The Paragon of Animals - Chapter 1: Signs and Portents

Chapter 1: Signs and Portents

Where does it come from: this quest, this need to solve life's mysteries when the simplest of questions can never be answered? “Why are we here?” “What is the soul?” “Why do we dream?” Perhaps we would be better off not looking at all. Not delving, not yearning. But that's not human nature. Not the human heart. That is not why we are here.

"Jimmy? Have you been drawing in my sketchbook again?" It wasn't an accusation, but the look of confusion on Whitney Robinson's face was tinged with just a hint of annoyance. Her boyfriend glanced up from the manga he had been reading, taking a moment to shake himself out of the world into which he had been subsumed. It was Saturday afternoon, and Whitney had taken the opportunity to leave school to spend the weekend with Jimmy at his house.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"There are sketches in here that I don't remember making, and I wanted to know if you'd borrowed it. 'M'not mad or anything, just wondering." At this, Jimmy Falba put the comic book down on the table, got up from the couch on which he'd been sitting, and made his way over to Whitney, a sheepish smile on his face.

"Um... yeah, I kind of had some ideas, and I didn't have anything else handy." He wrapped his arms around her, reaching down to kiss her cheek gently as he stood behind her, looking over her shoulder at the new drawings in her book. "You were asleep on the couch, and I -- wait --"

"What is it?" Whitney asked. "It's ok, they're really good!" She turned around, prepared to heap praise on Jimmy, who never had as much confidence in his own art skills as she had, but stopped. Jimmy's look of mock-contrition had changed now, replaced by one of honest befuddlement.

"This isn't... I didn't draw this one. This looks like yours."

"But... I didn't draw this." Whitney cocked her head to one side, glancing again at the picture. Her puzzlement grew as she recognized herself and Jimmy in the picture, his arms wrapped around her from behind as they stood, staring perplexed at a sketchbook. The only difference she could see between real life and the drawing was a small "S"-like image on the cover of the pictured book.

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"Man, you have GOT to start getting more sleep. You look like hell."

Chris Aumiller and Trevor Schadt sat at a table at Primanti Brothers, shortly after noon on Monday. Both of them worked in downtown Pittsburgh, and being close friends and neighbors, they got together for lunch at least once a week.

"I know," Trevor answered, as he used two fries to scoop up a bit of coleslaw. "I don't know what it is. I mean, sure, I usually dream a lot, but man, there's nothing I hate more than dreaming that you're dreaming, y'know?" Chris nodded, a silent encouragement for his friend to continue. "You're gonna laugh at this. OK, so in the dream, I wake up, and there I am... floating. I swear, it was right out of Ghostbusters: 'I like her because she's a client, and because she sleeps above her covers..."

The two completed the quote in unison: "'Four feet above her covers.'"

After a short chuckle, Trevor continued, "Right. So there I am -- in this dream -- and I'm floating about a foot above my bed, and then it's like I snap out of a trance or something and I fall back down. And dude, I sleep on a futon on a metal frame; that shit hurts. So I hit the bed, and that's what jolts me out of the dream." Trevor gave one of his trademark snort-laughs, rolled his eyes and added, "Worst part is, my back was killing me when I woke up."

Chris's look hovered somewhere between bewilderment, intrigue and bemusement. "You were dreaming... about flying?" His one lip curled up in a smirk.

Trevor cocked an eyebrow back at him, pointing one finger at him. "Dude, start calling me 'Peter' and I will hurt you." Among their many other shared interests, Chris and Trevor had both become addicted to a television show called "Heroes;" the first episode featured one of the main characters, one Peter Petrelli, dreaming that he could fly. "Ah, crap," he noted, looking down at his watch, "time to head back." They paid their bill and, zipping up their coats and putting on their hats and gloves, headed out the door into the cold January weather.

"Hey!" Chris called as they headed back towards their respective office buildings. "No throwing yourself off of monkey bars, nurse-boy!"

Without missing a beat, or even turning around, Trevor pointed one finger behind him and shouted back, "I know where you sleep, Aumiller!"

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Bayani Caes sat at his desk, staring at the clock. He was, as usual, surrounded by papers, notes, design schema, and other tools of his trade. When you're a programmer, days come in three flavors: interminably slow, unbelievably hectic, and -- worst -- both at the same time. This day was one of that third kind. Surrounded by a million things to do, Bayani wanted nothing more than for this day that wouldn't end to be over, but the hands on the clock mercilessly taunted him with the fact that it was only 2:30 in the afternoon. Worse yet... it was only Monday.

His eyes traced back and forth over the "S"-shape of the manufacturer's trademark, centered on the face of the clock, again and again, almost unconsciously timing their movement to the tick... tick... tick... of the second hand.

Tick...

...

The lack of the by-now-expected tick broke Bayani out of the almost meditative state into which he had unintentionally fallen. He stared again at the clock, unsure whether to be more annoyed at the fact that the clock's batteries had unexpectedly died or that the universe seemed to agree that this day would go on forever, but either way willing the clock to start again, to speed up, anything, just please get me out of here I want this day to be over...

"Hey, Bayani!" One of his co-workers shouted almost right in his ear. "You alright? I had to call your name four times before you heard me."

"Um..." Bayani took a moment, shaking his head to clear the cobwebs. "Yeah, what's up?"

"You coming?"

"Huh?"

"It's... five o'clock?" he said, talking to Bayani as if to a child. "You don't look too good. Go on home."

Bayani looked at him unbelievingly. "Wait, no, it's only --" He looked at the clock.

5:00.

Tick...

##############################

Chris returned to his house in Squirrel Hill after a long day at work. The support calls had been slow that afternoon, and so his mind kept flashing back to his lunch conversation. He chuckled as he realized he'd spent the entire afternoon, as well as his bus ride home, looking for examples of what Heroes fans had come to call "the symbol:" a stylized half-DNA helix that kept popping up in relatively unobtrusive places on the show. When he got home, he was met by his roommates Mike Olsen (sometimes known as Cat) and Jeanie Rabatsky, as well as Jeanie's boyfriend Jim Gogal, and their frequent houseguest T.J. Condon. Mike was, as usual, playing Final Fantasy XII on the downstairs PlayStation; T.J. was watching and, also as usual, making good-natured but sarcastic commentary; and Jim and Jeanie were discussing their plans for the evening.

"Jim, I thought we were going to go out tonight. Didn't you say you needed to pick up some things at the Mills?"

Jim paused, reflecting, and then stared at her in surprise. "Y'know, I did. Geez, that was what, two weeks ago? I'd completely forgotten."

Chris, putting his bag down and taking off his coat, smiled warmly at her and added, "That's our Jeanie, mind like a steel trap." Jeanie tried to pucker up her face at the assembled friends, threatening "Anyone makes any cracks about 'rust' and I'll kill you," but she couldn't keep from giggling and soon the whole room was laughing.

"Well," T.J. began teasingly, "I wasn't going to, but since you mentioned it -- Hey!" Jeanie reached across the couch, trying not to get in Mike's way as she went to thwap T.J. for the joke, but her hand caught nothing but thin air. The momentary distraction was enough, though, and the monster that Mike's party was currently facing dealt them a deadly blow.

Cat shot a glare at Jeanie as the "game over" music started sounding in the background. "I've been trying to get past him for a week and a half, Jeanie! Thanks a lot!!" The edge to Cat's voice cut the playful atmosphere in the room almost instantly, and she threw the controller towards the coffee table, stood up and stomped upstairs in a huff. The cord to the controller settled into a graceful S-curve, lying across several pencils that were sitting on the table. Her footsteps echoed her anger from the wooden steps, but otherwise the living room was quiet as everyone attempted to take in what had just happened.

"Boy, Olsen's in a mood today," Chris muttered in wonderment.

"The worst part is, I don't know what he's so upset about," commented T.J. "I mean, really. I watched him beat that thing two days ago. I don’t know why he went back to do it over."

##############################

Whitney was back in college Monday night and the return to classes and homework and her radio show helped her settle back into her familiar and comfortable pattern, but her mind would not let her forget the strange incident with the sketchbook from the previous weekend. She sat in her booth as Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" played over the airwaves, poring through every sketchbook she had ever owned. Whitney had been drawing for many years, although she almost hated to look at her early work; since adopting a manga-like Japanese art style shortly before joining Tekkoshocon, her skill had improved dramatically. Now that she more closely compared her drawings over the years, she noticed for the first time how much clearer her art had become just since meeting Jimmy just a bit over a year ago.

"Huh," she mused out loud to herself as she turned back to the first empty page in her newest sketchbook while absent-mindedly flipping a pencil in her hand. "Boy, that's inspiration for ya." She smiled as she always did when she thought of Jimmy; she could not imagine being safer or happier than when she was with him. Noting that the current song still had several minutes to go, her eyes closed halfway, and she allowed her mind to wander to the upcoming convention, Jimmy and the rest of her Tekkoshocon friends. Almost without realizing it, she started to move the pencil across the page, an image slowly taking shape on the page as her eyes, now white and clouded over, stared vacantly into space.

It was half an hour later when Whitney's producer banged on the window of her studio and she emerged from her reverie; when she came to her senses, she was immediately thankful that she had used the album versions of the songs she played, rather than the single versions; the last track of the CD was just winding down. "Hey there, faithful listeners," she spoke into the microphone as the song faded out and she recomposed herself. "Sorry about that unannounced marathon. I just... I mean, really, The Wall is just one of those albums you can't truly appreciate unless you listen to it beginning to end, don't you think?"

Frantically looking around her for a song to play, her eyes settled on the sketchbook. The page to which it was open was no longer empty, and while Whitney had no recollection of ever drawing the picture that now lay before her, the dulled pencil still in her hand seemed to lend evidence to the contrary. This was no image from any fic she had ever written or read, or any scene she had even envisioned in her imagination. Yet there it was, staring her in the face, almost taunting her with questions.

"Um... uh..." Suddenly realizing that she was still on the air, and not wanting to sound completely befuddled to her audience, Whitney thought of the first thing that came to mind. "OK, now how about a change of pace! A friend of mine from Pittsburgh recently introduced me to a great singer/songwriter named Tom Smith, and we've managed to get our hands on a couple of his albums just for you. Right here on WCAL --" she scrambled for the CD, almost picking a track at random -- "oh! Here’s one for all you people out partying tonight, um, Tom Smith's '307 Ale!'"

##############################

Trevor woke with a start in the middle of the night, shivering under his covers. This, in and of itself, was not unusual; as he had mentioned to Chris earlier that day, he usually slept quite poorly, and awoke at least once most nights. It was raining outside, and the rain coming in through the open window had coated everything with a fine chilly mist. Achieving only a half-state of consciousness, he reached up to slide the screen door ("gud thng neither uvva cats got out," he mumbled) and window closed, and then flopped back into bed. His hand absent-mindedly reached to scritch the head of one of his cats who usually slept with him, and just as he drifted back towards slumber, a thought floated through his head that stirred him fully awake: Waitaminnit... it’s January. In Pittsburgh. Why in the nine Hells did I have the window open?!

Slowly rousing himself from his bed, he started to run his fingers through his long brown hair, trying to smooth out some of the nightly tangles as he walked down the hall towards the bathroom. Crap, he thought as his fingers met thick cold moisture, my hair's all wet. Damn, that must be a hell of a rainstorm out there. Now that his brain was working a little more coherently, he noticed other fallacies in the otherwise-simple explanation of his wet bedroom. Why aren't I hearing the wind? My hair is sopping wet, what, did someone dump a bucket of water on me? And why don't I remember opening that damn window?? With all this on his mind, it took that crucial extra few seconds for the most pertinent question to rise to the surface.

Why aren't I hearing the floor creak? As he closed the bathroom door, flipped the light on and winced at the sudden brightness, he looked down at the floor, wondering how much of a mess he was going to have to clean up in the morning. His black cat Illyana, having followed him into the bathroom as she usually does, looked up at him; the questioning look was obvious, even on the face of a cat.

He was hovering, about a foot off the floor.

“Well,” he declared to no one in particular. “Fuck.”

##############################

Bayani took Tuesday off of work, claiming that he had a fever and was feeling nauseated. The latter, at least, was true, although not from any illness or virus. The incident with the clock from the previous day puzzled him, and if there was one thing that Bayani Caes enjoyed above anything else, it was solving a puzzle.

Well, perhaps there was one exception to that rule… and she walked into the room at that moment. His girlfriend, Kate Szkotnicki, raised her eyebrow and smiled at the look of consternation on his face. Smartest man in the world, she thought to herself as she draped her arms around his neck, and he’s all mine. “Everything alright?” she inquired.

“Not really,” he responded, a bit gruffer and more dismissive than he really intended. Kate knew that he just got that way when he had something stuck in his mind. But then he looked up at her and smiled. “Besides, I’m not sure you’d believe me if I told you.”

Kate, no stranger to games and puzzles herself, now found herself intrigued, and sat down in the other of the two recliners in the living room of her apartment. “Try me.” Slowly, he talked her through the events of the afternoon -- or, at least, as much of it as he remembered.

“So you lost two hours,” she said, somewhat uncomprehendingly, when he was done. “You’ve done that before. I’ve seen you lose a whole day working on a project.”

“But that’s just it,” he responded immediately, a slight note of panic creeping into his voice. “I wasn’t working on anything. I mean, there were a million things I was supposed to be working on, but I wasn’t doing any of them. I was sitting there, watching the clock, and it stopped. It wasn’t moving. Next thing I knew, it was 5 o’clock, and Jason was telling me to go home, and oh yeah, the clock was working again. Still synced up perfectly to the clock on my computer, too.”

“OK.” Kate still wasn’t sure she believed him, but whatever had actually happened, it was clear to her that he thought it was true. And, at least for now, that was good enough for her. “So what are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just take my mind off it for a while, play something on the PS2. Or, wait, is it still busted?”

“No,” Kate responded. “I took a look at it this morning and now it’s working fine.”

##############################

[22:22] Saberpilot: hey trevor
[22:22] Blackpaladin: Hey Whit! <hugs> How’s it going?
[22:25] Saberpilot: <hug> um… i’m not sure. something weird has happened.
[22:25] Blackpaladin: <blinkblink> OK. What’s going on?
[22:27] Saberpilot: did anything strange happen yesterday?
[22:32] Saberpilot: um… hello?
[22:33] Blackpaladin: Sorry.
[22:33] Blackpaladin: Spaced out for a minute there. ^^;;
[22:34] Blackpaladin: What do you mean, strange?
[22:34] Saberpilot: Trust me, I know the feeling.
[22:34] Saberpilot: I think you’d know it if you saw it ^^;;;
[22:35] Blackpaladin: Whit, what’s going on?
[22:36] Saberpilot: You’ll think I’m weird. Or crazy. Or both. --;;
[22:37] Blackpaladin: Only in the good ways. -_^ C’mon, Whitney, you know you can talk to me. What’s on your mind?
[22:38] Saberpilot: Can I send you a picture?
[22:38] Blackpaladin: Sure.
[22:38] *** Saberpilot is trying to send you “radioshow.jpg”.
[22:40] Saberpilot: It’s something I sketched last night during my radio show, but I have no idea why.
[22:40] Blackpaladin: OK…
[22:41] Blackpaladin: Not that I’m complaining about seeing something you drew -- you know I love your art -- but why send it to me?
[22:41] Saberpilot: You’ll see.
[22:42] *** You have received “radioshow.jpg.”
[22:44] Blackpaladin: …
[22:44] Blackpaladin: …
[22:45] Blackpaladin: … um… well. That’s… interesting. I mean, it’s really well done, but… yeah.
[22:46] Saberpilot: I swear, I don’t even remember drawing it. I kind of zoned out for about half an hour, and when I woke up that was on the page.

Trevor looked at his screen in shock. The black and white pencil sketch displayed in front of him could not be any clearer if it had been a photograph. It was clearly him, a look of determination and resignation on his face. And he was clearly carrying Whitney in his arms, although she was in some anime cosplay costume he didn’t recognize. And hanging from the zipper pull of his jacket, just large enough to be noticed, was clearly a charm in the familiar S-shaped curve of a half-DNA helix.

And that was clearly the ExpoMart -- the convention center that has hosted Tekkoshocon for what would soon be its fifth year -- behind them, being engulfed in flames.

And he was clearly flying.

This quest, this need to solve life's mysteries… in the end, what does it matter when the human heart can only find meaning in the smallest of moments? They're here, among us… in the shadows, in the light… everywhere. Do they even know yet?

To be continued…