Places Not Here

Chapter One

The Call

The call came late on a Friday night and I remember the circumstances quite clearly. I was in my office at Stanford University making a highly caffeinated attempt to break a bad case of writer’s block. I’d been doing some post-doc work at GCEP, the Global Climate and Energy Project, and was agonizing over a paper for an upcoming conference. This was my chosen field, after having pursued an undergraduate computer science degree and later a PhD in physics. The new research had come together well, but in the last few days my writing had gone stale; the words seemed to shrivel up in my head just before passing through my fingers on their way to the keyboard.

The phone’s ringtone and a quick glance at the display told me that I didn’t know the caller. Normally I would have let the call flow straight into the digital abyss, but I had been stuck for so long that even an unknown caller seemed a welcome break. I picked it up.

Morrison here.

Yes, hello. Is this Dr. Thomas Morrison? said a tired, deep voice on the other end.

Yes it is. I was beginning to regret my decision to take the call.

Thomas, my name is Dean Bailey. I’m an attorney with Gaithers, Gimble and Bailey in Seattle.

Yes?

It’s amazing how fast one’s mind can page through scenarios when surprised by a lawyer on the phone. I must have mentally sequenced though three or four possibilities, none of them particularly cheerful but one of them nearly correct, before Mr. Bailey had time to begin his next sentence.

I’m sorry to call so late but I’m afraid I have some bad news for you that really can’t wait. You were a friend of one of my clients, Dr. Spencer Blankenship, I believe?

At his use of the past tense, my eyes closed and my breath caught. Yes, I finally said.

I’m terribly sorry, Thomas, but it’s my sad duty to tell you that he’s dead. He left a note. I’m afraid it was suicide.

Suicide? But that doesn’t make any sense. He wouldn’t…I mean, I just don’t think that he could.

Yes, I know. I’m terribly sorry. But the note is pretty clear. There’s little doubt about his intent, I’m afraid, and the police have authenticated his handwriting.

How was he found? My voice broke.

The lawyer paused, cleared his throat, and continued.

Spencer’s note was found in his lab near a stone bowl of ashes contained within a.., well, a large machine that included a very powerful laser and some industrial robotic apparatus.

No. You’re trying to tell me that Mr. B intentionally burned himself to death!? That’s insane. No one would do that. And besides, if we’re talking about actual ash, how could anyone be sure that it was Mr. B’s real remains?

Thomas, there was some partially unburned material, I’m afraid. DNA analysis on it was conclusive.

But why would he ever…why would he even consider such a thing? I asked.

His note implied that he didn’t die that way, and that, however he went, before this cremation, it was completely painless. This seems to have been his way of making it a bit easier on the rest of us – handling part of the unpleasantness for us.

His way? I couldn’t imagine any way being his way of suicide. The man I remembered was never in despair, never down, always engaged. The man I remembered was a serious but friendly old professor, his long gray hair tied in a neat pony tail, always ready for a discussion or a hike in the woods.

But, I still don’t…

Yes, I know, Thomas. It doesn’t make much sense to me, either, continued the lawyer. But I’ve seen it before. Sometimes people are very, very good at hiding things.

Still, he was always so interested, so involved, so…, so happy with his life.

Yes, I understand.

When do they think this happened? I asked.

Day before yesterday, it seems. The mailman noticed that the front door was open two days in a row, found no one at home and called the police.

I couldn’t let myself imagine the details that lurked in the recesses of my consciousness like bats hanging in a cave, ready to take to the air if I so much as glanced in their direction.

A memory slipped past the leathery vermin and I grabbed it. I was back in Alaska, somewhere near Kodiak Island, wounded by gunfire and abandoned for dead up against a large rock outcropping in the forest. Through a mental fog I saw two figures approaching: an older man, tall, lean, gray, and behind him, a blond girl, my sister Katie. The man was shielding Katie from the bloody scene in front of her and he was moving toward me. He gently but quickly moved a body that was slumped in front of me. I remembered the shock on his face when he must have recognized me, and then wide-eyed relief when he discovered that I was still breathing. That was Mr. B.

And yet this lawyer on the phone was apparently talking about the same man. I struggled to own the dissonance of these two realities. Could they coexist? I hoped not, and it was very clear to me which one I wanted to discard.

Thomas, are you still there?

Uh, yes, sorry. Does my sister know yet?

Yes, I was able to reach her an hour ago in Raleigh. She gave me your new number there at Stanford.

Mr…I’m sorry, what did you say your name was again?

Bailey. Dean Bailey.

Of course; I’m sorry Mr. Bailey. So, how did you know to notify us?

Well, that’s another big reason for my call. I’ve worked for Spencer for years, putting together his will and attending to a small legal matter every now and again. Just last year he updated his will and asked me to be the executor of his estate. You probably already know that he had no close family left. In any case, the will specifically names you and Katherine in a couple of key areas. Did he ever discuss any of this with you?

No, he never mentioned a word about it.

Uh huh, well, I’m not terribly surprised.

Why is that? I asked.

Spencer talked to me about a number of confidential things, one of them being his work with you and Katherine.

Oh?

Yes. He told me that the three of you had discovered, as I remember he put it, ‘an extremely interesting phenomenon.’ He never told me anything more about it, but he did say that he became so consumed by its study that he sometimes went straight from bed to his lab, forgetting all about breakfast and even neglecting to get dressed for the day.

But I thought he dropped the whole thing. He hasn’t said anything to me about it for years now.

I thought about the astounding mode of transportation we discovered years ago. It had always seemed too good to be true. My academic training had led me to be suspicious about it, even to the point of denial. I assumed that Mr. B had gone through the same process.

That’s just the point, Thomas. He didn’t want you or your sister to be caught up in whatever this was. He wanted you to move on, to have a real life, to get an education and find your place in the world, which, by all I can tell, you’ve done quite admirably to this point.

Thanks, but I’m confused. I really thought that he had just given up on that work and moved on. I’d actually hoped that he had. He mentioned this as recently as a year ago?

Yes.

Really? What else did he say?

Well, the rest is best discussed in person. Katherine is flying out to Seattle tonight. Can you join us tomorrow at around ten thirty in the morning?

Yes; where?

Do you know where Elliott Bay Marina is?

Sure, just northwest of the city. Do you work near there?

Actually, I work three days a week out of my floating office. I’m in slip A-17. Just buzz the marina office from the gate at the head of A-dock. They’ll let you in.

Chapter Two

Reflections

I drove up highway 101 to the San Francisco International Airport early the next morning. As I marveled at the fog tumbling down over the South San Francisco hills ahead and the beauty of the bay to my right, I found myself looking back on the strange days following what I’ve since labeled my reawakening.

You may remember from another account of my early life that I suffered a major loss of memory over a period of several months. To survive, both psychologically and physically, I created another identity for myself. I was Kel. It was a lonely, frightening time, but at least I had a name. It was strange, understanding my charade on the one hand and desperately needing to believe it on the other.

But my sister Katherine – or Katie, as I’ve always called her – believed in Tom, and she worked tirelessly to bring him back. And, with the help of Mr. B and something else that was behind the extraordinary events of the story, she did just that.

When I literally came to myself, I felt torn between a desire to understand the power that was behind my reawakening, and an equally strong desire to leave it all behind and forget about the whole thing. After all, I had college to think about and a career to build, maybe even a family to raise. As it turned out, the family part didn’t happen for me, although, thankfully, it eventually did for Katie.

But I was aware of the choice at hand, and never more acutely than when, only weeks after my identity was restored, Katie convinced me to go with her to visit Mr. B at his log home in Stellar Woods.

It was winter time and an arctic cold front was moving through the Puget Sound area, creating bright blue skies and sub-freezing temperatures. The inch or two of snow that had fallen the night before crunched under our boots as we walked the familiar trail to the home of our old friend. The scent of ancient cedars lingered in the still air.

When we arrived at the house, I remember worrying that we had made the trip for nothing because there was no smoke curling from the chimney. Mr. B lived alone, with the notable exception of his canine friend Maggie Q, and was quite content to use his fireplace as the sole source of heat in the house. Today, of all days, I expected to see and smell the results of a cozy wood fire.

Strange, I remember saying to Katie. I felt sure that he’d be here. I guess we should’ve called first.

Wait a sec, she replied, jogging through the snow to the side of the house. His Jeep’s here.

I didn’t know whether to feel relief or dread. Nothing seemed right. You know how you can just feel things sometimes? Like when you sense that there’s someone standing in a large room even before you look around? I remember having a twisted thought that bad things seem to happen before you really have time to think, not when you’re being so introspective. I clung to that silly notion.

Katie walked back to join me in front of the frozen front porch. Glancing at each other, we climbed the stairs and I knocked three times on the heavy wooden door. It creaked open under the pressure of my hand.

The big living room, with its wooden floor and cabin smells, was dark but not empty. I heard a thump, thump, thump coming from one corner of the room near the cold fireplace and recognized the sound immediately. Maggie Q’s feathery tail was wagging against the wood-paneled wall in happy but sleepy recognition. She stood, stretched, and trotted over to us, her tail still making its nearly circular motion.

Good dog, Maggie! I said in an attempt to dispel the fear that squeezed my throat. I knelt to greet her. Maggie Q, as you might recall, was short for Maggie, Queen of the Universe. The name seemed appropriate in light of the fact that Mr. B’s chosen academic field was astronomy. But maybe even more to the point, the old man treated his dog with the kind of love and attention usually only given to royalty.

I guess that Katie was more willing than I to confront the situation directly because she turned toward the back rooms of the house and yelled, Mr. B, are you here!? It’s me, Katie, and Tom!

Silence blanketed the interior of the cold house like a shroud. It was broken only by a single whine from Maggie as she sat on the floor and looked up at us with sad brown eyes.

I got up and walked by my sister’s side, but she really led the way. If I had stopped, I’m sure that she would have kept right on moving. But if she had even slightly slowed her gait, there is no doubt in my mind that I would have come to an immediate and startled halt.

We moved toward the hallway and the back bedrooms, and I was interpreting every creak in the old hardwood floors: loose floorboard? Must have been. But that one came from somewhere else. I swear I wasn’t even moving when I heard that. Was Katie?

I tried to reach ahead with every sense – listening for any sound of life, peering into shadowed rooms one by one along the hallway, sniffing the air for anything unusual. I even half-expected to taste something horrible.

At the end of the hallway, on the right, lay Mr. B’s bedroom, our last hope and fear combined. I remember approaching the room slowly, just behind Katie’s left shoulder. What should I do, I wondered, if he’s there and he seems… dead? What if I’m not sure? Would it be obvious? Would I have the courage to really check? And how, exactly, would I do that, I mean, to be really sure?

But before I could finish with my selfish, fearful thoughts, Katie pulled me into the room by her side and turned on the light switch. There, on the unmade bed, was no body, either alive or dead.

Maybe he just went out for a hike, I breathed in relief. I sat down on the side of the bed, feeling unreasonably tired. Katie sat beside me.

He would have taken Maggie, observed Katie with a slight quaver in her voice.

Right, was all I could say.

Maggie Q ambled into the bedroom and sat in front of us, looking up. Katie and I took turns petting the dog as we talked about what we should do next. And if we had not been so caught up in that moment we might have noticed Maggie’s nervousness much sooner than we did. An older golden retriever, Maggie had mellowed nicely over the years and