Catching On Fire Read online

  Apparently his parents also had a treasure trove of VCR tapes featuring vintage TV shows…everything from “Gunsmoke” to “Leave It To Beaver”…whatever those were.

  My story was surprisingly similar at its core. I stopped watching regular TV at about the time I entered high school. I guess I just didn’t like having to center my entertainment around someone else’s schedule (back in those days, there was no TiVo at our house…if it even existed then). I am a bit of a movie fanatic (only good ones, I’m picky about everything – especially stuff that steals my time.) But, even more than movies, I turned to reading. Fiction. Non-fiction. History. Science. Books. Magazines. I read anything and everything. It was something that always worked according to my schedule and my mood. That may have left me a bit ‘encyclopedic.’

  Finally, Jim forced me to stop stalling and tell him my theory. It was difficult, exposing my weird assumptions to the light of day. Even though Jim shared the same underlying vision, it seemed I had more stuff attached to it than he did. And with something this bizarre, you just didn’t spill it out willy-nilly. With something this unusual, you never knew what might happen…you could be shipped off to an asylum…hauled away by the government…who knew what else?

  Since Jim didn’t seem to feel some of the other stuff attached to the vision, I couldn’t just blurt out what I thought it was. I had to prepare him with a framework that would help him accept the new reality I was proposing.

  The first thing to do was to shoot down his theories. “Where were you born?”

  “Wisconsin, why?”

  “Just a plausibility check on your theories. What kind of hospital?”

  “A county hospital.”

  “Okay. I was born in Pennsylvania in a Catholic hospital in ’84. What year were you born in?”

  “1982.’

  “Do you have any siblings?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do they share the vision?”

  “No.”

  “Same here. Doesn’t exactly seem to support your government-implanted image theory…two different kinds of hospitals in different parts of the country at different times…other births not affected.”

  “Doesn’t rule it out, but I get your point.”

  “The encrypted signal interception…don’t you think the encryption seems weak? I mean, you and I aren’t experts, but we agree these appear to be formulas. Doesn’t it seem like the sender is trying to make the formulas easy to figure out? The entire first section feels like a math primer with all that methodical repetition.”

  “I hate to admit it, but it does feel like whoever is sending these wants me to figure out what they mean.” So, he did have some feelings about these…Glyphs.

  “I feel obsessed with these images. Judging by your notebook, so do you. I don’t think we’ve chosen to be obsessed…I’d be happier to forget about them. I think some…entity…has somehow…” I had to choose my words carefully so as not to put him in instant denial, “imprinted this feeling of obsession on us.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I think you’ve read a little too much science fiction. People can’t imprint obsessions onto other people from some remote location.” He crossed his arms and looked totally exasperated with me.

  I figured, as long as he was being so completely resistant to ideas outside the mainstream. (Which was really, quite frankly, stupid of him. I mean, the fact that we both shared this vision was so completely out of the mainstream, you’d think he’d be a bit more receptive), I’d just go ahead and lay out all the whacky details.

  “Maybe people can’t imprint obsessions. But, who said we’re talking about people?”

  He got up and started pacing. It looked like he suddenly felt caged in a place he did not want to be. And that place was with me.

  “Now, you’re definitely going off the deep end. The simplest, most likely explanation is almost always the correct explanation. What…do you think some space aliens have flown around planting images in our brains like ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind?’?”

  “No. I don’t think space aliens are flying around implanting images in our brains. But I think whoever came up with the storyline for ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ probably has a notebook exactly like yours and mine.”

  That stopped his pacing. He obviously hadn’t considered that there might be more of us. But, then again, he hadn’t given the problem 24 years of intense scrutiny like I had. Until a week ago, he was writing this all off as an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

  “Interesting, don’t you think, that someone came up with a premise like an image – and an obsession with that image –being planted in someone’s brain? Hmmm…I think you or I could come up with that premise pretty easily.”

  Jim sat back down, leaning his back against the picnic table, his hands up holding his head as if it might spiral away from his body if he let go.

  “You’re right. There should be others. I mean, why would it just be the two of us? There’s nothing that connects us. We’re just two random people. The odds of us finding each other if we were the only ones would be astronomical. There must be others.”

  I could tell that Jim had a very strong intuitive side. But, for some reason, he chose to suppress it. I was too trusting of my instincts for his taste. He wouldn’t buy into my conclusions for a minute. Even if I felt, in every fiber of my being, that they were correct.

  It would be waste of time to try to explain the rest of my theory to Jim at that point. I might totally scare him off. Who knows, he might even have me committed. I wondered if a med student had that power. Better if we focused on finding the others – since we now both realized that there must be others.

  That would be our next step: to find the rest of us.

  Chapter 6

  I turned my cell phone off while I was meeting with Jim. I didn’t want to be interrupted. I turn my cell phone off a lot. It drives people crazy, but I don’t feel obligated to be available to the rest of the world every second of the day.

  I had three messages from Kim. She was dying to hear how things went with Jim. That was going to be tough to explain. Once we got started talking about the symbols – we decided to call them the Glyphs– it was like the rest of the world melted away. I was so obsessed, I couldn’t focus on anything beyond solving the puzzle of the Glyphs. Even my attraction to Jim sank into the background.

  It wasn’t until we said our goodbyes that the time spent so close to Jim had an effect on me. My heart started racing. I felt weak in the knees. I spent about ten minutes composing myself before I felt I could even drive home.

  I called Kim and let her know that there were no new developments. I was still attracted to Jim. He was still not attracted to me. I was glad I was telling her this over the phone rather than in person. It allowed me to hide the emotional toll it was taking on me. It was weird…the emotional rollercoaster I was riding was physically exhausting. In the end, I had to go for an ice cream sundae to calm my nerves. You know things are stressful when you have to go for the full sundae.

  Chapter 7

  When I get back to my apartment, neither of my two roommates was home. Perfect. I’d have some quiet time to plan our next steps. I loved sitting alone in the apartment. It was a typical South Buffalo flat. High ceilings. Hardwood everywhere. Lots and lots of windows. An enclosed sun porch in the back and a big, open balcony on the front. We had an upper and the autumn sun was shining in, casting everything in a warm, golden glow. The beveled glass on the front windows projected dozens of little rainbows around the room.

  We moved in about six months ago. It was my first apartment ever. Even though the apartment itself was lovely, it was in a non-trendy section (yes, there are trendy sections of Buffalo), so rent was relatively low. About $350 a month from each of us covered rent and utilities. (I was guessing it would be at least another $50 each when the furnace kicked on for the winter.)

  The neighborhood was relatively safe, but it was slipping. I was glad we had the second f
loor. That way we could leave the windows open at night. Far as I knew, no one bothered with second-story crime in this neighborhood. No one would have anything valuable enough to make it worth the climb.

  I sat down to work on a plan for our Glyphs project. Finding others who might share our “vision” was a tough assignment. How do you find people without being found out? I believed that knowledge of the Glyphs might put us in danger. Jim believed he’d be labeled a nut and thrown out of medical school. But, if we didn’t want to call attention to ourselves, how were we going to call attention to the Glyphs?

  With my advertising and public relations background, I thought this would be a piece of cake. But once I got into it, I realized how difficult it would be to get publicity while protecting our privacy. It was such a difficult project, I started foraging for food. Fortunately, my roommates and I didn’t keep any junk food in the apartment. But, my quest for carbs did turn up half a box of Melba toast. I’d have to settle for that.

  Chapter 8

  I spent all Saturday night and most of Sunday trying to devise a plan. I wasn’t totally happy with what I’d come up with, but I didn’t feel like I was going to think up anything better.

  The only way to reach a mass audience with no budget and complete anonymity was through the Web. I figured we could put a couple of our Glyphs on a website with the line, “Do you see what I see?”

  Those who could input another of the symbols would be directed to a private message board. People who input an incorrect symbol would be directed to a page that looked like an ad. That way, only people who could “see” the Glyphs would know we were looking for “Seers.” Everyone else would just think it was an ordinary, commercial website.

  The problem was, I had no idea how to program it – nor how to maintain anonymity. Maybe Jim would have some thoughts. I called and left a message on his cell: “I have an idea for a website. How are your programming skills?”

  He called me back Monday and we arranged to meet after work on Wednesday. I could tell he shared at least one feeling with me: paranoia. Our phone conversation was short and cryptic. I met him at the marina and we grabbed a nice, private bench.

  He thought my idea was perfect and said his brother could handle the programming.

  “I don’t like the idea of bringing in your bother. We don’t know what we’re getting into. There is the chance…well…this could be dangerous.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not going to put Pete at risk. The only information I gave him is that we’re looking for people who know the symbols. He knows he has to be careful. And that’s all he knows. He’s a bit of an underground nut. Ever since W got elected, he’s gone out of his way to stay off the grid. Some of his friends hang out with hackers. He says he’s got ways to keep things on the Q.T.”

  “Did he really say “Q.T.”? That sounds a bit anachronistic.”

  “And ‘anachronistic’ sounds a bit encyclopedic.”

  “Touché”

  “Oooo…you speak French?”

  Did I detect just the faintest glimmer of flirt in his teasing? If it was there, it disappeared immediately and he got back to business. “My brother knows some guys who know some guys who can get fake electronic identities. With those we can set up bank accounts, PayPal accounts, domains…whatever we need. He can get us the identities pretty cheap.

  “How cheap is cheap?” It wasn’t like I had an excess of cash. And, as I recalled, neither did Jim.

  “Under a hundred bucks for two — and Pete’s agreed to do the programming for free. He loves this kind of stuff – and the fact that it’s undercover just gets him all the more jazzed. Getting money into the bank account is going to be the trickiest part. If anyone does look for us, they can find us when we make a deposit. I think we should put in as much as we can up front, so we won’t need to make a deposit again.”

  We each put $250 in the account. That would be enough to finance the website for a couple years. We each bought a pay-as-you-go phone for exclusive “Glyphs” use and agreed not to contact each other on any other phone ever again. I made him promise that anything he did in connection with this would be totally anonymous. For instance, I made him promise his phone purchase would be made in cash, in disguise, without a car so that no video camera in the parking lot could be used to trace his identity.

  “You know, you’re sounding almost as paranoid as Pete.”

  “Haven’t I told you about Rachel’s First Law of Paranoia? Just because you think everyone is out to get you, doesn’t mean they’re not.”

  “Pete will like that one. I should get the two of you together.” Hmmm. I wondered if Pete might have the same effect on me as Jim. Probably not a good idea to find out. One paranoid nutcase in a relationship is more than enough.

  “He’ll probably love my First Law of Peril.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Rachel’s First Law of Peril: No matter how many precautions you take, something you could never anticipate will bring you down.”

  Jim frowned. “So you don’t think our plan is failsafe?”

  “I don’t think a single thing on God’s green earth is failsafe.”

  We sat for a few minutes in silence, lost in the worry of how true that was.

  Chapter 9

  I didn’t see Jim much for quite awhile after that. I wrote the website and came up with a basic design Pete could follow. Jim drew out all the Glyphs, put that together with my files on a disk and snail-mailed it to Pete.

  I was pretty proud of the domain name I came up with. First, it’s crazy hard to even find a good domain name that’s available. At least, it is if you want a “dot com” ending. And I felt we definitely needed to a “dot com” so the site looked commercial.

  The name I picked was “CussedEmOuterwear.com.” It was perfect. The symbols we were putting up looked a little like the way you’d type a swear word in a cartoon. We were even offering a free download you could use to make a t-shirt transfer. The whole thing could look like a totally legit commercial enterprise…at least until anyone figured out there were no Cussed Em Outerwear products or store.

  The t-shirt transfer download featured some Glyphs. Under that it said, “Do you see what I see?” and under that, the web address. If we were lucky, the bizarreness of the message would strike a chord, kids would make some t-shirts, and we’d get our message out to an even broader audience.

  It took over a month for Pete to do the programming. Inventing a way for site visitors to “draw” their symbol and coming up with a character reader to identify the symbols was a real challenge for him.

  That downtime gave me a chance to figure out how I felt about Jim. Honestly, when we were working on this, I was so focused that I was like an automaton, completely immune to Jim’s charms. I thought that maybe I was over him.

  But, the days of waiting for Pete to finish the programming gave me time to breathe. And the same feelings were definitely there. I needed to find a way to shake them. Jim had talked frequently about Kiku and it was obvious that he was devoted to her.

  I didn’t get to meet Kiku because she was in New York City on her own internship. Jim visited her in New York, but she never came to Buffalo. Jim talked about her brilliance regularly. It didn’t bother me at first, but I gradually came to find Kiku’s amazingness rather annoying.

  Jealousy was a new emotion for me. I didn’t like it. It appeared to make me very cynical. I was finding Kiku to be pushy, selfish and cold. And I’d never even met her.

  Finally, Pete finished the website. I had a computer, but being completely paranoid, I needed one that was untraceable. I drove across the Peace Bridge to Canada and bought the cheapest laptop I could find. (Of course, in disguise with my frickin’ car parked blocks away. Can’t be too careful, even in another country.) I threw away the box, slid the computer under the front seat and stuffed the instructions in the glove compartment. I wasn’t even going to declare this baby. (Sooo unlike me. I follow every rule, always.)

  I s
hipped the computer to Pete and he loaded the website programming and some anonymizer software onto it and shipped it back to me. I drove around looking for a Wi-Fi signal. I picked an upscale neighborhood, so it wasn’t very difficult. The anonymizer software would let me surf the Web without anyone being able to trace it back to me. I figured, even if someone did take the trouble (and I understand it would mean obtaining warrants in multiple countries) to trace things back to my computer, they’d still have no idea who owned the computer. I didn’t even mail in the warranty card. (Also very unlike me.)

  I opened a PayPal account using the fake identity that Pete had purchased for us. Amazingly, it all went through smoothly. PayPal’s computers couldn’t see my flip-flopping stomach. I don’t know why I was so nervous. What I was doing was deceptive, but I didn’t think it was illegal. (Though, I could be wrong about that. I didn’t check it out because I didn’t want to know.) And it’s not like I was going to cheat anyone out of any money.

  I was doing most of the work even though Jim and I were supposed to be partners. But, no matter how many millions of hours I worked at my real job, it always seemed Jim put in even more hours at the hospital. And, honestly, I don’t think Jim was quite as obsessed with the Glyphs as I was. Probably because he had no feeling for how big the consequences were. And I did. Or, at least, I thought I did. I didn’t have any proof. Just that feeling. And so far in life, my feelings never proved to be wrong.