A Ghost for a Clue Read online

  “Sure. I can walk you through the steps on how to block it on your device—”

  “Sorry, but the number didn’t register on my iHub. A glitch of some kind.”

  “No problem,” said the chap who sounded remarkably cheery despite the ghoulish hour. “Could you tell me the exact time you received the call?”

  “Hang on,” I said and clicked on my iHub to check the phone log. “It came at 3:03 a.m.”

  A few seconds ticked by. “I’m very sorry, but it seems that glitch wasn’t on your device. It may have been . . . from the caller’s end? Our records show you did receive a call at that time, but there’s no data available as to its origin.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s untraceable, so I’m afraid I can’t do anything at the moment to block it.”

  Bloody what? “Is it . . . How do you explain it then?”

  “I’m sorry, but—not knowing any other details—I can’t.”

  4

  Some Technological Mishap

  The black screen of my computer monitor was filled with coding for advanced robotics, but none of it registered. Scanning through the stream of multi-colored commands at least gave the appearance I was working. The image of two white envelopes, side-by-side, filled my mind, and I’d given myself this entire day to choose between them. One contained a dream. The other a nightmare. But it was hard to tell which was which.

  Sienna, with her shock of green hair and all-black garb, began to tap away on her keyboard from two seats away. My computer stared at me, waiting for me to follow her lead, but the mood of the daily grind failed to grip me—especially with the eerie vibe I was getting from the empty chair next to me.

  Instead of going for the computer keyboard, my fingers dawdled over my iHub.

  That phone call from Franco must have been some technical mishap. A signal relaying switch of a glitch that had caused some crazy fluke of a digital delay. Or it could have been my iHub. I stared at the wristband technology, which combined an Apple watch, an iPhone, and a miniaturized foldout monitor of the MacBook. It was an ambitious hunk of a runt still bound to have bugs. Those were the only explanations I could think of. Logical ones, at least.

  I rechecked the iHub’s log but found no new or delayed or unseen notification that could also help explain the glitch. I shook my head and tried to focus on the work I was ignoring, right when Sienna let out a little laugh. “Franco is such a funny guy, Bram.” She sat smiling at her computer screen.

  “Was, Sienna.”

  “What?” She turned to me with misty eyes.

  “He was a funny guy.”

  She shook her head. “But I’m chatting with him right now.”

  “Say again?” Did she have some other friend named Franco I didn’t know about?

  Her face grew taut, seemingly suddenly guarded. “Didn’t you get a . . . note or something?”

  A tiny jolt crawled up my scalp. “What note?”

  “Nothing. I was just going through our old chats.” She turned away, quickly changing her computer display with a click of her mouse.

  I narrowed my eyes. So what was that about? I waited for her to say something more, but she kept her eyes riveted to the screen, her hand on her mouse, as if looking my way again was bound to be a big mistake. Should I tell her I got a phone call?

  “Sienna, is everything all right?”

  She turned to me with a crinkle on her brow. “Yes, I’m fine. What about you? Are you doing okay?” She wiped a tear away, her fingernails a vivid green that matched her hair.

  “Still getting over the shock myself.” I cracked my knuckles as I figured out how to explain what happened. “Listen, I did get . . . something. But . . . I don’t know.” I glanced uneasily at Franco’s chair between us. “I think I got a call.”

  Her eyes grew wide. “From Franco?”

  It took some effort to nod. “Early this morning.”

  “Are you serious?”

  I swallowed in response.

  “Oh, my god.” Her voice quivered. “How did you feel . . . hearing his voice?”

  “I don’t know.” I raked a hand over my scalp. “Shocked. Confused.” Probably the same way I felt now.

  “Gosh, I can’t imagine.” A tear fell down her cheek. “I’ve never gotten one.”

  “Gotten what?”

  “A VN call.”

  “VN?”

  “Virtual Nexus.” She looked at me like some long-lost-friend who assumed I recognized her.

  I shrugged, completely clueless.

  “It’s an app that creates an afterlife surrogate so that—” Her mouth hung open for a second, and in that suspended moment, I saw the subtle shift from amazement to amusement in her eyes. “Oh, my god. Let me get this straight. You don’t know about VN? So you thought the call was . . . real?” She laughed, I think harder than she should’ve, bringing fresh tears of a different kind to her eyes.

  I scowled, wishing so hard I could give some clever excuse, but my tongue stayed paralyzed.

  “Face it, Bram. You’ve been punked from beyond the grave.” She snorted. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t help picturing how you must’ve . . . Oh, my god.” She burst out laughing again and tried plugging up her tear ducts with her fingertips until she could collect herself. “Oh, I will so miss his sense of humor.” She turned to Franco’s empty chair with a fond smile for someone no longer there.

  Something acrid rose up my throat. It was probably what people called the bitter truth: This was Franco’s version of goodbye. His idea of a last laugh together. I almost teared up myself. “I can’t believe he thought I’d find this funny.”

  “You know Franco. He’s allergic to sadness.”

  “So you were in on the joke all along.” I sighed like a deflating balloon.

  “No. I just got an email and clicked on the link. That’s how I ended up in his VN chatroom. Remember the note I asked about? I thought you didn’t get one, and I didn’t want you to feel bad if you didn’t. Turns out, he actually considered you special enough for a call. That costs extra.”

  I grunted. “Sounds like Virtual Nonsense to me.”

  Her expression quickly softened to that of a friend who actually seemed like she cared. “Hey, don’t be a poor sport. Franco did it because he likes you.”

  “Liked,” I corrected, then swiveled my seat to continue the conversation with someone who never considered anyone’s ignorance funny—Google—who, when asked to define VN, coughed up 556,000 results in 0.03 seconds. Virtual Nexus, it explained, was a proprietary online service that enabled people to chat with a digital proxy of someone who had died, put together from an authorized archive of data the person had provided and accumulated like email, texts, social media posts, and chats.

  But that didn’t explain the other “phantom call” I’d gotten. I could have sworn I’d woken up to the sound of the phone ringing, and yet the logs showed I’d only received one call last night. What kind of tech did VN have that masked calls just to freak people out? And how could that be legal?

  I checked my inbox and found a message from Virtual Nexus. I was about to click on it when—

  “Carpe diem, bro,” Sienna said.

  I winced. “Stop it, Sienna. The joke’s on me. Now drop it.”

  “What are you talking about?” She gestured at her monitor. “I just asked Franco if he had any last words for you, and that’s his answer.”

  I shrugged it aside. “It’s the same message he sent over the phone.”

  “You know why he said that, right?”

  “It’s an app, Sienna. It’s not him.”

  “It’s your many failed attempts to get into the Astronaut Candidate Program.”

  Oh, Jesus.

  “I’m only saying this because I think it’s what’s best for you. Look . . .” She got up, grabbed her coffee mug, and thumped it down on my desk. “It’s a matter of looking at your glass as half full instead of half empty. You’re working at NASA. What does that even me
an to you?”

  I glanced at her mug. It was half empty.

  Folding my arms, I leaned back and concluded she was the likeliest suspect to have talked to Dave about me making a fool of myself in Houston.

  “Franco’s message was for you to seize the day. Live for the here and now.” She leaned closer. “So why don’t you join me and the guys later? Let’s toast to new beginnings, instead of sitting and waiting for the impossible to happen.”

  My gaze darted to my own coffee mug and found it empty. I could never raise a toast to giving up on a dream.

  “No,” I said, easing my computer chair backward. “I’m not here to sit and wait. I’m filing for a leave of absence.”

  Sienna straightened up. “You’re going on leave? How long?”

  I took a breath and committed to the decision. “Sixty days.”

  5

  The Power Of Nostalgia

  I wasn’t a betting man, yet here I was, placing all my chips on the slimmest of hopes. I’d flown over two thousand miles to gamble the next two months of my life in the place I used to call home.

  I got myself a fresh haircut and a clean shave, changed my shirt three times, stared at myself in the mirror, slipped on a dark blazer, and told myself this was as good as it could get. Hoping the power of nostalgia could up my chances, I headed for the old-Hollywood inspired restaurant she and I had considered our favorite when we were kids. The place had the same cream-colored walls, same arched alcoves decorated with blockbuster posters, and a movie soundtrack playing softly over the speakers. It did have one major addition: Robotic waiters that looked like nothing more than digital placards on wheels. Far cry from state-of-the-art, but that was fine, considering I planned to remind her of our past.

  I chose a cozy corner table with a semi-circular banquette seat and a vintage poster of Shrek hanging right next to it. I can’t believe I got sixty days off! Even though all I needed were sixty seconds. I simply had to say, “Hey, there. How would you like to leave all your Earthly joys, plans, and ambitions and travel with me to some distant planet—and probably die before we get there?”

  The room suddenly felt warm, and I slipped out of my jacket. I was early. And anxious. Hoping to carpe in one diem the shreds of a relationship tattered by time and distance.

  Diddit’s way of bolstering my hopes had been to provide me with stats. “There have been approximately 450 hours of voice calls and 190 hours of holocalls between you and Torula in the past ten years.” So all in all, he concluded, our friendship was solid and secure.

  I sighed over that conclusion. Friendship. Yeah.

  Somehow, I knew she’d arrived before I turned to look. She walked in wearing a dark jacket over low-rider jeans and boots. Clad in drab brown and black, she still sparkled. Some chaps glanced at her discreetly as she walked by, and I tried to ease my nerves by combing my hair with my fingers.

  “It’s great to see you,” Torula said. Her dark eyes, with their tinge of blue-violet, were far more penetrating in person; I had to catch my breath.

  “Hey, Spore,” I said, calling her by the nickname I’d given her—a nickname only I ever got to call her. I wanted to reach out and hug her, but she had her hand on the strap of her shoulder bag across her torso. It read like a “Keep Distance” sign. I leaned in to buss her on the cheek just as she turned her head in the same direction, and we almost touched lips.

  She laughed. So did I. She looked as nervous as I was.

  I sat down to cover up my unease, then realized she was still standing, getting out of her coat. I shot back up and moved behind her to take her jacket. Her subtle fragrance brought to mind a pastel sunrise with a cooling, soothing mist. Before I knew it, the coat had slipped through my fingers, falling to the floor. “Sorry,” I said, picking it up and giving it a hearty shake as she sat down.

  After that fumbling-fool of a hello, I laid her jacket down next to mine and slid into our semi-circular nook, taking a deep breath and swabbing a hand over my mouth. If I had intended to remind her of how things used to be, then that was the only way our greeting could have gone. She had once said we were a couple of social klutzes, lucky to have found each other in the same school. I had eagerly agreed, willing to accept anything that meant there was something that we shared.

  She tilted her head as she looked at me with a subtle smile. Her black hair—which, like her almond eyes, hinted at her father’s Asian descent—fell in a provocative swirl down one side. “I can’t believe you’re really here,” she said.

  “It’s about time, I know. You look great.”

  She shrugged. “This is just me. Every day.”

  “Exactly.”

  She flicked a lock of hair off her forehead and averted her gaze—a tell of a gesture that let me know when she was uneasy. It was probably best to skip the next flattering statement then. This was the girl who, when chosen to play Sleeping Beauty back in middle school, had insisted on being a stagehand. Otherwise, I would’ve demanded to be the prince. It could’ve ended up an unforgettable match: The school’s prettiest tomboy with that year’s tallest dork.

  I sat back and watched her. She seemed oblivious—her elbows on the table, hands clasped as she glanced around.

  “I’m not!” she said, looking at me suddenly.

  “Not what?” I asked baffled.

  “Ignoring you.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  She gestured with one hand. “I missed this place. I was just being nostalgic for a few seconds, not the least bit ignoring you.”

  “Like I said, I didn’t say anything.” I leaned back into my seat and wondered what it was she’d heard.

  Slowly, Torula turned to look at the table next to ours. I followed her gaze towards a senior couple who sat munching their dinner—eyes fixed on their plates, faces on the verge of scowling, both ignoring the other.

  Did she mistake the old man’s voice for mine? I winced inwardly and cleared my throat.

  She leaned closer and whispered, “Promise me we won’t end up like that.”

  I froze for a second. Did she mean not to end up a grumpy old pair? Or ignoring each other? Or both?

  “I promise . . . never to order food that I’ll enjoy more than your company,” I said.

  She laughed, and that eased up the tightness in my chest.

  “So what brings you here,” she asked, her eyes still sparkling with amusement, “so far away from work?”

  “Not that far away, really. I’m working on something offsite.” Talking about Project Husserl—the assignment Dave had given me to work on remotely—could get her thinking about space travel. “They want to improve on a system for incapacitated astronauts to activate medic robots in case the automatic switches failed. The triggering mechanism being considered is voice control, but given the cacophony of an emergency . . .” Bugger. Project Husserl was all about survival and danger. What I needed was her thinking of the awesomeness of outer space. “Well, I guess that’s a poor choice of topic.”

  “No, it’s great, really. I find it a defying.”

  “Uhm, defying what?”

  She chuckled.

  “No.” I scratched my forehead. “I really didn’t get what you said.” It was conversations with her, like this, back in grade school, that had gotten me out of YouTube and into reading.

  “Oh! It’s edifying. I get exposed to a whole new world just listening to you talk about what you do. It’s . . . transporting.”

  I smiled and pictured ISEA doing exactly that to me—with her—on Pangaea. Where we would grow old together. As a couple. And never ignore each other.

  A robotic waiter approached the table, hi-definition images of their bestselling dishes serving as its face. “Hi, there! Ready to order?” it said in the default, friendly female voice many midrange restaurants across America selected.

  “No. Just give us a minute.” I blindly browsed through the menu. Here I was, on a dinner date, in no mood to eat, and lost over what to say. Jesus. If Dave s
aw me now, he’d facepalm over my not having rehearsed a thing.

  “Will you be in town for long?” Torula asked, pressing a button on the waiter, telling it how much time we needed before it should come back.

  “Uh, yeah.” If only I had a button Torula could press telling me how much time I needed to ask what I’d come here to ask. “Long enough, I guess.”

  “For what?”

  Simple question. Hard to answer. “I’m here to . . . consider an offer.”

  Her lips parted in surprise. “So you’re checking it out? Here? Is it at Ames?”

  “No, it’s not . . . here.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Not here in California? Or not here in the States?”

  Shite. I can’t just jump into it like this. Dr. Grant had said something about persuasion. Get to the big “yes” through baby steps. I guess that meant I shouldn’t let it all out tonight.

  Her iHub began beeping, and she glanced at the caller ID. “Oh, no. I’m sorry, I have to take this.”

  “No worries.”

  She clicked on her wristband and spoke in a low tone into it.

  Well, that was a welcome interruption. I needed to backpedal this conversation before it got too close to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere.

  She glanced my way with an apologetic smile, and I concluded that long-distance holocalls—3D-like as they were—had never managed to cast her eyes in full, vivid color. When we were kids, she had picked apart her features and declared them all “unspectacular.” I’d told her purple eyes definitely qualified as spectacular, but she dismissed it as an abnormality. A rare mutation she couldn’t even pass on to her “progeny,” which was her way of saying kids.

  “Sorry about that,” she said, ending her call. “It was Mom.”

  Oh, gawd. I winced, suspecting something was up. “Did you tell her you were meeting me tonight?”

  “No. I just said you were back in town.”

  I nodded, having a good idea what was going on. Her mother was no supporter of monogamy and had raised her four children, fathered by four different men, all on her own. And here I was, no doubt, in her opinion, a mistake her daughter was about to make.