Ashes of Foreverland
Read Ashes of Foreverland Online
Authors: Tony Bertauski
Tags: #science fiction, #dystopian, #teen, #ya, #young adult, #action
Ashes of Foreverland
by
Tony Bertauski
Copyright © 2015 by Tony Bertauski
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
This book is a work of fiction. The use of real people or real locations is used fictitiously. Any resemblance of characters to real persons is purely coincidental.
See more about the author and forthcoming books at
http://www.bertauski.com
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
All the beta readers who plowed through the potholes: Mandy Frankel, Hazel White, Sandy Gudaitis, and Chick Jabre.
Pauline Nolet
, the editor who hunts gremlins.
And all the authors in
DeadPixel Publications
. I’d name you, but the order could piss someone off. This trip is much better as a ride-along.
To the lost.
To the lonely.
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W
e all...
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f
all...
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d
own.
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An Incomplete List of Foreverland Survivors
Danny Boy
, whereabouts unknown
Cyn
, last known whereabouts Minneapolis, Minnesota
Reed
, whereabouts unknown
Harold Ballard (The Director)
, son of Patricia and Tyler, whereabouts unknown
Tyler Ballard
, ADMAX Penitentiary, Colorado
Patricia Ballard
, comatose at the Institute of Technological Research, New York City
ADMAX Penitentiary, Colorado
T
yler stepped onto the ledge.
The Italian marble was cold, his toes gripping the chiseled edge. The platform cantilevered from the roof a thousand feet above traffic. Taillights were strung throughout Central Park, starting and stopping, merging and turning, moving through the city like corpuscles.
He couldn't smell the exhaust from up there, couldn't hear the horns or the congestion, the shouts and whistles.
He held out his arms, Christ-like, tipped his head and inhaled the wind untainted by human grime, from the trash of selfish thoughts. Only the fierce breeze in his ears.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.” Patricia crossed the portico.
Her loosely fit dress fluttered around her feet. The brightly lit glass walls of the luxury apartmentâthe only such apartment atop the Bank of America buildingâbetrayed the layers of beige fabric that otherwise would hide her pear-shaped body. Her graying hair flowed to her shoulders.
“I can't stay long,” he said.
She looked through him with those penetrating eyes, a smile reflecting somewhere in their depths. Her scent carried through the cutting breeze, her dress snapping like taut flags. He stopped on the bottom step.
“You don't have to leave.”
“You know I can't stay, love.”
A beige pile of fabric fell at her bare feet. Her naked body was without wrinkles; the sweep of her hips hypnotic. None of her curves were as alluring as the tight curls of her lips pushing into her cherub cheeks.
He watched her from the bottom step, watched her dive into the glass-bottom pool that was suspended over the thousand-foot drop. The water, crystal blue.
She hardly made a ripple, swimming beneath the surface to the other end. Her strokes were long, water beading from her fair skin. Tyler waited with a towel. He wrapped her as she stepped out, water dripping from her nose.
The taste of her filled his sinuses.
He pulled the towel over her shoulders. This time, it was he that turned away and climbed back onto the ledge. The night consumed the streets. Red lights flared; headlights glared. And there, on the horizon, between the stiff city edifices lining the streets like metallic offerings to an industrial God, just past the end of the road where the sun would rise in the morning, he saw the flicker of gray static. Nothing existed beyond that.
Stay? That would give me no greater pleasure.
But staying in this reality, this world that Patricia dreamed, would be so small. Despite her ability, she could dream up the city.
Stay, he couldâhe wanted to.
But stay and the human population would never know the true freedom of another realityâthis reality.
Foreverland.
“The hosts?” he asked. “How are they doing?”
“You know your answer.” Her shadow crept up behind him. “Hope is your albatross, dear.”
Hope. It was indeed his bastard.
He was not so desperate to lay his future, his life, on the fragile ice of hope. But never had he thought he would be this old, this close to the edge of dying. He couldn't live forever.
Not in the flesh.
Unless they found someone with the potential, the brain structure, to host a limitless Foreverland, one that went far beyond the city, past the horizon, one that replicated this planet.
This universe.
A new reality.
Patricia couldn't do it. Neither could he. Even Harold, their son, if he were alive, could only do so much. But someone out there could. There had to be. And that was why he asked, that was why he hoped.
Maybe they would find one before this flesh ended.
Her hands slid over his ribs, laced over his stomach. “I may have found one,” she whispered.
“What?”
“A viable host.”
“What do you mean? Why didn't you tell me?”
“Hope, dear. I didn't want to stoke it any more than you have. I'm taking a chance, but I've sensed her exceptional potential.”
“You have her already?”
She nodded. “I've already had her. She is dreaming her own Foreverland and it is wondrous.”
His chest fluttered. “She agreed to host?”
“No. She doesn't know...I had to take her, dear. She has no idea.”
It was risky, but abduction was nothing new. “Why didn't you tell me?”
“I wanted to be sure.”
“And you're sure?”
She kissed his chin. “A goddess.”
Chance was a suspicious mistress, the harbinger of hope. And, try as he might to deny it, he was willing to gamble on a goddess.
Because a goddess is what we need.
“In order for her Foreverland to stabilize,” she said, “we'll need her to sleep.”
“How long?”
“A year.”
A year?
They had already squandered so much time on the other hosts.
Is this really our last chance to bring Foreverland to the world?
He pulled her close.
Their lips met, warm and wet. The wind howled. He held her until it was time to leave her, to return to the physical realm, where his body of aging flesh waited. Her floral scent lingered in his nostrils, but a faint layer of decay sifted through it.
A year,
he thought.
One more year.
A point burned his forehead like a red-hot wire. He reached up, felt the slither, the sting of a wasp as the surgical steel needle slid from his forehead.
He stared through a blurry veil at a cracked ceiling.
A metal door clanged. Two prison guards stepped next to Tyler Ballard's bed and waited. He took his time, letting his feet touch the floor. He rubbed the thin spotted skin on his knobby hands for warmth.
The floral scent faded.
The Institute of Technological Research, New York City
“L
adies and gentlemen, can I have your attention?” someone shouted. “The tour is about to begin.”
Alex put her phone away. Her husband had texted, wondering how long this visit would last. If he timed his exit from the Guggenheim, he could pick her up without parking.
Journalists crowded to the front. Alex dumped her coffee and moved along the wall, hands still shaking. A cold wave vibrated inside her like a chilled metal coil, a set of eyes scanning her organs. Her teeth damn near chattered, but she wasn't cold.
Nerves?
Through a gap of photographers, she saw the Institute's PR person standing in front of heavy double doors. Like the rest of the lobby, they were forest green, imbued with a sense of calming and healing. She had a sense that beyond those doors it was quite the opposite.
“I would like to welcome you.” The small woman's name was Ellen; that's what the badge said. She was in her early thirties, her teeth flashing a white smile. “This is a very exciting day at the Institute of Technological Research. You were handpicked to see our work up close, to ask our scientists questions. It's through you the public will know what we're doing.”
She made it sound like they'd found golden tickets in chocolate bars when, in fact, they gave select tours all the time. But it was by invitation. Alex's invitation came as a surprise. She wasn't a journalist anymore and didn't work for a major newspaper like the others. She squeezed between a young photographer and the wall. Her black hair fell over her face.
She rubbed her hands. Her lips, cold.
“Before we do,” Ellen said with her flashy smile, “I want to emphasize a few items. You have all signed a release and agreed to the above-mentioned rules.”
She held up a sheet of paper.
“Your enhancements, should you have them, will remain off during your stay.”
There was a rumble of laughter.
“I know, I know. We're the pioneers of biomite research, but while you're inside the laboratory, we don't want to run the risk of interference.”
The punchline wasn't
off,
it was
should you have them.
Every journalist on the planet had a certain degree of biomitesâthe recently invented and globally distributed artificial stem cellsâseeded into their brain to help with memory, data processing and, for some, emotional regulation. And this was where biomites were manufactured. Alex had the maximum allowed by the government. They probably all did.
And that's why I'm cold.
She couldn't remember the last time she'd shut off her internal enhancements. In the last hour, it had become quite clear how much they helped regulate her emotions.
It sucked to be plain human.
“Your identification has an imbedded monitor.” Ellen lifted the card around her neck. “Keep it on you at all times.”
She added a few more pleasantries before pushing the doors open, leading the group down a stark white hallway. Alex worked her way to the end of the line. The smell of gourmet coffee was quickly replaced with sterilizing solutions and artificial clayâthe distinctive odor of biomites. The place felt a bit too much like a 1940s asylum.