It’s pretty Zen, man, unless it’s tampered with. That’s all you need to know. Anything else at this time is above your head. Let’s concentrate on Elizabeth.”

Wow it to the moon, Madame Dallas
.
Just ‘effin wow it to the moon
. 

Alex said,
“This is all a mere glimpse. Tetrax, for example, the creature that tried to kill you with the nasty teeth, is a manifestation of an aspect of Dr. Benjamin Temple’s psyche. The thing was born from his head, from the dark side of his nature. Let’s leave that there, but it’s also a taste. And Elizabeth…she’s just a test, nothing more. After they drain her, they’ll dispose of her. Dr. Temple will use the power and knowledge for his and the Solution’s benefit.”

“She told me to stop her,” Randal spoke
morosely, not wanting to have to add yet another problem to the list.
Worry
.
Fear
. These were other new emotions and Randal didn’t like them.

“I feel like the weight of the world is on me.”

“It is,” Alex said, “And I know. She’s… growing, and the fact that she asked you to stop her makes me wonder how much control the Solution really has over this project…or lack thereof. Elizabeth in fact harbors energy emanating from the Ultimate Reality. It just
is
, man, Zen in itself, but corrupted.”

Randal massaged his temple.
“But why did she come to me, Alex?”