Through the observation windows everything turned green, boom, just like that. Vibrant, pulsing. And, just as sudden, black.

Not stars, not swirling nebulae, not those crazy psychedelic effects Hollywood would have provided.

Blackness.

Was the train still riding atop the tracks? But what would be supporting them?

If not, then did that mean it was just us, inside a train, adrift in a void? Were we in motion? Or maybe we were just suspended here for two days?

But, wait. Would it seem like two days for us? Did time even work in this place? We did have gravity, which was good.

One of the producers for I’d Eat That!, wished us a goodnight as he walked past our table.

“You might want to set your alarm clock,” he warned. “They stop serving breakfast pretty early. By eight-fifteen all you’ll have is a continental buffet.”

I guess clocks were still dependable, at least aboard the train.

Saligia finished her Campari, and we headed down to our stateroom.

When we closed ourselves inside, Saligia looked around. If she had wanted privacy, she wouldn’t be finding it here.

“At least it’s more comfortable than that radioactive cell,” she muttered before turning off the light.

There remained a soft glow of a nightlight that ran along the recessed edge of the ceiling. She was looking up at it, her hands frozen on the top button of her blouse. She rolled her eyes and turned her back on me to undress.

I, too, turned around. I had begun to get out of my clothes when it occurred to me I might need to help her up onto her bunk, and it might be more in line with whatever sort of decorum she wanted to create between us if I was still dressed when I did so. How had things become so awkward?

But then I heard the creak of springs, and I knew she’d made it up on her own.

I undressed and climbed into my own bed.

I thought about asking Saligia if I should close the curtains, but that would be absurd, as there was nothing out there. No intrusive moonlight, no chance of prying eyes. Nothing. Still, I felt I should say something before falling asleep. There was a tension in the air, and maybe I could lessen it.

“I’m sorry if I seem weird,” I said. Probably I should have said distant, that was one of her favorite criticism of me when we were together. “A lot has happened to me lately. I’m just trying to process it all.” That was no lie. “I mean, like Sy. I was so relieved to find he hadn’t died. And then when you told me that he had…you know, died, well, it was a shock on top of a shock.”

She said nothing. I knew she was still awake. I decided to be optimistic and  think of her silence as acceptance of my simple statement of…certainly not an excuse, but an explanation.

“I know you’re not lying,” she suddenly said. “You don’t do that. Of course, I suspect you lie to yourself all the time. But, good lord, Morris, nobody can be that dense.”

“Excuse me?”

I tried to remember if, in better days between us, pillow talk had been this graceless.

“So,” I began, slow and cautious, “you’re saying everyone on the show—Serpientes y Escaleras—they all knew Sy died and, months later, appeared out of one of the portals?”

That didn’t sound right. I would have heard some sort of gossip if it were general knowledge.

Saligia didn’t speak for a full minute. Aha! I had her.

“No,” she eventually said with a sigh. “Why would they? His death was never reported. It was the Changes. Newspapers didn’t bother with obituaries. There was so much more going on.”

“And yet, I’m the dense one?”

“You saw the explosion, and you ran away. Later, you saw him alive on TV. And then you came to La Vida Tower, at which point you learned about the portals…that dead people come out of them.”

“Okay. I’ll give you that. I’m a bit slow, at times. I would have eventually—”

“Would you? Once you had allowed your guilt be so wonderfully and completely washed away?”

Now it was my time to be silent.

I lay there in my narrow bunk trying to think of something to say. But I couldn’t. When I heard Saligia’s even breathing, I knew she had fallen sleep, so I decided to do so as well.

###

The next two days we learned less than we had hoped.

I say we, but I guess I mean, me. Saligia was less interested in the details of where Sy went or how that portal managed to get him from the set of Serpientes y Escaleras to wherever he was now. She just wanted us to get to him and make sure he was safe.

As for getting to the bottom of what happened to San Antonio, well, I still hadn’t told her what I had seen.

Clearly, I wanted to know what had happened. I mean if an entire city had vanished from the face of the planet, were any of us safe? I for one had been extremely relieved when I learned that the Changes had ended. It was how I imagine the British felt when the Nazi’s surrendered. Finally the constant fear of chaotic bombardment was over.

But, for us, was it over? Our fear?

If the Changes were returning, we needed to prepare ourselves.

Of course, maybe it was something else. Maybe it was what Ida had said. The portals overheated, or whatever. If those damn things were so delicate and so destructive, why the hell were they being used for something as asinine as a game show?

I for one would think twice before putting a bunch of entertainment industry folks in charge of something that could take out an entire city.

So, I decided to ask around the next morning after breakfast. We had made certain to get to the dining car while they were still serving the full breakfast. The eggs Benedict put to shame any I had had before. Saligia opted for the oatmeal and a huge sweating tumbler of mimosa.

When the waiter told Saligia about the spa at the back of the train, she smiled dreamily and stood.

“Off to the spa?” asked a young woman we had met yesterday on the observation deck. She handed Saligia a magazine. “Something to read while getting that pedicure.”

“Variety!” Saligia said. “I didn’t know they still published this.”

The woman laughed. “You’re in this issue,” she said. “Page 47.”

Saligia’s eyes grew. She hurried off with the magazine clutched to her chest.

I went up to the observation deck and soon was deep in conversation with Wanda, head of personnel for I’d Eat That!

She was a huge fan of Sy, and had recognized my name from those distant days of Wonders Unfolding. I found myself answering a barrage of questions about his boyhood and daily work schedule and all that sort of nonsense. I kept trying to move the conversation back to those portals. Just how dangerous were they?

But for Wanda such matters held no interest.

“Aren’t you afraid?” I asked.

“Of what?”

“Working around those things. You have them on I’d Eat That!, right?”

“Sure, but I’m back in my office in LA most of the time. Besides, those sort of accidents don’t happen often. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, trying to keep my voice from cracking. “You’re telling me cities have been destroyed before?” This was madness.

She shrugged and muttered something about how it was a shame, if you thought about it. And then she asked if Sy chose his own wardrobe.

“I heard he switched to a red wig on that final episode,” she said with an enthusiastic grin. “Before leaping through Door Number One. What a stunt. Flashy! Splashy!” She smiled wistfully off into space before turning to lock eyes with mine. “And sexy!”

Well, at least Sy managed to escape before the city was destroyed. But, sexy or not, I hoped that was not the last image I would have of my old friend. With that absurd toupee on his head.

And if we found him—I mean, when—how was I going to explain that all of San Antonio was gone? He must have made some good friends while living there. And then there was Rose. She was born there. Probably had family. The thought of having to share that sort of news made me sick to my stomach.

###

For the rest of the trip, our fellow passengers did little to inform or educate me on much of anything. Mostly they were keen to share gossip, gossip about people I knew nothing about. Saligia seemed to know some of the names they dropped in their hushed and amused tones, and I noticed that she was paying close attention so as to file away any useful information. She really seemed to be warming to everyone. It didn’t hurt that they treated her with such revered respect.

“These are my people,” she had even said to me on our second night. “And I never knew I even had people. My peers! My colleagues!”

I had about reached my fill of Saligia’s droning on about how far her fame had spread, but I let her have her moment. It was better than her former tirade about “those jackasses in upper management always slapping us down, me and Sy, keeping our knees bent in supplication—they should have been bowing to us!”

So, beyond general chitchat and shoptalk (chiefly about how to get better ratings), the Network people we talked to did little to expand my sketchy knowledge of the portals—their dangers, their origins, where people who went into them went. Most responses to my question were monosyllabic. Chet, the head of marketing for Don’t Spin Wrong! (“marketing maven,” he called himself with grinning gusto), spoke in greater length, but hardly more depth.

He had joined me and Saligia for breakfast on the second day. Saligia was still engrossed in her copy of Variety that sat open beside her breakfast plate.

“Portals?” Chet said. “Not much to say about them. We have them as well for our show, of course. People come to us, resurrected. The REINCORs. Which is pretty cool if you think about it, wouldn’t you say? And we process them. Separate winners from losers. You guys do the same. But you have that great hook. Not just winners losers. But the whole moral judgement thing. Saints and sinners! And into the departure portals they all go. What happens after that, who knows? Not me! I heard somewhere that they get processed again. Seems unnecessary. All this processing. Hey, maybe they’re reincarnated. Winners get to be captains of industries. Losers, chiggers or poultry. Maybe it’s on to pure enlightenment, cosmic consciousness. Had an aunt who was into all that top chakra mumbo jumbo. You really should be talking with Ida. She’s the most upper of upper management on this train.”

Not a good idea. Ida was still giving me the cold eye.

“We’ve heard that after the contestants go through the portals, they arrive in LA,” Saligia said as matter-of-fact as though critiquing the fruit salad she was picking at. “Do you know where? Where in LA?”

“An address, perhaps,” I added.

“Oh, that’s easy,” Chet said. “Hollywood Bowl. Well, underneath the Hollywood Bowl. There’s supposed to be a whole complex. The winners and losers get sent there. All of them. Central Processing, that’s the place. I can’t imagine it’s very interesting. I mean, if it were, they’d make a TV show of it, right?”

That was our first real lead. Now we had a destination when we arrived. I was heartened to know that there was at least one landmark I would recognize. What with the Changes, anything might have happened. From Chet we learned a few more things about the post-Changes Los Angeles.

“The surrounding countryside is mostly a desolate wasteland,” he told us, waving his hand dismissively. “But, not to worry, because a circular portion of the city has been preserved. Not all of it, unfortunately. Los Angeles is now fifteen miles in diameter, from the Santa Monica pier to Griffith Park, from Mulholland Drive to Culver City. Everything safe and cozy, beneath a lovely transparent dome!”

A dome? Something like that would have been nice in San Antonio. I had noticed how on windy days the dust from the treeless barrens would come into town and settle over everything.

But, all in all, I felt a surge of optimism. We would soon arrive at a town I knew well, and it sounded as though I’d still be able to find my way around. I would track down my favorite Korean place, Madam Bong-Cha’s Dumpling Diner, in Los Feliz. I think I could handle almost anything, as long as I could hold onto one pleasant and familiar thing. If, let’s say, Los Angeles was populated with bipedal talking cats, it’d be Madam Bong-Cha’s kimchi-mandu that would keep me sane.

Once we tracked down Sy and Nora, rescued Rose, and turned August over to the authorities, I would treat us all to an extended stay at a suite at the Biltmore. I’d like to finally put some of my gold coins to good use. Then, surrounded by luxury, we could figure out what to do next.

I tapped Saligia’s shoulder. She looked up from the magazine.

“What?”

“Hollywood Bowl,” I said.

She nodded and immediately returned to the magazine.

Chet laughed.

“She’s amazed to find herself featured in Variety,” I told him.

“Do you not know?” Chet said, leaning across the table toward Saligia. “Last year you were on the cover.”

Saligia’s eyes bulged. Her mouth opened, but no words came out.

“What’s going on?” I asked Chet, looking around the dining car as people were getting up and leaving.

“We’re about to transition from the void,” he said. “Come on up topside, it’s quite a sight.”

He stood and walked away.

I quickly gulped the last of my coffee and followed Chet up the stairs.

Saligia was close behind me, whispering loudly if I thought he was serious.

“You know,” she added for clarity. “About the cover of Variety?”

When we entered the observation deck, I took Saligia’s hand and we pushed our way to the front. The people crowding around the large window were happy to make room for us.

First there was just that blackness we’d been subjected to for the last two days. That infinite velvety nothingness. Then Saligia squeezed my hand and I saw it, too. A speck of green, which I first thought was a reflection in the window. As it grew in size, I had, for the first time since we’d been in this lightless limbo, a sense of motion. We weren’t floating. No. We were moving—and moving fast—towards something green. A glowing green blob. Glowing and growing, bigger and brighter. Then we were in it. All was green. And just as soon as we were in, we were out.

Our fellow passengers began clapping and cheering.

Saligia’s pressure on my hand became painful.

We had emerged onto a gray and blasted plain. The sky was black, and filled with stars. In front of us was a domed city. I suppose it must be Los Angeles. But I didn’t think we were in California. That giant red planet, which filled the sky, certainly did not belong to any landscape I knew.

“Good lord,” Saligia said, her tone low, the words formed deep in her throat. “Where are we?”

“Oh, I thought you would have known,” said Wanda. “These days, Los Angeles is on Phobos.”

“On what?” Saligia asked.

I’d be needing a double serving of Madam Bong-Cha’s dumplings.

“The larger moon of Mars,” I told her.

“If anyone’s interested,” Nora said to no one in particular. “I now hate robots.”

She was, of course, speaking to me. Now that the robots had been taken care of, and neither Sy nor August were in any condition to be roped into small talk, there was just the two of us.

I moved around the control room, checking for other doors that we might have missed. Not just because we needed to get out of this crazy place, but also I didn’t want any more of those robots sneaking up on us. But unless a secret hatch was well camouflaged, the only way in was that curved stairway.

Nora had her own agenda. She systematically worked her way around the room, looking at every console station, each covered with buttons, dials, and video screens.

I agreed with her opinion. I wasn’t too fond of those robots, either. What bothered me the most when we hauled them from the room and tossed them over the railing all the way down into that pool of water, was the behavior of the one who had shot Helen and Darlene. He kept saying the same thing over and over.

“We must process the arrivals. You don’t understand.”

He was right. We didn’t. We didn’t understand anything.

I think it would have been better if he—and really, I should be calling him an it—had begged for his life. I might have been less cavalier in helping Nora dispose of the robots in such an admittedly vengeful manner. And then there was the other one, who Nora had conked on the head. It was pretty much out of commission, although its right hand twitched about madly as if it were operating a ten-key adding machine.

Before heaving them over the railing, we’d stripped the robots of their uniforms so we could wrap up Sy and August for, I guess, protection. Their lumpy, glistening, tentacled bodies seemed so vulnerable. Next, we brought up one of those wheelbarrows and placed them in it.

I also wanted them bundled up so they wouldn’t keep staring at me with those huge, moist eyes. Unblinking and analytical. I couldn’t be sure that they were still able to think, but if they could, I have no doubt Sy would be imploring me to help him, while August would be plotting and scheming. Though, still, I could see their tentacles moving around under the robots’ outfits.

And then something caught my eye.

I had completely forgotten about that device the robot had used to shoot Sy and August. I bent down to pick it up. Maybe it had a reverse setting. But, no. There was just one button. I aimed it at a blank wall, away from those two things in the wheelbarrow. I pushed the button.

Nothing.

“Hey, careful with that thing,” Nora said, looking over.

I tried again, but it didn’t do anything. Maybe it only worked when held by robots. Or was it out of power?

“Busted?” Nora asked. “So, what is it anyway? Squid ray? Because that’s just stupid.”

“It affects something called a tau field.”

Then Nora paused, furrowing her brows.

“Tau? Like the Greek letter?”

“I have no idea how it’s spelled,” I said. “All I know is that was what the robots called it.”

Nora crossed over to a console panel she had already examined.

“Because that’s what it says here,” she said, tapping her finger beside a dial. “Tau Field Dampener. T-A-U.”

I walked around and peered over her shoulder.

The dial went from zero to 10. It was currently set on 4.

“Turn it all the way down to zero,” I suggested.

“That’s an affirmative.”

When she dialed it to zero, I noticed a deep drone, almost inaudible, soften and then die.

“Tau Field Dampener off,” she said. “How are the squids doing?”

I partially uncovered them, not wanting to see those eyes looking back at me.

Nora leaned across the console to see better. We watched and waited.

“Sy told me all about his accident,” she said, suddenly breaking the silence.

“His what?”

“You know, his…. Maybe he didn’t tell you? He died.”

I turned around to stare at her.

“What are you talking about?”

“Sy had an episode,” she said, looking away from me. I guess I had quite the expression. “On the elevator ride up here. It looked exactly like that time when I saw August back in La Vida Tower when he tried to escape. Parts of him losing, you know, human form.”

“But Sy left the building all the time.” This was getting crazy.

“Always with Saligia. Right? She and her mind powers. And now, he needs you.”

“Well, I’m right here.” I looked down at the wheelbarrow. Maybe if I poked him. “By your logic, the both of them should be benefiting from my proximity.”

“Hey, don’t yell at me,” Nora grumbled. “I don’t claim to know everything.”

Could that be true? I mean, Nora was right in that Sy never left La Vida Tower without Saligia.

I wish I knew the rules about all this nonsense.

Nora walked over to join me.

“It was a few years ago,” she told me. “A meteor. I mean, that’s how he died. Hit by a meteor.”

“Ah,” was all I could think to say. The thing was, Sy getting struck by a meteor seemed the least unlikely thing I’d heard today.

I squatted down, getting closer to the two swaddled figures in the wheelbarrow. Nothing seemed different about them.

“I wish we could tell them apart,” I said. “Then we could separate them. I’d hate to have them transform back only to have August take us by surprise.”

Nora got down on her knees and peeked under one of the white jumpsuits at a squid.

“Aren’t you supposed to be able to read minds?”

I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that.

I took a deep breath, made my mind clear and receptive. I closed my eyes.

But I just felt silly. Without Saligia, I never felt confident that the thoughts and impressions that came to me were external, and not just my imagination.

I wish she were here to help me.

Wait.

There was something. Something so slight. Two impressions. That cold, sharp darkness I associated with August. And a single phrase, zapped by a robot, which could only be Sy. Maybe if we placed them on different sides of the room, I’d be able to identify which was which.

“Can you communicate with them?” Nora asked. “Ask Sy if he knows how to bring him back. You know, with your mind powers.”

All I could do was shake my head and sigh.

I was in over my head.

Maybe Nora was right. Maybe that was something I could do…if I just knew how. But everything seemed beyond my understanding. I suddenly felt more lost than I had ever been before. I mean, those two robots. What I had done to them…that wasn’t me.

A single tone rang out, sounding like a child’s xylophone.

Nora rushed over to one of the consoles.

“In-coming,” she said, in a sort of clipped speech straight from a war movie.

She was enjoying this entirely too much.

“In-coming?” I crossed the room. “What does that mean?”

“Says it right here on this screen,” Nora said. “In-coming. Tier 18.” She leaned down to better see a line of flashing text. “Chaos Squad. Oh, I guess the contestants from New York are coming through. Exciting!”

I stood beside her as she activated a video monitor for Tier 18. We watched three dozen fit men and women with no-nonsense buzz haircuts as they stepped from their glass tubes with cautious deliberation. They were all dressed in colorful skintight unitards.

“Do you know the show?” Nora asked.

What was that girl talking about.

“That Chaos Squad show,” she added.

I just shook my head.

“I’m guessing it’s competitive,” she said. “Maybe like gladiatorial bouts in ancient Rome. I mean, that robot boss said the show was violent.”

The people got out of the tubes and looked at one another with obvious suspicion.

“I think they’re confused,” Nora said. “Other than the obvious, that us. I think winners and losers are materializing next to one another. Now I know why the robots would want the people coming into this place to be helpless little squids. Do you think they’ll start fighting?”

I suggested that we could go down and talk to them. See how we could all work together and get out of here.

“Let’s think this through,” Nora cautioned me. “Now I’ll be the first to admit I know nothing about the television business, but when I hear Chaos Squad, I’m not thinking allies. We need to assess. Learn the rules.”

She had my attention.

“So, you have a plan?” Why was I even asking? She had no plan.

“Well, I don’t mean to pull rank, but I did come to rescue you. Now, if we can only find a volume knob for this Tier 18 camera.” She moved her head about like a chicken looking for a bug. “Ah ha! Those robots thought of everything.”

She pushed a button and we had sound. I was impressed.

We were now able to hear the murmuring of all those people who had appeared in every one of the 36 glass tubes on the 18th level. These contestants wore either a purple uniform or a yellow uniform. Different teams?

Two men, closest to the camera, in opposing colors, squared off, fists at the ready.

“So, you miserable losers have followed us to Valhalla?” asked the one in purple.

“I guess we’ve been given a second chance to mix it up with you villains,” replied the one in yellow.

I had to say these contestants from New York certainly were more lively than ours. However, their commentary sounded extremely stilted. Especially that bit about Valhalla. All part of the Chaos Squad experience, I suppose.

“Something’s gone wrong,” the purple one said. “This was not what we were promised.”

“That’s because it was lies—all lies!” the yellow one shouted, looking around for someone to punch.

“You’re right,” said another man in yellow, stepping forward. “We all need to join forces. Find our common enemy!”

Did they think they were still on a TV show?

“We will unite!” a woman in purple screamed and raised a fist.

She was answered, unanimously, by the others.

“That doesn’t sound good,” I said to Nora, no longer thinking it wise to head down and reason with them.

“Nope.” Nora was in full agreement. “It sounds awful. I kinda wish we had those robots back.”

“Brothers and sisters!” shouted another Squad member—though shouldn’t the show have been called Chaos Squads, plural? “It’s us against them. Spread out, find the vermin, and eradicate! Take no prisoners!”

With battle cries they took to the stairs and elevators.

“This is all because we turned off the field dampeners,” I said.

Nora nodded and turned the dial all the way up.

“This’ll fix ‘em,” she said.

However, the Chaos Squad were unaffected.

“Or not,” she added.

“Thoughts?” I asked, trying not to let my panic show.

“Hold on,” Nora said. “Hold on.” She walked down a row of control consoles. “I know I saw something, somewhere, that might just…ah. Here.”

She held a finger over a large red button.

“Well?” I asked.

“It says Control Room Lockdown.” She cocked a brow. “What do you think?”

“Do it!” But I did wonder if there was another button, somewhere, that read Control Room Unlock.

When Nora pushed the button, a curved metal section slid out of the wall and rotated around to cover the staircase. It locked shut with a dull clang, followed by a heavy thud, as though some huge bolt had been slid into place.

“Snug as a bug,” Nora said, doing a little dance. “Who needs robots. Right?”

But all I could think of was that now we were trapped. No food. No water. Would the air run out? Trapped somewhere deep underground, the only elevators to the surface have been shut down centuries ago. If that was even possible.

“In-coming,” Nora cried out.

“Would you stop that.” I was trying to think.

“There are more contestants coming through. Some show called I’d Eat That! Sounds like it’d be kind of funny, don’t you think?”

Nora reached out and turned the dampener dial to zero.

“But why?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It just seems like we owe it to those new-comers to have a fighting chance. If they come through as those flabby little creatures, they’re doomed.”

I couldn’t argue.

“Well, at least we have our eyes,” Nora said, patting the video screen. “We can see what’s going on. Just like watching TV.”

She was not wrong. Though, as the hours passed, it was not a pleasant show to watch.

I’ve never jumped out of an airplane before. You know, the way that some people do it as a lark. Or maybe they call it a sport? Obviously, I’m talking about using a parachute and all. And, in the unlikely event I’d ever willingly leap from a plane, I’d be quite remiss were I not to savor the moment. The trick would be to enjoy the experience for what it was—giddy insanity! Unfortunately, because I have this thing about heights, I’d be terrified. I might be able to come to terms with soiling myself, but if I failed to be fully present to the wonderment of free fall—that would be unacceptable.

Of course, we should strive to be present each and every moment of our lives.

However, when the guy in the white coveralls shot me with that green light—or, as Nora would insist, when the robot zapped me with the ray gun—I wasn’t prepared at all. I’d gotten sloppy. Sloppy and cocky. I mean, there I was, toe-to-toe with the madman, August. If he’d punched me in my face, or pulled a shiv from his back pocket, it would be in keeping with the situation. Much like standing in the opened hatch of an airplane over the drop zone, there are reasonable outcomes in specific situations. Violence in the former, falling in the latter.

At that moment, being blindsided by a robot wasn’t at the forefront of my mind. None of my, let’s just say, “manly training,” ever covered such a scenario.

Ah, well, if you have to go, ray gun blast from a robot has gotta rank up there with being swallowed whole by an anaconda or getting struck by an asteroid. Something to add to the CV, to be sure. And would you look at me, two out of three!

I reminded myself not to let the distractions keep me from the experience of the moment. Not the robots. Not the psychopathic killer. Not even the girls screaming. Well, it was just Nora. I guess Rose didn’t rate me scream-worthy.

No. Ignore all that. Clear the mind.

Be. Here. Now.

That’s what Sal’s old boss would tell me to do. The Great Oberon. Or, as I liked to call him when he was sober enough to be baited, Oberon Mahoney, the Phony Messiah.

And I did, I followed his advice. It took a second, after the initial shock of being, what? Transformed? Then I took a breath. Breath? Did I still have lungs?

Calm. Calm and centered.

There. Not so bad. I wasn’t in pain.

In fact, I could feel little in the way of sensation. It occurred to me that I also wasn’t able to hear. The sound of Nora screaming faded out completely after I had been shot. My vision worked well enough. It certainly appeared she was still screaming, I just couldn’t hear her.

Actually, my vision was better than ever. I had an eye on each side of my head—or whatever passed for a head. I could see the entire room. This was useful, because I couldn’t turn around even if I wanted to.

At some point Nora’s scream of surprise shifted to a battle cry. Well, that’s what it looked like. She launched herself at the robot who shot me. He went down. Rose scanned the room. And with barely a second thought, reached under one of the control consoles and wrenched loose a handful of cables. If only there’d been sparks!

Oh, but that didn’t diminish the experience. I mean, how thrilling! I had a front row seat, watching these two women avenging me.

They were so fierce. It should have been much more exciting and energetic, but the robot made no move to resist. Perhaps resisting attack wasn’t part of its program. Once they had that one trussed up and subdued, I watched Nora walk to the robot in charge of the control room. She picked up a curvy and futuristic chromium office chair (did the presence of chairs mean that robots sit?) and lifted it over her head. The robot observed the indignity about to be performed upon him with detached and perplexed submission. Once the chair smashed down, the robot collapsed like someone had just turned him off. In a way, I guess someone did.

Nora’s robot-love was a fickle thing.

Rose crossed over to where I was. She knelt down to peer closely at me and August. Between us lay my red toupee. Rose held up the hairpiece and looked from me to August. I realized she didn’t know who was who. I tried to wink or wave, but I had no control over my flabby, boneless body.

Nora and Rose grabbed hold of the two robots, and with not a scrap of delicacy nor decorum, they dragged them down the stairs and out of sight.

I could see my tentacles twitching. There really was no other word to describe them. Tentacles, like a cephalopod. Like Cleo. Their movements were wholly involuntary.

This was a level of vulnerability that didn’t sit well with me. But, no, I reminded myself. Be. Here. Now. August was no threat—he seemed in the same state as I. Twitchy, goggle-eyed, and helpless.

We lay there, observing one another. Probably I looked the same to August as he did to me. Because we were more blobby than elongated, we possessed a greater resemblance to octopi than squid. Maybe more like slugs, with feelers. I kept thinking that this was what an octopus would look like as drawn by a five-year-old. Simply sad. Something you really didn’t want to be looking at it. The worst of all, there was not a hint of humanity to be seen in this current form of mine. Nothing cute. Not noble. It’d be like trying to anthropomorphize a turd. Even if I were to say, “at least you’d not want to step on me,” it wouldn’t be because of your compassion for all things sentient, but mostly because, well, ick!

I was hoping I wasn’t too icky for Rose and Nora to come back for me.

Though I don’t know what one does with an icky, sentient, uncommunicative slug with feelers.

Might there be some de-squidifier in this place? I’d even be fine if my brain could be scooped out and put in one of those robots. They do run to the scrawny and pasty, but I’m not that vain. Besides, they might have sexier models.

No, no.

No.

Centered. Focused.

Be here now, Moreno.

So, I assume you want to know how I first learned of this post-rebirth “condition”—my tendency to turn into something ghastly if I happened to wander too far from my penthouse (or too far from Sal).

That one’s easy. I found out on day one. I mean, no one likes being cooped up. First thing I did when Sal’s personal assistant returned from the store with some jeans, a nice cotton guayabera, and a pair of espadrilles, was to head off to explore my new city.

Almost died on the elevator ride down.

Also, I freaked out the workers in the lobby who—after seeing what I had turned into—surely would have stomped me flat if not for the intercession by a couple of Network admin types who’d “seen a few things,” as they say.

I soon had the basic rules of my condition explained to me.

But, I demanded, what the hell was that thing? That horrible thing that was apparently part of me. The thing that I had finally become.

The sad truth was, no one knew.

Or, they pretended not to know.

Those tight-lipped half-wits from the Network would just shrug and mutter something about “the Changes,” as if those two words were enough to smooth out my existential terror of becoming a helpless monster. It was like offering someone a band-aid after a shark attack.

But, because I had never transformed so, well, completely into this creature, I’d never had to learn how to transform out of it. Didn’t even know if that was possible. Of course, if I did know of some handy trick, I wouldn’t have been able to share it with Rose and Nora. I mean, I didn’t even have a mouth!

Oh, speaking of Rose and Nora, they soon returned. Returned from disposing of the robots. Heaved them over the railing, perhaps? Like August did with the other one. I noticed that Rose was carrying, draped over her arm, two white jumpsuits. I wondered what a naked robot looked like. I won’t lie, that was something I’d have liked to see. Were they smooth, like a Ken doll? Or maybe there was an attempt at anatomical fidelity?

Rose handed one of the jumpsuits to Nora. They approached. One covered up August, the other, me.

The old blanket-over-the-birdcage trick. Exactly how you tuck in a budgie for the night.

Just like that, all of my senses were gone.

Nothing but me and my thoughts.

Be. Here. Now.

As if I had a choice.

Dr. Hetzel’s information had given me something of an edge, but obviously she’d left some things out about this processing facility. She had to have known it was underground, but that was a fact which she didn’t share. Of course, she was experiencing a high degree of anxiety during my interrogation session.

Some of the things she had told me had, indeed, gotten me this far. Such as the importance of traveling through the portal with a “reader” so I would not arrive in that other form. Had I not incorporated that element into my escape strategy, all would have been lost before it even began. She also made it clear that even though she wasn’t fully informed on the ultimate fate that awaited me on the far side, it was not something she’d wish for herself. So, I knew that the stakes were high. But that was about all of the pertinent facts I had.

From this moment forward, I would have to rely on my wits. They’d served me well in the past, or so I liked to believe.

But the idea of charging into whatever situation awaited me in the control room seemed foolish. I would have liked some sort of weapon, but there wasn’t anything useful laying about.

Suddenly a flash of green came from one of the lower levels.

“It was just a couple of tiers down,” Rose said, crossing over to the railing. “Do you think they fixed the portals back home?”

“There are other portals,” I told her. “Different game shows in other cities.” Well, I suppose that there were other things Dr. Hetzel had told me. And, who knew, some of those facts might eventually prove useful.

“Really?” Rose asked, less interested in such matters that I thought she’d be.

I stepped over to join her.

She was leaning to the side, trying to see where the light had come from.

My attention, however, went to a figure moving down at the bottom level. Someone dressed in white pushing a handcart.

Rose gave up trying to see where the newcomers might be when she saw I was looking elsewhere.

“Our robot friend,” she said.

Probably she was right, but there could be others roaming about, pushing those carts.

We watched the robot roll his wheelbarrow to a break in the railing of the bottom tier. He tilted it up, and two small forms (Helen and Darlene, I presume) slipped into the sluggish dark water and oozed out of sight.

“That doesn’t look very pleasant,” Rose said. I had to agree with her. “Maybe that’s just for those who go through Door Number Two. Could be the winners go some place less…disturbing.”

“It’s all a cruel sham,” I told her. Not that I learned this from Dr. Hetzel, but it was self-evident. “Just sick entertainment.”

Rose returned to the door to the Control Room.

“We might as well do it,” she said, opening the door to reveal a dim stairwell leading up.

She did not wait for my permission, so I had no choice but to follow her up the stairs. This was unlike the stairwell we had climbed earlier. The steps were wide and carpeted and and only went up a short distance, curving around to reveal, unexpectedly, a large, circular room.

The control room.

There were lighted consoles, video screens, and a soothing hum that came from a glass or plastic ceiling which glowed with a familiar green light. A lone man in a white jumpsuit moved busily from console to console. He looked up as we entered, but immediately turned away, seemingly unconcerned with our presence. He appeared identical to the other two robots, workmen, or whatever they are. But it was not the technician in white who commanded my attention.

“Well, if it isn’t the villain of this adventure,” said a familiar man seated in a plush white armchair on an elevated platform that was somewhat removed from the work stations. “I hope you didn’t murder any more robots on your way here.” It was Silverio Moreno, or Sy as everyone called him. He still wore that absurd red wig. And beside him, no longer seated but on her feet, was that girl who had helped me back when I’d had my “episode” in the elevator. “It’s good to see that you’re safe,” Sy added, but this time speaking to Rose.

“What are you doing here?” Rose sputtered.

“Why, we came to rescue you from this madman,” Sy said. “Me and Nora.”

“We’ve been spying on you,” said Nora, the elevator girl.

“And obviously move faster than the two of you,” Sy said. “And we did begin a couple of floors below you. Not that it’s a contest or anything.”

“It was awful what happened to those nice ladies from the TV show.” Nora had shifted her attention to the worker in the white jumpsuit. “These robots aren’t so easy to figure out.”

We turned, all four of us, to look at the individual in white, who was peering into a video monitor, calmly turning a dial. We had all shifted into an awkward detente. The nuances of allegiances and alliances uncertain.

Sy looked over at me, and I almost thought we would wink again.

“This one,” Sy said, indicating Nora, but keeping his eyes on me, “says she loves robots. Me, I think it’s just the novelty—her first day amongst them. Mine, too, but they’ve not yet won me over. Aren’t they supposed to be servants of man? Think they could offer us sandwiches or at least some coffee.”

“I think you broke the portals, Sy,” Rose said. “When you came through.”

Sy continued to regard me with caution as Rose moved across the room and up the steps to join him and Nora.

“Me?” Sy laughed. He got to his feet and welcomed Rose into the safety of their little group. “That bald headed scoundrel started it all.”

Speaking of me, of course.

“I think we need to get out of here,” Nora said.

“The sooner the better,” Rose echoed in agreement. “August has already had, well, an altercation with one of the workmen.”

“You mean robots,” Nora corrected.

“Whatever. But probably we’ve overstayed our welcome.”

The robot in the control room with us lifted his head and spoke to Rose.

“It would be preferable if you were to depart. The presence in the facility of a high level Reader such as yourself poses the threat of a full tau field feedback cascade. And then where would we be?”

“We’d be happy to go,” I told him. “If we could just have a key to the elevator.”

“The elevators to the surface have been sealed for two centuries,” the robot said, returning his attention to the consoles. “A bad decision, but there you have it.”

“Centuries?” Sy sputtered.

“Besides,” the robot continued, “even if access were possible, REINCORs are forbidden to leave the facility.”

“Well, we really didn’t want to leave with him,” Nora said, her eyes flashing over to me. “Sorry,” she added, but of course she wasn’t.

The robot pushed a button and tapped at information displayed on a screen.

“We still need to process August Mathers 5813213768 and Silverio Moreno 2964865366.”

“What?” said Rose, stepped back to stare at Sy.

Things were beginning to get interesting.

“But the pressing issue,” the robot continued, “is the disruptive qualities of this Reader.” He advanced a couple of paces toward Rose, who retreated closer to Sy. “New York will be sending three dozen REINCORs through at 21:25 Eastern Standard. Are you familiar with their show? Chaos Squad? I’ve not seen it. I understand it’s quite violent. And they do excel at volume. 36 each day, Monday through Friday!”

“If I must stay,” Sy said with a cloying magnanimity, “might we find a way to send these two woman to a safe place, out of your hair?”

“Quite unprecedented,” the robot said. “However, I’m afraid that any action will have to wait until after New York transfers their full complement of tonight’s REINCORs.” He lifted an arm and pointed to Rose. “You will not leave this room once the Chaos Squad download has begun.”

“So, we wait,” Sy said with a smirk. He descended the two steps from where the armchairs were and sauntered his way across the floor, coming to a halt once he stood nose to nose with me. His bravado was of the schoolboy variety. “It looks like the two of us are in the same boat.”

Just what all did I have in common with this foppish fool?

There was the sound of a footfall on the stairs we had come up.

It was another of those robots in white coveralls. And even thought they all looked identical, for some reason I knew that this was the one that had carted away the creatures who had once been Helen and Darlene.

“How timely,” the technician said to the new-comer. “Please do something about these two REINCORs.”

“You again,” he said, glaring at me. “And now with a new companion?”

I suppose by that he meant Sy.

Without a second thought, he pulled a familiar baton from a pocket, aimed it my way, and suddenly I was bathed in green light.

Nora screamed as Sy collapse into a squirming, tentacled thing. I spun around to escape before he could get off another shot, but I didn’t move. That was when I noticed everything was above me. I was on the floor, but I hadn’t fallen. Had I? I found myself looking directly at Sy, or whatever one would call that thing which he had become. His pupils were star-shaped. And that was when I saw my own arm twitching. I looked at it. It wasn’t an arm at all, but a moist, veiny tentacle.

As I began climbing the steps in that dim stairwell, I realized I was no longer afraid of August. Without noticing, I had transitioned from a state of trepidation, into one of frustration. He had become a burden more than a threat.

The premise that I exuded some sort of powerful psychic energy that kept August from metamorphosing into a quivering tentacled grub worm struck me as laughable. August thought differently, which apparently was why he hadn’t tossed me over the railing yet. Of course, he’d no doubt come up with a grisly disposal method when I was no longer useful.

It was a shame there was no one to witness my nonchalant poise in response to this series of astonishing events. I was very proud of myself. Not everyone finds herself abducted by a murderer during a live television broadcast and taken through an inter-dimensional portal to an underground facility beneath Los Angeles that is run by robots. Add to that, the sight of Helen and Darlene being turned into…those things.

August certainly displayed disgust at that sight, but I did not register surprise on his face. He seemed to understand that he was in danger of becoming such a creature himself, and he was steadfast in his opposition to become one.

He was an unwilling pawn in all this, he had pleaded to me. Plucked from some liminal place of spiritual limbo, and deposited into a dreary linoleum-tiled and fluorescent-lit prison where he waited out his days until he would be selected to have his life judged on live TV. A strange definition of hell, he had added—only made more ghastly by its utter banality.

What he had said, while not untrue, was presented in such a tone that he managed to chase away any scrap of empathy I might otherwise have felt. I couldn’t stomach much more of his whining narcissistic self-pity. Of course, there was that other thing—him being a sociopathic sadist who most likely had murdered two people.

Just because the man had been victimized didn’t mean he couldn’t be pure evil.

I needed to get away from him.

I had things to do. I was in the place Lionel had gone. It seemed impossible, but here I was. Here in this strange—but not really supernaturally strange—place. Here where my dead brother had been sent…once he had been resurrected and plopped down on a soundstage in front of the cameras of a televised game show.

To have his life judged.

I allowed that last bit to sit a moment, feeling some of August’s ire.

Should I have followed the robot who rolled Helen and Darlene away? Or maybe headed to the Control Room to locate someone to answer my questions? Those options were not available as long as I had to serve as August’s babysitter.

Each time we reached another landing on our journey up the stairs, I was tempted to fling open the door onto that tier and run as fast as I could. But I had no idea of the distance I needed to be from August to, well, disable him. (Which, again, I wasn’t completely sure was a real thing.) Maybe my powers were so great they permeated the entire place. Those robots had sounded very impressed with my Fitzroy score. 

“When you made your escape,” I said over my shoulder to August, choosing my words with caution, “did you pull me along because you knew I would keep you from turning into one of those things?”

“Correct,” he said. “That was one of the things Dr. Hetzel told me. My lifeline would either be you, or Saligia. You two were the only people with the show who had a Fitzroy above a thousand.”

I made it a point not to inquire what had become of Dr. Hetzel, because I was afraid August might tell me. Instead, I asked, “So, whatever that Fitzroy scale measures, it does more than just let me read people’s thoughts?”

“What?” August laughed. “You aren’t very well informed. I’d think you would know…well, at least all that stuff. Maybe if you’d exercised your mind-reading muscles better, you would have known all the good doctor’s secrets. As she explained it to me, gifted mind-readers like you and Saligia naturally radiate an electrostatic discharge—the tau field that those robots mentioned. It’s some sort of unexpected side effect. I mean, it’s not the main thing that keeps the contestants back in San Antonio from, well, let’s just say, transforming. No. The portals do that—and much more effectively. Four portals in all. Two on the 28th floor in those closets where the contestants arrive, and the two on the 29 floor behind the magical doors in the TV studio—through which they depart.”

August had fallen into a relaxed and chatty attitude. Almost pompous.

I didn’t care for it.

“It doesn’t matter whether or not they’re active,” he continued. “The inter-dimensional portals, that is. I suppose, in a sense, they’re always active. Anyway, the entire upper region of the building is irradiated with this tau field. That is why all of the contestants retain human form. But if one of them—meaning one of us—gets too far from the portals, they transform into…well, you saw yourself. The tau field dissipates over distance. I suspect it follows the inverse-square law, like luminosity or gravity. However, if I understood those robots, the arrival portals in this place (those glass tubes) have devices that dampen the tau field, so that people like me are guaranteed to arrive as those tentacled things. As we witnessed, in that state they are easy to manage. They can’t run. Can’t fight back. But, thankfully, your 1200 Fitzroy mind powers work as a tau-field-dampener dampener. You’re my bullet-proof vest.”

“Until I get too far from you.”

“That’s how I understand it, my dear,” August said. 

My dear?

I did not care one bit for his psychological bonding techniques.

And then, quite unexpectedly, he asked me what year it was. Of all the things he might want to know, this one question seemed so odd. Wouldn’t it have been the first thing he would have asked the doctor during his interrogation? I mean, if it was truly important to him.

I told him the date.

However, when the words left my mouth, I wondered if I was right. I mean, I knew nothing about inter-dimensional portals, or how time works with them. I assumed we had traveled to Los Angeles. But maybe this was Heaven. Hell. Or some distant century in the far-flung future.

“Six years,” August said so softly I almost didn’t hear. “I died six years ago. But where was I in the interim? Some place I don’t remember? Or just…in suspension, on hold, as it were?”

It did occurred to me that my brother had also died six years ago. Was that a coincidence?

When there were no more stairs to climb, I placed my hand on the door in front of us. I looked over my shoulder, not wanted to behave contrary to August’s wishes. Not at the moment, at least.

He nodded his head, but slowly, which I knew meant we were to proceed with caution. Silent caution.

No one was in sight, so we stepped out and looked around. This tier was different from the others. There were no levels above us with lighting fixtures along their railings, so that added ambient illumination was absent. If the green light didn’t have such a creepy quality, I’d say Tier One was quite cozy. Also missing were the glass arrival tubes.

I crossed over to the railing and looked down. The huge, cylindrical space appeared even more impressive when viewed from the top. 

This floor was covered in a dark, almost black carpet unlike the other levels which had beige linoleum with a slight rubbery bounce. The walls also were covered in the same carpet material, and this made it easy to locate any doors along the curving wall. There were the two gleaming metal sliding doors of the elevators, right where we expected them to be, opposite one another. If you thought of the circular tiers as a clock on its side—I guess a sundial would be more apt—the recessed alcoves to the two elevators would be at noon and six o’clock. We’d just come out of the white door to the stairwell, which was at three o’clock. Directly across from us, at nine o’clock, was another alcove. A third elevator? Or was it the entrance to the Control Room? Or the exit?

August motioned for me to follow him. We headed along the curved mezzanine and eventually came one of the elevators. There was a single button labeled, Down.

August muttered something and resumed walking.

The mystery alcove had a metal elevator door. This one also had only one button. But it was labeled, Up. 

August and I spoke the same words in unison.

“We’re still underground.”

This subterranean facility was larger and more impressive than I imagined. Dozens of levels beneath Los Angeles. A pool at the bottom. And yet we were…how far still from the surface? A place like this was certainly not where I expected to find myself when I got up this morning.

How many hours ago was that?

And, poor Marta, what was going through her mind?

Had someone called her? Explained what had happened?

August turned to look at the door beside the elevator.

White letters in a black rectangle read: Control Room.

He compressed his lips. He had no intention to go in there.

“We keep heading up until we get out,” he said, reaching out to push the lone button beside the elevator.

Nothing happened.

“There’s a lock beside the button,” I said, pointing at the small circular depression for a key.

“I can see it,” he said, with an edge of irritation in his voice.

“So, it seems that Dr. Hetzel left some things out,” I remarked. August didn’t respond. “We could check the other elevator, but I’m pretty sure it only goes down.”

I turned to the door to the Control Room.

“We might as well give it a shot,” I said. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

August narrowed his eyes, but he didn’t say no.

There was no mistaking the sound of that squeaky handcart. The robot was almost upon us!

Fortuitously the elevator arrived. Nora dragged me inside, pushed a button on the control panel. The door slid shut, just in time!

“Take us all the way down,” I instructed her.

“Oh, no,” she said. “We go up.”

“To the roof?” That made no sense.

“We’re underground,” she said.

“How do you figure that?”

“Because of the pool of water all the way down there.” She looked at me as if I were a child. “And where else do we find water?” It was apparently a rhetorical question, because she barely paused. “We find water at the bottom of a well.”

Her syllogism seemed weak and ill-formed.

Before I could reply that lakes and ponds and rivers were usually encountered on the surface of the Earth—a place I very much wanted to be—Nora reached out to the panel of the elevator. Not finding an up or down button, she pressed the one for the first floor. Or, Tier One, as it was labeled.

“You’ll see,” she said. “This’ll take us all the way up.”

Even with her skewed logic, she was right. The sensation of traveling upwards was unmistakeable.

As I allowed my imagination to play free with the thought of all our contestants from Serpientes y Escaleras—winners and losers—popping into existence deep in a murky and morbidly-lit underground facility, I winced from a sharp unexpected pain I hadn’t felt in years.

My hand, which was brushing against the wall, flickered and disappeared, then reappeared. The pain ran up my arm and across my back like a white hot wire. I clenched my teeth, hopping Nora hadn’t noticed. She’d seen something like this before—also on an elevator—but with August. I did not want her to associate me with him.

But it wasn’t going away, so I had no choice but to shout out.

“Stop!”

She’d already seen my sad state. Her eyes were locked on my arm. Well, it wasn’t much of an arm, to be honest. Immediately she pushed a button and the elevator came to a halt. We were between tiers nine and eight.

“There’s something you should know about me,” I gasped, easing myself down to the floor of the elevator.

Nora sat down to join me.

“I died,” I told her.

You got that? I died! I bet you, dear reader, never saw that coming!

Nor, I realized, did Nora. She seemed quite confused.

“Never give up hope, Sy!” she said, scooted forward to give me a brave and grim smile. She thought I was about to expire right there on the spot! Before she started in with we can beat this together, or some similar cliché, I felt I needed to make a clarification.

“Past tense,” I said, and she seemed to relax. “Back in the early days of the Changes. This,” I tilted my head to look at the surreal syrupy morphing of my left arm, “is the price of being reborn. All in all, it is better than the alternative. Right?”

“I’d say,” she said quietly. “What happened?”

“I don’t recall the particulars. I mean of the life-snuffing event itself. Sal was the one who filled me in on the accident. Though accident was never her choice of phrase. Negligence, she would call it on a good day. Manslaughter, when in her darker moods. She blamed Morris, which I thought extreme. But I guess it all played out much different for her. She had to live with me dead for a couple of years. Lots of emotions, I don’t doubt.”

I went on to tell Nora how that fateful afternoon had begun as just another day at work. On assignment out in a pasture near San Angelo with the most adorable stegosaurus ever! I’d wandered over to have a word with the boys in the production truck and, well, it all went away.

My whole existence, that is.

Like turning off the television during a show.

No tunnel of light. No hosts of angels with lutes or trumpets or whatever they play. No red-faced imps with pitchforks. Not even grandma smiling down at me while holding a pitcher of lemonade. Just nothing. Blackness? Probably. I have no memory, though.

And then, as though no time had passed—it certainly didn’t seem like two years—I was surrounded by a glow of bright green light. There were people around me. No halos or wings, only burly men wearing hardhats and carrying clipboards and rolled up blueprints. The green dissipated like vapor, and I was in a skyscraper, high above a city. The architecture was old, but the building seemed new—there were no walls to define rooms, just support columns and windows. And there, amidst the helmeted men, was Sal. She was staring at me, mouth agape, when I appeared. The men, concerned, turned to see what had caught her attention.

I’m no prude. Let me make that quite clear. But I have never made it a habit of parading publicly in the nude, so I felt somewhat self-conscious that I had materialized au naturel, not so much as a fig leaf or g-string.

It seemed that in the previous two years Sal’s TV career had taken off. She removed her full-length sable coat and wrapped me up in it. She sat me down on a crate of lighting fixtures. There were tears, jumbles of words, and even an outburst of anger when Sal shouted at the gawking workmen to clear off and leave us be.

She had been in charge, at the time, telling everyone how to prepare the upper floors of La Vida Tower for her offices and apartment.

She explained that two years previous I had died in a fiery explosion. Once I’d wrapped my head around that dramatic image, I found myself disappointed by the mundane manner of my return—naked and surrounded by a construction crew.

Sal kept stopping and starting, trying her best to fill me in on my demise, as well as what had happened in those previous two years. As she was explaining that the building I was now in had disappeared and then reappeared and some organization calling themselves simply the Network—who, by the way, held the contract for Sal’s TV show (the show, I should point out, I created for her)—had moved themselves and Sal into the upper floors, my mind was still stuck back on something she said earlier.

About how she had seen my remains after the explosion. All that had been left was a charred and stubby torso.

Those were her descriptive words.

A charred and stubby torso.

How unbecoming!

But for some reason, the first words from my mouth, in, well, two years, were: “So, we’re in San Antonio?”

“It’s not so bad, Sy,” she said. “We have the penthouse.”

And then it was sobbing again.

That green light through which I arrived, or was resurrected, seemed to have been anticipated by two people—two people who came up to pay me a visit before Sal could find me some proper clothes. Parcell Prescott, head honcho with the Network. And Dr. Lydia Hetzel. A doctor of what I was never sure, but she insisted she was an expert on people just like me. Dead people, who came back. (Though she seemed suspicious of me because I returned from the dead lucid, with “full faculties intact”).

In fact, the doctor was leading a confused yet docile woman—as naked as I was before Sal loaned me her fur coat. This woman had come through the other arrival portal which had been hidden from my line of sight by a stack of stainless steel ductwork.

At that point things moved fast, and it wasn’t Sal issuing orders, but those Network people.

It seemed that those portals through which the dead emerged were considered hot properties by the Network. In fact, that was what they built their business model around. Every time new portals appeared, another show would be created.

Even though I was barefoot and wrapped in a full-length sable coat, Parcell Prescott recognized me as the host of Wonders Unfolding (a beloved program which ended only because of my unfortunate death). So, Sal and I were given the task of making a show. A game show. Those were what the Network preferred. A format to separate winners from losers, and send those contestants on to their glorious (or ignominious) rewards.

And in under two weeks, we had our show ready to go live.

Serpientes y Escaleras!

It was a hit from the very beginning.

And because each day—well, Monday through Friday—a new pair of people would come through the portals, we had accumulated a good-sized studio audience by the time we were ready to air our maiden episode.

Neither Parcell Prescott nor Dr. Hetzel seemed unduly concerned that I was never properly processed through a departure portal like all the other resurrectees who magically arrived at La Vida Tower.

Everyone else who came through those portals had little to no memory. Mostly they were harmless, kind of benumbed like a group of retirees on a wine tour. I could never get an answer from Lydia as to why I was an exception. She presented herself as an expert on those sorts of matters—the spooky stuff such as the rebirth of the contestants and the mind reading shenanigans (the other special feature of our show)—but I think her claim of such expertise was, for the most part, bluff.

However, she showed no surprise when I told her I’d almost died the first time I tried to leave La Vida Tower on my own. It was the portals, she said. They emitted some sort of electrical frequency or radiation which kept me and my ilk intact and in human form. If I wandered too far, well, neither she nor the Network would be responsible for the outcome. She did tell me that Sal (and any other particularly gifted telepath) could also function the same as those portals, as long as I kept that person fairly close.

A useful bit of information to know. But it meant that I had to impose upon poor Sal every time I wanted to visit the cinema or pick up some breakfast tacos.

And now, I was gambling that Rose would provide the same protection to me as had Sal.

I admit, I was confused as to why all these portals—1692, if I could trust Nora’s math—weren’t helping me to, well, keep it together. Like it or not, in my current state, I could be used as a sort of compass to track down Rose. It was like playing that old children’s game of hot and cold, except if I strayed too far from Rose, it wouldn’t be me getting cold, but painful nausea, disappearing limbs, and a full-on transformation into something I’d rather not even think about. I’d seen it happen to poor Helen and Darlene.

What a fate!

“Wait a minute,” Nora said, when I had paused in the telling of my tale. “You have to stay close to a psychic? That doesn’t make sense. I would have thought you could use some kind of machine with flashing lights and such.”

“It’s what I yearn for,” I said. “A world made better by technology. But, sadly, there is no such device. It’s all very convoluted—the physics, or, I guess, the metaphysics. Lydia told me all about it once, but if the conversation gets overloaded with words and phrases like transistors, wave amplifiers, electro-chemical emanations, I tend to drift off.”

“I bet you were one off those kids who sat at the back of the class.” Nora was not wrong. She shook her head in pity thinking of young Silverio Morano and his scholastic shortcomings. “Not me. Never!”

“That’s why I’m glad to have you on the team,” I said.

She wrinkled her nose at that. Was I being patronizing? I do that, I’ve been told.

“Well,” she said, changing the subject, “you are looking better. You have color back in your face.”

“That would mean that—”

Nora excitedly finished my thought.

“Rose is getting closer!” Nora leaned in for a better look at me. Had my toupee slipped? “You’re improving slow, but steady. I bet she’s coming up the stairs.”

“We’re lucky she didn’t decide to go down.”

“Rose is smart,” Nora said. “She figured it out.”

“Shall we continue?”

“Sure,” Nora said. “We’re only a few floors away from the top.” Without standing, she reached up and pressed a button and the elevator continued its journey upwards.

The pain in my stomach had gone, and it seemed my arm was stable. For the time being, at least, I stopped worrying that portions of my anatomy might began to wink in and out of existence, eventually to be replaced by rubbery tentacles.

An upbeat musical note sounded, and the elevator door slid open.

Nora stood and offered her hand. I allowed her to help me to my feet.

“Can you walk?”

I nodded, and asked, “Where to now?”

“Oh, it’s my turn to be leader?” Nora laughed. “I love these field promotions!”

I leaned on her and we stepped out onto the topmost level, Tier 1.

My previous journey traveling as a stowaway had only lasted three hours, and I napped for most of it, with Nora chattering away, sounding like a radio playing in the background. There had been an energetic sense of optimism and adventure lacking on this trip. I was experiencing more than a bit of trepidation when I recalled that the station agent, back in Great Falls, had told me that in the other direction it was a two-day journey to get to LA. Something having to do with a time warp out in the desert. When I had brought this up to Saligia, all she had to give in way of a response was a short and quiet grunt in our dark and cramped chamber.

It all came back to me. Her subtle, passive-aggressive communiqué. That noise meant that she expected me to resolve the situation.

I had been all over this compartment before on my previous trip, and I knew that there were no access panels or hatchways which might take us inside the train. And even if we did that, I wasn’t certain how we’d be received. Ida struck me as the sort who’d have us tossed out into a canyon far below as we sped across a bridge, or whatever was the train equivalent to keelhauling or walking the plank.

I told Saligia that we’d be stopping in a little town to take on water. “It cools the engine, I believe.”

“If we have time, I’ll go squat behind a bush,” she said, with less sarcasm in her voice than I would have expected. Maybe she’d mellowed over the years.

“We’ll figure something out,” I told her.

But when the train finally came to a stop, I had nothing. Not a plan. Not so much as a notion.

That was when hatch flew open and our cramped hideaway filled with light. I blinked, and saw the familiar shape of the water tower of the Great Falls depot lit in silver by the moon. The bright light, however, came from an electric lantern being held by a tall man bending down.

He leaned in for closer inspection.

“Well,” he said. Just that. Then he stepped back and added: “I suspect you are wanting some fresh air.”

I pulled myself out and stretched my arms. When I arched my back, I heard a pop. A good sound, I hoped. The man with the lantern was holding, in his other hand, the water hose. His unkempt beard bore the hallmarks of having grown through neglect of the razor, and not vanity. It suited him.

“Might you be Nora’s brother?” I asked, the question emerging more folksy than I had intended.

He looked at me for a moment before replying.

“I do have a sister by that name.”

“I’m a friend of hers. My name’s Morris.” I extended my hand.

He put down the hose and shook my hand without breaking eye contact.

“McAllister Fitzgerald’s the name,” he said. “And, I know, it’s a mouthful. Call me Mack. Is Nora okay?”

“She has a job,” I told him. It seemed the appropriate response. I didn’t know how to say she stepped into a magical closet and dematerialized, and we had no idea what had become of her. Gone to LA, maybe? Seemed a burden to lay on him.

“A job?” And he laughed. “What do you know about that?” He turned and shouted to the two teenaged boys back under the water tower. “This guy’s a friend of Nora’s. She’s landed a job, working in the big city.”

The young men grinned.

“Yes,” I said. “Nora was hired on as the assistant to the superintendent of elevator services of the La Vida Tower. And I don’t doubt that there’s room to move up in a job like that.”

My quip was ignored as Saligia stuck out her head, smiling benevolently in her role of celebrity. Though if Nora was right, no one in this little town even owned a TV. Of course that wouldn’t stop Saligia from making an impression. She had that way about her.

Mack stood up straight when he saw her and self consciously ran a hand through his uncombed hair.

“Ma’am, please, stretch your legs,” he said, and then bent to offer Saligia his hand.

Once Saligia was standing beside us, Mack turned to me.

“Any more of you in there?”

I told him it was just us.

Saligia introduced herself to Mack. When he displayed no recognition of her as a famous personage, she managed to show no outward signs of disappointment.

“I had spoken to the station agent here last week,” I said to Mack. “He said it was two days to LA. It’d be nice if there was some other way we could travel on this thing without being cramped in that little compartment.”

“Mr. Maynard was not wrong to tell you that.” Mack looked down at his shoes for a moment. “However, there are some facts of which he is ignorant. Not part of his job. So let me make it quite clear, if you folks continue on your journey inside there, you’re going to suffocate.”

Saligia tilted her head to look back into the shadowy recess we had stepped out of.

“Well we don’t want that,” she said.

“I wouldn’t imagine,” Mack said.

I made some comment about how it didn’t appear that the hatch was airtight.

“It isn’t,” Mack said. “And that’s the problem.” He smiled at my look of confusion. “You see, not more than an hour into your travels toward Los Angeles, the train crosses a huge salt flat. Directly in the middle is a big blob of glowing green light, right dead on the tracks. When the trains passes through it, it goes someplace else. That’s where you spend your two days. Just in some dark and airless nothing. Some primordial void?” He shrugged. “Makes no sense to me. You’d think they’d have built the train tracks around that damn thing. Maybe it arrived later? Anyhow, if you look at this hatchway, you can tell there’s no safety gasket to keep the air from leaking out. You’ll want to travel inside the train itself. Not just because it’s more comfortable, but also because—”

“We want to arrive alive,” Saligia said.

“I know I would,” Mack said. He pointed down a ways to the door into the side of the train. “Problem is, they don’t hardly ever open that door and talk with us.”

“It’s Nora,” Saligia said. “We’re trying to get to her.”

Mack looked from Saligia to me, confused.

“It’s complicated,” I said. “A friend of ours was kidnapped and taken to Los Angeles. Your sister followed. You know, to help.”

“Sounds like Nora. Helpful and headstrong.” Mack scratched his head. “So, she came through here on this train?”

“We have this portal, well, had,” Saligia began, then turned to look at me.

I didn’t want to go into the whole game show, resurrected contestants, rogue murderer, so I tried to keep it simple.

“In the building where she worked, there’s a room. Small, like a closet. You go in, close the door, you are transported to LA. Anyway, some maniac took our friend through that, well, that portal. Nora chased after them. Now the portal doesn’t work anymore. So, we’re heading west, trying to find them.”

Mack nodded thoughtfully, as if it all sounded reasonable.

“So, Nora’s in trouble?”

“Might be,” I said. “We’re concerned enough to be heading out after her.”

“Yes,” Saligia said, her eyes on me. “We are.”

“Then that’s all there is to it,” Mack said. “We need to get you onto this train. Come along with me.” As we walked, Mack shouted to the young men over at the water tower. “Boys, get in that compartment and fetch these good people’s luggage.”

Saligia and I followed Mack along the track, up onto the platform, and we came to a stop alongside the flank of the train car with the door.

“Lucky for us,” Mack said, “Mr. Maynard is home and in bed at this hour. No need to bring the boss into this matter.”

He slip a hammer from his tool belt and banged loudly several times on the door.

“Leave all the talking to me,” Mack instructed us. “I’ll give them no other choice than to let you on. Without the water, they can’t leave. And we have control over that.”

Before we could further discuss his plan, the door was flung open, and two men in blue suits stood glaring at us. Mack held his lantern up high so that we all were well lit. The two men standing in the opening to the train wore metal badges with a star, like old west lawmen, but instead of the word “sheriff,” there was the word “porter.”

I was waiting for them to began shouting at us, but their expressions transformed instantly, and I realized they were both staring at Saligia.

“Oh my god,” the youngest of them finally said in a whisper, which he repeated, slower. “Oh. My. God.”

“Saligia Jones,” the older man said, regaining his composer sooner than the younger porter. “This is extraordinary! The famous Saligia Jones, out here, in the middle of nowhere.”

“I take exception at that, sir,” said Mack. “As would all the fine citizens of Great Falls.”

And as if on cue, Mack’s two coworkers stepped up and placed my rucksack and Saligia’s bag on the ground beside us.

“When the train was departing San Antonio,” Saligia explained in a tone of calm and slightly pained civility, “we weren’t allowed on board. In a moment of desperation, we took temporary berth in that little compartment beneath the engine car.”

“Weren’t allowed?” the older porter muttered. “Weren’t allowed? Shameful. Absolutely inexcusable.”

“Those blasted Network people,” the younger porter said crossing his arms.

“Now, now, Jimmy,” said the older porter. “They’re not all bad folks.” He held out his hand to Saligia. “Please, ma’am, come aboard. We’ll ready your accommodations immediately.”

“For me and my valet,” Saligia said, pointing to me.

Valet?

“But of course,” said the older porter.

I picked up both our bags, falling into character as a valet, though I’m not exactly sure what that all entailed.

Saligia took the porter’s offered hand and stepped into the train. I followed, turning to nod at Mack and the two young men of Great Falls.

“God speed, and give my best to my little sister,” Mack told me as Jimmy the porter closed the door behind us.

###

The train was unremarkable inside. We were escorted through a car of private compartments, so all we saw was a wood paneled corridor with recessed lighting and brass fixtures on the sliding doors.

“We always keep a stateroom set aside for an unscheduled VIP,” said the older porter. “And I can’t imagine a more Very Important Person than Saligia Jones.”

Unrestrained praise should be a good thing. But with Saligia it just fueled an appetite which was, ultimately, insatiable. And when it began to diminish, as such things tended to do in the entertainment industry, she would become resentful and morose. I’d seen it before with her. The rise up was bad enough, her behaving like a giddy child enjoying her first exciting day at school, but the inevitable journey down was a cheap bottle of wine, equal parts sour and bitter.

After we had walked the length of several cars, the older porter held up his hand and smiled at Saligia. We stopped.

“Jimmy,” he said.

Jimmy nodded and opened the door to the compartment.

Saligia and I stepped in. It was cozy, with two upholstered bench seats facing one another. Beds above. A wide window, which looked out onto the nighttime platform of the Great Falls depot.

The porters politely remained in the corridor to list the amenities. When they explained that the bar up on the observation level was serving drinks and light snacks, Saligia suggested I join her once I’d finished stowing our luggage.

Before I could respond, she stepped out, Jimmy slid the door shut, and I was alone.

Things had drifted out of my control, I realized. It wasn’t like I had a plan or anything, but I was aware of this pattern that dominated my life. Anytime I began to feel that I had finally stepped on the correct path forward, things would suddenly shift and rearrange themselves. This was how it used to be with Sy and Saligia. Periods of relative calm broken by punctuated chaos. I like the calm—I fight to find and maintain it. Still, there was an undeniable thrill in the chaos, and with Sy and Saligia I had a front seat to the frenetic dramas generated by two impulsive personalities. It suddenly occurred to me how much I had missed that sensation. There was a rush like someone had just opened the door on a jetliner. No need to fight it. Let the wind carry you away. Don’t hold on to anything, or you’ll get knocked around something fierce. Just hope you’re wearing a parachute.

There were two Morrises within me, their divergent temperaments constantly at odds: the sensible fellow who valued stability and preparedness, and the thrill-seeker. The former had been running things for too long, I realized.

I dug a deep into my brain and pulled forth what had once been my mantra. I mentally blew off the layer of dust.

Embrace the chaos.

I didn’t feel the train begin to move, but I saw, through the window, the painted sign for Great Falls slide away, and soon it was just moon-lit rocks and shrubs zooming past.

I tossed Saligia’s bag up onto one of the beds. And, before doing the same with my pack, I pulled out my drawstring pouch holding my gold coins and stashed them under the cushion of one of the seats. I wasn’t expecting theft, but as there was no lock on the door, I didn’t want to chance it. We’d probably need money in LA. That was certainly the way it used to be.

Then I left in search Saligia.

I walked forward through the sleeper cars and eventually found myself in the empty and darkened dining car. I couldn’t go further, because the door at the far end was locked and had a sign cautioning that only staff were allowed beyond. Was that to the engine car? Where we had hidden beneath? I turned and glanced around the dining area with tables covered by crisp white linen.

Observation deck? Could it be overhead? These train cars did look tall from the outside. That was when I noticed a curtain just beyond the salad bar. I pulled it back and found stairs going up.

I encountered another curtain at the top. Soft music played—some sort of inoffensive, vaguely classical music, maybe Aaron Copland—and I also heard the murmur of conversations and the scattered titters of polite society. I pushed through into a cozy space dimly lit from recessed lighting and candles on about a dozen tables. The music was clearly recorded, as I saw no musicians. There were maybe thirty people, in all, seated in intimate groups, drinking and laughing and being attended to by waiters in white suits. Large windows all around looked out onto the moonlit desert.

At the nearest table I recognized a few people from Serpientes y Escaleras. When Ida saw me, she turned her head in my direction and stopped speaking. Everyone in her group looked, and then turned away with a sort of awkward distaste.

Everyone but Ida. She made no attempt to conceal her hostility. Without breaking eye contact with me, she said something to Michael who sat beside her. I could not hear her voice over the music and general chatter of passengers, but from simply watching her lips I could make out the words.

“Another one of them,” she said, and then looked away from me.

Ah. I guess that meant she’d already seen Saligia.

I walked to the front of the car where the floor-to-ceiling curved window provided a full view through of the gleaming tracks shooting out to the distant horizon. The scenery of the desert all around us was barren and majestic.

That was where I found Saligia, sitting at the head of a table with the grand scenery behind her. About ten people were seated around her, listening as she held forth, a sly smile on her lips.

She delivered some sort of punchline, because suddenly everyone around her broke into laughter.

Saligia watched as I walked around the table toward her.

“This is Morris,” Saligia said. “He’s my camera man. Makes me look good.”

It seemed I had been promoted up from valet.

A chair was pulled up beside her and I sat.

“It was so dramatic,” a woman said, looking across to me. “I can’t believe the show’s canceled. But what a way to go out!”

“Word has it, the portals overloaded, and shut down,” a young man in wireframe glasses said. “Is that right?” This last bit was addressed to me.

“Yeah,” I said. “Something like that.”

“Saligia, you are a legend,” the woman continued, looking at Saligia with an excited flutter of lashes. “I can only imagine you’ll be able to write your own ticket on any show you want.”

All heads nodded in agreement.

These were apparently all Network people. But friendly. A far cry from Ida’s inflexible crabbiness.

The young man with the glasses fetched me a beer and I just sat back and tried to make sense of it all.

I eventually learned that our group included people working on TV shows in New Orleans, Baltimore, and Lisbon (which, I learned, now resided where the Finger Lakes once were.). All game shows. They each had portals through with people appeared—people who became contestants on the shows. Just like Serpientes y Escaleras. One was called Don’t Spin Wrong! Another had something to do with competitive cooking, I’d Eat That! How many other shows were there? I think someone mentioned productions in Chicago and Missoula.

I felt it best not to trot out my ignorance, so I kept quiet.

I learned that even though Serpientes y Escaleras was acknowledged as the most popular of the Network’s shows, it was also clear that the Network employees who worked on that show, our show, who sat over at the table with Ida, were certainly not as well regarded as Saligia. Not by the people at our table, at least. Probably because they were seated with Ida, a member of the hated upper management.

Wasn’t that how it usually worked?

God, even after the Changes, corporate politics still existed.

Eventually the star-struck woman exclaimed to the group that “we’ve been taking up so much of Saligia’s time—I think we need to let her and her friend have some privacy. They’re no doubt hatching an idea for a brilliant follow up to Serpientes y Escaleras.”

The little crowd politely excused themselves, and broke into smaller groups as they sat at various tables arranged about the observation deck.

“You’re a star,” I said to Saligia.

“Quite unexpected. I mean, it’s nice being recognized when out and about in San Antonio. But to be so well-regarded by your peers within the industry, goodness. I don’t know what to say.”

“We should have asked them some questions,” I said. “Like where do those people go when they step through Door Number One.”

“We have plenty of time,” Saligia said, motioning a waiter for another drink. “We’ve won these people over. During the next two days, we should learn quite a bit.”

“It certainly has been a time for revelations,” I said, idly looking out the window. The train emerged from a canyon and was speeding across a flat plain, washed in the light of the moon. It was the salt flat Mack had spoke of. There, dead center, was a bright green point of light. It generated a weird glow, like that from an aquarium, for miles. “Well, revelations for me, that’s for sure. Especially about Sy.”

“Sy?”

“Yeah. It was such a relief to discover that he hadn’t died. I must admit, for the last few years I’ve been wrestling with this guilt. You know, feeling somewhat responsible for—”

“As you should,” Saligia interrupted. “He did die.”

I turned away from the view. She had my attention now.

“Out there in that production truck.” Saligia had shifted so she could look out the window. “And there were witnesses who saw you running away, like a coward.” Her lips compressed, and she slowly let our her breath. “Did you know I was called in to identify the body? There wasn’t much left to work with. I was able to vouch for that tattoo on his left buttock, but mostly the medical examiner went by the dental records.”

Saligia still wouldn’t meet my gaze. I could see, reflected in her eyes, that green light we were speeding toward. I twisted around so I could look too.

I watched it grow larger as we moved closer. It was as Mack said, a big green glowing blob. I was doing my best to process what Saligia was saying while at the same time trying to figure out if we should brace ourselves for, what, impact?

The music, I realized, had been turned off. The entire bar had fallen silent, as I assumed everyone was as focused on the fast-approaching blob sitting on the tracks ahead. I, for one, could not look away from it.

“What are you talking about? He’s alive,” I said. “Sy’s alive. Or at least he was alive when he went after August and Rose.”

“I don’t know what he is,” I heard Saligia say as I leaned closer to the window, fascinated and not a little terrified by that light. “I do know he died,” she continued in a matter-of-fact tone. “Back then in that production truck. And, years later, when the portals appeared in La Vida Tower, he was the first person to come through. I’d already mourned him, put all that behind me, when, boom, back from the dead.”

And then we hit the green blob and things got weird. Well, a different kind of weird.

Click on the image above (or right HERE) to navigate to my long story, The Book That Sells Itself. You will get to the first or several parts. At the bottom of the page on the Unlikely Stories website, you’ll find a link to part two, and you can take it from there to the final, fourth part.

I surprised myself with the smooth immediacy I had used to take care of that inane robot. Add to that, my unexpected behavior back at the TV studio. I will readily admit that my life, previously, had been filled with a great deal of physical activity, often struggling with and eventually dominating other people. But not right out in public. Never on display. Those were things I had kept hidden from others. Except, well, my victims.

That was all over now. The sensation was thrilling.

And it was honest!

I had to remind myself that when I thought of “my life,” I was referencing not the past, so much, as a completely different life.

A sad life, in many ways. Small, too. I had never left my hometown. Kept to the shadows. Never been appreciated for my true work. Sent to prison for the most petty of reasons—I’d been sloppy in handling my own finances. And all culminating in the most ignominious ending imaginable—death in prison by natural causes.

That was all over. I was a new man. Reborn. The phoenix up from the ashes. How I’ve changed! Perpetrating grand actions, in public. In full sight to anyone who happened to look my way.

At the moment this woman, Rose, she was my lifeline. I needed her around to keep me from turning into some gelatinous tentacled creature. Lydia had made that clear to me. Somewhere on one of the top floors of that building in San Antonio was something Lydia called a tau field generator, and if I ventured too far away from it, I could only survive if accompanied by one of the TV show’s psychic Readers. Saligia or Rose. Lydia doubted Michael was talented enough to be of any use to me.

I had little choice but to believe her absurd admissions. But it appeared that I had been wise to act on them. Those robots had corroborated Lydia’s story. In fact, Rose’s “powers” were causing distress to the robots’ entire facility.

To that, I say, good!

And also keeping me intact, in human form.

I had to get Rose to see things my way. Lies wouldn’t work on her. She seemed to know all about what had happened to that director, Hal. In her eyes I was a murderer. No doubt she also suspected I had something to do with Lydia’s disappearance. She was smarter than most of those TV people.

I decided not to waste time with threats, either. She didn’t seem motivated by fear.

I would be honest. Mostly honest.

She needed me. And I needed her.

She needed me because of my strength and determination. I’d already proven capable of defeating the robot threat—though she might not see them as the enemy I did, even with their ray guns.

My ultimate success would be to get Rose to understand how I needed her. It was crucial to play to her sense of compassion. She had deep reserves of empathy. In fact, I hoped she could read my thoughts. She’d have no choice but to come to the conclusion that I was the victim in all this.

True, she might not come to accept that my behavior toward Hal and Lydia was justified no matter how wronged I felt, but I didn’t need to turn her into a lifelong friend, just convince her to remain in my proximity until I figured a few things out.

“We need to get out of here,” I told her. I could make my case as we moved.

Rose didn’t seem to be listening. She stepped to the railing and looked up.

“I think someone from the other side came through after Helen and Darlene,” she said. “Those robot things said tier 24. I think it’s above us. We should check it out.”

“You think someone from a game show can save us? Do you know how absurd you sound?”

“But they probably came to help.”

“They will not have come to help me.”

“No, I wouldn’t imagine.” She turned to face me. “You know, because of Hal.”

“They were holding me prisoner. You know that, right? Poking around in my brain. Forcing me to perform on a game show as some twisted entertainment. What would you have done? Me, I was just trying to escape from that madhouse. And it is still going on.” I paused a moment to let my words sink in. “Even here, wherever here is. Those two men, robots, whatever—you saw what they did to Helen and Darlene. Did they deserve that? Whatever it was that happened to them, that has been my fate all along. Seems like I was wise to try and escape.”

There. I did it.

I saw from Rose’s face, I had her. Made my case. At least for the time being. Whatever powers of telepathy she might have, she wouldn’t have need that to know I spoke the truth. Factual, logical truth. I watched as she processed it all. Then, she glanced up, I presume towards tier 24.

“Well we can’t stay here,” she finally said. “The robot had a cart, so I suspect there’s an elevator somewhere.”

We began to walk cautiously, side by side, neither having the full trust of the other.

One of the things I had learned from Lydia was that Serpientes y Escaleras wasn’t the only TV show that had mysterious portals and “reincorporated” contestants. If that was true, then shouldn’t the portals from those other shows lead here as well? And if so, why was the place so empty and quiet?

“I want to know where we are,” Rose said, not bothering to ask me my opinion. Then she frowned. “We know one thing we didn’t know before. Door Number One and Door Number Two lead to the very same place.”

What I had learned from Lydia was that the doors led to Los Angeles. She, however, claimed not to know if the two doors went to the same place in that city. So, yes, Rose was correct. I had learned something I had not known before.

It took only a few minutes for us to find, nestled in a recess, the elevator.

“There’s another one,” Rose said, pointing directly across the wide central shaft of the space.

Two elevators. Good to know. I pressed the button—the only button to be seen. As I waited, Rose walked over to the railing and looked down into the depths of the green-lit space.

“I don’t see anything special about the ground level,” she said. “Other than that pool of water. Of course at this angle it’s hard to see much of any of the other floors.”

I wish Rose would remain closer. I needed to keep an eye on her, least she make a run for it, but I also had to focus my attention on the elevator door when it opened.

And then it did.

No warning chime. No sound at all. The door silently slid aside. I was glad to see it empty, as I was not well prepared if there had been anyone inside.

It was roomy enough, maybe for a couple of people—meaning robots—along with two of their handcarts. More of that soft green light came from a panel in the ceiling. The walls were brushed metal. I stepped in, placing my hand along the door recess so the elevator wouldn’t close. Rose walked away from the railing and joined me inside.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

I still held my hand in place, keeping the door open.

“This is all wrong.” I meant the panel with the column of buttons, numbered 1 through 47. “See? The numbers go the wrong way.” I had never seen an elevator control panel where the larger numbers were below the smaller numbers. Unless they were indicating multiple basements.

I gently took Roses wrist (so as not to startle her) and we both got off the elevator. I let the door slide shut.

“We’re in an underground facility,” I said. 

“Just because of how the buttons were numbered?” She seemed doubtful. “Maybe they’re just arranged different.”

“Not just that.” I pointed at the raised metal decal attached to the wall beside the elevator call button. There it was. The number 24. “We’re on the 24th floor. Or, as the robots would say, the 24th tier. When they mentioned the new arrivals, they said they were on tier 22. They indicated it was above us.”

Rose returned to the railing and looked down, toward what she had only seconds ago considered the way out.

“So, what’s that down there?” I took it to be a rhetorical question. Still, I joined her and peered down into the waters far below where I had tossed that robot. Was it some underground river? Hundreds of feet below Los Angeles? That didn’t seem right, but that hardly mattered. We weren’t headed down there.

“Honestly,” I muttered, “I’d rather not know.”

Then we both looked up.

“One of those robot’s mentioned a control room,” I said. “He told the other one to go up to the control room. I assume something that important would be at the very top. And, if we’re underground, that’s also where we need to be if we want to get out.”

Rose turned to face the elevator.

“No,” I told her. “Not unless we can’t find some stairs. Elevators are not know for their stealth. And whereas you might be comfortable walking up to strangers, be they mechanical or biological, I don’t feel that way at all.”

I was losing Rose. Stealth was not important to her.

“I need you, Rose,” I said. “Don’t give up on me. I’ve made it this far. And you heard those robots. Your ability, or whatever, seems to be keeping me from turning into…whatever Helen and Darlene became.”

“Surely, they were wrong,” she said, sounding tired. “I don’t have any sort of superpowers. I’m no one special.”

“That just not true. Please, I need your help get me some place safe, so I can figure this all out. Will you at least do that?”

Rose sighed. But she also nodded.

We continued walking.

I had not gotten all that I wanted from Lydia—towards the end it became very frustrating with her slipping in and out of consciousness—but there were two important facts I had learned. First, I was now somewhere in the city of Los Angeles. That meant if I could get free of this dreadful underground facility, I should have ample opportunities to lose myself in a large, thriving city. Second, Lydia had made it quite clear that she knew of no way to reverse the effects of the terrifying transformation that would visit me once I was away from Rose. I stilled hoped that someone, more savvy than Lydia, would hold the solution to that problem. I also hoped that Rose remained too overwhelmed by all of the uncertainties around us to come to the realization that I would never let her out of my sight until I found that solution.

But I needed to focus on there here and now. Fortunately, we soon discovered the door to a stairwell.

If you think of each circular level in this place like a watch face with the two elevators at six o’clock and noon, the stairs were at three o’clock. Probably there was another at nine.

I held the door to the stairwell and Rose obediently entered. I followed. We began the long trek, climbing up toward what I hoped to be freedom.

Not wanting to attract attention, Nora and I were stretched out flat on the floor so we could peer down at Rose and August, two levels below.

We watched in shock as August tossed that white-suited robot over the railing to his sad fate in the dark waters far below. At that moment, the severity of our situation returned to me. Though I held no personal stake in that mechanized man, I nervously kept my eyes trained on the slow churning surface of the sinister pool, hoping the robot might bob to the surface and swim to safety.

I realized that Nora, pressed close beside me, was holding her breath, and then I noticed I was as well.

“Breathe,” I whispered to her. Then I muttered, “Poor devil.”

###

When the two of us had arrived—perhaps materialized would be more apt—I am embarrassed to admit that my first thoughts were not of Rose.

My focus had been the Plan.

If there was any place I could find the answers that would allow me to give those reincorporated people a real choice in their future (other than two grim unknowns), it would be here. Wherever here was.

I needed to explore. Investigate. And be quick about it. Probably sneaky as all get out. I doubted I’d have much time.

But I couldn’t let my thoughts roam untethered for long, because I had not arrived in this realm beyond Door Number One alone.

We were still in a tight clutch—Nora and I—not because of fear, but from our giddy pose we had struck for the camera before we transitioned into the featureless and weightless void.

How long had we been in that nothingness between worlds?

Minutes? Decades?

Nora was a lively one. Quick and observant. Head-strong, yes. But what can I say? I too shared those virtuous traits. However, at times prudence was the higher virtue.

So, when we popped into existence within a green-lit glass tube, I felt a need to restrain Nora as she leaped out.

She spun around, looking perplexed at my hand holding onto her wrist.

“But we’re on a rescue mission,” she had said with dismay.

She was right, of course. We were here to rescue Rose from that maniac!

“Assess, my dear,” I told her. “We’re in a new world, and don’t know the rules.”

She smiled at me, flicking her eyes down to my hand.

“You can let go of me. I won’t run away.”

We both stood a moment, processing the fact that we were not only still alive, but a long way from La Vida Tower. And then, with care and deliberation, we looked around, doing our best to make sense of this place.

Slowly we both stepped away from the tube and stood at a waist-high railing looking out into a gigantic space. And what a space. It had all the dimly lit industrial minimalism of a Marriott hotel atrium as designed by a fourteen-year-old devote of 1980s science fiction movies. Dozens of levels of balustraded walkways providing access, not to hotel rooms, but hundreds of human-sized glass tubes into which people, such as Nora and I, might land after traveling through the ether of time and/or space. Most of the light came from glowing green orbs the size of potted ferns. Hundreds of these globes sat atop metal pillars distributed along the railings.

High above us, at the top of the huge central shaft, was a flat black ceiling with a hint of glittery reflections, as if ground mica had been glued up there. In the center was an enormous globe, half its hemisphere exposed, glowing, also, with that eerie green light. It throbbed and shimmered. And below, all the way at the bottom of the cavernous space, was water, sluggish and rolling. I think it was water. It could have been molasses for all I could tell. I wondered if the place had been constructed over a river. Maybe a river of molasses. If that were the case—and I’m not suggesting it was—than the food court most likely would be placed at the lowest level.

I almost expected tinny piano music issuing from circular speakers in the ceilings. But all was quiet. Well, a sort of soft buzz did come from all around. Probably those weird light fixtures.

The place was exotic and ordinary at the same time. But, I made it! Alive and in one piece. Here, beyond the portal. Beyond Door Number One. And what I had said to Nora couldn’t be more honest. I did not know the rules. I realized, in fact, I knew nothing. Even after years of sending contestants on this very journey, I had acquired no more than vague speculations.

Notes! I should be taking notes. But no paper. I didn’t even have a pen.

All of those observations which I would have preferred to leisurely gather and consider, had to be placed on hold when Nora alerted me to the presence of others.

“There they are,” she hissed. Now it was her time to grab my wrist.

Because Rose was still with August, we, Nora and I, with not a word exchanged between us, dropped down, out of sight.

From our hiding place on the floor, we saw that they were standing with two men in white coveralls not far below us, on the opposite side of the shaft.

“Looks like we’re the only ones in the whole place,” I said to Nora in a low tone. “The two of us, and the four of them. Seems strange. I mean, if these tubes are for transportation, they’re sure not getting much use. There are thousands of them.”

“1692,” Nora said.

“What?”

“You overestimated. 47 levels, 36 tubes per level. 1692, in total.” She looked up, then down. “That’s still a lot. Well, seems like a lot to me.” Then she turned her gaze back to the little group below.

“I wish we could hear them,” I said. The two men in white seemed so officious, probably they were employed to process the arriving contestants who were sent through Door Number One. White, like angels? Were similar men, though dressed in red devil suits, waiting in some other similar place for those assigned to Door Number Two?

If this was supposed to represent heaven, I’d like to have a chat with the design team. Theatrics should take a higher priority. White jumpsuits? Oh, please! We were holding up our side—back in San Antonio, running a smooth, professional show. But this? Not impressed. It had the Network all over it. Shoddy half-assery.

“Whoa!” Nora said. She sucked in her breath.

There had been a green flash down below us coming from the tube right beside Rose. New arrivals! It was Helen and Darlene! Oh, if only I could see what was going on back in the studio. I sure hoped Morris turned on the video recorder. It must be exquisite chaos—the best kind!

But wait, I couldn’t imagine anyone on crew who would have sent the women through Door Number One. That’d just be bad TV. They would have been sent through Door Number Two. Because if Door Number One and Door Number Two both led to the same place, that would make no sense at all. That was worse than a rigged game. That would be…pointless.

“They’re busted, now,” Nora said.

“What?”

“Those two glass things,” she said, pointing down. “They’re broken.”

She was observant. The tube that brought Helen and Darlene was smoking. A bit. And the tube next to it, too. It was probably the one Rose and that killer used. Also, those two devices looked different. Then I realized that every tube in the whole place had a subtle green glow to them. I hadn’t noticed because it was so faint. But when they went dark, as had those two below, they stood out.

Nora taped my shoulder and pointed behind us to the tube which we had arrived in. It was dark as well.

Maybe the chaos back in the studio was less exquisite and more disastrous. I wondered if that might impact our chance of returning.

Then there was another flash. Green again, but very vibrant and powerful. One of the men in white had just zapped Helen and Darlene.

“Oh, no,” Nora gasped.

The women weren’t women anymore. They looked like Cleo, all tentacles and floppy bulges. They twitched there on the floor, helpless. One of the men grabbed up both the creatures and loaded them into a rolling cart. And then, he took them away.

Lord, was that what happened to all of our “lucky” contestants?

But wait, the remaining man in white was aiming his ray gun at August.

When August grabbed one of those rolling carts and slammed it against that guy in the white jumpsuit, all I could think of was good job! The man in white collapsed.

“Sparks,” said Nora. “Sparks are coming out of that man’s head.”

“A robot,” I said. “Those sort of sparks don’t come out a human. How interesting.”

“Oh, he’s okay. He’s standing up. Wow! I love robots!” Nora laughed quietly. “Well, I’ve never met one, but what’s not to love?”

“You think those two women would be so forgiving?”

“Mr. Moreno, we don’t know the full story. Remember, we’re assessing.”

“Please, call me Sy.” And then we saw August chuck that robot over the edge. When it landed in the water far below, it didn’t splash so much as ooze out of sight. I was beginning to lean towards molasses. “Now, that’s how you handle a robot.” I was starting to warm toward our cold-blooded killer.

I was still watching, wondering if it might eventually come up for air, when Nora poked me.

“They’re on the move,” she hissed.

Indeed they were. Momentarily unencumbered by any robot threat, August and Rose began heading off. 

We crept away from the edge before standing. We walked along the mezzanine, keeping close to the glass tubes lining the wall.

“We want to avoid being noticed by our friend, the murderer,” I whispered to Nora. “But, also, there’s that other robot skulking around.”

No sooner had I spoken the word, than there he was, moving our way, pushing his rolling cart with its unsavory contents. I grabbed Nora and pulled her into an alcove.

He—and I suppose a robot could be a he—hadn’t seen us. I was pretty sure of that. But he’d find us soon enough.

“Sy!” Nora hissed in my ear. Ah, finally, no more of that Mr. Moreno.

“What’s up?” I asked, shifting my gaze to where she was pointing.

“It’s an elevator,” she told me.

Well, it did appear to be some sort of sliding metal door, but that didn’t mean…I almost laughed at my own stupidity. Nora was an elevator expert!

Wait! What was that irritating sound? It flashed to mind that it must be a squeaky wheel of the robot’s wheelbarrow as it came closer. So, when Nora held her finger questioningly over the elevator call button, I nodded assertively.