Seizure Page 3

  She tapped her pen against her teeth. "It is kind of odd, but I don't know anything about epilepsy, so I dunno what's normal. If I were you, I wouldn't worry about it. Just wait and see what the cops come up with."

  Kent put aside the chips and soda and got to his feet, leaving the rickety chair to creak in his wake. "Thanks, Jan. I'll pass that along to Adrian."

  "No problem." Janet smiled. "Drop by anytime. Again, I'm really sorry, Kent. If there's anything I can do, just let me know."

  "Thanks, Jan. I appreciate your help."

  Kent left her to her computers.

  * * *

  Cigarette smoke drifted across the First-and-Ten Bar and Grill like ghosts, silently observing the excited crowds filling the room. When Kent walked in, groups of men in football jerseys cheered at a TV set playing the New York Giants game.

  Wayne already sat at a corner table, chewing a handful of beer nuts. When Kent arrived, Wayne shifted to give him room to sit down.

  "How'd your day go?" Wayne asked.

  "Good," Kent said. "I think the TeleTech report'll be ready by next week."

  "That's great. Beer?"

  Kent looked up at a waitress standing by the table, pad in hand. He blinked, startled, and said, "Oh, uh, yeah. Heineken."

  The waitress wrote it down, then walked away.

  Kent took a handful of beer nuts. "I didn't even notice her standing there."

  Wayne grinned. "That could be your problem."

  Kent picked almonds out of the beer nuts in his hand, but stopped to look at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Nothing," Wayne said.

  Kent glared at him, but couldn't penetrate Wayne's persistent grin. He let it go, dropping the almonds back into the nut bowl.

  "So how's the band?" Kent asked.

  "Not bad," Wayne said. "Our drummer, Davis, has the flu, but Cash Flow should be ready for the Takeshimori dinner."

  Kent nodded. Wayne's band, Cash Flow, performed at all of Gaines' functions, as well as various dinners to celebrate new clients.

  "But I'm not here to talk about me," Wayne said. "The trial ended last week, didn't it?"

  Kent was relieved when the waitress brought him his beer. Drinking a third of the glass gave him time to calm down. Wayne was referring to the trial of David Unger, the man who had hit and killed his wife.

  Kent finally said, "Yeah."

  "What was the verdict?"

  "Guilty of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of Driving While Intoxicated, and one of leaving the scene of a fatal accident. He'll be sentenced next week, but everyone expects him to spend a long time in the slammer."

  Wayne clapped him on the back. "Well, that's great, huh?"

  "I guess." Kent took another gulp of beer that froze a path down his throat into his stomach. He wasn’t convinced.

  Wayne picked up on his tone. "You don't seem too thrilled about it. I thought seeing Sharon's killer get put away would make you happy."

  "I thought so, too," Kent said. "But during the trial, I had to listen to the whole thing all over again. Had to watch photos of my wife lying in the street, surrounded by blood...had to give testimony that brought back even the most minute details. It was like living her death all over again. And now that it's over, I don't think it made any difference. I got justice, but it doesn't matter. Sharon's dead, and Unger spending ten or fifteen or a hundred years in prison isn't going to bring her back or give my son a normal childhood."

  "Well, you shouldn't expect it to."

  Kent looked up at a lamp hanging over the table, shaded by a skirt of colorful stained glass. Dust swirled and drifted in the beam cast over him, a miniature snowstorm.

  "That's the problem, Wayne," Kent said. "I did. When the cops failed me, I ran all over the country to track down anybody who had anything to do with the scene of the accident. I used up all my vacation time to catch the scumbag who killed my wife. And I thought that, somehow, getting the guy would make things better, that it would bring Sharon's death to a close, but nothing's changed. I still watch TV and find myself turning to Sharon to make some joke about the actor. I still can't get close to my only son. And I still can't look at Sharon's picture without crying."

  Kent looked up at Wayne. "It's not like I lost my wife. It's like I lost my connection to everyone and everything. It's like I've died. And I can't bring myself back to life."

  Kent looked down into his beer, at spirals of foam that turned gracefully on the surface of the drink. He wasn't thirsty anymore. Kent put down the mug, letting beer slosh out onto the plastic tablecloth.

  Wayne spoke. "I can't say I know what it's like, buddy, 'cause I don't. But it's been three years. Are you seeing anyone?"

  Kent looked up at him. "What do you mean?"

  "You know, a woman. What about that computer gal, Janet Bourne?"

  Kent shook his head. "She's just a friend. Besides, she's too young for me."

  Wayne let out a quick laugh. "Oh, come on, quit exaggerating. You're only thirty-four. It's a ten-year difference."

  "Well, that's a big enough gap for me. Besides, she's not my type. She's too young, too wild, too disorderly. Anyway, I don't want to find anyone else. I'm happy just being by myself." He tried to make it sound genuine.

  "No you're not. You said so yourself. You're dying inside and you know it. It's not healthy, Kent. Sharon's gone. She would've wanted you to move on with your life."

  Kent stared at him with a growing sense of horror at his words. "I can't believe you're saying this to me. You want me to find someone else? Replace Sharon, like I'd replace a fuse in my fuse box?"

  "You wouldn't be replacing her," Wayne said. "You'd just be moving on. There's no reason for you to be lonely."

  "Have you ever considered that I might like being lonely? That I like the way I am? That I loved Sharon with every cell in my body, and that I'm realistic enough to know that I'm never going to find anyone even close to her again?"

  Wayne held up his hands as he turned back to his drink. "Okay, okay. Fine. You're right. Forget I said anything. I was just trying to help."

  "Well, I don't need your help. I'm a grown man. I can take care of my life."

  Wayne glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. "Can you, Kent? Can you honestly say you're handling this well?"

  "Yes. It's been three years. I haven't killed myself yet."

  "Is that the only criteria you have for not handling it well? Suicide? I mean, there's other problems besides suicide. I knew you before Sharon died. You were driven, but you were never like this. You never go out anymore. You never do anything except work, eat, and sleep. I'm just worried about you, that's all."

  "I appreciate that, Wayne, I really do. But I'm handling it, really I am."

  "Well, I'm glad. Just take it easy, okay?"

  Kent stood up, just wanting the conversation to end. He fumbled a twenty-dollar bill out of his wallet, and dropped it onto the table. "I'm sorry, I'm feeling a little tired. I gotta go. Thanks for the drink, Wayne. And thanks for the company. See you tomorrow."

  Kent didn’t wait for a reply. He strode out of the bar, shoving past drunken sports fans, out into the cool November air. Kent leaned against a streetlamp, the icy metal freezing his cheek as a stiff breeze chilled his exposed skin.

  When he had composed himself, Kent flagged down a taxicab. On the drive home, Kent thought about what Wayne had said.

  He thought Kent wasn't handling Sharon's death, but he was obviously wrong. There were some problems, but overall, things were going well. Every day, he got a little bit stronger.

  Or did he? Kent watched the lights of a passing car flare in the rear-view mirror, like a sun burning itself out in the night sky. He wondered if he really was handling Sharon's death. It was true, he worked a lot more and longer than he used to, but that was only by choice. Work was good for him. It kept him busy, active, and built up his confidence. There was nothing wrong with that.

  Kent gripped his briefcase tighter. Wayne was wr
ong. That's all there was to it. He only saw Kent's outside, not his inside, his mind, where he was coping. Kent was just fine, and didn't need anyone telling him otherwise.

  As for Janet, he had to admit to being attracted to her, but he couldn't bring himself to take things any further. They were friends, and he didn't want to mess that up if she didn't feel the same way. More importantly, his attraction to Janet felt like a betrayal to his wife's memory.

  He arrived at his house an hour later. It was almost ten o'clock in the evening. The moon was incomplete, a sliver glowing among the stars that were gradually disappearing under a sheet of clouds.

  The lights glowed in the living room when Kent walked in. He hung up his coat by the door, and walked up the stairs to the bedrooms, the wooden stairs groaning beneath him.

  Troy's door was closed, but not locked. Kent knocked tentatively and waited. When he got no reply, he cautiously pushed open the door to look inside.

  Troy sat in front of his computer, as he usually did. Kent had bought Troy the computer in the hopes that it would boost his spirits. It had only made things worse. Troy used the computer as an escape from reality. He spent all his time playing computer games and surfing the Web. Kent had supported it, thinking it a harmless diversion, but discovered that Troy used chatrooms as an excuse to avoid any social contact whatsoever.

  Even now, Troy's hands danced over the keyboard and mouse mounted on his desk. His lips curled up in a snarl as he glared at the computer screen, which roared with digitized sounds of dogs barking.

  On the screen, a three-dimensional computer graphic of a rocky landscape faced Troy, while a hideous monster growled and lunged towards him. Its massive paw swept at the screen, extending jagged claws that turned the screen red every time it connected. Troy controlled a pair of hands on the screen that operated a bow and arrow, feverishly shooting arrows at the monster trying to destroy him.

  Kent walked into the shadows of the unlit room, taking a position beside his son in the flickering light of the monitor. He watched the battle rage until the monster gave out a strangled cry before collapsing to the dead earth. Troy flashed a lopsided grin as he moved the mouse forward, and the image on the screen did likewise, moving him into a dank, gray cave. Torches flickered on the walls as a hollow crackle echoed from the computer's speakers.

  Kent waited for Troy to acknowledge his presence. When he didn't, Kent asked, "Whatcha playing?"

  Troy stiffened briefly, then muttered, "Odyssey."

  Kent nodded. Even he knew that game, the most popular computer game on the market. From what he understood, the game revolved around ancient Greek mythology. The player became Ulysses, a character from the classic collection of Greek myths, The Odysseus, fighting a series of monsters and obstacles.

  Kent had never understood the fascination gamers had with Odyssey. Now Kent got an inkling of the enthusiasm. The graphics looked incredibly realistic. In the darkness, Kent felt like the glowing screen replaced his eyes, as if the cave Troy moved through was there in the room with them.

  Kent waited to see if Troy would say anything more. When the boy engaged himself in battling a hissing woman with snakes instead of hair, Kent decided it was a lost cause. He closed the door behind him as he left, the lock's muted click saying what Kent could not.

  As he changed into his pajamas, he reflected on his wife's death. His son was a stranger to him. One of his best friends was dead, and another was telling him he was crazy. The only constant in his life was his work. That never let him down.

  He lay in bed, trying to sleep, when he realized that Victor Morgan was dead. He was gone. He was never coming back. It shocked Kent how suddenly the thought hit him, and how much it seemed to surprise him. It hadn't fully sunk in until that moment. Only a few hours before the day of his well-deserved retirement, Victor Morgan, Kent's best friend and mentor for years, was gone.

  Victor had been one of the few people Kent considered a friend. The two had met during Kent's two-week training course as an associate consultant for Gaines, where Victor Morgan was the supervisor for Kent's group. After the course, Victor and Kent continued to spend time with each other at Gaines. They found themselves being assigned to cases together, and Victor became a father figure to Kent. When Sharon died, Victor was one of the few who stayed with Kent through the hard times. As Kent rose up from associate consultant to consultant-in-training, then finally consultant, Victor was with him every step of the way.

  But all that was gone. Kent would never see Victor's grinning face, his booming laughter, or his dazzling business savvy again.

  Bars of light fell from the window onto Sharon's side of the bed. Kent had tried to get used to sleeping on both sides of the bed, but he could still feel Sharon's body on her side. If he tried hard enough, if he squeezed his eyes shut tight enough, sometimes he could almost believe she was still there with him. Kent tried that again tonight. He tried to wish himself back to a simpler time when his world was whole again.

  It didn't work. Kent wondered if it would ever work again.

  3.

  AS PLUTO, he was hated by millions around the world. But as Roland Weaver, he was loved and respected by many more.

  At almost ten o'clock in Los Angeles, a meeting in the heart of the Vulcan Corporation wound down. Roland sat at the head of the table, listening to the discussion crisscrossing the room.

  "I don't know," one of the reps from marketing said. "We're having a hard time positioning Lightning 6.0. Focus groups are saying they're not impressed. The problem is that Lightning has been around for decades, since Vulcan's origins, and it's always run a distant fourth in computer operating systems. It's been a failure for decades, and nobody thinks this new one will be any different."

  One of the programmers said, "But that's your problem. You need to point out that Lightning was originally designed for the Nomad computer system, which was supposed to overrun both IBM and Apple Computers in popularity. When Nomad failed, so did Lightning. The OS never got the chance. This time, Vulcan is ready. This new version of Lightning for the PC was created for the purpose of crushing the stranglehold Microsoft has on the computer industry. And it will."

  Roland watched his employees with a cautious eye. They all wore jeans and T-shirts. Roland wore a black suit and tie. Roland hated disorder, but had to admit a lax environment was important for creativity. Roland insisted on maintaining rigid standards for himself.

  At exactly ten o'clock, Roland held up his hand. Everyone at the table recognized the sign and immediately fell silent.

  Roland treated them all to a broad smile. "That's enough for tonight. We'll start again in the morning. Good job, everybody."

  The programmers grinned as they left the room, whispering and laughing among themselves.

  Roland waited until they left before allowing his face to relax into a dead expression. He didn't like to smile or frown. In fact, he hated wearing any expression at all. He always felt happiest when he was alone, where he could let his face relax into its natural state. Purely and simply blank.

  Roland reached under the table to pick up his gun. The 9mm Beretta semi-automatic pistol fit snugly on a shelf mounted under the table. Feeling its cool metal against his palm soothed him. He always felt safe with his gun nearby, and kept it handy at all times. The world was too corrupt to go without it. Roland tucked the gun into the holster strapped around his ribs, buttoned his coat, then walked out of the Vulcan boardroom.

  His secretary approached from her desk. "These contracts have to be signed by tomorrow morning, Mister Weaver."

  "Thank you, Jenny," Roland said. "I'll go over them tonight, and have them back to you tomorrow morning."

  "Yes, sir," she replied, hurrying away again. She had learned quickly that Roland Weaver did not engage in idle chitchat. This pleased him.

  Roland walked across the sixth floor of the Vulcan Corporation complex. He passed a window, and glanced out for a moment to take it all in.

  Even at night the compl
ex was beautiful. It had been constructed in the shape of a large "Y", each branch dealing with a separate aspect of the company. One branch handled software, the other hardware, and the other handled the more mundane aspects of the company like marketing and PR.

  It lay at the heart of a sprawling lawn on which Vulcan employees worked and played. Even now, a group of his programmers gathered near the brightly lit main square, enjoying a free concert by a rock band hired by the company. Roland listened for a moment, and moved on.

  Roland crossed the floor to his personal elevator. He lived in a luxury apartment on the roof of the center of the complex. It was part of a policy he had adopted in the early days of his company, when he would sleep on the floor of the garage where he built the first Vulcan PC. Roland loved to be near computers. He could almost feel the electrical fields generated by the millions of computers on the complex. It felt like plugging himself into an enormous battery.

  Two burly guards stood on either side of the elevator. They saluted him as he passed, and he responded in kind. After sliding his pass card through a slot, the elevator doors opened. When he was inside, the doors closed again and the car immediately began to rise.

  Roland felt a great sense of satisfaction. He had started the Vulcan Corporation in his garage when he built the Vulcan PC from scratch in 1977. It was one of the first personal computers that came pre-assembled. It was lightweight, came with a keyboard and connector to hook up to a TV, and at seven hundred dollars was relatively inexpensive at the time. Roland advertised the computer in magazines like Byte and Popular Electronics, and took the fledgling computer industry by storm.

  At first, Roland had assembled the computers by hand. But eventually the demand outstripped his limited resources. He hired two more people, then three more. He moved out of his garage to a small office. Then to a larger one under the name Vulcan Electronics, named after the Greek god of invention.

  By 1979, Vulcan was worth $2.4 million, and had a hundred employees. It was also running head-to-head against the Microsoft Corporation, which specialized in software. Roland pushed to get into the software market with its own versions of BASIC and FORTRAN languages to compete with Microsoft's. He also developed Lightning, an operating system designed to be compatible with all the latest models of computers.