Simon Sees Read online

  Simon began to write.

  A B C

  He’d written three letters. There were twenty-three to go. Not twenty-two. The doctors wanted him to write the next twenty-three. Not just twenty-two.

  D

  Dr. Michael’s chin rose slightly as he watched. And waited. They were at the critical moment. Fifty times before this was where they’d confirmed no progress had been made. But the protocol did not indicate that any should have been made. They’d expected failure.

  Until now.

  Simon hesitated. The marker stilled in his hand.

  Leah drew an anticipatory breath and glanced to her colleague for an instant, the brief, silent exchange between them making very clear that something was different.

  And something was very different.

  Simon stared at the white board on his lap. He’d written four letters. There were twenty-two left in the alphabet. Twenty-two.

  Twenty-two.

  He knew the next letter. He knew how to write the next letter. Even though he never had.

  “Simon,” Dr. Michaels said, gently urging the manchild to continue. To do what the protocol suggested he would. To break through. “Go ahead, Simon.”

  Simon Lynch put the marker’s tip against the slick white surface.

  Twenty-six letters.

  Twenty-six.

  A B C D

  Simon moved the marker on the board and wrote the next letter.

  E

  “Good God…”

  Dr. Warren Michaels could not contain the soft exclamation. He looked to Leah, a skim of wondrous tears in her eyes at what they’d just witnessed. At what they’d just accomplished.

  “That’s good, Simon,” Leah said.

  Simon kept writing, finishing the alphabet.

  Z

  He lifted the marker, his gaze fixing on it.

  Something is…

  He couldn’t complete the thought. Too much was happening within right then. His mind was afire with a cascade of information. Words, numbers, pictures, sounds. All things he’d processed before, but now they were…different. Almost…

  “Real,” Simon said aloud.

  “Excuse me, Simon?” Leah said.

  But Simon did not answer. He held the marker out to her and she took it, snapping the cap back on.

  “It worked,” Dr. Michaels said. He took a moment, stepping back from Simon and Leah. “Half a trillion dollars and we got an ‘e’ out of him.”

  “It’s only the beginning,” Leah said.

  “Exactly,” Dr. Michaels agreed. It was that. And so much more. “I need to revisit the protocol.”

  “What do you mean?” Leah asked. “The protocol got us to this point.”

  “We know that it works now,” Dr. Michaels said. “Advancing the timeline may be possible.”

  Leah stood, more than surprised at what she was hearing. The entire pharmaceutical plan had dictated that, after the 51st injection, enough of the NB compound would have accumulated in Simon’s system to allow communication to begin. Communication with the amazing mind trapped by a terrible affliction.

  “That’s never been part of the plan, Warren.”

  Dr. Michaels, his heart actually racing with excitement, with satisfaction, eyed his colleague and shook his head.

  “The plan has changed, Leah.” Dr. Michaels moved toward the door, pausing to look back upon Simon Lynch for a moment before shifting his attention to Leah. “Stay with him. Draw blood. We’re going to need new numbers for an updated panel.”

  She wanted to protest, but didn’t. In the split second when she could have, before he left, Dr. Leah Poole could have raised all the possible dangers associated with what the leader of the project was suggesting. The protocol might be affected, or even sent into a state of failure. Connections and communication could be termed unreliable. And…

  She looked to Simon, his hands hovering over the alphabet he’d just penned on the board. The complete alphabet.

  What about him?

  That was her worry. His wellbeing was supposed to be assured. An outside observer who visited was supposed to verify that Simon Lynch was not facing any harm. But would that last if Michaels was able to move forward without regard to any effects on their patient?

  Patient…

  She’d equivocated on what to term Simon Lynch. Subject might be appropriate, but it was wrong. He was not a lab rat.

  At least not in her eyes.

  “Get that draw done,” Dr. Michaels said, opening the door to the examination room to reveal an armed guard in the hall outside. As the door swung slowly shut, Poole eyed the trooper, clad in grey, his automatic rifle snug across his chest. He was a necessity, she knew. As were the twenty others like him on The Ranch.

  The Ranch…

  She frowned lightly as the door clicked shut. That’s what they called the place in the desert. Those who had conceived and built The Ranch had at their disposal the largest repository of intelligence the world had ever known, hidden away in humming computer banks in NSA facilities across the globe. Leah Poole, though, knew that what they had here dwarfed what existed in those acres of air-conditioned electronics racks where all the world’s communications were gathered and stored. Here, in the small examination room, between the ears of the thirty-six-year-old man they’d been working with for a decade and a half.

  “I’ve spent a third of my life with you, Simon,” Leah said.

  She was talking to him. Simon knew this. More importantly, he understood. Not just what she was saying, but…more. What was behind the words. What she was…feeling.

  What’s happening?

  “Can you tell me my name?” Leah asked and prodded all at once. She crouched down and tried to look into his downcast eyes. “Simon, what’s my name?”

  No reply came. As his silence persisted, she took the board from his lap and set it aside. After a quick glance toward the door, she reached into the side pocket on her lab coat and retrieved something.

  “Simon, do you remember this?”

  She held the item out to him. It was a set of ringbound three-by-five cards, worn by use, but not tattered.

  “These are your cards,” Leah said, taking another look at the door. Dr. Michaels might be violating the protocols he had established himself. But what she was doing, bringing a piece of Simon’s past into his present, would be seen by the man as a far more serious breach of propriety. “Do you remember these?”

  Simon’s gaze shifted slowly to the cards Leah held out before him. His cards. Cards which guided him. Cards which told him how to get home to the blue house by riding the school bus. Cards that told him what to do if a tornado was coming. Cards that told him who…

  Cards that told him who his friends were.

  “Friends,” Simon said.

  “Yes,” Leah said, an eager smile building. She flipped through the cards until she came to one with FRIENDS written neatly upon it. “These are your friends.”

  Simon reached out and took the cards from Leah. There were names written below the identifier. In childlike block letters. Phonetically spelled. No ‘e’ apparent in any name.

  I wrote this…

  He saw names he remembered. DOKTR CHAZ. DOKTR AN.

  “Simon…” Leah tapped the cards in his hands. “I’m your friend, Simon.”

  Only a friend could tell him who a new friend was. She could not be a friend just because… She could not…not be…

  She…

  “What’s my name, Simon?”

  He looked up. Looked into her eyes. A wave of terror cresting in his gaze as he spoke to her.

  “Your name is Leah.”

  She brought a hand up over her mouth, easing it away, trembling, after a moment.

  “Leah Poole,” Simon said, his own breathing quickened. “L-E-A-H P-O-O-L-E.” He paused, seeming to consider what he’d just said. “E…”

  “Yes,” Leah said, smiling, that skim of tears building, a few spilling and dragging wet streaks down her cheeks
. “That’s right. That’s my name. Two e’s in it. Like the ‘e’ you just wrote.”

  She picked up the board and pointed to the letter. Simon looked at it, then closed his eyes.

  What’s wrong with me? This isn’t how things are.

  The fears he expressed within manifested outwardly, as well. Leah could not help but notice that the man whom she’d watch grow from a teenager was suddenly exhibiting behaviors which would not normally be seen from someone on the spectrum. She had to remind herself, though, that such a clinical and diagnostic appraisal of Simon Lynch was rudimentary at best. The world had never seen anything like him. Anyone like him.

  He's a person, Leah.

  She reminded herself that, with emphasis. That was the very reason she’d taken the cards, his cards, from the collection of possessions that had been locked away, to be used only for research on Simon. Dr. Michaels had dictated that there should be no connection between their patient and the life he’d known. None. She’d ignored that edict.

  And she’d been right to do so.

  It was those very cards, she believed, that would help transition him from the autistic fugue which had gripped him his entire life. Transition from that state to one where his incredibly brilliant insights into the world, the universe, science, math, could be expressed without hindrance. In just the few minutes since the NB protocol had elicited its first effects, he’d come what could only be termed leaps and bounds. He’d given Dr. Warren Michaels an ‘e’. But to her he’d offered direct response. He’d looked at her—looked at her!—and answered her question.

  “I’m your friend, Simon,” Leah told him. She touched the card where he’d long ago written the names of those who were his friends. “I am.”

  Leah took a pen from her lab coat pocket and held it out to Simon.

  “You can write my name right there if you want,” she said.

  He didn’t take the pen.

  I don’t understand…

  The Nurek Dam was the tallest in the world. The Aswan Dam created a reservoir holding one hundred and thirty-two cubic kilometers of water. Dams were structures that restricted the flow of great waters. That held things back. Those facts tumbled about in Simon’s thoughts as his own dam began to crumble, all that it had contained since birth seeming to flow out now in one uncontrollable cascade.

  “Simon?”

  Leah saw his demeanor change. A sadness spread across his face. Tears welled in his eyes, mirroring her own emotion. He looked quickly down to the cards he held. To names he’d written. Names of people he’d known.

  People he’d lost. Doctor Chas Ohlmeyer had died on the 13th of October in 2001. Dr. Anne Jefferson passed away from cancer on January 9th, 2015. His mother and father were killed…were killed…

  The dam broke fully and Simon Lynch began to weep. He collapsed to the floor, clutching the cards as Leah hovered over him, calling out for help.

  “It’s all right, Simon,” Leah said. “It’s all right.”

  But it wasn’t all right. Simon knew that with more certainty than anything right then. All that he’d known was changing. All about him was changing. The world, both outside, and within, was an alien place now. Nothing was familiar.

  Except…

  He looked through tears to a name on one of the cards. A name of one of his friends. He’d written it long ago in the space beneath DOKTR AN. It was the name of the person in his world he knew he could trust the most. A man who had been willing to give his life for him.

  “Art,” Simon said, his finger tracing over the name as guards and doctors rushed in. “Art…”

  * * *

  They were in the house.

  Art Jefferson couldn’t hear them yet, but the flashing light on the alarm control box in the upstairs bedroom told him all he needed to know. A window downstairs had been breached. Not broken, but forced open.

  Worse, though, there was no thrashing about. No drawers being yanked open to dump their contents in search of valuables. No frantic rummaging for money or jewelry or drugs. The intruders were not burglars, he knew. But they were after something valuable.

  Something priceless.

  He didn’t bother trying the phone. It would be dead. So would his cell. Both silenced through acts of technological trickery that should have surprised him, but didn’t. His time in the Bureau, interacting with and, sometimes, jousting with other government entities had left him with a deep understanding of the power wielded by agencies with acronym calling cards. His own FBI. The DOD. CIA. NSA.

  There were others, of course. Individuals and organizations which operated outside the law. Beyond the constraints of some nebulous charter which granted them power, and restrained the same—in theory. The reality was that there were no more constraints on what either side could do. Right, wrong, good, evil. Everyone was armed with the same sword, now, the weapon most often crafted from digital ones and zeroes. Bits of computer code that could destroy a centrifuge in Iran, or silence the ability of a long-retired old Bureau man to call for help.

  Beyond that limitation, Art Jefferson wasn’t even sure that anyone could help.

  The lights went out, bulbs in the lamps on the bedside tables going dark, as did the glowing face of the alarm clock. They’d cut the power.

  He lowered himself to the edge of the bed and sat there, fixing his gaze on the framed photo that sat on the nightstand. Enough light from the three-quarter moon filtered through the drawn shades that he could see her face.

  “Anne…”

  He spoke her name softly. In a true whisper. If only to be able to one more time before the inevitable happened. Almost three years she’d been gone now. Even before that terrible day the cancer had stripped much of the vibrancy from the woman she’d been. Much, but not all.

  Not the smile. Art took the photo in hand and smiled himself at her beaming face. Her joyous, beautiful face. She was connected to what was happening, or would be if she was still alive. Beyond that, he knew that she would approve of what he’d been trying to do, if not what he was being forced to do.

  There were sounds on the stairs now. Softened footsteps. More than one person, Art knew. Multiple people advancing toward the second floor. Trying to not be heard.

  He placed the photo of his wife back on the night stand and opened the drawer. A pistol lay there. His onetime duty weapon. A Smith & Wesson 1076. Its tenure as the Bureau’s preferred sidearm had been brief, but Art had come to appreciate the weapon. To respect its power. Now, with the intruders almost at his bedroom door, he hoped that it would serve him one last time.

  The weapon slipped easily into his grip as he eased it from the drawer. A round was already chambered. Any weapon without one in the pipe was, at best, a club, and, at worst, an overpriced ammunition storage device.

  He looked again at the image of his wife, but he was thinking of another. Of a boy who’d become a man. A gentle soul cursed by an affliction in too many ways. A special, special person.

  The hushed rustle of boots on carpet stopped. They were here. Just beyond his bedroom door. He knew he was about to die.

  Not at their hand, though. They weren’t here to kill him. The forces behind the armed men who’d invaded his home wanted more from him than his life. Something he might be able to give them.

  And he could not allow that to happen.

  The doorknob jiggled lightly, a hand beginning to twist it. It was locked, but that would not stop them. Perhaps nothing would stop them and the powers that sent them to his house.

  Perhaps…

  But Art knew he had the power to at least thwart this avenue of their operation. To delay any acquisition of what they sought. Of whom they sought.

  If that was all he could do, Art Jefferson could only hope that it would be enough.

  The men outside stepped back from the door. One would be placing small charges on the hinge side. In a few seconds, he knew, the barrier would be blasted inward and armed men would rush him.

  He would not be there to g
reet them, though.

  “God help you, Simon,” Art said.

  He brought the 1076 up and placed the barrel in his mouth, his gaze angling toward the night stand and fixing on his wife’s smiling face as he pulled the trigger.

  Two

  Emily LaGrange was given her name back by the fat man from Justice.

  They sat in the back booth of the downtown diner, Minneapolis rising outside, towers old and new groping at the slate gray sky. She’d stared at the buildings before entering. Just stood in the open and gazed up at them. There was no fear, no looking over her shoulder, no listening for an engine racing, tires squealing, gun blasting. Out there, for a few moments, she’d felt and been anonymous, caught in the half-life between who she was and who she’d had to be. Just a nameless twenty-eight-year-old woman. A nobody.

  Finally.

  “You’re not hungry?”

  Emily looked to the man, his attention ten percent on her, ninety percent on the plate of hash he’d half devoured already. His name was Schur, Edward Schur. At least that’s who he’d introduced himself as. She had to remind herself that normal people didn’t construct their lives around lies. They usually were who they claimed to be, and did what they said. Still, that didn’t mean they were any more or less righteous than the vermin she’d run with for the past two years at the direction of functionaries like the man across the table from her, flecks of corned beef and potato embedded between his front teeth.

  “The omelets are outstanding here,” Schur said.

  “I’m not that hungry.”

  He nodded, some omniscience in the gesture. “It’s not easy, reintegrating.”

  “Is that so?”

  Schur stopped eating for a moment, the cold rejection of his observation registering.

  “Look, Dana…”

  Emily smiled flatly at the man’s mistake. The manufactured past wasn’t easy to erase. Either in thought or act.

  “Emily,” Schur corrected. “I’m sorry.”

  How many times in the two months since it all ended had she looked in the mirror, or at her reflection in a storefront window, and thought ‘You’re not Dana anymore.’