Liminal Wake Chapter 3: Blink
If you stumbled onto this, here are the preceding chapter links:
3. Blink
Dr. Colbeck nodded bleakly and followed Bennett back up the stairs. They moved to the elevators, where Bennett pressed the button a half dozen times. They waited.
“I wasn’t planning on staying for that. Suppose we got a bit carried away, eh?”
Bennett didn’t answer, lips pressed tightly together. The hang drums continued their haunting rhythm through the hallway speakers.
They slipped into the elevator before the doors fully opened, and Bennett immediately hit the button for Level Nine—the open-air top level of the structure. He avoided looking at his companion as they rose. Colbeck did the same, feeling like he didn’t quite know what to do with his hands.
The doors slid open, the soft chime drowned out by the deafening rush of the water, the crowds, the music. On the eastern deck beneath the arch, the cramped crowd rustled with suspense. The smell of pepper sausages and nachos wafted from the concessions stands like a discordant note.
Bennett started for the skybridge. “Let’s go,” he said, gesturing to the entrance of the hallway marked SKYBRIDGE – VIP ONLY.
Calvin followed him past the concessions stands as the drum rhythm quickened, mounting to a commanding dat-da-da-dat-da that stilled the collective breath of sixty thousand spectators.
They quickened their pace. Bennett stole a glimpse of the biologist beside him. His head hung low, gaze unfocused. He was ashamed to be here.
They flashed passes at the door of the skybridge and entered into a brief respite from the deafening music. He could hear himself think again over the rhythm, hear the soft thump of their feet on the thinly carpeted walkway.
He stopped and threw out a hand to stop Colbeck. “Something’s changed. Shh. Listen. Do you hear that?”
Whoops and heckles were popping off, grating against the orchestra’s impeccable build of trance-like rhythm.
Bennett stepped up to the plexiglass, craning his head to see the stadium seating on the north and eastern sides. “Do you see that?” He tapped the glass urgently. “Look! There.”
Colbeck stepped closer, tried to line up his gaze with the journalist, whose finger pressed over the eastern deck that jutted out slightly over the pool and shaded the edge of the reverse-falls.
“Someone’s on the railing,” Colbeck gasped.
A spindly figure balanced on the rail, stripped down to white boxers.
“They’re gonna jump,” said Bennett.
He rushed back down the bridge, no longer concerned with the scientist’s fate, hearing a meek, “What are you going to do, Stillman? I’ll—I’ll call the police,” as the skybridge door slid behind him.
Community Welfare Officers were few and far between at the Loop. Usually, there was no real trouble—nothing security guards couldn’t handle. Even if they got there faster, Bennett knew Welfare Officers weren’t well trained in de-escalation.
His bionic leg whined as he charged across the walkway behind the stands, shoving through bystanders slow to move. He tried to keep his good eye on the wavering human silhouette, but he was still more than a hundred yards away.
The man crouched, arms stretched beside him, gripping the rail tightly, each of his ribs visible around a sunken belly. He looked down sixty feet into the developing whirlpool, over the gracefully angled reverse-falls.
Grins, cackles, air punches—the spectators in the stand directly behind were goading him.
“Aw, throw him in! Just push him over!” bellowed a heavy-set man in the back.
“What are you waiting for? Second Life ain’t gonna wait for ya, darlin’,” chimed a woman, now cast in deep shadow by the reverse-falls’ grand arch that towered to the left of the stand.
“Now’s your chance! Blink or sink, buddy! You gotta hitchhike that shit!” said another man, leaning forward in his seat in the front row.
As Bennett closed the distance along the southern ridge, a new chant rose from all the stands with a clear view: “Blink or sink! Blink or sink!”
Oh, sick, cursed Bennett inwardly. This half-naked man was timing his dive to hit the water just as the canoe carrying Sylvie down the stream dropped off the waterfall into the Body, where the transliminal energy of the absentis liminalis would make her—and most of the alien creatures—disappear.
No one had ever tried this, as far as Bennett knew. But if the jump succeeded, the man would secure a free ride to the Second Life.
“STOP! DON’T DO IT!” Bennett screamed as loud as he could as he barreled around the bend. “DON’T JUMP!”
His false eye was closest to the edge of the stands, so he didn’t see the aircar swoop over the chaos and land on the roof at the back of the nosebleeds with a tooth-aching creak.
Bennett whirled toward it as the wind threatened to rip his hat off.
A muscular man popped out of the Saturn, launching off the wing to thunder against the roof on all fours.
“I’ll take the other side!” shouted Eli before sliding down the roof on his thigh and landing in a crouch on one of the shallow steps between stands.
Startled by the sudden commotion, the undressed jumper nearly lost his balance. He white-knuckled the railing, arms quivering. His sallow face sobered as the music’s tempo crescendoed, and he gazed, transfixed, into the whirlpool below. Only seconds left.
Bennett squeezed past the front row, batting away arms, while Eli climbed forcefully over fanatics who tried to bar him from reaching the jumper.
The skinny man’s skin was tinged yellow, and his face was puffy despite his lack of fat. Bennett’s guess: liver failure, no funds for a loop, hopelessly far down the waiting list for a synthetic transplant.
The poor man muttered to himself as he stared at the water, but over the chaos Bennett couldn’t hear the words.
There was no time to talk him down.
Eli nodded knowingly to Bennett as they closed in. One, two, three, Eli mouthed, miming a hug so Bennett knew to grab him around the waist.
Three.
Bennett lunged into the last few protestors like a running back with the football, but Eli got there first, leaning over the railing with his big right arm to push the man backward.
Bennett grabbed an arm with both hands—it was all he could take hold of across the bodies partially blocking him. He yanked, but the man was stronger than he’d anticipated, instantly provoked to rage. His spine sprang back into an arch as he ripped Eli’s arms away, roaring insanely.
Bennett caught the man’s wrist as he flailed, but the prospective hitchhiker was oblivious to encumbrance now.
He jumped.
Bennett felt his legs lurch off the deck as the crowd behind him gasped. His torso thudded onto the round railing, his head hanging down over the maelstrom, the thin yellow man swinging by the wrist. His hat dropped thirty feet into the swirling current.
His press tag dangled precariously from the base of his skull. His legs clambered for purchase, for leverage. He was slipping. They were both going in—into the unknown, into the consuming Body. He wouldn’t fulfill his mission. His daughter would never know.
The jumper swung up his other hand to claw at his grip with untrimmed fingernails, trying to break free. Bennett yelped as the gashes welled with blood.
“I see it, I see my master,” the jumper cried. “He’s taking me home.”
Just let go, Bennett thought as his abdomen slipped further over the railing, as the cool mist from the water hit his face and the roar of the whirlpool drowned out the chants from above. Let go of him, it’s okay. You have to live. He doesn’t want to.
Despite his own ambivalence about the Loop, his aching fingers clung.
This was someone’s son. Maybe someone’s father. Maybe someone was fighting for him like he was fighting for Charlotte.
The man wasn’t even in his right mind. He could hold on another second...
Bennett felt strong arms wrap around his hips like a vice and yank backward. Eli’s powerful legs pushed back against the railing, heaving two men against gravity as the mob heckled from behind.
Bennett’s shoes touched the deck again. Eli reached around him to grab the jumper under his shoulders, finally toppling them all to the floor.
Bennett scrambled away as the foiled jumper, struggling prone under Eli’s knee, let out a long, rattling scream at the arch above them.
It was done.
But the spectators—filled with a level of bloodlust Bennett had never witnessed firsthand—were still chanting, “blink or sink.”
On one of the jumbotrons, the hand-carved canoe floated overturned in the choppy water. On the other, a camera approximating the perspective from Viewing Room Two showed the carnage of a few creature bodies tumbling in a violent blur, streaking gray-blue blood into the rushing water.
The ones that didn’t disappear themselves had given their lives so Sylvie’s entire organic form could vanish.
The process had worked, like always. The long white cloak the musical artist had worn flew past the screen. In the corner of the view, something dark and floppy—his hat—also whisked by.
“It’s over!” Eli screamed at the mob. He held the jumper’s arms tightly behind his back like a cop. “It’s done, you little demons! You wanna be charged with murder for inciting this? Get back!”
Bennett sat against the railing, catching his breath, conscious of his press tag. It had begun to draw eyes as the chant finally broke up.
A drone hovered above, its lens pointed in his direction. He shut his eyes, trying not to betray any emotion, to give them a good shot for the inevitable breaking story.
The sullenness of unfulfilled desires overcame the little mob. Slowly, they picked up their things and shuffled off to the nearest exits, muttering and cursing as they went.
Eli shot poison glares at the men who’d fought the hardest to prevent the rescue, until he resolved they weren’t a threat anymore.
The attempted jumper had fallen silent. He’d stopped resisting when the ceremonial drumbeats ceased.
Eli released him and stepped away. The sallow man spoke.
“I would have done it. I don’t regret it. I would have gone in.” His voice crackled weakly in contrast to the spirit of his words.
For all the danger, his breath was slow and rhythmic. He must have taken something—a sedative or a hallucinogen, or both—not long before. Maybe a black-market version of the cocktail given to scheduled loopers. A stronger dose, probably.
Though he stared defiantly at his rescuers, the light had already left his eyes.
Bennett realized with a dull shudder that he’d seen that haunting look before. A topic for another time. He needed to go home. He needed to see Charlotte.
Already, the dive team of six was donning masks, preparing to enter the decelerated current from their platform on a lower deck.
Three would retrieve the precious bionic parts left behind by Sylvie, to be recycled and used in some other ailing body. The other three had the unpleasant job of cleaning up the larger remains of the creatures before they disintegrated into mush that could clog the great pool’s filters.
“The water snake. He wanted me to come,” said the jumper, eyes glassy as he stared toward the sloshing water of the Body.
Bennett peered down into the pool and thought of his daughter as the neon green-suited divers shimmered and shrank beneath the waves.
If she wanted this, when her time came, would he consent? Would he watch her eyes grow wide as she fell alone into the Body, into the coil of some great serpent?
Nobody knew what the loopers saw. Maybe it was a nightmare, and they all regretted their choice. Maybe it was truly beautiful—the cleanest way off this broken plane of existence, just like New Dimension Resources promised.
Either way, he had to succeed, so Charlotte wouldn’t have to make that decision until long after he made it for himself.
Bennett felt Eli’s heavy arm around his shoulders as he congratulated him on his bravery, saying he made the right call to abandon Colbeck for this man’s sake.
The journalist muttered agreement and rubbed his good eye, fatigued and disoriented by the sudden shift in horizons.
Any more brazen anti-Loop escapades would work in Bennett’s favor, he figured, as long as he survived to write about it.
Dangling above the Body while gripping a deranged man by the wrist…He wiped the blood from his hand on his trousers. Well, he was fairly certain nothing would be as dangerous as that.
……
Find Chapter 4 here.
If you’d like to read the rest of Liminal Wake, it is currently available in all formats (including audio!) on Amazon.
Again, the second book of the duology, Oblivion’s Reach, will be out next month. I’m stoked about it—it’s full of action and tension and revelation and deep mythic layers. I hope you stick around for it.