The Empty Door Read online

They stood on the reality side of the mirror gawking at the perfectly dry apparel that adorned their tired bodies. Their hair, clothes, backpacks, everything, including the robot, bore not the slightest sign of dampness. Their appearance was tattered and disheveled, but other than that, there was no evidence of the storm.

  Markman was the first to recover. “We made it,” he said, and he trotted down the ramp, trying to appear untested by the ordeal. “I swear, I’ll never get used to that place. I keep thinking I’m soaked, but it’s like we were never there.”

  Cassiopia dropped her pack on the floor by the ramp and stared at the elapsed time display above the Drack station. It read one hour, twenty minutes. “God, we’ve been gone for less than an hour and a half, but by my watch we were inside almost five hours,” she said as she came down from the door, followed by Tel. They went to the Drack station where Cassiopia plunked down in the control chair and began to manually disengage the mirror.

  “Well that was a big waste of time, wouldn’t you say?” said Markman as he came over to stand by them. He made an awkward attempt to straighten his hair with the palm of one hand as he watched the mirror of the SCIP door fade to white.

  Cassiopia answered without looking up. “Not at all. We covered a big area. The Tel’s summary may have something. We learned some incredible things.” Looking physically drained, she swiveled in her seat to face him. “We may have actually entered someone else’s dream, and if that’s true, then Dreamland is even more profound than I could have imagined. It must go on literally forever. If I call Brenda tomorrow and she remembers any of it, that will be all the proof I need.”

  Markman shook his head wearily. ”It’s way beyond me, but I don’t see how any of what we just did will help much. I still say we’re lucky not to be lost in there.”

  “All this means is that we need to originate in the right place to find my father. Somehow I need to figure out how to do that, and I will. Just give me some time.”

  “You don’t have time. Tomorrow, that is later this morning, I’ve got a nine o’clock meeting at the university, and I hate to tell you this, but you need to be there.”

  “Me? I need to stay here and work. I can’t leave. Why should I have to go?”

  “Because it’s not safe for you to be left alone here, even hidden away in this lab. It’s just not safe until we find out for sure what’s going on.”

  Cassiopia looked angry.

  Markman attempted consolation. “Look, the briefing will take maybe forty-five minutes. We’ll make them happy somehow. Give them a good story. Having you there will reassure them. Then we’ll get you back here with a little more breathing room.”

  “I don’t like this. We’ll be misleading them. But we’ve got to conceal what we’re doing until….”

  “And we will. I promise. We will.”

  Markman escaped the hostility by retreating upstairs. Though physically exhausted, he managed a thorough tour of the Cassell home, checking the doors and windows, peering cautiously outside from time to time in search of the unusual. Finally he found his way to his borrowed bedroom but refused to allow himself to collapse onto the bed while still dressed. He poked through the drawers of the small dresser at the foot of the bed and managed to come up with a set of mismatched, silk pajamas that were two sizes too small. He stripped off his dirty clothes and forced the borrowed garments on. The bed felt especially accommodating, even with the Berretta tucked under the pillow.

  In the lab below, an equally exhausted Cassiopia had already fallen asleep, her head resting in her arms on the still-running Drack console, her loyal robot standing guard.

  Cassiopia dreamt. In the cloudy dream vision of her childhood room, she sat among the many stuffed animals on the thick, soft comforter that covered her small bed, banging unmercifully at the game controller of her battered personal computer. Phantom math problems streamed down relentlessly from the top of the monitor screen, programmed by the enemy warlord within the binary reality of Spacemath, to destroy little Cass’s hard-earned city of points.

  But it was another bad day for computer generated enemies. The endless barrage of fourth-grade math missiles were being mercilessly cut to shreds by a mere five-year-old. Unless some miraculous act from user heaven intervened quickly, the fearful young competitor would soon break through the virgin barriers that guarded the territories of the fifth level.

  A soft tap at the door partially distracted the devilish concentration of the young girl. The door pushed gently open, and a familiar face peered inside. It did not matter that the wrinkled countenance bore a gray beard and gray hair though it should not have. Such things were of little concern in times of imaginary war.

  “Hi, little one,” the gruff voice of Professor Cassell called.

  “Oh father, just three thousand more points and I’m in the fifth-grade level!”

  “Wonderful, dear, but your Dad needs to tell you something, okay?”

  “Oh, no!” cried the distracted five-year-old, “there goes the Empire State Building, you darn missiles--!”

  “Sorry to mess up your game, lil’ Cass, but I need you to keep the door open. Do you understand?” the Professor said calmly, swinging the door slightly to and fro for emphasis.

  “Ah, ha! Two problems with one answer, take that. I’m ahead again!” screamed the little girl in delight.

  “Keep the door open for me, Cass. Keep the door open.” The voice echoed away into oblivion.

  Cassiopia sat up wide-eyed at the Drack station, which had finished running its assigned tasks and was now idle with dark display screens. She placed one hand on her heart and fought to shake herself awake amid the realization of what had just happened, but as her focus and vision returned, a shocking scene emerged before her. For at the adjacent Drack terminal, her father stood in plain view, staring down at a controller keyboard.

  So much was happening so fast, Cassiopia sat uncontrollably stunned for a moment before she could react properly. “Father, are you all right?” she cried in the broken voice of half sleep and reached out to take his arm.

  But her hand passed through it. Nor did the very realistic apparition seem aware of her presence. It looked up as though staring into infinity and a moment later was gone. Cassiopia gasped and put her hand to her mouth. She felt cold and empty. Tel stood by, alert and aware, though it had made no gestures of warning.

  Markman rolled himself awake to the persistent push of a frightened woman. He clutched the handle of the Berretta under his pillow and stared blindly up at the light. A hurried, nervous voice slowly focused in his mind.

  “Scott, wake up, something just happened and it scared me.”

  He pushed up on one elbow and surveyed the room. “Break-in?” he asked and stiffened at the thought.

  “No, come downstairs with me, please.”

  Embarrassed greatly by the ill-fitting night clothes, Markman groggily followed her down to the lab and listened as she recounted the hazy episode of her father’s appearance.

  “You probably were dreaming the whole thing,” he suggested, with a sleepy kindness.

  “I think he was in my dream, I really do. It was him.”

  “But you can’t even say for sure that’s possible. Oh God, listen to me, I sound as crazy as you. I mean think about it; it only makes sense. You think we went into someone’s dream while we were in Dreamland, and then a few hours later, that very thing happens to you. Subconscious suggestion, you’re the expert.”

  Cassiopia became quiet with doubt.

  “Tel, you saw nothing, right?” asked Markman.

  “No visual anomalies in the lab.”

  Cassiopia began to argue, “Yes, but, --oh I don’t know. I am exhausted.”

  “Well, look—from my point of view—later today you call your roommate, if she says she had such a dream, then you know it’s at least possible, right?”

  “It would mean a lot if it were him. It would mean he’s alive.”

  “Maybe so, but it’s five-thirty
in the morning. Try to get some more rest if you can; tomorrow will be a rough day.”

  “Thanks, you’re right, I’ll go upstairs and sort this out in the morning,” she agreed, seeming much more composed.

  The pair began to leave the lab when Tel spoke unexpectedly of its own accord. “Mr. Markman, disproportionate sleepwear.”

  Markman stopped and frowned. He opened his arms at Cassiopia. “Now it’s making fun of my pajamas!”

  Cassiopia could not keep from blurting out a laugh, but managed to catch herself quickly. “No, no, Scott, he’s not. Humor can’t be programmed. He’s just adapting the personality enhancements a little unsuccessfully, that’s all. He means that he really does like your pajamas,” and at the sound of her own voice, she again broke out in open laughter, covering her mouth with one hand in a vain attempt to contain herself.

  Markman put his hands on his hips, made a “Hmmff” sound, and marched indignantly out, his bare ankles terribly exposed by the shortness of the ill-fitting silk trousers.

  Later that morning, Cassiopia begrudgingly accompanied Markman to the impersonal, gray, building that housed the university’s main offices. They took the bare, worn, metallic elevator to the third floor, where Cassiopia was politely escorted to a waiting room lounge, one not available to the general public.

  A beat-up looking black telephone sat on a small table by the room’s large observation window. With assistance from a secretary who had been cursing a defective coffee machine, she managed to get an outside line and anxiously made her long distance call to Brenda.

  “Hey! Best buddy, where have ya been? I’ve been calling you for a week. You never returned my calls,” complained an affectionate voice on the other end of the line.

  “Returned your calls?”

  “Your answering machine, dummy. It’s all I could get.”

  “Oh, the answerer, yes, I haven’t been back to my apartment for days, it must be overloaded by now.”

  “Well, where the heck are you, girl? You got some scandalous affair going on that I should know about or something? Please, tell me.”

  “No, no, nothing like that. I’ve been staying at my father’s. I’m working on one of his… projects.”

  “Oh dull. And I thought it just might be passion.”

  “Nope, I was just calling to check in on you, see if you needed bail posted or anything.”

  Laughter distorted the already poor connection. “Oh, you devil. I’m fine, but I miss your company, Cassy. We’ve got to rendezvous and get into some kind of trouble, before we lose the touch. There’s a couple of irresistibles that just moved into the apartment across from mine. One for you, and one for me. Why don’t you fly on out here?”

  “Can’t right now, Bren, maybe later. Hey, I wanted to ask you something. Did you dream about Brenda’s Castle last night by any chance?”

  There came a silent interlude from the other end of the receiver. Cassiopia closed her eyes and kept her fingers crossed.

  “God, Cassiopia, what are you, psychic now? How could you know that?”

  “I um...believe it or not, I saw it in a dream. You were eating some kind of desert and drinking a margarita.”

  “This is too unbelievable. We both had the same dream? It’s an actual psychic event. You know I’ve always said that I was..., psychic, I mean. That’s just too much! We could probably get on TV or something.”

  “It is amazing,” replied Cassiopia with a wince.

  “Hey, that was a hot dream too, I mean there was these handsome guys in tuxedos and they....”

  Cassiopia interrupted, “I get the picture, Bren, no need to elaborate, okay?”

  But it was no use.

  Chapter 26