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Chapter 4

The room was all but gone this time, faded to a pressing, infinite grayness. Only the door remained substantial.

I can't begin to tell you the problems this door caused. It was the first thing I knew about the story, yet it took the longest to resolve. Most of the people thanked in the credits of the story (as posted in the TPFICT archives) are there because of listening to me whine about the damned door.

Two early considerations involved the TP--all of them, not just Lisa--walking through the door and ending up in an AU where they weren't TP and never had been, and the TP encountering a mirror-being who would show them their lives if they hadn't become TP.

Early drafts of the story also had different people encountering and walking through the door. I have a partial scene with Grimm, himself, being the victim.

"It figures," Lisa sighed. But it wasn't a surprise, not really. Wishful thinking had been all that let her convince herself that the first dream was a one-off. "So," she added, throwing her arms open wide, "How do you want to play this? I'm not going to stand here and whimper, so you can just forget that idea. I set my alarm, though. I wasn't about to hang out here all night."

Everything I needed to know about life, I learned from Nightmare of Elm Street.

There was no response, no hint at all that anything or anyone heard her. The air in this space wasn't any more real than the light that seemed to fill the space; the curtains couldn't twitch nor the light flicker in any way that could even be interpreted as meaningful. There was no way to tell if someone else was present.

"You're going to make this difficult, aren't you?" she called.

If Sara was listening, she didn't answer. Lisa remained alone in the room that was a shadow of what it had been.

"Come out, come out wherever you are," she sing-songed. Her voice rang in the stillness. "Midnight, starbright," she continued under her breath. "I wish I see a ghost tonight." Memories sprang to mind of many a childhood evening playing the combination hide-and-seek and tag game. The gray dreamscape lent itself to imagining a foggy night, although it lacked the flashes of lightning bugs or the playful screams of her peers seeking to navigate in the dark. "And if I do, I'll take my shoe and knock it black and blue.

"Ghost in the graveyard!" she sang out: the name of the game, but also the warning to the designated "ghost" that their time to hide was up.

I loved this game. As children, my friends and I played it frequently. While trying to write this scene, I had some trouble remembering the chant, so I started asking around .. and learned to my utter surprise that no one else had heard of the game.

As if on cue, Sara appeared. She, too, seemed faded around the edges. A kind of weariness that seeped through every movement, and couldn't be pin-pointed to any one description. "You came back," she said. The girl leaned in to peer at her face. Lisa saw her reflection in the other girl's eyes, and had no doubt that the reverse was true.

"Yeah, want to tell me why?"

Instead of answering, Sara flashed out of existence.

"Great!" Hands on her hips, Lisa glared out at the emptiness. She waited for several minutes for Sara to return, until she started to imagine that the grayness was closing in around her. Then she started to pace, to count off steps. To try to force dimension in its absence.

Eventually she realized that no matter how far she seemed to walk, no ground was covered. Nor was she tiring out. It was no more than she expected for a dream, but she'd already had ample proof that this wasn't just another dream. Through it all, the door didn't move.

She stopped in mid-step, caught with that thought. The door hadn't changed position relative to her. No matter how much she paced, how far she seemed to walk, the door was still in the same relative location. Even her attempts to circle it were met without result.

"Great," she repeated, but without the fight. "So what am I supposed to do *now*?" The last was directed up, in the general direction of a God that Lisa wasn't sure she believed in.

Not sure where this came from. Although I am planning to tackle the whole theme of "what does it mean to be religious and a TP," at no point had I planned to deal with Lisa's religious views.

She felt her attention redirected to the portal; the same invisible force that had stopped her from opening the door before now moved her head so she had a clear view of it. While Lisa watched, the air in front of it thickened, then became a person. A Hispanic teen, with the broad, high-cheek boned face of someone who no doubt had ancestors among the indigenous population.

He was turning in place, clearly trying to reason what he was seeing. He just as clearly didn't see Lisa. His gaze skipped over her, just another spirit.

"How come he can't see me?" she breathed, more to herself than anyone else. She didn't expect an answer, but the silence of this place begged to be filled.

Lisa watched with morbid fascination as the new arrival explored the scene. She couldn't help but wonder if he saw the same emptiness as she, or if his mind was filling in the blanks somehow. Maybe he saw the bedroom that she'd seen on her first visit. Was it just the previous night?

Did he understand that this was more than just a dream, she wondered. In a bed back at the school that had once felt so safe and normal her body lay in sleep, but her mind was quite conscious of the here and now--such that they were. Although her body was asleep, she was quite awake. Yet, there was a certain stiffness about the teen's movements that suggested that he wasn't quite aware.

"Sometimes they talk," Sara said, once again standing next to the elder girl as if she'd never left her side. "They beg, or yell or pray to God. Some cry. I don't like the ones who cry. Mostly they just look around, and then . . ."

The boy reached for the door. His hand never found the knob. Instead, he stepped straight though what had appeared to be solid wood. He didn't come out the other side.

". . . they go away."

The act itself seemed so innocent, so painless. The teenager had been there, and then he walked through the door. And Lisa knew with utmost certainty that this was not a good thing. Sara sounded sad, and perhaps a little lonely as she related the facts. Lisa was just horrified. She rubbed at the goose bumps on her arms. "Ghost in the graveyard," she repeated without humor.

She looked up to see Sara standing at her side. And another thought occurred to her. "Why me?" she asked. Why was she standing here watching when another person had been allowed to pass? she meant. Why was she allowed to see the boy, when he hadn't been able to see her? If Sara was to be believed, what she'd just seen had happened before, and would happen again.

Lisa seems to ask this question a lot. Better add it to the drinking game.

"You answered me," was the murmured response. "No one's ever answered me before."

"Yeah, you said that already."

"They go away. She went away, and she didn't answer me."

Her hands stilled. The topic had somehow jumped beyond the creepy scene that had just played out, and Lisa wasn't sure when it happened.

"Lisa Davis," Sara added, her voice child-like and almost too low to be heard. "Make it stop. She went away and I . . . ahhh . . . ." The sound turned into a moan, then escalated into a scream of anguish. Sara pressed her arms against her ears, fingers locked behind her head. Dropping to her knees, she curled in on herself. Her hair cascaded over her hands and face, hiding her from view, offering yet another layer of protection.

"Sara?" Lisa laid a gentle hand on the girl's head.

I had some description written for this scene of what Lisa feels when she places her hand on Sara's head. IMO, it was great description. I have no idea why it's not in the final cut.

Sara froze in place, the scream cut off abruptly. For precious seconds the two stood immobile. Then Sara pulled back, crawling on her knees. "No. Nonononono." The desperation of the word tore into Lisa, the sound of an animal under attack. The sound of a person without knowledge of pain, one naive of her right or ability to fight back, being tortured.

Curling her fingers into a fist, Lisa grimaced and took her own step back. Whatever it was, Lisa was pretty sure she hadn't started it. But she was sure that she had made it worse.

"There. Will be. No. Touching," Sara choked out. "Not. At all." Then she flickered out of existence again.

Lisa couldn't move for a long time after that. Her limbs shook from the rush of adrenaline that had no outlet in either fight or flight; her heart pounded in her chest, the beat equipresent in her jaw, and deafening in her head.

[Lisa?]

She came awake. Not suddenly, not like waking up from a nightmare. But there was no transition. One moment she was sleeping; the next she was awake in her dorm bunk-bed. Her sheets had all been kicked down to the foot, and her pillow was squashed in the corner where the bed met the wall. From above, the soft snores of her roommate filtered down. It all felt so normal, until the dream surfaced in her memory. Then she felt her pulse quicken, and the darkness of the room turn a little less friendly. The bed springs creaked as Tanya rolled over, and Lisa realized there was no one here she could talk to about the dream. No one who would see it as she did.

[Lisa?] she heard again.

She felt the softest touch at the fringes of her mind, and reached out in return.

****

"It wasn't just a dream," Lisa said. "Adam, it felt so *real*."

Lying awake in her bed, she'd felt Adam reaching for her. After their less than amicable discussion they day before, she hesitated about accepting the offered help. She had told him to go away, after all. She hesitated, but only for a second. Once, the two of them had been the only representatives of their race. Then, Adam had needed her and the two had formed a friendship of default that promised to become much more. But Lisa's fears interrupted the developing relationship, stalled it when she walked away. She had told herself then that she didn't need them then, and she had mouthed the same words again one day previous.

Minus the exposition above, this scene is also one of the original story scenes.

A very early draft of the story was very Sara-centric, with Lisa only appearing in a couple of scenes. Now, I can't write from an outline. By the time I get a story outlined, I've lost interest. But that doesn't stop me from outlining what I've already written while I'm writing. Especially for a longer story, like this one, quite a lot of what gets written is just summary and outline of what has already been written. It helps me see the big picture, the larger patterns. One larger pattern that emerged was a very unbalanced story with lots of Sara, very little Lisa, and all the dream sequences kind of packed together at the beginning.

It's possible that this sequence actually happened before the one that now comes first in the story. I can't remember now.

I had hit a creativity block, which is why I started with the summarizing/outlining thing again. I wasn't sure what to do to untangle the story, so I rewrote it with one scene to a page, and then started shuffling the pages around until a better flow presented itself. Finally one did, but it meant that I had to rewrite all the transitiony stuff within each scene. And some new scenes needed adding to explain what happened to the rest of the day that Lisa wasn't sleeping. The segment above is one of those transitiony add-ins.

Maybe she didn't need Adam's help, but someone else did. Someone who, if it was possible, was more frightened than she. And that someone didn't seem to be in any hurry to go away until she got that help.

Now Adam regarded her in that soul-searching manner of his, as though looking for the truth behind her words. Not that he expected her to lie -- not that any of them could lie to him -- but he looked as if to see the things she wasn't ready to admit. Perhaps, hadn't even yet recognized herself. "It wasn't just a dream," he confirmed. "I . . . lost track of you." He bowed his head to the floor.

In the dim light of the spaceship, his expression was impossible to read. Almost without conscious control she felt the clenched control of her mind ease. The power she had first struggled against, then ignored, was waking up. Although she never wanted to admit it, the Tomorrow People's abilities could be convenient at times.

Her hard-fought-for control relaxed, and for the second time in less than a day she reached out with her thoughts to find Adam's. She found nothing. His control was better than she could have wished for herself; his thoughts were untouchable.

That wasn't fair. What did she have this power for if she couldn't use it for anything good? "What's that supposed to mean?" she demanded, instead, using the recourse she was best familiar with.

Adam raised his head. "I can feel you," he admitted, tapping his temple, "here."

The Tomorrow People are never alone.

She stared at him in silence for several seconds before responding, "You keep track of me?"

"I don't have a choice."

"Wait a second. You spy on me? All the time? And you're just now getting around to mentioning this?"

"It's not spying, Lisa. I don't close my eyes and watch you take a shower."

Her eyes widened at the thought, and she opened her mouth as if to say something, but no words came out.

"I couldn't even if I wanted to," he cut in, interrupting the brewing outrage. "It doesn't work that way. You, Megabyte, Jade. Everyone. You're all here." He tapped his temple again. "Usually," he added with a frown. "You know that. Or, you used to.

"I always know where you are, how you're feeling. When a Tomorrow Person dies . . ." he squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed hard. ". . . the loss . . . we feel the loss. The part that we share . . . is gone."

She nodded silently. "But I didn't die," she said. "I think I would remember that. I can't seem to forget the last time it happened."

"No," he agreed. "You didn't die. You just . . . I'm not even sure how to describe it. It's like it went blank. You were still there, in my head, but . . . you weren't. I didn't know where you were anymore."

"Do you have *any* idea how many people there are in the world who I could wish had the same problem?" She pressed the heel of one hand to her forehead and held it, eyes closed, for a long moment. The ship hummed and moaned in the background, like it was trying to answer her question.

"Okay," she said. "You said the ship wanted something from one of us. Apparently that person is me. Here I am." She dropped her hand back to her side, acutely conscious of the slight quiver in her fingers that she couldn't seem to bring under control. "This is all your fault," she directed to the central column.

It moaned in response, the voices of thousands of generations of Tomorrow People past and yet to come trying to speak through alien machinery that had been broken long before the rise of earth civilization.

More fanon. I, too, am assuming that the Ship hums and moans because its voice circuits are broken.

"Okay, but why *me*?" She turned suddenly to face Adam. "Why *now*?"

Drink.

"Maybe she knows you, goes to your school?" he suggested.

"Too young," Lisa argued. "She couldn't be older than fifteen." Which was true, although there had been something about her that seemed much harder. When the girl looked at her, it wasn't with the innocence Lisa had come to expect from fifteen-year-olds. Including herself at that age, though she had fought hard and often to deny it then.

"Is there anything else you remember. Anything, at all?" Adam was leaning against the wall that looked out onto the ocean. He showed no signs of having been awakened by her dream, but there were many times Lisa questioned if he slept. She knew he pretty much lived in the spaceship and he cared for the Tomorrow People like his own. She didn't know if there was another place he called home, or another group of people he called family.

With a shake of her head she answered, "Nothing. The first time, I guess it was her bedroom we were in. She mostly just acted strange and cryptic. All this stuff about me being able to hear her, *and* she knew my name."

"So she's telepathic."

"No kidding. The second time, well I already told you what happened the second time. And it sounded like it's happened to her before, more than once." She sucked in her lower lip, then added, "I think maybe he was a Tomorrow Person too."

That got Adam's attention. He looked at her squarely, focused on her with an attention that would be frightening coming from anyone else. "How? Can you be sure?"

She returned his gaze, wanting him to understand exactly what this piece of information meant. "His name is Alejandro de los Reyes."

Alejandro de los Reyes = Great Defender of the Kings

"That's why the ship . . . ." Adam gazed off into the distance, his brow furrowed in thought. He was dressed as always in a simple, loose-fitting t-shirt and jeans. He should have looked like any other young adult. But partially turned, with the dim light catching his profile and casting his face into shadows, he looked like anything but.

"Are they Tomorrow People?" Lisa asked when his silence grew too long.

He shook his head. "We haven't had any new break-outs since Rachel." Rachel was the blonde American who came into her own during the height of summer a few months back, Lisa remembered. "I suppose they could be people who're about to break out," Adam added.

I'm not sure why Lisa would remember this since she was never told. Rachel, of course, was introduced in The Atropos Project. In the original published version of that story, Lisa does make an appearance. Two, I think, but one off-camera. After I got going with this story, I realized that the continuity wouldn't work, so I went back and edited Lisa out of Atropos.

The earliest conception of GL had Rachel being a main character. She went from being the main character, to being a one-line continuity keeper. That's quite a demotion.

"I don't think so," Lisa responded slowly. "There was something just . . . wrong . . . about this, about her. I can't put my finger on it--" she stopped in frustration, searching her thoughts for just the right description, and coming up blank. "You'd see it too if you met her."

[So, introduce us,] Adam said, projecting the thought right into her head.

"Don't *do* that," she said, rounding on him with finger upraised.

"You needed to know I'm serious," he answered. "Introduce us."

"Adam, I don't even know if I *can*," she protested. "I mean, what if she doesn't contact me again?"

"Do you think she's contacting you?"

Lisa scowled. "What else would you call it?"

He crossed the ship to sit cross-legged in one of the round portals that led out of the main room, like a guru sitting in meditation on top of a mountain. Through closed eyes he looked up at the ceiling, as if concentrating on a sound he could barely hear. "Maybe you're contacting her," he suggested. "Maybe she's a Tomorrow Person from another time or another planet, and you've reached out to her." When his eyes opened again, Lisa made sure her face expressed every bit of doubt and disgust she could muster. "Maybe not," he conceded, looking a little sheepish.

It's really not that out of the question, given that Adam experienced the whole Tutankhamen thing and Lisa didn't. Still, this is here because I'm tired of everyone arriving at the right conclusion on the first try.

"No," Lisa said, just to make sure he understood. "There is no way this would be happening if it had been up to me to start it. Don't even try to blame me."

"I'm not blaming you."

"Good, then we agree that she's the one causing all the problems. So, how do I make her stop?"

"Well, we have to figure out what she wants," he said, sounding reasonable.

Lisa kicked at some of the sand that covered the space ship floor. "When did it become 'we'? She came to me, remember? She's not your problem, yet."

She saw something darken in Adam's eyes, as if he were holding himself responsible for recent events; at his failure to protect her from the world she had opted out of. "If she's a Tomorrow Person, then she is my problem."

"Okay, so she's your problem. She's my problem. She's generally just a problem. A real problem child."

"We need to stop her before something happens," he said.

"What makes you think something is going to happen? Besides the fact that something has *already happened*." She heard her voice rising and forced herself to take a deep breath. In a more normal volume she added, "I'm sorry, but I'm having a very hard time remembering not to panic. I don't like the unexplained, and lately I seem to be surrounded with things I can't explain."

"I understand," he said quietly, twisting his hands together in his lap in a gesture of nervousness that didn't seem like one Adam would ever have reason to know. "What if we find Sara and ask her?"

That, she thought, was the elder speaking again. No matter how ridiculous a situation they found themselves in, Adam was able to establish and maintain the distance necessary to solve it. It was one of the elements that made him a good leader. And one of the elements, Lisa thought, that made her a lousy follower. Because while everyone else was happily following Adam's course of action, she was stuck trying to figure out how things got the way they were to begin with.

There was just one problem.

"How?" she asked.

He shrugged carelessly, like the situation wasn't anywhere near as complicated as they were making it seem. "We know her name," he said.

Lisa kicked again at the sand and started drawing concentric patterns with the toe of her shoe. "And we're supposed to do what? Look her up in the phone book?"

I like this line. A mundane solution to a paranormal problem.

"Sure."

"Which one? There're probably dozens of Grimms in my town alone and we don't even know if she's in my town. We don't even know if she's in my country." Why was she having a bad feeling about this? Why did she feel like she was being set up?

Adam shrugged again. "You said she sounded American."

"That's what people say about Megabyte, too." The comeback dropped from her lips, followed by the realization that she had squashed any last chance at normalcy. The only kind of investigation left was the kind she did not, under any circumstances, want to participate in.

"That's what people say about Megabyte, too." is in reference to CT being Canadian. Since that's a little too meta for a story like this, I'm also working under the assumption that he's been in England long enough that he's become English-by-culture, if not by citizenship.

Adam's expression grew intense. Lisa didn't have to be telepathic to see the thoughts and plans racing through his mind. Each idea echoed on his face, his expressions shifting faster than Lisa could identify and keep up with them. "There is something we can try," he said at last.

"Don't," she interrupted. "Don't you dare suggest a mind merge. I don't even want to hear it!" That was something she'd never done, to share one's mind with another person . . . or worse, with the space ship . . . so completely that there was no telling where one mind left off and the next began. A mind merge was supposed to enhance memories, to bring to light the details that had been perceived but not noted. It was also supposed to let one view memories from a different perspective. It was an experience she didn't need.

"It may be the only way."

"Or it may be the wrong way. Did you think of that? Adam, I'm part of this because she came to me. I don't know if it'll happen again; I can only hope she'll find someone else's head to waltz around in tonight."

"You said this was the *second* time she came to you," he pointed out reasonably.

"It had better be the *last* time," she demanded. "I didn't ask for this, and I don't want it. All I want is for her to stop."

"Easy," Adam said. "We find out what she wants and we give it to her. Then she won't have to come to you anymore."

She stomped her foot down hard. "I am not doing a mind merge."

"Do you have any better ideas?"Adam asked, still sounding too reasonable. He sounded like he wanted her suggestions, and wasn't just spitting the question out as a dare he knew she couldn't accept.

The quiver in her hands grew stronger and she clasped them behind her back to hide the shaking from the one person who wouldn't fail to notice it. "I can't," she said, voice catching.

She could.

"Please?"

Did he see through the lie, she wondered? Could he know the choice he was asking her to make? He was asking too much.

"I can't," she repeated.

He didn't respond, verbally or telepathically; she could feel him standing somewhere just inside her personal space, hesitating, sizing up the situation and her determination. She almost wished he would touch her, place his hand on hers and say something uniquely Adam that would make her cave in and go with him. Instead, the silence stretched on. She was just about to look up, to apologize for disappointing him again, when she registered the electric charge in the air and flash of light that signaled his departing teleport.

"I'm sorry," she said to the empty ship. "I can't."

The moan it responded with left no doubt that it didn't believe her either.

****

Thus endeth chapter 4 which was originally sub-titled Anaphor. An anaphor is a word that refers to some other word, like a pronoun.

Since I've brought this up again:

• Chapter 1 was Universal Grammar. UG is the theory that certain aspects of language are hardwired into our brains. If we can figure out what these aspects are, we can learn how to switch them on and off, and thus revolutionize how we learn languages. The chapter was called this because Grimm's Nefarious Experiments (tm) were intended to uncover the UG, which would naturally let him communicate with Sara because he had moved past the restrictions of language. Eventually I did come to my senses.
  
• Chapter 2 was Markedness, which is the levels or means by which a thing differs from the standard. The more something differs, the greater its level of markedness.
  
• Chapter 3 was Transfer, which is the process of taking skills or knowledge learned in one situation and applying them to a different situation.