Dream Walker (5 page)

“You know, I need to get ready. I have a long day ahead of me.” She got up and gave her mom a kiss on the cheek. “Love you, Mom.”

Aislen turned to head back up the stairs.

“I love you, too, Buttercup,” her mom replied.

Aislen stopped dead in her tracks. Her mother had never called her Buttercup before. The air in the kitchen turned electric, her skin bristled into a cloak of gooseflesh. A wave of nostalgia surged through her, the feeling that she had lost something precious, something she loved. It was the same longing ache she had felt in her dream when the unknown voice spoke to her in the desert.

Aislen looked back at her mother, but Sabine was already looking back out the window, taking another sip of her coffee, seemingly unaware of the novelty of the pet name she spoke.

Aislen turned and ran back up the stairs. She jumped in the shower and began scrubbing herself in the hottest water possible, trying to wash off her heebie-jeebies. She toweled off, dried her hair, and threw on a pair of scrubs.

She stopped to check herself in the mirror. Her hair was slicked back in a neat pony, she wore no make up, and there were the damn freckles that would never fade. She leaned forward and looked closer at her reflection.

There it was: the “butt-chin.” Strange. She had been looking at herself in the mirror for 24 years and had never noticed the shallow hollow of her chin. She reached up to the mirror and pressed the chin of her reflection.

The warm humidity of the room suddenly chilled, dropping 20 degrees in an instant. Steam clouded over her reflection, and the mirror made a loud popping sound from the sudden shift in temperature. A tingle ran down her spine and Aislen became aware of a presence in the room with her.

“I love your little butt-chin, Buttercup.” The voice from the dream desert whispered to her, reaching inside her chest and wrenching her heart. She wanted to run, but something—or someone—gripped her and pinned her before the mirror.

“I’ll be here when you wake up,” a man’s mellow timbre whispered in her ear, as plain as if he were standing at her shoulder. Another deluge of emotion sluiced through her, filling her with the deepest sadness.

There were no men in her life who would have ever touched her chin in such a way or have said such a thing. Aislen never had any boyfriends and her mom had only a very few dinner dates in all these years. They had no close, living relatives. And her father had never been in the picture.

Well, he had been...once. Just
one
day. Aislen could barely remember it. She had only been three or four. But the memory pressed itself into her head now as if an invisible hand was forcing it inside.

The memory of a small apartment, the doorbell ringing and her mom opening the door. When her mom saw who it was, she shut the door and spoke to the visitor through a narrow gap in a low voice. The person on the other side of the door spoke back, again in a low voice that Aislen could not hear. The exchange continued back and forth, the hushed, urgent tones took on a staccato rhythm.

Aislen could tell her mother was not happy. Her voice had the same cadence and insistence that Aislen heard when her mother told her to clean her room, or to stop fussing in the car.

Aislen heard a “no”, a “stop”, and a “don’t.” She moved closer to her mother, mostly to reassure her small self that everything was all right. She heard her mother tell the person that she wanted him to leave. A man’s voice on the other side of the door asked something with an attitude as firm as her mother. Mother kept saying “no”—a lot—and got angrier.

“You can’t just walk out of our lives...out of
her
life...then just pop back out of the blue. Especially now. Aislen is old enough to know things—to remember things. This will confuse her.”

“So you did name her Aislen after all?” The man did not say her name the way Mom said it. Mom said it “Aaaazlyn.” The man on the other side of the door said “Ashlyn.”

Her mother went silent. A wisp of a breeze slipped through the crack, past her mom, and swirled around Aislen. It carried the scent of wood and dirt and leaves, of something unknown and known at the same time. Aislen tiptoed a little closer.

“Sabine,” the man’s voice said, softer this time. “May I please see Aislen?”

When she heard her name again, said with its foreign lilt, Aislen felt the absolute need to check out the stranger on the other side of the door. She came up behind her mother’s legs and tried to peek between them. Her mom reached around and placed her hand on Aislen’s head trying to push her back, but that only upset her; being stopped from doing something only made her more obstinate about having to do it. Aislen ducked from under her mother’s palm and went around her knees instead and pulled open the door.

The man looked down in surprise. He looked back at her mother, a plea in his eyes, then without waiting for her approval he squatted down so he was face to face with Aislen.

Aislen didn’t take too well to strangers. Attention from anyone except her mother usually instigated an awkward game of peek-a-boo that ended up with Aislen either bursting into tears or running off to hide in another room. But she didn’t feel the need to hide herself from this man.

The hair on his head reminded her of the sand at the beach that she so loved playing in. He had a soft smile with lines at the corners that made it seem like he smiled all the time. He had lines like that around his eyes, too, and she recognized those eyes. They were exactly like the eyes she saw in her mirror when she looked at herself, grass green with a gold ring dancing within them.

“Hello, Aislen,” the man finally said. “My name is Preston.”

“How do you do,” Aislen stuck her tiny hand out for him to shake. “I’m Tweedle Dee.” It was a gesture she had seen in her favorite Disney movie, “Alice in Wonderland,” the one she watched over and over and over again even though her mom wished she would watch “Something Else For A Change.”

This made the man laugh. He reached out his hand, taking hers in his and shaking it gently. But he didn’t let it go and Aislen didn’t pull away. The man named Preston looked down at her small, pudgy hand and smoothed his thumb softly across the top of it.

When he looked into her eyes, his were as shiny as glass and he looked at her for a very long while without saying anything. Then he smiled, reached his pointer finger up and pressed it in the center of her chin.

“I love your little butt-chin, Buttercup.” Then he leaned in, kissed her on the cheek and whispered into her tiny ear, “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Aislen snapped out of the reverie, thrown back from the mirror as if it had electrocuted her. Profound sorrow ripped through her, clutching at her throat and choking off her breath.

It was him!
It was the voice of her father she was hearing—the same voice she had heard when she was lost in her dream. It was his words, transported from a forgotten moment—their only moment—so long ago.

Why in the hell would she have dreamed
his
voice? What was going on that she would pull up such a well-buried memory? And why was it filling her with this sadness, rather than the anger, resentment or apathy she had nurtured for all these years? He had abandoned her, for Christ sake—abandoned them!

Yet the memory was back with full clarity, as if it had just happened yesterday; and the look in his eyes, the total love that she saw in them, was imprinted afresh in her psyche.

She looked back up at herself in the mirror. The condensation that had veiled her image was clearing away as quickly as it appeared. The mirror percussed again loudly and the ghostly grasp released her.

So completely freaked out that she couldn’t stand it any longer, Aislen grabbed her backpack, ran out of the room, down the stairs, and out the front door—away from everything that was haunting her.

CHAPTER 4

Raze arrived at Headquarters in Palo Alto twenty minutes early for his meeting with the Infiniti 8. The 8 had pre-arranged this appointment back when they first approved the Parrish Project and assigned Raze to implement and complete it.

The headquarters of Infinium Incorporated was as sterile on the inside as it was on the outside, purposefully designed to look as generic as possible. With all its bland glory, it should have stuck out like a sore thumb, but despite the looming size of Infinium’s headquarters, it managed to hide in plain sight among the more aesthetically pleasing Fortune 500 buildings around it. This suited II’s needs perfectly.

The austerity of the interior made a different impression than its external facade. When one entered the building with its clean lines and functional surfaces in white and stainless steel, one walked into a clear space. The internal arena of Infinium represented the Zen mind: a blank slate, a mind without identity or belief, virgin and open to every possibility. It was the perfect environment to accomplish the company’s mission.

He walked down several long corridors, made a few turns, descended a flight of stairs, made a few more turns, and went down several more flights of stairs deep into the inner hub. It had taken him almost a year to maneuver through the intricate labyrinth of the building without getting lost.

Raze had been employed by Quantum Gaming Systems, a subsidiary of Infinium Incorporated, for almost 2 years before he’d been invited into these hallowed halls. He was a 20-year-old kid, who after years of being told he was a loser by pretty much everyone, was still in awe that he ever landed a job. He didn’t know at the time that II was going to offer him a very serious promotion and that life, or rather, reality, was never going to be the same for him.

It all began with a letter. Just before he turned 18, he received an invitation in the mail—snail mail—not just his email spam box.

Dear Raziel Tanis,

We have been watching you play AnnihilNation on the Now and via match replay videos on YouTube for quite a while now. Your skill and strategy is impressive. We would like to extend this personal invitation to attend Quantum Gaming Systems National Gaming Championships. It will be held in San Francisco next month. If you accept this opportunity, we would also like to meet with you in person to discuss other opportunities. Please contact our offices and we will make all the arrangements. Please do not let expenses dissuade you from contacting us. Food, lodging, transportation and entertainment will be paid for by QGS. We hope to hear from you soon.

Sincerely,

Grant Parker

The director of QGS himself signed it, in ink. Raze could feel the indentation where his pen pressed into the paper. It seemed too good to be true, but Raze picked up the phone and dialed the number listed on the letterhead.

“Quantum Gaming Systems, Grant Parker’s office, can I help you?” a sexy sounding receptionist greeated hi.

“Uh...yeah...I think so,” Raze was a little taken aback that the number actually worked. “My name is Raze Tanis,” he said, more as a question, than a statement.

“Oh, yes, Mr. Tanis. We have been expecting your call. Are you calling to reserve your space at the championships?”

“Uh...yeah...I think so,” he answered again.
You gotta be kidding me? This is for real?

“Very good. Mr. Parker will be pleased to hear that. Let’s get some information from you so I can make the arrangements.”

And, no shit, just like that, he was heading out to Cali. Raze emptied his bank account, packed some clothes and his tournament game controllers, told his family to go fuck themselves, and flew halfway across the country to play video games.

Directly after Raze had won his first National Championship, Grant Parker sent Raze an invitation to dinner in the form of a suit and tie, with a note reading, “The driver will arrive at 8.”

The suit was a perfect fit, and the limousine was waiting when Raze came down from his room. The driver opened the door for him and then drove him to the crest of Nob Hill, right to the front door of the InterContinental Mark Hopkins. Raze was directed to the 19th floor, the Top of the Mark, to a table by a window from which, he swore to God, he could see the whole world. He sat there, awestruck, watching the sun lower over the Golden Gate and the lights across the skyline flicker like candles.

The waiter brought over a bottle of Dom Perignon in an iced bucket just as Grant Parker arrived. He sat down at the table with him and got right down to business.

“We know you’ve been approached by several companies this weekend and have received some compelling sponsorship offers,” Grant began.

He was right. Just the night before, at a wild party that included mixed drinks and strippers, Red Bull had offered Raze a sponsorship worth $250,000 over the course of three years, just to keep playing AnnihilNation as a representative of their product.

“I, personally, have been watching you for several months,” Grant continued, “and while you are a truly gifted player, I think you have more to offer. Quite frankly, I can tell you’re bored. This game is beneath you. Any schmuck can play a game.” Grant paused while the waiter poured each of them a glass of the champagne. “We would like to offer you an opportunity very, very few will ever get.”

Grant outlined his proposal. “We would like to offer you a position at QGS in a research and development capacity. We have been developing a completely new system that will blow our competition out of the water. It just may blow everybody’s mind as well,” Grant chuckled. “In R&D you would be a Beta Player. You test drive the new product, help us work out any bugs, and assist in taking our system to the next level.”