John Gone (27 page)

She wondered if her decision to stay on the
island had been selfish. She wondered if homeschooling John until
high school had been more for her benefit than for his. She
wondered if she had stunted him, and not encouraged him strongly
enough to build relationships with people other than her.

Then, at the peak of her doubts, she released
them. Looking at John now, she knew that for better or worse, she’d
done her best. It was time to share him with the rest of the world,
because it was happening with or without her permission.

For the first time in sixteen years, John’s
mother remembered that she had her own goals and aspirations. It
was time for both her and her son to move on; not apart, but
together in a way different than what both of them were used to.
She thought of the possibilities that awaited her: a new apartment,
a new job, maybe even a date.

She peered out to the waves on the ocean, now
glinting against the sun’s morning rays. They’d always seemed the
same each morning, rising from the sea and crashing in the sand,
but the water that made them was never the same water, and the
shells and life that they carried were perpetually different,
always changing unseen beneath their crest.

Helene
, she thought,
it’s time.
What have I been so scared of? Everything is out there just
waiting. It’s out there already, just beyond the ocean.

John awoke hours later beneath a carefully
laid red blanket. He looked to his mother, whom he found asleep on
the chair beside him.

“I’ll be back again,” he said.

When the hands of his watch touched 3:14,
Helene was still sleeping, smiling in dreams, and never even
noticed the bright blue flash of light that surrounded her son’s
disappearance.

John crashed into the side of a tall, sandy
dune. For the first time since he’d put the watch on his wrist,
he’d not landed peacefully on top of a toilet seat. Instead, he
found himself prostrate, turned sideways, and implanted in a mound
of sand.

Grains of that sand, swirling in the wind off
the mound, entered his nose and mouth as he shallowly inhaled. He
painfully craned his neck to the side and fought one of his eyes
open. Rolling desert filled his vision as howling winds filled his
ears. John heard a muffled voice calling his name against the
swirling air.

“John! John!” Mouse called.

John regained more strength in his body and
moved his left arm out to steady himself. The movement had an
opposite effect than intended; he quickly lost his lodging and
twisted down the dune with a small cavalcade of sand following just
behind. He ended on the ground two feet below with a rush of sand
piling down upon his back.

John forced a pushup and rose to his feet.
Night had fallen, wherever he’d landed, but a large full moon
illuminated the edge of each mound of sand rising from the ground
around him. The landscape was prosaic, looking as if a lifeless
programmer had copy–and-pasted the image of a generic sand dune
over and over again in some lazy attempt at creating a desert
panorama.

“John!” Mouse called again against the
wind.

John lifted his bag all the way to his face
and maneuvered its flap over his head to protect his mouth and eyes
from the wind as he spoke to Mouse.

“Hi,” he said.

“What’s going on?” Mouse exclaimed, crawling
from the pocket. The robot turned its head to the left and right
before quickly ducking back inside. “I can’t come out or Mouse will
get sand in its joints. What is this? Some sort of sand storm?”

“It’s not a sand storm,” Kala replied. “Sand
storms are much more intense than this. This is just a windy day in
the desert. If it was a sand storm, you’d know it.”

“Where’s the toilet?” John asked.

“It doesn’t seem like anyone is around,” Kala
replied. “I’m sure you can just go anywhere you’d like. Just please
remember to turn the watch in an opposite direction.”

“You know what I mean,” John said.

“You must have jumped into an area with no
nearby bathrooms,” the doctor answered. “Honestly, I don’t know. We
hadn’t done any tests in remote areas. Interesting results,
though.”

“Or maybe someone had been using that dune as
a bathroom,” Mouse added.

“Thanks for that charming thought,” John
replied, dusting as much of the sand as possible from his face.

“You need to move,” Kala said. “The
temperature is going to cause you serious problems before
long.”

“Now that you mention it,” John shouted above
the wind, “isn’t this a bit chilly? I thought deserts were supposed
to be hot.”

“In many parts of Africa, sunset occurs
around 6:00 P.M., meaning the sun’s been down three hours already
in this time zone,” Kala said. “And it’s only going to get
colder.”

“Africa? Why not the Middle East or
Australia?” John asked.

“Have you noticed that
Cerastes Vipera
over there?” Kala asked.

“What?”

“The horned viper,” Kala clarified.

John lifted the flap on his bag and looked
around. Soon, he saw a coiled snake watching him from just a few
feet away.

“Ahh!” he exclaimed. “What do I do?”

“You see,” Kala continued, “there are three
primary varieties of the sand viper, but this one is specifically
native to the African regions. Did you happen to notice those
demonic-looking horns above its eyes?”

John had, indeed, noticed the demonic-looking
horns.

“That’s why I concluded Cerastes Vipera,”
Kala finished.

“Kala,” John said, “seriously, what do I do?
I’m freaking out here, man.”

“I don’t know, Mr. Popielarski,” Kala said.
“I’m not an outdoorsman. Just stand still and keep speaking loudly.
Don’t worry; it probably won’t bite you. The sand viper isn’t as
aggressive as it looks, and their bite isn’t generally fatal, even
if it does bite you, which it probably won’t.”

“Great, I’m totally not worried anymore.”

“We’re most likely in the Sudan or Egypt,”
Mouse said, changing the subject back to geography.

“Very good!” Kala exclaimed. “Because?”

“Well, we’re supposed to be going further
with each jump, right? So, it would stand to reason that we’ve
travelled somewhere east of France,” Mouse explained. “If we
combine that fact with Dr. Kala’s assessment, it puts us in one of
those two locations.”

“Very good,” Kala said. “There’s hope for you
yet!”

“I don’t see how any of this helps,” John
said.

“It might help you more than you think,”
Mouse retorted. “If we’re right then you barely jumped farther than
France, relatively speaking. And if that’s the case, then maybe you
bought yourself another jump. Kala?”

“In the interest of honesty and disclosure,”
Kala said begrudgingly, “yes, this lowers the death risk of a sixth
jump, though, only slightly.”

“That’s great!” John said.

“I suppose,” Kala replied, “though regardless
of if you were only to jump five feet left from here on out, a
seventh uncontrolled jump would kill you regardless. You’ve only
gained more time, or as I would describe it, more risk. Anyway,
let’s move on. Time is passing.”

John peered toward the spot on the ground
where he’d seen the snake minutes before, finding nothing but sand
there now. The viper’s disappearance made him more apprehensive
than its presence.

“Which way?” John asked.

“Robot?” the hologram asked.

“East,” the robot replied quickly.

“Very good,” Kala said. “And why?”

“I don’t know,” Mouse admitted. “I was just
guessing.”

“East, Mr. Popielarski,” Kala said through a
tired sigh.

John hesitated.

“That way, Mr. Popielarski,” Kala continued,
extending an arm and finger to John’s left.

An hour and a half passed with almost no
discussion between the companions. The whipping wind blowing
against the small microphones located in both the hologram and the
robot made hearing anything that John could have said while walking
impossible.

A cloud passed in front of the moon and the
desert fell into darkness. The air was cooling, and the effect of
its chill on him was amplified tenfold. He turned his messenger bag
to the front of his body and placed both of his arms inside it for
warmth.

As the cloud moved past, John suddenly saw
another desert life form in front of him. This time, however,
though horned, it failed to inspire feelings of dread and panic. It
was some sort of antelope, completely white, save a pitch-black
beard hanging beneath its neck. Two bell earrings dangled from its
left ear. John cautiously approached it.

“Anuket, what have you found?” an old man
called from behind the animal. “That’s not water, you silly
thing.”

The elderly man stood six feet tall and was
so thin that the uncovered patches of his skin showed John the
precise shape of his bones underneath. He wore brown cloth around
his neck, face, and head, and white cloth strips around his arms
between his elbows and wrists. The rest of his garb seemed cut from
a single piece of thick light-blue cloth held onto his body by
three thin ropes: one around his waist, two around his shoulders
under his arms.

“Do you have a name, traveler?” the man
said.

“John,” John choked out, not realizing how
dry his throat had become in such a short time.

“Here,” the man said, pulling a handmade
canteen from the rope around his waist. The container was nothing
more than two pieces of leather sewn together with an opening
fashioned from a reed at its top. John accepted the man’s offer and
drank. The water tasted odd, but John continued to drink until the
man spoke again.

“How long have you been out here?” the man
asked.

“Not long. An hour, maybe two.”

“Impossible,” the man replied. “We are deep
in the sands. Where did you come from?”

“I don’t remember,” John lied.

“Ra has tricked you,” the man said. “This
happens.” He looked over John’s strange clothes once more and
looked up at the stars for some cosmic data invisible to John.
“Okay,” the man said. “Put your hand on Anuket’s horn. You come
with me.”

John followed the man’s instructions and held
onto one of the antelope’s tall, spiraling horns. It shook its head
to his touch, and the bells on its ear rang loudly. John was
startled by the beast’s stir, but before he could let go of it, the
thin man put a large, dry hand around John’s and held it tightly to
Anuket’s horn.

“It means she likes you. Come. It is not far
from here.” The man removed his hand from John’s and began to
walk.

“Anuket is highly skilled at finding water,
though she drinks little to none herself. Once, she waited over a
year before drinking,” he told John.

“Is that possible?”

“Of course!” the man exclaimed. “Anything is
possible if the Gods will it so. And Anuket is special chosen of
the Gods. She is theirs, and also is them.”

“What’s your name?” John asked.

“Thutmose,” the man answered.

“Where are we going?”

“There,” Thutmose said, pointing a long
finger beyond a dune. Behind the sand and wind was a small hut
built as one might expect a hut to be built if it were upon solid
ground. Its walls were made of wood and clay and its roof was
weaved with dried fronds and branches. It wasn’t long before they
arrived at its entrance.

“How is this here?” John asked. “How can
something like this be built on the sand?”

“I have a secret,” Thutmose said. “You can
let go of Anuket now.” John released the antelope’s horn. The
animal gave him a long lick across his arm. John wiped off the
slobber and looked to Thutmose who was leaning down to the ground
near his pet’s feet.

Thutmose brushed the sand away from under him
and revealed short, green and yellow grass just beneath it. Anuket
leaned down and munched on the plants.

“I am built on solid ground. It only looks
like the sand because you had not seen deep enough,” the man said,
winking his left eye. “Let us go inside.”

John followed him through the entrance to his
hut, ducking underneath a faded red cloth flap. The inside of
Thutmose’s home seemed oddly larger from the inside than it had
from the outside. At its center was a small circle of rocks
approximately two feet in diameter. John approached and looked into
it. Water rose to its brim.

“Anuket brought me here two years ago,”
Thutmose explained. “This is extremely rare to find. I have built
my entire home around it.”

Thutmose lit a small lantern, and John looked
around the surrounding hut. Small slats of wood adorned the walls
horizontally, supporting small idols, various plant leaves and
cloudy jars. At least two sections of the walls seemed to be
fashioned as altars.

“What do you do?” John asked.

“I walk the sands. Sometimes I find strange
young men with strange clothes and give them water,” Thutmose
replied.

“I mean for money,” John said.

“Are you trying to tell me that you are not
paying me for this service?” Thutmose asked.

“Well, um--” John stumbled.

“A joke. Please.” Thutmose gestured at a
small woven rug next to his well. John sat and Thutmose did the
same.

“I do not make money,” the man said.

“How do you eat?”

“Sometimes I do not. When I do, I trade water
for it with some of the roaming tribesmen.”

“So you search the desert for water?”

“I am a priest,” Thutmose said. “That is what
I do.”

“Oh,” John remarked. “Your English is very
good.”

“Yes, thank you. It is actually almost my
first language. I grew up in a city where it is very common,” he
explained.

“You left the city for the desert?” John
asked.

“Well, yes,” the priest said, allowing
himself a small laugh at John’s comment, “but not by choice.” He
paused and looked to the faded red cloth at the entrance. “Someone
approaches.”