Chapter 1 Transport

Through negligence, incompetence, or just plain spite, Old Miser Nature had issued only five senses to Delaney Jefferson. Lord knows she had tried to make do. For 17 long years she had battled this injustice, flogging those pathetically inadequate receptors to exhaustion every waking moment just to squeeze a few drops of joy out of her weary existence. But it was a losing cause.

That futility explains why, on this evening, she barely noticed the savage rhythms that pounded through her headphones, drowning out the efforts of her mother to call her for some annoying task that her lazy brother could just as well do. The flickering candles did not even register in her consciousness, nor did the vanilla scent they released into a room plastered with Johnny Depp posters against a backdrop of hot pink and lime-green walls. Forgotten for the moment was the arsenal of sensory stimulation waiting in the wings; recharging cell phone with unlimited texting, loose stack of Rolling Stone magazines, aloe lotion in four different scents, and a mound of pillows piled on a queen-size bed.

She sat at her laptop computer, manicuring her nails and taking the occasional bite of a Snickers bar while she scanned her latest texts. Taste was the only one of her senses subject to rationing, due to ill-founded concerns about weight and complexion. As she was a little hazy on the distinction between moderation and martyrdom, each bite of chocolate triggered a grieving process and intense as the actual enjoyment.

While absently rocking to the music, she tossed the nail polish bottle on her cluttered dresser top, and tapped out a keyboard reply to her best friend:

"Megan: FYI I was NOT mad. People always think I'm mad when I really don't even care. I just thought it was typical of Jenna. She said she didn't want a boyfriend for a long time. She wanted to 'find herself', etc. But then she gets a boyfriend anyway. She said she had been without a boyfriend for a long time, but she hasn't a clue. I don't think I'd recognize Jenna without a boyfriend. Okay, that really sounds bitter but-"

Delaney preferred music played at a volume that put at risk not only her hearing but that of her neighbors as well, which was why she had submitted to the shackles of earphones. Who needs to listen to parents yelling to turn down the volume and yammering about how you are going to go deaf before you are 30? But nothing could have prepared her for the blast of sound that tore into her skull and all but blew her eyes out as it knocked her backward off her chair. She tore off the headset and whirled around, her tongue primed to incinerate her worthless insect of a brother for messing with the volume control.

But her wrath found no target. She was alone in her room. Worse yet, although the earphones dangled limply in her hand, the tsunami of noise continued to shriek at such a volume that she could not even hear her own cries of pain and anger. As fury turned to panic, she pressed her hands over her ears. The decibel level soared ever higher until she shook like a rat in the jaws of a terrier. Sound waves shredded her posters. One by one, the computer, bed, bookshelves, and television disintegrated into dust that shot off into the blackened cosmos.

Delaney tried to stand. The floor quivered crazily until it broke apart and then dissolved altogether. The pit of her stomach leapt into her throat as she tumbled through a swirling, magenta cloud. She could not tell if she was falling or simply being blown into the corners of the universe by the roar of a devil with powers beyond imagination.

Then, mercifully, it stopped. The seismic convulsions ground to a half. Her vision cleared. One by one, her senses came back on line, although her ears continued to ring.

But her relief evaporated as she discovered the devastation that the hurricane of sound had left in its wake. Her room was gone. Her world had vanished. She found herself lying face down in a shallow puddle amid the stink of dead worms. Mud greased her face and arms, and cold water seeped into her clothing.

This time she could clearly year the voice of her own terror.

Ron Berch shielded his eyes and spat a stream of brown tobacco juice through stained teeth as he emerged from the gloom of the machine shed into the harsh glare of winter. Before him, a field of uncut stalks stood shoulder to shoulder, like a jury rendering its verdict to a condemned man. Stunted ears of field corn clung to the stalks, their tattered husks fluttering in the breeze above the snow-crusted ground. They would stay that way through the winter because Berch had failed as a farmer.

This was not a setback, a time of tribulation, test of character, or some deep hole of adversity he could crawl out of with a heroic display of guts and moxie.

He was done. Failed. Sure, he could hide behind a pile of excuses. Louise, he companion of 38 years, had left his side and gone into the cold, hard ground six months ago. The dying had been a blessing compared to the two years and six weeks that had preceded it, when the cancer had tortured the sweetest, most generous woman in existence.

They called it a courageous fight; it struck him as nothing of the sort. Yes, she held up as well as most, better than many. But it was not a fight. No more than pulling the wings off a butterfly, one by one, constitutes a fight. And he could do nothing but sit and witness the execution, as helpless as she.

Then get up the next day and watch it continue. Day after day. The ordeal and the loss had drained him--of energy, of ambition, of humor, of the assurance of a just and merciful God.

Late frost, drought, withering summer heat, broken planter, rising costs, faltering market--he had faced that and worse most of his life. Maybe he could have weathered it all if only Louise had been spared. But he no longer had either the strength or the will. Without her steadying influence at his side, each disaster slapped him down before he could get off his knees from the previous blow. With the arthritis that he had shrugged off for a decade now piling on...he didn't know which direction was up anymore. Not that it made any difference.

"Look at this," he muttered, as he surveyed the standing corpses of his crop and looked back at the ribbons of paint, the tinsel of poverty, that dangled from the rotting wood of his farmhouse. "This is what we gave our lives for."

A string of curses raced to his lips, yet he refused to give voice to them. Not that he had shied away from turning the air blue in many a bar room or backyard discussion in his time. But Louise hated that kind of language. What he could not stop himself from doing for the dear woman during her life, he somehow felt compelled to do upon her death.

Even this last empty trophy of their life was not to be his for long. The banks were processing the paperwork to complete the sale of the farm to the usual faceless, soulless, blood-sucking agribusiness conglomerate. Once the debts had been settled, there would be barely enough left over to buy a stamp.

He wandered into the rutted rows of corn, kicking bitterly at the stalks. For a fleeing moment he remembered when he and Louise had walked hand-in-and through the same field more than 30 years ago. Back when the soil was a wishing well for dreams and not insulation for a coffin. Back when . . .

He snorted in disgust at himself as he jammed his hands into his pockets and turned away from the house. If there was one thing Berch could not stand it was folks feeling sorry for themselves.

As he walked into the field, he kicked up a puff of dust from a blanched, beaten-down stalk. More from reflex than curiosity, he scuffed the area with his boot. This seemed to stir up more dust. No, it was more than dust; it was smoke, bubbling up out of the ground.

Birch poked at the stalk, searching for the embers of a hidden fire. The smoke continued to thicken and swirl as he looked for its source. It obscured his boots as it climbed up his overalls. He backed away and yet the cloud followed him, engulfed him. Soot stung his eyes and robbed him of breath. Covering his mouth with a ragged flannel cuff, he lurched toward the open ground.

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He never made it. A boot caught on a bent stalk, and he fell heavily. He thrust out his hands and braced for impact with the ground. Instead he found himself falling through the purplish-gray smoke. The vocabulary that accompanied his descent would have greatly disappointed Louise.

Roland Stewart would rather have crawled through a graveyard of open caskets at midnight under a moonless sky than cross the white lawn at his feet. Not that the icy squall diving straight down from the Arctic Circle daunted him in the least. As a north woods native, he accepted stinging earlobes and lung-searing draughts of frozen air as tests of character. Leaning into a -40 degree windchill that had already numbed the few square inches of face not protected by his parka hood, he warmed his blood with the perverse pride of knowing that those less-acclimated wusses on campus suffered worse than he.

Far more intimidating than the elements was the fortress of darkness that loomed at the end of the path. The college library stood alone, buffered from the other campus structures by a vast carpet of sod that had been buried under snow since early December. Drifting snow had begun to choke off the two ribbons of sidewalk that connected it to the freedom of the outside world. Only two types of students would even think about approaching the library on a night like this: the dedicated and the desperate. Although he occasionally dipped a toe into the former camp, on this night Roland stood squarely in the latter. Along with the rest of his General Biology class, he had been assigned to write a report using at least three sources from scholarly scientific journals. The professor did not care what subject they chose; the purpose of the assignment was to gain familiarity with the formal way that researchers presented their findings.

This assignment presented an opportunity of sorts to a person who was acutely aware of his niche in life as a background prop, whose most recognized accomplishment in an average day was the successful occupation of space. It was not that he suffered from self-loathing, or even a low opinion of his abilities. In fact, his status baffled him as much as it bothered him. In his more objective moments, he could make the case that he was more intelligent, pleasant, and thoughtful than the average college student. Given the right circumstances, which never seemed to present themselves outside of this immediate family, he could even be witty and playful. Although he would never be sought out for bodybuilding ads, he had never heard anyone express that he was physically repulsive, and he was one of the better collegiate distance runners in the three-state area. Perhaps he was exceptionally sensitive, but he had constructed defenses over the years to keep that defect under wraps. Introvert though he was, he could detect no glaring social blind spots.

Why possessing the qualities he did should consign him to a bottom rung on the American undergraduate ladder baffled him to the point where he began to doubt his self-assessment. The fact was, whether in a classroom discussion or at a table in the main campus cafeteria at lunchtime, he made less impact on his surroundings than a windblown candy wrapper scraping against a street curb. His occasional forays into conversation produced so little response that he sometimes questioned whether his voice registered within the range of human hearing.

In a rare open rebellion against the station to which his personality had assigned him, he had tried to claim a few rays of limelight by choosing an exotic subject for his paper--an analysis of the poison of the South Pacific stonefish, the venomous of all fishes. His interest in the topic had quickly worn off, however, thanks to the grotesque perversion of style demanded by academia. The scholarly entries on the subject, such as "Purification and Properties of a Cardioactive Toxin, Cardioleputin, from Synaceia verruscoso," proved all but unreadable. Despite hours of internet searching, his probes had so far yielded barely enough facts to satisfy three of the required five pages of the assignment, and even that required generous license with the English language.

A procrastinator by nature, Roland had managed to stall, daydream, and generally waste all but the final 13 hours before the assignment was due. Now a mob of deadlines pressed upon him: a chemistry quiz; a biology report; two Shakespeare plays to be read; probably a dozen things that had slipped his mind.

So it was that he approached the library with the enthusiasm of a prisoner dragged at the end of a chain. At the entrance to this hall of dread, he held the door for an amorphous bundle of down-filed fabric that mumbled "thanks," as it passed. Inhaling a final icy breath of freedom, he plunged inside. With stiff fingers, he unzipped his parka.

"Cold enough for you?" asked a custodian, who seemed to be enjoying his discomfort.

Roland pasted on a thin smile to disguise his opinion of that brilliant foray into the arena of original wit. Wiping the thawed frost from his eyelashes, he thumped down an open, carpeted stairway. By the time he reached the bottom, dry, forced air was already flushing the shivers from beneath his parka.

Tons of concrete pressing down on the supports of this windowless dungeon reinforced the sense that he was here to do penance for his sins of procrastination. He scuffed past rows of shelves toward the study carrels lining the far wall. On such a bitter evening, he had his pick of the lot. Choosing one wedged into the corner, he slung down his backpack and pulled out several notebooks whose stiff covers crackled from the cold.

Where to start? He thumbed through a stack of chemistry notes--hieroglyphics from an ancient age, untouched since the early weeks of the semester. Discouraged, he shoved them aside. He flipped open another notebook to where he had written stonefish entries culled from the library's computerized list of periodical holdings. After a detour at the magazine rack to browse the latest Sports Illustrated, he returned to the desk with a fat stack of bound research annuals. He would have preferred scanning the microfilm editions but the only reading machines available were broken, as they had been for weeks, while he was running out of time. He dropped the books on the desk and shook his arm to restore circulation. In so doing, his elbow clipped the top folder in his stack. It slid over the edge of the desk. Roland had always meant to organize that bundle of loose papers into a semblance of order. But, as with every resolution he could remember having made, the day of fulfillment had never come. Papers cascaded over the carpet.

He threw down his pencil, muttering. As he dropped to his knees to reclaim the mess, the papers exploded into flame. Before Roland could blink, the entire building ignited. Fed by an in invisible bellows, fire whooshed to the ceiling transforming the sickly fluorescent glow of the room into a blinding radiance. Jets of purple flame shot across the floor, cutting off his escape. Too bewildered to cry out, he tried to fight through the inferno for the safety of the stairs. But the fire raged everywhere; he could not find the stairs or any other exit.

Gasping for oxygen that the fire had consumed, choking on the sulfurous odor, he pulled his shirt over his face to shield himself from the flame. He dropped to the floor and pressed his nose against the fibers of the carpet to get below the smoke.

As he lay clinging to the carpet and to the shrinking hope that he could wring a few moments of further existence from his destiny, an odd feeling settled over him. It took him a moment to recognize it as something like euphoria. Why this should strike him at such a moment made no sense, unless he was already crossing over into the afterlife, perhaps experienced the blissful welcome he had encountered din tales of near-death phenomena.

Yes, that's it! Immortality! That explained by the fire had no effect on him, why he could not feel its heat. He was beyond the reach of the flames, free from the confines of mortal flesh. Nothing could hurt him any longer.

Dazed, he lifted his head off the floor. Purple flames danced impotently, like a spectacular hologram. They burned nothing, charred nothing, singed nothing.

Then, as he squinted into its fading brilliance, Roland saw a vision of himself. There was no mistaking who was standing outside the flames at the edge of a shallow creek in what seemed to be a forest clearing. Long, straight brown hair that never quite laid right. Penetrating blue eyes. Sparse whiskers that he had not bothered to shave that morning. Lean build. The well-worn, one-size-too-long, frayed-at-the-bottom jeans and the work shirt that he had forced into serve a day longer than he should so that he could put off doing laundry.

All of this was so familiar, and the image was so clear that Roland thought for a moment he was staring into a mirror, or perhaps a monitor with live feed from a surveillance camera. But then the face began to take on expressions of its own, expressions that he did not feel. The body refused to conform to his movements.

What he saw appeared to be a video of himself, played on a very expensive high definition screen. Except there was no screen. He could not imagine who had filmed him or what the occasion had been, much less how he happened to be viewing it now. Another hologram? The arms held a large, weathered, leather-bound manuscript, like something he had seen in a museum of ancient artifacts. He could not remember even handling such a thing.

As he watched himself turn and step into the woods, apparently deep in thought, the inferno exploded in one last cataclysmic roar that shot flames high into the heavens. Blinded by the electric purple flames, Roland fell back to the floor, a hand instinctively poised to protect his face.

But as before, the fire gave off no heat. Roland lay on his stomach, numbed by the assault on his senses, watching as the flames fell back, sputtered and finally died. As the last evidence of the fire receded, a green world sharpened into focus. Feeling a sharp sting on his wrist, Roland pulled it back. Only then did he notice the barbs of a thorn bush gloating over the jagged scratch it had inflicted.