sensory chair and closed my eyes while it morphed to fit my body. With a thought command I switched on the Grid. Narrow bands of red, blue and green light shot across the room, sought and defined its dimensions, creating a chart of horizontal lines. The light quickly formed a graph of horizontal and vertical bands.
The Grid was up.
I went to my home page, a glittering seascape where waves crashed against a mountainous shore. Sandpipers waddled across the narrow beach, following the tides like tiny Charlie Chaplin impressionists. I took a deep breath, sucked in the smell of saltwater, felt the charge of negative ions.
I always have a hard time leaving my home page.
It was well past midnight in my tiny corner of the universe, sometime between rest for the weary and insomnia for the troubled. And yet—elsewhere on earth’s canvas—dawn painted gray skies; sherbet colors layered the horizon; and the earth waited to run a rough tongue over the flavors of tomorrow. I spun a VR globe with my right hand, looking for places where the sun still cast long shadows, where the inhabitants had reached that point in the day where they could pause and catch their breath.
I have ten preselected locations around the world, ten different time zones, places I can visit whenever I have a chance.
Not everybody has a regular nine-to-five. I’ve learned over the years to find my solace where and when I can. Tonight it waited for me in a tiny stucco building in George, South Africa. I always start on the outside, on the dusty street. I know I stand out from most of the regulars, me in my glittering VR suit, them in their brightly colored caftans and turbans. But there will be others like me, visitors from around the globe. One man comes from China; his almond eyes watch me as we stand beside each other. I’ve never actually talked to him, but he nods and smiles, glances down at my right hand.
I’m carrying my sax.
The building glows from within, the glimmer of a thousand candles. I’ve come to fill up all my empty spaces, to patch the holes in my heart, to revive my ever-dull, ever-disobedient soul.
I sit in a back pew, my eyes closed, letting the song wash over me, cleansing me. Already I can hear her voice. Beulah. An old black woman, frail and tall, her nubby hair cropped close to her head, her neck long: her wide lips lift praise in a velvet-rich tone, her lungs an instrument as pure and clear as mountain sky. Then I lift the saxophone to my lips, joining the song. Somehow we always manage to stop at exactly the same moment. There is a hush, an expectant selah-pause as angels themselves draw nearer, eager to know more about this thing called salvation.
Sometimes I wish I fully understood it, how my part is going to add up to anything of significance in the end. Most of the time I think I’m fooling myself, trying to convince myself that I really matter at all.
But for now I just have to take it like every other One-Timer does.
Like credit in the bank. Invisible, but there when you need it.
Like faith.
CHAPTER FIVE
Chaz:
Night brings peace for some, for those who can sleep. Personally I think it’s all a ruse. Go ahead, close your eyes. Tomorrow will be better than today. Go ahead. I dare you. Well, I’m not taking any bets. When I stand and look out at the night sky, I have a hard time believing that the sun is really going to rise again.
The landscape of George faded away, faster than I wanted. I was alone. Remembering that freak in the jazz club. He left a bad taste in my mouth. Almost like I’d swallowed a glass of his jive-sweet take-me-to-the-sky high, and now his snake-in-the-skin was going to rub off on me.
I’ve never liked gen-spike addicts, the way their skin ripples and shivers, like it’s crawling with a hundred snakes. There’s something primeval about them, as if evolution somehow reversed, imploded in upon itself; maybe Darwin stood up in the middle of the night and pushed a cosmic button and then suddenly all his clever theories began to unwind. Not that I ever believed in them in the first place, but somehow the gen freaks have his name tattooed on their souls.
And I hate to say it because it sounds so déjà vu, but I felt like I had seen this guy somewhere