Humbug (The Unwinding of Ebenezer Scrooge): A Science Fiction Adventure, page 7
Eb repeated his conversation with Jerri.
“Why don’t you ask her?” Rick said.
The hoverboard wheels whirred in a circle. Rick’s tired face was stretched across a holo floating in the bedroom. He rubbed his cheek, the whiskers grinding in his palm.
“Tired, Rick?”
“Exhausted, Mr. Scrooge. It’s…” He stopped. It’s Christmas Eve. “Is there anything else?”
“Did you run through the new launch lines?”
“Yes.”
“Conceptual?”
“Yes.”
“Read them to me.”
Rick looked down at a monitor and yawned. “Uh, alternate reality immersive is on schedule, artificially intelligent infusive game world is going through beta, the cinemaker is finishing self-directed analysis…”
Rick’s tone of boredom ran through the remaining projects. It was musical to Eb, poetry in his ears. Avocado was going to flip the entertainment industry on its head. Medical innovation always slogged through red tape quicksand. They would never get anywhere with that; Jerri couldn’t get that through her skull. It didn’t matter how well-intentioned the project was. If nothing got done, then it wouldn’t matter.
Avocado was making a difference under Eb’s leadership.
The cinema-maker environment alone would revolutionize entertainment. Actors would become obsolete when every director wannabe stepped inside a cinemaker room and digitally created his scenes and the actors in them—a realism that was impossible to differentiate from fantasy. Want an Oscar-award-winning performance? Can’t afford top-shelf talent? Make it up yourself.
First own the world. Then solve its problems. He needed to lay that line on Jerri.
“That’s weird,” Rick mumbled.
“What?”
“There’s an imbedded kernel in the immersive…” Rick tapped a key sequence, the dregs of sleep falling from his eyes.
“What is it?”
“It’s using a lot of data.”
“What is?”
More keystrokes. “That would explain the occasional data lag…”
Eb dialed his round spectacles until they were clear and sharp. He wheeled right up to the holo, nose to nose with Rick’s image. He held his breath while the production manager frowned.
“What is it?” Eb said.
“It’s encrypted, Mr. Scrooge. I think you’re right. There’s no name or tag attached to it. There is a date, but it doesn’t make sense.” He leaned closer to his computer. “Twenty-five years ago? That can’t be right. The system isn’t even that old. Something’s corrupt. I need to run analysis, Mr. Scrooge. It’ll probably run through the night.”
“Are you lying, Rick? You just want to go to bed?”
Eb couldn’t wait till morning. He’d stare at the ceiling until it was finished.
“It’s something that’s hidden pretty deep. How did Jerri know about this?”
“How should I know?”
A baby was crying. Rick looked to his left, muttering something. His wife brought the baby into the room and put her over his shoulder. How is he supposed to type?
“I’ll start the analysis. You’ll get the results in the morning.”
“Rick?”
“Goodnight, Mr. Scrooge.”
“Rick!”
“And Merry Christmas.” He killed the connection.
Eb stood in a darkened room with a mystery that weighed as much as a herd of reindeer. He wasn’t going to sleep with that kind of pressure. He cruised around the room, tapping his chin, mumbling through thoughts that filled his head until they tumbled like rocks.
“Jerri,” he said. “Call Jerri. Now.”
The holo hung dead gray.
She knew something. How could his production manager not know about this and she just threw it out like gossip? She had something to do with this, that was what it was. She was in on it. And she wanted him to know.
After a minute of silence, he attached a critical flag to his call. Her rings would sing until she picked up. He coasted back, expecting her tired and angry face to pop into the holo.
Instead, it went black.
“Oh no she didn’t.”
She killed it. She knew he was calling and killed it without answering.
How could she do this? After everything he’d done for her, now this? He gave her a career and she was going to do this to him now because… because it was Christmas?
“Bah!” Eb shook his fists.
He searched for a word that would capture his feelings, a word that summed up all his thoughts and emotions. A word that would squash all those well-wishing, present-giving, joy-singing, cheery-faced joyheads.
And then he had it.
It was a word the girls muttered last year. They gave it to him like a gift to wield when he felt this trapped, this powerless. This frustrated.
“Bah!” He shook his fists over his head and drew a deep breath. “HUMBUG!”
A great tremor ripped through the house.
The hoverboard struggled to keep him from falling. Arms stretched out, thoughts of an earthquake spitting the Castle from the side of the mountain filled his head. Colorado didn’t get earthquakes. And the architects assured him that should there be one that nothing would happen.
As quickly as it started, it settled.
The house gasped one last time.
The hoverboard had moved across the room in the throes of balance. He was now facing the window. The snow was still bright beneath the quarter moon. But no longer perfect.
A path had been etched from the horizon.
Then a voice crawled from a dry throat and walked up his spine.
“Ebenezer.”
TEN
~
EB’S TONGUE CLUNG TO the roof of his frosted mouth, his throat a cold steel pipe. His legs were columns of ice, head carved from a block of granite. He could not turn, could not utter a single word.
There was a rustling sound behind him, perhaps a paper bag dumping a pile of twigs, the clickety-scratch of insects crawling for cover. The musty odor of wet leaves.
“Turn, Ebenezer,” the hoarse voice said.
The vise of fear released him, sensation trickling into his thighs. Doubt crept around him. He no longer wanted to turn around. The voice, however, compelled him to step off the hoverboard.
It was standing in his bedroom, the head scratching the ceiling, gangly fingers twitching at its sides. Eb’s breath came in short chops. A lack of oxygen caused his brain to float. His eyelids fluttered, eyes half-rolled.
“Ebenezer,” the thing said.
Eb found his balance. Sensation had returned to his arms and chest. He still couldn’t accept the dark stooping form that filled his bedroom. A word bubbled out of Eb’s lungs. It was so large that it nearly lodged in his throat before exploding from his mouth.
“Dum-dum!”
The door immediately opened. The dull gray droid stepped casually around the thing.
“Would you like cocoa, sir?”
Eb lifted his arm. It was locked at the elbow, finger quivering.
“Trouble sleeping, sir? Perhaps you should not have had the second glass of wine. I can fetch aspirin, if you wish.”
“N-n-n-n-n…”
“A bad dream, sir?”
“Th-th-th-that.”
“That, sir?” The droid looked at the bed and pulled the covers back and fluffed the pillows. “Perhaps a soothing cup of chamomile, sir? Christmas will soon be over and you can get about the business of business.”
Eb slobbered through another string of syllables. All he could do was point, yet the droid acted like this was part of a bedtime ritual and not a seizure.
“He cannot see me, Ebenezer,” the thing said. A dark chuckle finished the sentence. And then, “That will be all.”
“Very well, sir.”
“N-n-no-no. Don’t—”
The droid left the room. Dark laughter rattled the walls, quaking in Eb’s thighs. Rotten, musty air puffed from the thing’s lips.
It moved as a tree might swing heavy branches. It took one step toward the bed. Moonlight cast upon the length of its body, illuminating the lanky limbs and narrow head.
The skin was beyond pale. It was porcelain.
The hair was thick and solid. It stuck out from its scalp like twigs. And it moved. The thing slowly sat on the bed. A long sigh escaped like a punctured tire.
The bones of the thing creaked.
“Could I have some water, Ebenezer? It has been a long trip.”
“W-what’s happening?”
“Water first.”
Eb was compelled to walk. His wooden feet thudded the carpet on the way to the bathroom. He brought back a cup of water.
“Jacob,” Eb said.
The thing took the cup with long ghostly fingers that appeared to have one too many joints. Ice crackled around the rim in jagged lines. The thing took a long drink.
Black shiny objects dripped from its tattered sleeve. They began to crawl—beetles and cockroaches and centipedes. They fell from the thing’s ragged shirt and crawled beneath the covers.
Eb fell back a step, but only a step. He was trapped by the thing’s eyes, the pupils black and engulfing, eyes adapted to moonlight.
“What are you?” Eb muttered.
“What am I?” The thing took a thoughtful draught. “A guide. A mirror. A blessing, a curse—I’ve been called many things, Ebenezer.”
“How’d you get in here?”
“Down the chimney, of course.”
Eb never believed in Santa Claus. If he had, it wouldn’t have been a thirsty, bug-infested nightmare.
“Who are you, then?” Eb said.
“I will tell you who I am,” It said, hauling in a deep breath before saying, “if you can tell me who you are.”
“I am Ebenezer Scrooge.”
“Is that what you are, a name?”
The laughter erupted in mangled coughs, specks of debris showering a moonbeam. The earthy smell cloyed at the back of Eb’s throat. He eased around the room as the thing coughed into its clammy fist, a fit of laughter still escaping its haunted chest. Eb made it to the door.
He pulled it open, but there was no hallway for him to escape into, no ramp for him to run down or stairway to leap. Eb had somehow stepped right back into the bedroom as if it were on the other side of the door.
The laughter was hysterical.
He tried again, opening the door first and looking into the hall. He could see the chandelier, could see the ramp. But when he stepped out, it was the bedroom.
“No matter where you go,” the thing said, “there you are.”
The air was thick and hard to breathe again. Eb leaned against the wall, clutching his chest. The floor slowly churned.
“Relax, Ebenezer. We have a lot to discuss. Come, have a seat.”
It patted the bed. A brief waterfall of black bugs crashed onto the mattress and escaped beneath the sheets.
“I want you out.”
“It doesn’t work that way, Ebenezer.”
“Out of my house!”
“No matter what power to which man lays claim, he can no more affect me than he can grasp the wind or own the sky.”
Its laughter flattened out.
This made no sense. Eb was not asleep. This was not a dream. Yet the thing was there as Jacob had been a year before, when his childhood friend claimed to give him a gift. And now he was staring at a nightmare. Unlike Jacob, this nightmare sank into the bed as if it were weighty. This nightmare filled the room with its stench.
This nightmare is very much here.
“I don’t understand,” Eb said.
“Of course you don’t. It is why I’m here.”
“I don’t want you here.”
“No one does. But you’ll see, Ebenezer, you don’t realize you’ve been calling for me all your life.”
“What are you, some sort of… dream? A monster?”
“I am neither.”
It stood with the same crackling creaks as It did when It sat. The insects that had escaped its sleeves crawled back beneath the hem of its shirt. The thing handed the cup back to Eb and thanked him.
Eb dropped it on the carpet, the handle so cold it burned his fingers.
“We’re going on a trip, Ebenezer,” It said. “One of many.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You’re already there.”
Eb worked his way to the window, away from the suffocating darkness. The illusion of space brought a small sample of relief.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Where you need to be, Ebenezer.”
Its arms spread across the room, long and lanky and nearly touching the opposite walls. The sleeves hung like those of a scarecrow. As It stretched out, gossamer threads clung between its chalky fingertips. They began to vibrate, sweet chords of music shimmering through Eb’s feet, filling his head with light, fluffy daydreams.
“You see, Ebenezer,” It said, “the fabric of time contains all the possible futures. It is the present moment that does not move, but only seems to.”
It let go of the singing threads. They were suspended above the floor, the vibrations making them appear as more than one string. They split into two, then four. Eight. Sixteen. They continued to multiply until countless threads twisted and weaved, knitted and knotted, kinked and crossed from wall to wall, a tapestry of moonlit webbing.
“Life lines,” the thing said. “All the possible futures of your life, Ebenezer.”
There was nothing he could see with his eyes, they were just glowing lines tracing empty space. But somehow their sound, the music, carried images and feelings, emotions and events. Eb could taste sadness when one particular string sang above the rest. Anger, bitterness and resentment.
“Yes,” the thing said. “It is all there, Ebenezer. The path you have chosen. I am here to show you where you are going.”
Eb shook his head. “I know where I am.”
“Shhhhh.” It placed a long finger up to Its bluish lips. “Every journey is different, Ebenezer. For you, we will start with things to come. Tonight, on this Christmas Eve, I take you down the path you have chosen. We will follow it to the end.”
The thing reached inside the infinite web without touching a single strand. Its thick fingernails settled on one particular string, as if it were searching for that one and that one only.
It plucked it as a musician would pluck a harp.
It sang inside Eb, his brain a tuning fork struck with the edge of an axe. His limbs stiffened, body rigid. A light sparkled behind his eyes. The strings took on a golden hue, the luminescence blinding. Engulfing.
Until there was only music.
No more web, no more room.
No more anything.
Eb fell into the light, swimming effortlessly in an ethereal ocean of weightless particles, an endless fountain of sunshine.
One moment there was only light, the next he saw his bare feet on a golden floor. He wiggled his toes, the surface hard and polished. Birds fluttered overhead. He lifted his arm and shielded his eyes. Sunlight passed through a transparent dome where colorful birds were trapped. The walls were gold.
Pure gold.
Heaven, he thought. I’m in heaven.
Laughter rumbled like thunder. “No, no. Not heaven,” the thing said, “Not even close.”
Its eyes were lumps of coal stuck in a face of chiseled ivory. It pulled back a smile that exposed crooked teeth. A spider escaped his lips.
Eb’s feet were anchors.
As the golden walls dimmed, shapes appeared. Several people stood in two lines, all facing a table. The dull gray texture of skinwrap soon became apparent. The droids were all accounted for, all seven of them—three on one side, four on the other. They wore black and white suits, the formal attire of servants.
It was not a table they faced but an elevated bed. The blankets were folded over a man’s chest, his arthritic fingers clutching the fabric. His lips were caving into the mouth, the eyes hidden beneath thin eyelids.
A luscious mop of inky black hair was parted to the side.
“You made it to a ripe age,” the thing said. “Bravo.”
“That’s…”
“That’s you, Ebenezer. Definitely ripe.”
Eb couldn’t turn away, couldn’t step back or forward. All he could do was watch the living corpse rattle air through its suckhole, each breath coming slower and farther apart than the one before it.
“What’s wrong with me?” he said.
“You’re dying, Ebenezer. This is it, the final hurrah. You managed to delay your date with Death for one hundred and thirty-two years, but it couldn’t last forever.”
“One hundred and thirty-two?”
“Oldest man in the world.”
“I outlived them all. Is that why no one’s here?”
“Not exactly.”
A door opened on the far side of the golden atrium. A woman walked alone, the click of her heels coming in short, even strides. The birds stirred above.
“Where are we?” she said.
“He’s fading, ma’am,” said the droid to the left of Eb’s shoulder. “Perhaps two more minutes.”
She hummed grimly then watched and waited.
“Is that… my granddaughter?” Eb said.
“Uh, no.”
“Great-granddaughter?”
“You’re hilarious. That’s the executor of your will.” The thing leaned over, half-whispering, “She took control of your estate when you went cuckoo-cuckoo.”
“I went what?”
“You lost it, Ebenezer. You always were a strange bird, but when you hit about one hundred and twenty years, you started talking about ghosts that visited you every Christmas Eve at midnight.”
The thing offered a pleasantly creepy grin.
“Even for you, it was out there, Ebenezer. You began using Avocado’s money like your own piggy bank. Well, you always have, but then you went over the top. Exhibit A.” The thing gestured to the golden atrium. “Despite the protests of your legal team, a judge ruled in favor of Avocado’s board of directors. They took control of everything.”
“You…” Eb pointed.
“Don’t blame me, Ebenezer. This is your path.”
The ancient body of Ebenezer Scrooge stopped short, his breath catching in his throat. His chest arched a few inches. The young woman leaned over, turning her head to listen. A long, gurgling breath broke the blockade in his lungs and the painful journey continued.
