Calls like these always come in the middle of the night.
This is why it freaks you out when the call comes just after lunch -- that's not how it's supposed to happen. Things like this don't happen on warm May days.
They happen during thunderstorms. In winter. Just anytime but now.
You pick up the phone on the second ring, and you've already got a bad feeling about this call, but you're determined to stick it out. For all you know it's someone who wants to sell you a timeshare in sunny Florida.
"Jeb?" rasps a voice when you say hello. "That you?"
"Yes." Your stomach turns over. It's Prescott. Why is he calling while you're at home?
"Are you three doing all right?"
Strange question to ask. Your danger sense is tripping on this. Something is going on.
"Yes," you say. "Everything's fine."
"You're sure?"
"Yes. Now," you say, "why did you call?"
"It's Reilly," Prescott says, voice raspy like a snake uncoiling over the phone wire.
"What about him?" You left him to work with Subject Eleven. He should be all right. He's wanted to work with her for so long.
"Reilly's gone." There's a dark resonance in that, and a gap between what those words should mean, and what they do mean.
They should mean Reilly left.
What they do mean you don't know, but it makes you feel sick and uneasy.
"What do you mean?" you venture, but you already know the answer.
"He's gone," Prescott says. "Not here anymore."
The mental equivalent of double vision takes over for a second. You see Reilly deciding to pull up stakes and move across the country.
At the same time, you see a dark and threatening blurry image. Something that's actually happened. Now. Today.
"What happened?"
"Subject Eleven bit him when he tried to do a blood draw." Prescott's voice is clean and clipped. Dispassionate. "He hit it. When I tried to confront him, he ran. Are your doors locked?"
"Don't be ridiculous," you snap, running through the mental checklist: yes, the doors are locked. You checked. You always check. "It's what, twenty miles from here to there? He's not getting here without a car."
"I don't want anything bad to happen to you," Prescott says dryly. "We've got security personnel looking for him, but... who knows?"
"Is that all?" you say.
"Yes, that's all," Prescott says. "Sorry for the interruption."
"It's nothing." You hang up the phone.
It rings again before you can walk away, and you pick up, resigned. (Maybe this time it will be a telemarketer.)
The voice on the other end is familiar, but it's speaking too blurrily for you to understand.
"Reilly?" you say. "Is that you?"
"Telephone," says the voice on the other end, and then he hangs up.
My head hurts. Oh.
Someone in my head is still OK. He buys a coffee. How did we get here.
I think I walked.
Caffeine helps so much.
I'm bleeding, but it's slowed down.
Call. I should call. Jeb. Yes.
(Again)
I can't hear you. I'm sane now.
It's too hot, but it helps me so much.
Too many people
live inside my head.
It's simply
intolerable.
Reilly, you're breaking up.
I'm a cell phone, hahaha.
What's the number again.
I'll call myself. Because I'm a cell phone.
Ha. No. Hang. On.
"Jeb," I slur into the phone. "I know you're there." Why is my voice so slow? "Pick up." Oh. That sounds funny. "Pick up." Again. "Pickuppickuppickup."
Hahaha.
The telepath can't see/hear any of us anymore. Why?
"Reilly?" someone's voice says, and I can't I can't I can't I'm a broken record and I can't stop repeating myself but it's Jeb, and that makes it OK.
It's an extrasensory talent. Why should it be influenced by anything quantifiable?
"Help." I giggle. It's a funny word. "Help me."
(Connections snap inside my brain. I'm seeing. Oh my God it's full of stars. Ha.)
"Reilly, where are you?" Hahaha. I'm David Bowman.
I can't do that Dave.
Because because because
of the wonderful things he does
because! Of the Voice!
"Reilly?"
Oh.
"I'm. Coffee-shop." I can't break these connections. Delicate. Fairy-floss. I'm losing it. Shit. Hahaha. Rhymes.
"Help," I plead from a space outside my head. "Please."
Why would the Voice effect that, though? We don't have chips in our heads. We just talk into a modified telephone.
I stare at the one in my hand. It's gone silent. Did I kill you, Hal? I'm so sorry. Sosososo sorry. Sorry.
Maybe it's the telepath's chip. Did Kyle hack it? He might have. Why?
To keep anyone from droppin' no eaves on us. Hahaha.
The effect is lessening. Why self-medication never works.
Hahaha. I'm an example. Look at me.
Only one coffee-shop in town. Luckyluckylucky. Me. Ha.
This isn't luck, it's a curse.
I'm falling from outside my head. Huh. I like the sound of that. I'm a poet, and I didn't even know it.
My feet are Longfellows hahaha.
The car pulls up and he stares at me. Stares. Stairs. Don't fall down the stairs Reilly you could break an arm.
My headache is spinning and I'm getting tangled up.
"Help," I say, and then what's me inside my head gets gone.
There's a lingering suspicion in your mind that this is because of something you didn't do. That dark shadows are hollowing Reilly's eyes because of you, that he looks too thin because of you.
But you know it isn't your fault -- when someone goes mad, they burn brightly, like a falling star. Or a fallen angel.
And both of you are, or have been, mad.
Reilly is, and you are not.
Which raises some interesting existential questions.
He starts crying, for some reason you can't understand, and knowing your own fruitlessness you try to calm him down.
"Home," he says. "Take me. Home." and then he stops making sense.
But he gets in the car without putting up a fight, and you debate where to take him.
And finally you decide maybe home is the best place, for now. For him. You can call Prescott from there. Call someone, anyway. Get Reilly treatment.
He curls up in the seat like a child, and suddenly he reminds you over yourself. A very, very long time ago.
Wait. Hang on a moment.
PBD is a rather orderly terror. You go mad sometime during college, usually. In your early twenties.
Reilly is twenty-eight.
So if anything you've kept him from going mad until now.
Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?
Roland's standing out in front when you get back, arms crossed. When he sees who's in the passenger seat, his eyes widen.
Maybe he understands.
Reilly's eyes flutter open when he feels the car come to a stop, and for a moment he's there, and someone you know is behind his eyes.
Then he's gone.
And then back he flickers into view, like the Magic Eye puzzles you never quite mastered the art of seeing.
"Thanks," he says, and he sounds the way you used to feel, all off-kilter and run down like a failing machine.
"No problem," you say, feeling unreal yourself. Like you're watching someone else act.
He gets out of the car, and Roland shoots you a death glare. "You look sick," Roland pronounces.
"Feel worse," Reilly says with difficulty.
He weaves back and forth drunkenly when he tries to walk, and with a sigh you go to hold him up.
"Come on." This is how you're going to help him: the way you wish someone had helped you.
"I love you, man," Reilly slurs as you make it in the door, and you smile.
"You're gonna be OK," you say, and maybe for once you mean it.