The PRL Event: CZS 10
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“Do you love Kevin?” Ivan asks.
He is in a place that the Alia built. It is a docile place on the mental plane. They are in a room of a complex structure that is all a manifestation of Alia’s consciousness.
“I do love Kevin. Do that one.”
Ivan adjusts a dial that is among a grid of dials that fill an entire wall; he doesn’t know how many there are. The dials are small, black circles and there are no labels identifying the purpose of any of them.
“Anything?” Ivan asks, turning slowly, steadily. “How do you know that you love him?”
Alia is leaning on the seal of a window that looks out onto a bigger room. She is looking out intently, concentrating. Then, “No. Change direction.”
Ivan nods and changes direction.
“I don’t know that I really do love him.” Alia looks at Ivan when she says this. Ivan contemplates her mental form, the way she chose to represent herself; she looks the same but she is bigger, twice her normal size. Ivan didn’t seem to have a choice in his appearance on this plane, he was like a glow stick made man no matter how hard he tried to change it.
Alia looks back through the window. “I feel like I’m supposed to love him. He’s a good guy. I can only appreciate him while I can.”
Ivan is saddened by this. “Do you really believe that?”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe Ivan. Move on the next one.”
Ivan moves to the dial directly to the right of the one he was turning, and he starts turning steadily in one direction.
“Kevin and I are apparently supposed to be here doing this. Imagine if we weren’t.”
“So, you feel a duty to be with him?”
“I want to be with him, but even if we weren’t intimate, our destinies are intertwined. The intimacy makes it easier. But the futures tell me that this is probably the happiest we will ever be as a couple.”
Ivan is confused. “So you don’t love him at all?”
“Why does it matter? Are you worried about him? Change direction.”
“I’m not worried about him. We’re friends but I haven’t known him for years now. You seem nice, he seems happy enough. I’m worried about me and Clay. I thought you might understand given our similarities.”
“What are you worried about? Is Clay already pressuring you to run away together?”
“What do you mean?” Ivan asks, confused.
“I’ve seen you two before in the futures. In most, Clay is unhappy because you want to help people at the expense of time with him. Or that’s how he sees it.”
“That doesn’t surprise me, it hasn’t happened yet, though. But yeah, that’s what I’m worried about. I love Clay.”
“I know, I’m jealous. You two made me realize that I don’t love Kevin. Not like you guys. I love him, but he won’t stop lying to himself. He thinks he can have a normal life, but he can’t. You and Clay love each other so much, you do your best to make each other happy.”
“But I don’t want to be the reason bad things happen to him. He’s fighting monsters now because of me. If not for me, he could have a quiet life without all of this.”
“You don’t know that. He could have the exact same life without you and that could be devastating.”
Ivan turns his attention to the dial. “Anything?” he asks.
“No, and we don’t have time to try them all.” Alia is frustrated and stands.
“Why don’t we look for Crude? She’s with him right?”
Alia nods slowly. “I can do Crude, look.” She points through the window and Ivan walks over to look out at the huge screen of a movie theater. The scene on the screen is jumpy and chaotic. “She’s too angry to see clearly through her eyes.”
“What do we do?” Ivan asks.
The scene on the screen of the movie theater changes and it is a blurry, incomprehensible smear of colors.
Alia says, “Like I said before, this is as far as I can get alone, and we know now that you can’t help me get past this block. We can wait for Kevin. Maybe Conner can tell us where his father is, but he definitely won’t talk to me. How are they all doing?”
Ivan’s mental form flares a brighter green and then dims. He looks to Alia gravely. “They killed them. They killed the monsters.”
Ivan and Alia are still on the campus of Duke University. As they traversed the mental plane in Alia’s theater of the mind trying to determine the location of Dr. Roy Worthington, time had lapsed, but not nearly as much time as they perceived had passed as they did their work to sharpen the doctor’s mental picture. Ivan had insisted that they at least try together through the means that Alia was familiar with to locate Worthington before he let her plunge the depths of his consciousness for whatever remarkable thing he could do that would help him to locate the doctor. Ivan is still skeptical of his new-found powers and he doesn’t know if unlocking a new thing in his mind will have an impact on Clay. But the Alia is obviously exasperated, she is sure that he can find Worthington if he tries.
“I just don’t want to let you inside of my head like that. I don’t know how to exist there like you do. I don’t know what we’re even looking for.”
“You’re scared to examine yourself, to know the truth about what’s inside of you. It’s the reason your powers or whatever came when they did, because you were being your most genuine self. You’re a foolish hero, Ivan. The one who gets statues and institutes named after him. And when you felt Crude for the first time, it was after you revealed your true self to your mother. All of the work you do to be centered only works when you’re not afraid to be yourself. Be a big, pretty, fool Ivan. Be a hero.”
Alia grabs his hands and when she closes her eyes, she sees a desert under a yellow sun stretched out before her. The ground is dry and cracked into puzzle pieces of burnt orange, and it is flat as far as she can see. When she turns, she sees a house, if you can call it that. It is shabby, a modest rectangle of composite wood and flimsy metal as a roof. Alia walks toward it and as she gets closer, the house appears to be larger. At first, she justifies it as simple perspective, but by the time she is standing in front of it, she is looking up at the nob of the front door that towers over her. She jumps to try and grab it, but she is not tall enough, and then she resorts to banging on the door. It eventually opens and Alia slips inside. The interior is not what she expects to encounter upon entering. It is a wide open space, like a church with no pews and Alia walks to the front of the space where a green glow radiates. She runs when it doesn’t seem that she is making any progress. When she finally reached the source of the glow, she sees Ivan with his eyes closed and ensconced in his glow that is like a raging fire. His eyes are closed and Alia calls his name. He doesn’t answer. Alia touches the flame around Ivan apprehensively and when she is not injured, she practically dives at Ivan. They collapse on the floor and Ivan startles to attention. They stand.
“It’s like I was frozen in here.” Ivan says, looking around.
“What is this place,” Alia asks.
“It looks like the church my family goes to when we visit relatives out west. Well, it kinda looks like it. It’s empty.”
“Let’s go, this can’t be the right place for you to be.”
They jog to the door that Alia had entered, but it’s closed again and there are no knobs to turn. Ivan tries to force the door open with the glow that he projects from his hands, but it doesn’t budge.
“We’re stuck.” Ivan says.
“You’re stuck!” Alia says frustrated. “I’m trapped. What did I tell you Ivan? You don’t need anyone’s permission to be yourself. This is your mind. This is your door. It’s closed because you allow it to stay that way.”
Ivan takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. He starts to levitate and his glow expands. When it encompasses Alia, she levitates with him, and as the glow pushes against the door, it bends and creaks, then gives way, flying open to a scene that surprises Alia. They walk into the hospital room where Ivan first met Clay. Ivan and Alia watch the scene of the two men, Ivan on the hospital bed and Clay in a chair next to it and they hold hands. There is a glow where their hands meet.
“I’ll never forget that,” Ivan says to Alia. “I didn’t know what I missing until that day.”
“Then feel that way again,” Alia says, “feel that way now.”
Ivan closes his eyes and everything goes black. Alia is frightened by the darkness, but it doesn’t last long. When Ivan powers up and his glow returns, they are on a mountain top. There is no wind, it is calm and Alia marvels at the view.
“I can feel everything.” Ivan says. “I can feel all of the mountains, all of the rocks, the clouds moving overhead, I can feel you.”
The lights go out again and Alia hears Ivan say, “Open your eyes.” When she does, they are on the college campus and Ivan is smiling.
“I can feel everything,” Ivan says. “The Earth lends me its energies, that’s why I glow. And I can feel everything of this planet. I can feel Dr. Worthington too, but I can’t sort it out because I’ve never met him before.”
“Maybe this will help.” Alia puts a hand on Ivan’s forehead and she forces all of her knowledge of the doctor, his son Conner, the portrait he was making, into Ivan’s mind.
Ivan’s eyes glow and when it subsides he says. “I got him.”
“Great, tell Clay where to meet us.”
Clay, Kevin, and Detective Paul Young drive silently to the campus of Duke University. Their day had been full of carnage and each man is processing it in their own way.
Kevin is convincing himself that sometimes people die so that others can live free of terror. Young says the same thing over and over in his mind; We did what we had to.
Clay won’t allow the reality of the situation to set in fully. He only cares about one thing; seeing this through to the end so he and Ivan can finally have time together. Clay knows that what he and the other men did this day was necessary for a broader sense of public safety, but his motivations had been pretty one track since Ivan made it clear that they could be together once the Crude threat was neutralized, and to Clay that meant they would get married and live together. That’s the only thing that matters to him.
Young is driving, and Kevin is in the front seat.
“We should be there soon.” Young says, breaking the silence.
Suddenly, the inside of the car flashes green and Clay tells Young where to drive to meet Ivan and Alia.
“I guess kids don’t even use phones anymore these days,” Young says.
They park once they arrive at the campus and Clay practically explodes from the car and jogs away. “Follow me!” he yells back at Young and Kevin.
“I guess he’s excited to get back to Ivan.” Kevin explains as the two men rush to keep up.
Clay runs to the spot where Ivan and Alia are sitting in the grass. Ivan stands and they hug and kiss.
“Is this it?” Clay asks. “You found him?”
“We did,” Ivan says. “But we’ve got bad news.”
Kevin and Young arrive and Kevin introduces him to Alia.
“He’s in a lab now, at the medical center.” Alia explains.
“He’s surrounded by unnatural things.” Ivan says. “Like those monsters…”
“Zombies,” Young says, “they were zombies, son. And the only way to kill them is with fire.”
“I don’t know how we do that without drawing attention.” Alia says. “He knows that you guys killed everything in those trucks. Someone told him and they’re getting ready to go underground. And once he’s gone, I think that finding him will be impossible. It’s like they know about us, about me. I was in his assistant’s mind for a little bit, and then it went blurry, just like Worthington. They’re expecting us.”
“How could they know about you?” Kevin asks.
“I don’t know. How have they managed to keep all this quiet so far?” Alia asks.
“This just keeps getting weirder and weirder.” Young says. “Let’s go stop him before he leaves. That we know how to do, we can deal with the fall out later. Suit us up Kevin, full protection. I don’t want none of you extraordinary young people going zombie on me. You all ready?”
They all follow Ivan and Alia.
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