NightSide - Asynchronous Mud

He leaned up and rested on his elbow, looked her in the eye again. "Would you like to come home with me, to stay with me?"

"Forever and ever?" she said -- with that sly grin twinkling in her eyes again. "Is that kind of like a 'come home and stay with me forever' kind of question?"

"Please don't make fun of..."

"Sh-h," she said, bringing a finger to his lips. "I'm not making fun of you Mark," she whispered. "There isn't anything in the world that would make me happier." She leaned in and kissed him again, stroked the side of his face. "Oh, my love," she whispered. "I wonder if we could make it work..."

"If we loved one another as much as I love you right now, we could make anything happen."

She nodded her head. "Well, I've got to go now. I hope you'll think about me while we're apart."

"What? You..."

"I really must go now, Mark. Please, no questions. I have to leave." She was up and off the bed in a flash, and he watched her as she walked to a door across the room and went inside. He heard the door lock behind her and that was that...

He felt a sudden overwhelming emptiness, a pervasive loneliness more devastating than any he'd felt over the last sixteen years; he sat up in bed, rolled his legs out from under the sheets, his feet finding the floor in a rush, grounding him to the physical reality of the room while he fought off the dysphoria of her leaving.

"My God," he said, fighting for breath, "what just happened?"

+++++

She walked into the exam room, now undressed and so tired she felt ill.

"Have a seat," the 'doctor' said, "and put your feet on the metal plate. You'll feel better in a few minutes."

She sat, vaguely remembered instructions concerning foot placement on the charging plates, and sat watching the physician-engineer, waiting for his questions...

"So, how do you feel this morning?"

"Fine," she said. "Tired, but very good, overall."

"And emotionally? How do you feel?"

"Happy," she said, without a moments hesitation.

"And can you tell me how you feel about Mark Stuart?"

"I...I love him..."

The physician-engineer looked at his screen, watched her responses then typed in his own observations. He watched the screen again, adjusted settings and smiled, hopeful. He hit send and waited a moment, then he asked her the same question: "Tell me how you feel about Mark Stuart?"

Her features brightened, she smiled at him and said "I've never felt so alive in my life, doctor. I do love him so..."

The physician-engineer looked at his screen, satisfied with the results. He looked at her, reached out and grabbed her face, turned it side to side. "Open your mouth, please." She opened wide and he took out a penlight and looked inside her mouth, between her cheeks and gums. "Did you notice any reaction to his semen? Could you taste anything?"

"Yes, I think so, but I'm still not sure."

"Well, Dana," he said as he looked her in the eye. "Do you think you're ready for this? I mean, really ready?"

"I think so, Doctor Evans."

"Well, I'll call Ralph and let him know. I want you to just sit here for now, and keep your feet on the plate, okay? You'll feel better once the charge level is back up to thirty percent."

"Thank you, doctor."

+++++

He walked down the same hallway he had the evening before, only now he couldn't see a door of any sort -- anywhere. As he reached the end a different wall slid open, this opening revealing another, much larger room beyond, a conference room of sorts he saw, complete with a large table with a half dozen chairs around it. A large flat panel came to life as he entered the room, a logo for Richardson Autonomics floating in and out of clouds, like a bluebird flitting through fields of cotton on a summer afternoon...

Another panel on the opposite side of the room slid open, and a woman came into the room and took a seat, followed by a younger woman who looked similar to Eve, yet with slightly different features. She came to Stuart, asked him if he wanted coffee, or perhaps something else to drink?

"No, thanks," he said, yet there was something about her voice? Similar diction, yet quite a distinctively different accent...almost like she was from the south, perhaps the Carolinas?

Two more people came into the room, two older men, one quite old, and this man was in a wheelchair. Moments later another man dashed in, this one in a white lab coat, and he was busily flipping through pages on a tablet.

"I don't suppose anyone would care to tell me what the fuck is going on?" Stuart said, and the middle aged woman simply turned to the screen. The cloudscape dissolved, replaced by the room he'd shared with Eve last night.

"Would you like to come home with me, stay with me?" he heard himself say, and he squirmed in his chair.

"Listen, I don't know what it is you people want, but blackmail sure isn't going to get..."

The woman turned to him and smiled. "Mr Stuart? This is not what you think. Please relax, as we have a lot to go over this morning, and we need your help." She turned back to the screen, and playback resumed...

"Forever and ever? Is that kind of like 'come home and stay with me forever' kind of question?"

"Please don't make fun of..."

"Sh-h, I'm not making fun of you Mark. There isn't anything in the world that would make me happier." He watched as she leaned-in and kissed him again. "Oh, my love, I wonder if we could make it work."

The woman turned and looked at him again. "Mr Stuart, could you tell me what was going through your mind right then, what you were feeling, more specifically?"

"Not until you tell me what's going on. Now...and I mean right now!"

"Mr Stuart," he turned to the old man in the wheelchair as he started speaking, and everyone turned to face this man as he spoke, "your confusion is duly noted, as is your anger. Now, please let me rephrase Ms Anderson's question. Do you love Eve?"

"And who the hell are you?"

"Ralph Richardson, Mr Stuart."

Stuart's eyes narrowed. If there was anyone in the Bay Area more a recluse than himself it was Richardson, and even his company was among the great unknowns of Silicon Valley. No one knew much about the company, what they were making -- or even what they intended to make, for that matter -- and about the only thing he'd heard, other than some big guns were involved in the company's creation, was that Richardson was involved in some sort of biomedical research.

"Okay, sir. What's this about?"

"Please answer the question, Mr Stuart."

"As much as I'd like to tell you, sir, why are my feelings any of your business?"

Richardson smiled, turned to the woman. "Would you ask Dana to come in now, please?"

"Yes, Mr Richardson." The woman didn't make a move, didn't push any buttons or speak a word, yet seconds later yet another doorway slid open and Eve walked in, still completely undressed. All eyes were focused on Stuart, on his reaction to Eve's presence in the room, as he watched her walk around the table and then, as she stood beside him.

"Eve?" Richardson said, looking directly at her. "Do you remember Mr Stuart?"

She ran her fingers through his hair. "Of course I do, Ralph. Why?"

"Mr Stuart, could you please tell Eve how you feel about her?"

Stuart looked at Richardson, then at Eve. He stood, took both her hands in his, then brought one to his lips and kissed it. "I love her, Mr Richardson. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

"Thank you, Mark. Eve, could we have a few more minutes alone with Mr Stuart?"

"Of course." She turned and left the room, but she stopped and smiled at Stuart before she slipped through the doorway.

"Dana?" Stuart said. "You called her Dana? Then Eve. What's going on here, Mr Richardson?"

"I suppose an explanation of sorts is in order. Perhaps you have time to sit and listen to a story?"

"I can do that."

"Are you sure you wouldn't like something to drink first?"

+++++

She walked back to the exam room and sat in her chair, her feet on the plate, yet she couldn't remember why she needed to do that, or what she was doing in this room in the first place. Still, she sat, looking at her hands on her lap.

"Those aren't my hands," she said after a minute, and she wondered what the rest of her body looked like...

+++++

"So, how did I get here?" Stuart asked.

"You mean Toby? Yes, we met years ago, and as he thought you might be a good resource we asked him to mention our, well, this place to you."

"A good resource?"

Richardson shook his head. "I'm sorry. We're getting ahead of ourselves now."

"Listen, I've got to know. Is she, Dana, Eve, whatever her name is...is she, well, is she human?"

"That's a very good question, Mark, and one I'm reluctant to answer even now, but again, we need to go back a few years, twenty years ago, to be more precise.

"Do you recall, well, I'm sure you must..." Richardson sighed, adjusted his eyeglasses while he paused. "When an American 777 was hit by a helicopter, during that police chase in Los Angeles?"

"Yes, of course. That was a truly..."

"Yes, it was. What you probably don't know is that my wife was the pilot of that aircraft."

"No, I didn't know. I'm terribly..."

Richardson waved his hand. "Not important, Mark, but thanks... Anyway, let's move on. What is most relevant concerns my sister-in-law, my wife Laura's sister. She was working in Los Angeles at the time, and she had been for several years. She was working for a start-up, a company with breakthrough solar technologies. The Air Force was involved to a degree -- because they were utilizing a new technology to measure solar output via angles of incidence, and they were making precise, long term measurements of the sun. Anyway, that wasn't Dana's real background, her real background, anyway. We found out later that she had worked for the Mossad..."

"What's that?"

"The Israeli equivalent of the CIA, but they tended to be a little more proactive in the world than other western intel agencies in those days. Assassinations, infiltrating western companies, even our armed services were routinely compromised by the Mossad. Then, of course, the Iran-Israeli Cold War put an end to that dilemma."

"I imagine so."

"Her name, by the way, was Dana. Dana Goodman. Her family was, as it happens they were Jews, originally from Iran but they fled to Argentina in 1953, after a CIA-MI6 coup deposed the Mossadegh government. But that is, as they say, water under the bridge. I guess that's when problems in the Middle East began in earnest, not that that matters so much now, but she was a part of all that.

"Anyway, for what it's worth, Goodman wasn't their family name, and Dana was just a kid when her father moved to Minnesota, and he worked for 3M until he died, which was back in the 80s, I seem to recall. Dana went back to Israel for a while..."

"Excuse me. So Dana, her family, were from Iran, but are you implying they were Jewish?"

"Oh, yes. There were in the mid-20th century, and I suppose there might still have been -- until the war, anyway -- more than a few Jews in Iran. Merchants, physicians -- who knows? Anyway, her grandfather was a physician, and closely allied with the Mossadegh government, but when the Shah returned to power they had to get out in a hurry. The Shah remained in power until January, 1979, as I'm sure you know, but by that time Dana had been living in Israel for some time. She became very actively religious while an undergrad at UCLA, but she quit school and moved to Tel Aviv during her junior year. I don't think the details are relevant, but she finished school over there and went to work for Mossad right out of college. She was working in Zurich about the time the Shah's government was collapsing, and the most important thing that happened during that period was, well, something quite interesting happened." He looked away, lost in the memory. "Anyway, to make a long story even longer, it seems she was in on an assassination project of some sort, where several members of the SAVAK, the Shah's internal security apparatus, were killed. Her targets had been instrumental in eliminating the Shah's political opposition, and I guess many Jews were among those liquidated, or taken out. That's was Israel's stated interest in the action, anyway."

"Wait a minute... You said her name IS Dana, not was. Is she still..."

Richardson shrugged. "Again, I'll leave that for you to decide, Mark."

"Wait a minute...now, just what does that mean?"

Richardson looked down at his hands again, then he looked at the young woman by his side. "Dana, why don't you go sit with Eve for a while."

"Okay, Dad."

Stuart watched the exchange feeling more and more confused, very much on the outside looking in, and simply unsure whether or not he should just get up and leave -- before this went much further, or got much stranger.

"Mark, I'm curious. Have you been with many women over the years, or have you just had a couple of serious relationships?"

"Didn't Toby tell you?" Stuart replied, not a little sarcastically.

"No, I'm afraid not."

"I haven't been active much, as you can imagine, since my accident. Does that answer your question?"

"I'm sorry, it's just that I wanted to know about last night. How was, well, how did you feel, physically, when you were with Eve?"

"What do you mean, how did I feel? How was I supposed to feel?"

"Satisfied, perhaps, might be the word I'm looking for. Was Eve a physically satisfying lover?"

"Well, I'm sure you have recordings of everything we did. What can I tell you that you don't already know?"

"A lot," he said, chuckling. "It seems, if I'm not reading to much into the matter, the intensity of the experience was enough for you to fall in love with her? Is that about the size of it?"

"Yup. You could say that, but now you're telling me, well, if I can read between your lines a little right now, is that Eve isn't really quite what she appears to be, is she?"

"Not in the way you mean. No, she's not."

"Excuse the fuck out of me, but how many ways can there be? I mean, either she is, or she isn't human, correct?"

Richardson shook his head, turned to the older man beside him. Sumner, I think we'll need the Balvenie '68. Why don't you bring the cart."

"Yessir."

"You have a '68?" Stuart said, somewhat in awe. "I didn't know there were any left."

"I managed to lay my hands on a few cases, before all the recent unpleasantness."

"Cases? Okay, sir, now I'm impressed."

The old man returned, pushing an ornate whiskey cart into the room. Stuart saw several Balvenies, a few so rare they were regarded as almost mythical, then he saw a Glenfarclas 60 that had to be a hundred years old. He saw that the bottle was unopened and shook his head. Of course, he thought to himself, a man like Richardson would know that these casks were a particular weakness of his, but Stuart knew he'd gladly sell his soul to the devil himself for just one sip of that Glenfarclas.

"Mark? See something that catches your eye?"

"Whatever you'd like will be fine."

"Some Famous Grouse, perhaps? Or could I can send someone out for a few cans of Colt 45?"

Stuart laughed. "I'm sorry, sir. The Balvenies would be very nice."

"As you wish," the man behind the cart said. He poured two fingers in a cut crystal cocktail glass and carried it over, then returned to the cart. "Ralph?"

"I think I'd like to try the Glenfarclas today, Sumner. This seems a fitting occasion."

"I agree, sir."

"Well, by golly then, you'd better pour one for yourself!"

Stuart's eyes crossed; he was fuming inside as he watched the two men settle down with their glasses, and now he was sure Richardson was trying to hide a goading smile...

"Now, Mark," Richardson said, looking up at the ceiling, "the story gets a little strange from here on, and I have to ask that what you learn in here today remains in this room. Can we agree to that much right now?"

"Yes, sir. I'll agree. I'm all ears, as a matter of fact."

"Well, good. So, Dana eventually moved to California in the months after her father passed, and she began working, as I mentioned, for a solar firm in West LA. She was, as I mentioned, still working for Mossad. Actively, we think. She was still a spy, in other words, and the FBI knew about her activities, too. Anyway, she'd made a lot of friends in LA, a few very close friends during her undergraduate days at UCLA, and things were going well. So, the company was failing, running out of money after the crash in '08. She was stressed out, was going to have to fire a lot of those very same friends of hers, and then Flight 22 crashed. Not good timing, I guess, from that one simplistic perspective.

"She drove to the crash site that afternoon, and it turns out she saw the wreckage, the fires and all that. Bodies being carried from the scene, that kind of thing. My guess is her mind snapped. Just snapped like a dry twig. The things she'd done over her life. Killing people, being a spy at a difficult time, then having to lay off friends at her company, while she was still a goddamn spy, spying on her friends. Who knows? Maybe she was already brittle, about to break, but I doubt Laura ever thought so?"

"Laura?"

"My wife."

"Oh, yessir."

"She snapped, I think, and she was driving around in a fog, through south central LA for God's sake -- and it was after midnight. She ended up at the harbor, on the Vincent Thomas Bridge, and then she tried to jump. That's when things changed, and, well, I hate to say it Mark, but all our lives changed that night...only you just don't know how much things changed..."

+++++

"The stars -- they were everywhere -- they seemed to coalesce around us. I don't know how to describe it, what it was like out there, but all of a sudden I remembered thinking they were fireflies. Like we were inside one of those glass balls, you know? You shake the thing and then it looks like it's snowing inside? Only we were surrounded by fireflies, and then they were all over us, swarming all over us. And then I see one of them in front of my face, hovering right in front of my eyes. I don't know what it was, who it was, but it was talking to me, telling me to relax, telling us that we weren't in any danger..."

The screen paused and Mark looked at the man sitting next to Richardson. "Is that you?" Stuart asked. "You were a cop?"

The man nodded his head. "Yessir, I was 'the cop on the bridge' that night. And yes, I stopped her from jumping."

"And this," Richardson said, interrupting, "is what people on the bridge saw." He resumed playback, and the screen came to life again. Stuart watched as the cop climbed the anti-suicide fence on the bridge, winced when he saw the woman up there getting tangled in razor-wire, then the cop was talking to her, extricating her and then helping her down. He couldn't quite make out her words when they reached the bottom, but then she was holding him, crying into his chest, then she slipped to her knees...

...and then Stuart's world turned in on itself...

...as he watched the two of them, the cop and the grieving woman, as they grew vaguely transparent, their forms dissolving within a gauzy, glowing amber-gray mist. Whoever was filming the event moved in close at that point, their camera movements rapid yet somehow tentative, as if whoever it was couldn't quite reconcile what they were watching unfold with any sort of reality they understood. The camera circled about the two kneeling forms, tried to get close and then Stuart saw the 'fireflies' -- thousands of pale forms hovering and circling those two people. He watched, not sure himself if he understood what he was seeing anymore, as the flies coalesced into a pulsing sphere around them, and then Stuart gasped as the sphere began pulsing, glowing a deep, radiant bronze with each successive pulse -- until there was a shift and the sphere began spinning, the pulsing movement growing faster and faster as the spinning increased, then colors -- moving through a molten kaleidoscope -- and when the sphere was a deep cobalt it collapsed in on itself...