A new “Chris Johnson, Anglican Investigator” adventure

Chapter One

Chapter Two – Magic

I watched the DVD again. And a third time. And a fourth. And a fifth. I was almost grateful for the clap of thunder which indicated yet another storm coming through. I went out to the porch to watch the last storm of the day and to desperately try to somehow forget what I’d just seen.

But it was no use. While the storm passed, my heart pounded and my stomach churned. When it was over, I came back inside and tried to eat a little dinner. I ended up nervously nibbling on this and that.

After dinner, I tried to watch a little TV but that didn’t help at all. I couldn’t sit still long enough; while the TV provided background noise, I spent the evening hours slowly wandering from room to room trying to make sense of it all and failing miserably.

At one point, I picked up and carefully examined the envelope trying to get something, anything from it. The outside told me nothing. But when I looked inside, I saw a note, again in my own handwriting. An upstate New York address. Nothing more.

I took a quick shower about 9:00 and walked around for another hour, outside this time, before trying to go to sleep. But nothing worked.

Not Beethoven‘s 6th, not thunderstorm CD’s, not a 19-century history of Britain that had put me to sleep before. About 2:30 in the morning, I stopped trying.

I don’t drink much anymore. I mostly gave it up when I moved out here. Not that I’m against booze or anything; I have some in the place all the time. It’s just that I seldom indulge even during the winter.

But I hit it now. Hard. I took a bottle of bourbon and a glass out to the porch, looked out at the night sky as if it might tell me something and began pouring one double after another, desperately trying to calm down.

Had the DVD been faked? I doubted it. You would have to have computer resources unavailable to most people to fake something that good and I wasn’t even sure you could even if your resources were the absolute top of the line.

But even if someone had faked this thing, why would it involve me? I hadn’t been involved in any sort of Christian investigation for almost a decade. And I’d never been involved in anything big.

Why hadn’t it been mailed to me or left on my doorstep? Did somebody actually sneak into my house and put it in the back of my closet where I might never ever find it? Why did all the writing I saw look for all the world as though I had written it myself?

When I got enough bourbon in me, I laid down on my porch hammock, finally able to knock myself out for a couple of hours. It was a cool night and the sky was full of stars. I woke up about 4:00 AM and stared at the sky until 4:30. But it was no use.

At once, I went inside and began stuffing clothes and other essentials into a gym bag. I’d filled the truck’s tank the day before so I’d have enough gas to get me going.

I had my debit card with me and more than enough money in the bank so as soon as I got to a truck stop, I could get some cash along with, I supposed, an atlas. I had to find out what that New York address was.

As I backed the truck down my driveway, I stopped right before I got to the road. Looking at my house, I was suddenly overcome by the most intense terror that I had ever felt in my life.

My place wasn’t much. But it was mine. No one could laugh at me there, no one could hurt me there, no one could reject me there. Granted, there was nobody there who could or wanted to do any of those things but it was nice knowing that there was one place in the world where it couldn’t happen.

The occasional stray dog or cat might, from time to time, provide me with the only company I had before deciding to move on. But that house was the closest thing to a warm and loving home that I had ever known.

And I was leaving it.

For…something.

After several deep breaths, I backed out on to the road and headed north toward the interstate. At I-70, I turned east.

Driving was relaxing even though there wasn’t much on the radio. I listened to the radio preachers for a while. Most people considered them jokes and some of them were but one can glean the occasional insight.

Stopping for coffee and a snack now and then, I didn’t have any particular goal in mind. I made it to Columbia, Missouri that evening and began to conk out. Deciding I wanted to sit down for dinner, I pulled into the Holiday Inn there and walked into its restaurant.

There was some sort of conference going on so the place was packed. The waitress told me it might be at least two hours before she could even think about seating me so I went into the bar, sat down, ordered a beer, slapped a twenty on the bar and told the young bartender to keep the change.

The bartender smiled at me. “Dude, you just made my week.”

I grinned back at him. “Glad to help. Who are all these people?”

“Lobbyists, state legislators, business leaders, people like that. They’ve been meeting here since last Wednesday and, quite frankly, a lot of us are ready to quit and take our chances.”

“They’re stiffing you?”

“Every chance they get. Particularly that fat lawyer over there. He‘s been hell on that waitress more than once,” the bartender said, nodding in the direction of the restaurant. “Spends his time screaming at people and then he claims the service was lousy so he never tips.”

I looked over and saw a fat man with a high-pitched, whiny, fingernails-on-a-chalkboard, obnoxious voice seated at a table with some equally-loud associates. “WHERE’S MY DAMN STEAK?!!” he barked at an overworked waitress.

“It’s coming right now, sir,” the poor woman said as a gigantic and beautifully thick T-bone was brought over.

“ABOUT DAMN TIME, YOU LAZY BITCH!!” She placed the steak in front of him, looking like she was about to cry. Fatso noticed me staring at him. “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU LOOKING AT?!!” he snarled.

“The most perfect a-hole I’ve ever seen,“ I said quietly, turning back toward the bar and staring into my beer. “The last thing you need is a steak, lardass,” I murmured.

Not two seconds later, I heard, “HEY!! WHAT DID YOU DO WITH MY STEAK!!”

I looked over and the fat guy’s steak was no longer there. The plate was empty although some juices remained on the plate. His associates looked baffled.

But as the lard bucket stormed off to assail the manager and try to get the waitress fired, a strange thought popped into my head.

“Everything you know is wrong. Everything about your life is a lie.”

I looked back toward the restaurant. As the fat guy came back to the table swearing at everything and everybody, with the manager trying to calm him down and the waitress looking scared, I whispered, “Put it back.”

Instantly I saw the steak back on its plate.

While the fat guy stood there looking stunned, angry and humiliated and his associates looked either amused or astonished, I downed the last of my beer, ordered another and made the bartender’s week again.

At the other end of the bar, I saw a guy who’d had a great many too many order a bourbon. He was wavering and I could see the bartender serve him although he really didn’t want to give him anything at all.

“No,” I said to myself when the guy momentarily looked away. “He‘s had enough.”

The guy turned back to an empty glass. “Did I…did I just…drink this?” he asked the bartender.

“I guess,” the bartender replied.

Now the guy looked scared. “I don’t…I don’t…remember. Would you mind calling me a cab?”

“Delighted,” said the relieved bartender. I finished my beer and quickly left.

A few miles down the road, I found a room at a Motel 6 and paid cash for it.  I got to the door of my room and stopped. I’d stayed here before and none of these rooms had what I was about to describe.

“A small refrigerator,“ I said to myself. “A large bottle of Absolut, already cold. Bottles of orange juice and lemon juice, already cold. A jar of olives in the fridge and a package of plastic toothpicks on the top.”

When I opened the door and went inside, there it all was. Exactly as I described it.

I sat down at the desk. Then I began pouring myself one vodka after another because I had never been so scared. What in God’s name was happening to me?

Was I dreaming? I didn’t think so. The time was all wrong and it had a kind of internal logic to it. But unfortunately, that left only one other option.

I was going insane. Or I already had gone insane. But if I had, how would I know?

I had to confront the possibility. But after downing a third of the bottle in one form or another, I decided that there wasn’t a whole lot I could do except ride this out to whatever its conclusion was.

Next morning, I stopped at McDonald’s for some breakfast before getting back on the road. At St. Louis, I momentarily thought about getting off and visiting Webster Groves again but decided against it.

Nothing much happened as I continued east. But in Ohio, I stopped at a rest stop to go to the bathroom and get a cup of coffee along with something to nibble on.

I had my atlas out and was starting to figure out how I was going to get through New York City when I saw an extraordinarily beautiful little girl about ten feet away by the vending machines who couldn’t have been much more than four or five.

She had just purchased a Coke, looked at me with a beautiful smile and was about to go back to her family when she froze and a peculiar look came over her face.

She looked at herself almost as if she suddenly didn’t know who and where she was or how she got there. “Momma?” I heard her say. “Where are you, Momma? Momma?!!”

As the poor, frightened kid stared toward the west, a look of stark terror came over her face and tears started streaming down. “No. No, I do’ wan’ go back dere. I all ALONE dere.

“Nobody know me dere, can’ see nudding dere, nobody hug me dere. I don’t know where my Mommy is. I don’t WANNA…” Then her face suddenly resumed its beautiful smile, she wiped her eyes and walked over to her family.

I put it down to just a troubled little girl until I stopped in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania that evening. I found a room, had dinner and dropped into a nearby bar for a nightcap.

An incredibly beautiful woman in the bar, an accomplished professional of some sort, regarded me superciliously. I looked at her, looked at my drink and then looked at the empty seat in front of me, smiling and raising my eyebrows. She shook her head, disgusted, while I grinned and returned to my bourbon.

I continued to drink as I used to drink back in the old days. Oblivious to everything and everybody. Which was suddenly interrupted when the woman sat down in front of me.

I saw exactly the same terrified expression on her face that I saw on the face of that little girl in Ohio. She looked wildly around as if she had no idea where she was.

“This is going to sound really weird,” she told me quickly and intensely, “but where am I? What city is this?”

“Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,” I replied, more than a little disconcerted.

She took something out of her purse. “Could you please call my husband and tell him that…” Suddenly the woman stared over my shoulder with a look of unbearable terror on her face. “NO…NO, PLEASE. NO, I DON’T WANT TO GO BACK . PLEASE, I DON‘T WANT TO…”

As if someone had flipped a switch, the woman instantly resumed her arrogant expression.  She looked at me with a disgusted glare and said, “God, why I am I sitting with you?!!” got up and practically ran out of the bar.

I watched her go. Then I hurried back to my hotel and spent most of the next two hours staring out the window. Messages? If they were, what did they mean?

A day later, I successfully negotiated the New York City maze and headed north. Some Internet time at a truck stop a bit south of Albany got me more-or-less definite directions to the address I was seeking.

I spent the night at another Motel 6 and arrived at my destination the next morning. It was a rural address in the Adirondacks. The mailbox had the very address I was looking for painted on it.

There was no house immediately visible so I parked the truck about twenty yards up and started walking. At the top of a hill, I could see a house about a quarter mile away.

It looked like a farm of some kind but nothing was happening there. There were no barns for stock and no cleared land.  Just the house off in the distance amid a few trees.

When I got to it, the door was locked and the doorbell didn’t work. After several minutes of knocking and trying the door, I looked down at the lock and said, “Unlock.” At once, I could enter the house.

“Hello?” I called out. “Is anyone here?” I slowly walked from room to room. Someone lived here but no one was around.

Then I heard a woman’s voice. “How did you get in and why are you here?”

“Through the front door,” I said. “And I’m here about the cloud.”

The woman drew in a breath and then I could hear quiet but strained conversation between at least three people. “He’s not with them,” said a soft, unemotional, Russian-accented voice. “He‘s alone. They always come around in pairs.”

“And he’s not wearing a monitor,” said another woman.

“Make no sudden moves, whoever you are,” the first woman said. “Or they’ll be your last.”

“Are you referring to the Japanese gentleman with the spectacular samurai sword standing behind me?”

The woman was taken aback. “How in the world did you know?”

“You don’t seem to get much dust in here and that silver trophy on the mantle is polished to perfection.”

“Most impressive. You do know that the gentleman easily can take off your head with that sword, don’t you?”

“I beg to differ.”

Extremely confused by now, the woman replied, “Walk straight back to the kitchen and wait at the cellar door.”

I entered the kitchen, my Japanese friend no longer trying to conceal himself, and waited by a door. Five minutes later, the door opened and the two of us walked down a flight of stairs.

I hadn’t gone three feet down a hallway when a metal door slid shut behind the two of us. I opened a door at the far end and heard the first woman call out, “Come in! Come in and know me better, man!”

Inside were two women and another man who I recognized instantly. It was Sasha, widely considered the greatest chess player as well as the greatest genius in a wide variety of sciences who had ever lived.

I’d actually played him once, long after he gave up competitive European chess out of sheer boredom. It was an exhibition and he played a room full of us. Took him 40 moves to vanquish me, a feat I still brag about. He stood in the corner and eyed me suspiciously.

“You have never seen the like of me before!” the first woman continued with a gleam in her eye, holding a vodka martini in her hand.

“True,” I said. “But I know you like Dickens.”

“That I do. Now then, young man. Might you do us all the honor of telling us just how it is that you know something about the cloud that no one anywhere is supposed to or is able to know anything about?”

“First things first. It’s a bit early for that, isn’t it?” I asked, pointing to her drink.

“When you have to live like we do,” the other woman told me, “there is no right or wrong time for one of those. Now how do you know about the cloud?”

They were clearly worried; somehow, I didn’t fit. I was silent for a long time, wanting to choose my words carefully. “Am I correct in assuming that you know about the cloud?” I asked.

“Yes,” the first woman replied. “In a way, the four of us are responsible for it.”

“Allow you to introduce yourselves.”

“Fair enough,” said the first woman. “You already know this but that man over in the corner there is Sasha.”

“He obliterated me at chess once,” I commented.  That piece of information brought the slightest hint of a smile on Sasha’s face which quickly vanished.

“He is, of course, the greatest genius who has yet lived or probably ever will live,” the first woman continued. “And he is the world’s foremost mind in more sciences and arts than most people can name.

“That Japanese gentlemen is Professor Kozaburo, head of the Computer Sciences and Information Technology department at the University of Tokyo. He also regularly teaches at the University of Beijing and has had visiting professorships at Harvard, Oxford and MIT.”

“That sword is magnificent,” I told him. “I’ve never seen anything that approaches it.” I received a slight smile and nod in return.

“The woman next to him,” continued the first woman, “is Dr. Alice Linsley, currently the head of Computer Sciences at the University of Kentucky. She’s fresh off her tenure as the first Regius Professor of Information Science and Technology at Cambridge and has, over the years, been a visiting professor at Cal Tech, MIT, Yale and other places.

“I…have…consulted…for the CIA and NSA on occasion and they call me the Anchoress. Bon vivant, raconteur and general woman about town. I‘d tell you more but then I‘d have to kill you. Which I can do whenever the mood strikes me.”

“A sort of elegant and refined Jack Bauer.”

“That‘ll work,” she said with a smile.  “But now that you know our names, what might yours be?”

“Christopher Johnson.”

“And you are…?”

“A subsistence farmer in western Kansas.”

The four of them looked at each other. All were definitely baffled. “Then how in the world do you know about the cloud?” asked Kozaburo.

“Later. Exactly what is that thing?

After a strained silence of at least two minutes, the Anchoress took a slow, contemplative sip of her drink, looked at me and quietly said, “That cloud is a computer.”

“A computer,” added Sasha, “that the four of us created.”

Next week: The Lampstand