Dying scream, makes no sound

Calling out to all that I've ever known

Here am I, lost and found

Calling out to all…


December 19, 2010

Fifty-two hours.

Alan knows that's roughly how long it's been because of his Android, which still still has the timestamp saved in his Dialed Calls folder: 21:37 12/17/10 Roy Kleinberg (818-555-1123). The call he'd made to Roy after he'd finally managed to convince himself that the number blinking on his old pager's LCD screen was real, just after 9:00 p.m. two days ago. There's also the midnight board meeting later that same night as a marker, too. Approximately 38 hours since then, plus the better part of the 17th before.

That's how long he's been awake.

He'd intended to catch at least a catnap yesterday morning, after returning from the arcade, but his mind had been racing, confusion and half-formed speculations mixing with a certain building eagerness. Whatever Sam had found at the arcade had galvanized him somehow. After nearly a decade of stasis things were finally going to move forward again, starting now, and when he'd gotten back to the house he'd simply poured himself another cup of coffee and sat down in front of the glass patio doors, watching the rising sun burn off the marine-layer fog and turning the events of that endless day over in his head.

You were right. About everything.

About what? What did that even mean?

He'd tried again around noon, shucking off his loafers and stretching out on the leather sofa in his office at Encom Tower. His morning strategy session with Sam had been productive but exhausting, and if he didn't recharge his batteries at least a little before the oncoming storm of memos and press conferences and announcements of the sweeping structural changes to come he reckoned he'd spontaneously combust. But that hadn't worked, either; no sooner had he begun to doze than he was overcome by a feeling of suffocation so overwhelming in its intensity that for a moment he'd been convinced he was having a heart attack. He'd sat bolt upright, gasping and sweating, and it'd taken him a good ten minutes just to bring his breathing back under control.

Can't shut down now, he'd thought dimly, barely aware of it. Can't shut down or I'll never be able to start back up.

By hour 36 a dangerous sort of giddiness had begun to overtake him. The press conference had been partly to blame; it had been insane, and Alan had caught some of that energy and insanity almost like a cold, high on caffeine and adrenaline and punch-drunk from sleep deprivation. His memory had begun to slip, along with his judgment—in the midst of the hurricane Alan had forgotten that the last time he'd spoken to Roy had been their three-way Skype call the night before. He'd set Roy to tracking the page, but he hadn't even called him back to report in on Sam's trip to the arcade.

I scared the shit out of him, Alan thinks, a sick little twist of guilt worming through his gut. Christ, I was so far gone I didn't even think to send him a text message. He saw that press conference without a damn word from me since, what the hell was it, 2 am the night before? 3? For all he knew Sam and I had decided to throw him under the FBI bus. And I just bopped on into his place at half-past dawn with a big old grin on my face, thinking it was going to be a good surprise when I told him he was back on board for real. I'm lucky he didn't break my nose.

They'd worked it out fairly quickly, in the end—nearly a quarter-century of friendship and the associated ability to nearly finish each other's sentences ought to be good for something, after all. The downside to that, of course, was that Roy had taken one good long look at Alan once they'd gotten out into daylight and conversationally asked him if he was going to go home and go to bed like a good boy, or if he was finally going to have to make good on the chainfall threat.

"Jesus, Roy, you still remember that?"

"You mean do I remember breaking a dozen different traffic laws busting ass out to your place at the behest of a very panicky Sam Flynn to find you passed out on your kitchen floor? Give me a break,Tron. Are you sure you're even good to drive?"

"Good enough to make it home, at least," he'd replied, with an assurance he wasn't quite sure he actually felt. "And I'll go straight to bed, promise."

"Good to hear it, because it'd sure be a shame if I had to tattle to Lora."


Driving home, as it turns out, is safe enough; the 405 is still molasses-slow with morning rush-hour traffic. Alan keeps the windows down and the radio on full blast, flipping stations occasionally, all the old time-honored tricks to keep from falling asleep at the wheel.

KLOS 95.5, classic rock. Hendrix comes on, All Along the Watchtower, and he smiles, thinking of Roy ranting about Battlestar Galactica. "'Plan', my entire ass!" Cylons. The new ones, more like Blade Runner's replicants. Dozens, hundreds, thousands of duplicates of each version, each identical, and yet each an individual in their own right. But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate… He'd had a figurine back in his old cubicle, one of the old-school Centurions. "By your command," as (ifightfor) the catchphrase went.

He realizes he's drifting again and changes the channel. Oldies on the USC college station, this time. Frank Sinatra, one of Lora's favorites, they'd danced to him at their wedding reception. Fly Me to the Moon. Alan smiles again.

Somewhere, beyond the sea

Somewhere, waiting for me…

The shudders that strike him are so sudden and so overwhelming that Alan nearly slams on the brakes. He jabs the tuner button hard enough that it actually sticks for a moment, feeling the skin beneath his white Brooks Brothers buttondown rippling into gooseflesh. The next station, thankfully, is in the middle of a commercial block.

Home, he thinks shakily. Concentrate on getting home and getting to bed. Before I start hallucinating.

The Miata behind him honks irritably, and Alan jerks the car forward again, his heart triphammering in his chest.


Alan is cold.

Cold to a degree he's never experienced before, a cold that numbs his limbs and slows his thoughts to a syrupy crawl. He's wet, soaked through to the skin, shirt and jacket and slacks clinging to him in a way that would certainly be uncomfortable, if only he could feel it. He can't even feel the waves dragging at his ankles anymore, although he can hear them.

It's dark, too; the night is moonless and starless, lit only by distant flashes of lightning, and, Alan eventually realizes, by an odd dim phosphorescence In the ocean itself, shifting ghostlike in the endless expanse of black water and swirling in the foam around his feet.

Red tide, he thinks distantly. Like the ones in San Diego. Toxic algae. Got to get out of the water.

Oh, but it's hard. He's so numb and so exhausted he can barely make his legs move, and he doesn't know where he's going. To his left, away from the water, he can make out hulking black shapes like buildings or cliffs, darker than the sky. There are no lights to be seen.

He is alone.

He staggers on away from the water, but the beach seems to stretch on forever, and the cliffs seem no closer. He stumbles, grits his teeth, forces himself to keep going. He can't stop, can't shut down. If he shuts down now, he'll never be able to start back up again.

After a while he begins to call, hoping desperately that maybe there's someone nearby who will hear and help, though it feels and sounds like he's shouting through a throatful of sand.

He calls for Roy, but Roy doesn't answer. Roy is dead,

(so long, suckers!)

has been dead all along. He can't hear him, can't help him.

He calls for Flynn, but Flynn doesn't answer. Flynn is gone,

(ran away never came back flynn, go—!)

has been gone for years. He can't (won't) hear him, can't help him.

He calls for Lora, but Lora—

(well? what the hell are you waiting for?)

(NO!)

There's no one left to call.

No one except…


Half an hour after waking Alan finds himself standing in front of the mirrored medicine cabinet in the bathroom. He's cranked the thermostat in the house up to 75, but the chill of the nightmare refuses to leave him.

If this is déjà vu, Alan never wants to feel it again. He remembers the mid-90s all too well, the grueling, miserable mid-90s, the stress that had left him teetering precariously on the edge of a nervous breakdown until finally his friends had forced him to seek help. He can't afford this now, not again. Not when the people and things he loves—Sam, Roy, Lora, Encom—need him.

"If I shut down now, I'll never be able to start back up again," he mutters, and winces at the edge of gravel in his voice.