The Enlightened (8 page)

On a whim, cognizant that I’m just delaying my weird confrontation with Julia, I approach one of the monks doing kung fu.

He seems to be the most capable of the bunch, his frozen movements reminiscent of a lion or a cobra about to strike. I put my hand on his wrist and enter the Coherence state.

* * *

Strike. Breathe. Strike. Breathe.

Our mind is blank, like a pond on a windless day. There are no ripples on the lake, no movement of any kind, only stillness and serenity.

I, Darren, find this very odd. I came here in an attempt to sample this monk’s fighting style, but that’s not what I’m getting. Like the Abbot’s, this mind is in an altered state, as though the monk is meditating, despite the fact that he’s moving around. What’s stranger is that when I try to feel light and rewind the monk’s memories, I get a similar result: some nirvana bullshit but no actual memories. That’s really odd.

Frustrated, I exit his head.

* * *

My self-esteem has taken a serious dive today. First, I lose all those fights with Caleb. Then I miss all those targets. And now I just screwed up a Reading. Still, I suspect all this stuff is small potatoes compared to Julia’s reaction when I tell her why she’s here.

Chapter 8

D
etermined, I walk into the mansion-like guesthouse and approach Julia. She’s wearing a sleeveless dress. Without giving myself a chance to flake out, I touch her exposed elbow.

An animated version of Julia appears next to me, her blue eyes filled with shock. “Darren? What are
you
doing here?”

I look at her uncomfortably, unsure what to say.

“Is something wrong?” she asks, her surprise turning into worry. “You look pale.”

“I
...
sort of have something strange to tell you.”

“Okay.” She blinks. “I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”

“You’re not here for the reason you were told,” I say, looking at her.

“I’m not here for any reason at all.” She frowns. “They’re giving the reins to my mom.”

“Right. That succession thing? It’s a ruse to get
you
to come here,” I say, watching her closely. “The real reason is different.”

“Okay, and are you planning on telling me this reason you’re building up so much?” she asks almost teasingly. She has no idea what’s coming.

“It kind of involves me,” I say. “Or, rather, us
...
”

She stares at me for a moment as I search for the most delicate way to proceed. Then her eyes widen.

“You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding.” Her joviality forgotten, her perfectly manicured hands tense. “These old farts want us to marry each other? Or are they liberal enough nowadays to just breed us like fucking livestock?”

“The latter,” I say, glad she guessed it for herself, sparing me the need to explain.

“How could you, Darren?” she says with disappointment. “I thought Eugene was your friend.”

“What? He is. I said no.” Realizing that might have sounded insulting, I explain, “I’m not here to talk you into it. I’m here to see if you can help us get out of it.”

She looks a tiny bit calmer and takes a breath, letting it out with an audible sigh.

“Fuck,” she finally says.

“They didn’t call it that,” I say, attempting to lighten the mood.

“It’s not funny,” she says, but the corners of her eyes crinkle. “What are we going to do?”

“When I said no, they basically decided to bore me to the point of agreeing to do it.”

“What do you mean?”

I explain to her how I have no idea where my body is, and how because of that, I can’t phase out of the Quiet.

“What I don’t know,” I say, “is how they’re planning to convince
you
to do it.”

Her lips tighten. “Sadly, they have many ways. For starters, they can threaten to ostracize me if I don’t cooperate. Perhaps that’s why they brought my mom here. They might tell me the only way she’ll get what she wants is if I play ball. But what makes you think they would have to convince me at all?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if you were willing, all they’d have to do is tie me up—”

“Oh, come on. You can’t be serious.” I shudder from the images in my mind. “If it goes that way, then they can wait as long as they want. I will fucking travel the world on foot before I stoop to raping for them.”

“They might not have presented you with their most persuasive arguments yet,” she says. “These old people are ruthless.”

“I was thinking it’d be easier to ‘go along with it,’” I say, making air quotes. “We can just pretend to do it. We could sleep in the same room but do nothing. I’ll sleep on the floor or something.”

“Gentlemanly, but extremely naïve.” She gives the door a worried look. “The Enlightened know what they’re doing. If they don’t watch us do it in person, they’ll install a camera in our room for sure. And I doubt they’d let us out of here until I passed a pregnancy test.”

“Shit.” I begin to pace around her. “I didn’t realize they’d be so thorough.”

“Yeah, that they are,” she says, watching me.

I stop after a minute. “So what do we do?”

Instead of responding, Julia steps closer to me, making me uncomfortably aware of her rather ample breasts. In a daze, I wonder whether she decided to see if she might want to go along with what the Enlightened want by first giving me a kiss or something, like a little test to see how bad the situation is. But instead, she whispers in my ear, “We try to escape. Though I’m not sure how yet.”

Now I understand. If she thinks these people are paranoid enough to put cameras in the hypothetical bedroom where we’d do it, she also sees them as capable of eavesdropping on us right now. Even if they have cameras in this room in the real world, they wouldn’t work in the Quiet, but it’s all too plausible that my grandma is putting her ear to the wall, waiting for us to reveal our plans.

“I have an idea,” I whisper. “But if it fails, I don’t have a backup plan.”

“If your idea fails, we’ll still have time,” she responds quietly. “I had a birth control implant put into my arm two years ago. So, for another year, I can’t get knocked up.”

“But that would mean we’d—” I cut myself off, shaking my head before I can complete that thought. “No, no way. And besides, I need to get out of here fast.” At her questioning look, I say, “It’s a long story.”

“We can say yes and play it by ear after,” she whispers.

It doesn’t sound like too good of a plan to me. I also really don’t like the idea of them not yet having used their ‘most persuasive arguments’ on me. I don’t even want to know what that would entail.

“So the plan is we both say yes to this?” I ask. “That’s a prerequisite for my idea too.”

“We don’t have much choice,” she whispers. “If your plan works and you get out, can you tell Eugene to call me, please?”

“Sure,” I whisper back, glad she can’t see my face. Her mention of Eugene reminds me of my guilt. “You guys haven’t talked recently?”

I’ve been wondering how the events in New York affected Eugene’s interactions with Julia, the girl whose father is dead because of us.
In some stoic Russian tradition, Eugene has been avoiding the whole subject of Julia. Mira told me he’s been avoiding Julia too, though she saw that as a positive, having never approved of the relationship.
And now it looks like she was right about Eugene taking the avoidance route. I can’t really blame him. I have no idea what I would’ve done in his place.

“No,” Julia whispers, this time louder. “I haven’t heard from him at all since—” She swallows audibly. “Since my father was killed.”

“I heard,” I say, trying to keep my voice expressionless. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” she says, her voice catching.

“I’ll go announce my willingness to do my duty,” I whisper to change the subject. “You might want to return to your body.”

“Sure,” she says. “No offense, but I hope I don’t see you again.”

“None taken. I feel the same way.”

She doesn’t even know how serious I am. I never want to feel this guilt again—the guilt I feel when the subject of her father comes up.

Chapter 9

I
enter the Hall and find Rose and Paul sitting in that special spot in the middle of the meditation circles. Not surprisingly, they’re meditating. The sound of my steps pulls them out of their concentration and they look up.

“I’ve thought about it,” I say to Paul when I get close enough so I don’t have to shout across the room. “If you’re really going to take care of the child, I’ll do what you want, but I have one extra condition.”

“Which is?” Rose asks.

“I want you to answer a few questions.”

“Sure,” Paul says dismissively, getting up. “Let’s talk on the way to my body. I’m sure I can answer whatever questions you might have.”

“I’ll walk with you,” Rose adds, rising to her feet as well. “Whatever Paul can’t answer, I’ll try to.”

“Okay,” I say as we start walking. “For starters, what is the Mind Dimension? What actually happens when we Split, as everyone calls it?”

They don’t answer for a bit. Finally, Rose says, “Well, Darren, despite everyone calling us the ‘Enlightened,’ there are many things we don’t know, and this is one of them, unfortunately.”

“But you must have some idea,” I press. “For example, Eugene thinks it’s an alternate universe.”

“We’re aware of that theory,” Paul says, holding the Temple’s big doors open for us. “We saw your memories, remember?”

“So do you think he’s right?”

“The one thing we agree on with that boy is that we’re not truly here in regular, physical form,” Rose says. “In the old days, we called what we do ‘Spirit Walking.’”

“That has a nice ring to it,” I say, “but I don’t believe in spirits.”

“I don’t either,” Paul chimes in. “But you have to admit, this experience has a certain ethereal quality to it.”

“I guess.” It’s disappointing that they know as little as I do.
Or that they’re willing to share so little
, a skeptical part of me suggests.

I walk in silence for a few seconds, trying to decide what else I want to ask. Then it hits me. “What’s up with the monks? Did you start a religion or something?”

“That is a long tale,” Rose says. “It all started centuries ago, when the first of us, the Enlightened, realized that Joining works best when the host’s mind is as clear from distractions as possible.”

“So they sought out meditators?” I ask, fascinated.

“Sort of,” Rose says. “They might’ve invented the practice or taken it further, but in a nutshell, yes. The rest fell into place. Once meditators started living side by side with our people, they created legends about us. It would be hard not to, since these ‘wise people’ knew their inner thoughts and probably showed off in other ways.”

“With time, the whole thing evolved,” Paul says, picking up the story. “It turned out that certain meditation regimes can make a mind more difficult to Read, and more importantly, to Push.”

“The monks can’t be Pushed?” I ask excitedly. I recall my attempt at Reading that one monk, and indeed, all I got was the serene-mind equivalent of white noise.

“We don’t know for sure how immune they are,” Paul says. “But our oral tradition claims they are, and this is why they were encouraged to learn martial arts over the years, to become our protectors of sorts.”

“Maybe you can test how much influence you have over one of them?” Rose suggests. “Once the business at hand is over.”

“I’d love to try,” I say, and mean it. If I
were
to stick around, I’d do exactly that: try to Guide one of these monks. As is, though, I hope to be out of this mess long before such an interesting experiment can happen. A shame, as I find the idea that someone can resist us rather intriguing.

We talk about this some more. I learn how Buddhism actually branched off from the monks who lived with the Enlightened and not the other way around, as I assumed. Rose and Paul explain to me that they’re not deified by the monks, but are seen as normal people who have achieved enlightenment. This belief is where the nickname ‘the Enlightened’ originated. Of course, once the nickname was given, the Enlightened appropriated it, making it their own and going as far as calling the visions inside the Joining ‘Enlightenment.’

“What can you tell me about my dad?” I ask once my curiosity about the monks is satisfied. “What was he like?”

“A lot like you,” Rose says, smiling, and proceeds to tell me about young Mark.

Like me, he was impatient and a big troublemaker as a kid. He was perhaps even more rebellious than I was as a teen—a difficult feat, I imagine. Through it all, I glean a lot of information between the lines. I picture someone like me growing up under the thumb of someone like Paul and can easily imagine that person running away from the Temple and doing everything to spite them. Hell, not only would I not have impregnated the girl of their choice, I likely would’ve burned the whole freaking Temple down on my way out. Mark showed some restraint, in my opinion, but obviously Rose and Paul don’t see it that way.

“I’m tired,” Rose says after we’ve been walking for a while. “I’ll sit on this stump and wait to be pulled out, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure, Rose,” Paul says. “We should be there in a few hours.”

“I’ll practice my meditation then,” she says and takes up a comfortable position on her makeshift chair.

The rest of the way, Paul and I walk in silence. I don’t have many questions left, nor am I sure I can talk to him without getting into a verbal fight.

My grandpa is about as far from my favorite person as it gets.

* * *

“We’re here,” Paul says when we finally reach the car.

I say nothing, doing my best to keep comments such as ‘no shit, Grandpa’ firmly in check.

Paul approaches his body. The frozen Paul is still staring at the frozen me through the window. The frozen Caleb is still where he was originally, behind the wheel.

I realize something at this point. When Paul phases out of the Quiet and causes us, in turn, to do the same, Caleb will be caught by surprise. He wasn’t told about any of this. There’s a small chance he’ll be disoriented as a result.