The Dreamer in Fire and Other Stories Read online

  “Something came through.

  “There is a pattern to reality lying underneath our perceptions. Sometimes, there are those who can recognize the pattern. People like Rasputin or Nostradamus. Most of us are blissfully unaware and go about our lives like ignorant ants, but—and this is the important thing—it is not just a pattern, it is a noose. A noose that is tightening around us and this world ever harder with each new completion of the circle.

  “‘By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles?’—Matthew 7:16.”

  “It’s getting worse. Ever since 1958, it has escalated. The intervals between events are getting shorter and shorter. Something is making us act this way. People are easily influenced, especially when they think that they aren’t. There will be no big event. There will be no apocalypse. There are no monsters. ‘Cthulhu’ does not exist, but the concept of Cthulhu does. The world will end because we contribute to it every day. One step forward, two steps back. Subtly, we are moved, shaped in the proper directions. What we think are our decisions have been made for us. Seeds have been planted that are carefully cultivated and will soon bear fruit. Those who see the pattern are removed, sacrificed like pawns on the chessboard.

  “There is a deep scratching in my chest that will not go away. The more I learn, the worse it gets. ‘This evil worm that gnaws the world,’ said Dante.

  “It is the force behind us, driving our actions, and it will not end until it is finished. I don’t know what it is but I know it gets more powerful every year and there is no fighting it. This thing is in our blood now, it is in our minds, it drives us relentlessly, but it is patient. Give it ten years, twenty, even fifty, and our world will be a bloodbath of wars and violence. Massacres will become commonplace and not just in war zones but in our schools and hometowns.

  “‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,’ said Yeats. We are rushing toward oblivion but are driven there by some obscene swineherd. The truth within me will come out of its own accord.

  “God help me. I have seen the thing behind the curtain and it has seen me.”

  Showtime

  “Hey kids! It’s Captain Billy time!”

  For more than ten years, that was the phrase that kids in the New England area woke up to every weekday morning. In the world of regional children’s television, Captain Billy (William Turner) was approaching the big time. He had already brought the show to prominence in the New England market, far eclipsing any other show in recent memory and was approaching record numbers that hadn’t been seen since the heady days of Salty’s Shack. Within days, a new contract would be signed and Captain Billy would be on his way to national syndication. Everyone was poised for the kind of market penetration that hadn’t been seen since Mr. Rogers retired, except for one thing: no one could find Captain Billy.

  The rotund funnyman, loved by thousands of youngsters, had been missing for more than two weeks. The local Rhode Island network, which aired the show, filled the space with repeats and had managed, through a great deal of pressure, blackmail, and cash, to keep the events from reaching the newspapers or evening news; but I knew more than they had realized. Although I had only been working in the Captain Billy Show production department for the past six months, I knew panic when I saw it—and everyone was in full panic mode. Even the producer, Mr. Banks—a small, beady man who looked the part of a middle-aged accountant turned producer—acted worried, and no one could ever recall Banks being rattled by anything. Not by the lawsuits from certain children’s parents, not by the rumors of sponsor kickbacks, not even by the mysterious late night ‘trips’ that Captain Billy would take. But this rattled him. This shook him to the core. He didn’t show it around the set, but I could sense it and each day made it worse. Of course, it was strange how Banks was even more upset when Captain Billy returned.

  The executives were thrilled, naturally, as Billy Turner came back just in time to sign on the dotted line and make everyone’s dreams of money and syndication come true. “I just needed to take some time by myself,” Billy said. “I never thought it would be such a big deal! Didn’t you get my memo?” Everyone laughed and said how Billy was such a kidder and bottles of champagne flowed and various other substances were ingested and fun and laughter was had by all. Except for Mr. Banks. Not many noticed that he didn’t stay around for the after-signing party or for the after-signing party “party” that was invitation only. Being only a production assistant, I wasn’t included in that last celebration, but that was okay. A few of the other “non-included” office workers and I stopped at a local bar afterwards and continued with our own party. When I had finished my fourth beer or so, I staggered my way to the men’s room—and that’s when I saw Banks. He was sitting alone in a booth in the back, away from the lights and the noise and the people. When I got closer, I saw something that I never thought I would see. Mr. Ryan Banks, terror of the network, the man with ice water in his veins, was sobbing.

  Not the kind of crying you see most people doing with little tears falling from their eyes. This man was sobbing with his entire body. He shook as he cried; so badly that you would have thought he had palsy. Unbelieving, I went up to him. “Mr. Banks, you OK?” I asked tentatively.

  He recognized my voice and looked up sheepishly. “Ah, Kevin,” he said, “I was just having a few drinks. Been a long few weeks, you know. Why . . . uh, why don’t you join me for a few, eh?”

  Now, even drunk, I knew the politics involved. When your boss asks you join him for a drink, you don’t refuse. Not if you want to get anywhere, that is, and I really wanted to get somewhere. Banks motioned for the waitress and ordered a double shot of whiskey. I ordered the same and he chuckled at that. “You’ve got a way to go if you want to catch up to me, Kevin.” The drinks came; he gulped his down quickly and ordered another. I tried to do the same but ended up coughing a bit and needed a few tries to get it down. Banks smiled at that and ordered another.

  “So,” he finally said, “everyone’s still celebrating, eh? Big payday for all of us now. National syndication, big-time ratings, lots of money flowing in. Everybody’s happy. Are you happy, Kevin?”

  I told him I was.

  He snorted into his empty glass. “I was happy once. Seems like a long time ago, though. I remember being happy when I met Bill Turner. I remember being happy when the show started climbing in the ratings. I remember being happy the first time I went to one of the ‘elite’ parties he throws. I don’t remember being happy again after that.”

  I asked why he wasn’t at the after-party party tonight.

  “I will be, soon enough. Have to fortify myself privately first.” He raised his glass. “But I’m expected and I will have to put in my appearance.” He sniffed and wiped his eyes. “Did you know . . . ” He stopped for a moment to compose himself. “Did you know that they used to do it all through books? It’s true. Once upon a time, the world communicated through books. Imagine that. No instant communication. No faxes. No phones.” He chuckled to himself and then sang, “‘Not a single luxury’!”

  I could feel the room spinning around me and could barely hear what he was saying, but he wouldn’t have made much sense even if I had been sober.

  “In those days, ideas were communicated over long distance through books. Especially dangerous ideas. The kind of ideas you could get killed for having. Books were easily disguised and hidden if need be, but it wasn’t enough. You still couldn’t reach enough people because not enough of them could READ! Not to mention the fact that a lot of the books became ‘forbidden’ so people couldn’t even find the damn things!”

  Another round of drinks came and Banks downed his again. I had no idea he was such a prodigious drinker. I could barely touch mine.

  “The thing that everyone kept missing was that communication was essential. Even at the right time, even when the ‘stars were right,’ if there weren’t enough people who believed, truly believed, then it still wouldn’t work. So things went
underground for quite a while. You going to drink that?”

  I shook my head, and he downed my drink as well.

  “But then, at the beginning of the last century, things started to change. Faster communication of ideas was a lot easier with the invention of wireless, and they almost got it right. But only part of it got through. Still, that was enough to result in World War I and the 1918 flu epidemic. Millions died and Europe was devastated, but there still weren’t enough believers. You have to believe to make it work. So then came radio. It helped spread the word but, primarily due to the efforts of one small scribbler from Rhode Island, a lot of people didn’t take it seriously. So that resulted in World War II. Still not enough power.

  “Then came television.

  “Now that started to work. But there were problems. Sometimes the message didn’t convey correctly, and that resulted in such debacles as McCarthy and Southeast Asia. But then they hit on the right formula and connection. It’s taken a while to get it all together and coordinate the astronomical factors, but they’re nearly ready to try it again.”

  Banks leaned forward and whispered to me.

  “Kevin, have you ever seen what happens to kids when they watch TV? They’re mesmerized. They become totally absorbed in whatever is on and they soak it all in. To top it off, they’ll believe anything they see. Want to sell a piece-of-crap toy? Tell them how great it is and you won’t be able to make enough of them. Packaging a new cereal or candy? Make them believe how delicious it is and it’ll fly off the shelves. Their friend in Germany knew this. Capture the young and you can determine the future. And that’s what Bill Turner was for. Start small. Make sure it works and then go big time. Well, it’s the big time now. They’re gonna spread it electronically and spread it nationally.”

  Banks grabbed my hand.

  “Do you want to know, Kevin? Do you really want to know what goes on at the ‘after-party’ parties? What really walks the earth in the guise of Bill Turner? Then I’ll show you!”

  Banks looked into my eyes and I saw, for the briefest instant, what he had seen. It was the future. The earth had been wiped clean, and huge, hideous things slid and climbed over the wreckage of humanity. Dark horrors swam through the air and reached through the clouds. They had been waiting for centuries to reclaim this world and now, finally, through the miracle of television, they would succeed. Cthulhu roared through the abyss. Nyarlathotep gloated over his huge camps of human slaves and pain. Hastur, in his golden lake, luxuriated in his horror. And over it all, orchestrating the terror, was Azathoth. The Lord of Chaos ululated grotesquely over the cosmos.

  I fell off my chair as if an electric shock had gone through me.

  “So now you see. When Bill disappeared a few days ago, I knew what was about to happen. He was getting ready for his big debut. Except . . . except when he came back, it wasn’t Billy. The man was gone. In his place was something wearing Billy like a cheap suit. Yog-Sothoth had claimed him. It was in his eyes. God help me, I could see it and I did nothing. Nothing!”

  Banks started sobbing again.

  “And now I’m going to go to that ‘party’ and do nothing again. I’ll sit there and do nothing as they gather believers and open the door. I’ll do nothing when they come through and I’ll do nothing when they wipe the earth clean in their image.”

  Banks got up to leave as two well-dressed men appeared.

  “And you’ll do nothing either, Kevin. You can’t, you see? It’s the power of television. It convinces you that it is the best thing in the world to sit there and do nothing.”

  I tried to get up, but my legs wouldn’t work and I fell forward. I remember something very hard hitting my head and then nothing for a while.

  When I woke up, it was two days later and I was in the hospital. It was explained to me that I had passed out from intoxication and hit my head on a table. A minor concussion, they said, nothing to be too worried about. As I left the hospital, I walked by the pediatric ward and saw something that happens every day, but which I had never noticed before. The children were all gathered around the television, watching.

  None of them moved.

  None of them blinked.

  None of them did anything.

  They just watched with an intensity I had never seen before.

  I didn’t even have to see their eyes to know that they were also looking at me and it was looking at me through them.

  I bought a bottle of whiskey on the way home and drank it all within an hour.

  Later, I put my television outside and listened to the news reports on the radio as they described strange happenings around the country.

  The Captain Billy Show was number one in the ratings and Mr. Banks was nowhere to be seen.

  I sat there and drank and did nothing. Because nothing was all any one man can do. Because you just can’t beat good TV.

  The Adventure of the

  Prometheus Calculation

  Over the past few weeks, I had seen little of Holmes in our rooms at 221B Baker Street in London. It was not an especially alarming situation, as he would frequently be absent from our shared apartment whenever he was especially embroiled in a new case. Still, I could not help but be a little concerned, since there was always the possibility that he might be in need of repair or calibration of his internal engines.

  The view from our sitting-room window was obscured by a particularly thick fog this morning. The many steam-horses and bicycles had increased the normal London fog to the point where it was practically impenetrable. The constant, steady hum of the airships that had virtually replaced the underground trains told me that they were still up there whether I could see them or not.

  I was beginning to wonder if I should venture out in search of my friend myself or contact Inspector Lestrade when I head the downstairs door slam violently and Holmes’s heavy, metallic footsteps on the seventeen stairs.

  “Mrs. Hudson!” he cried out. “Hot water!”

  When he stepped through the door, I was once again amazed at the sight of Holmes, the world’s only living, functional robot. Even after years of chronicling his cases, I can barely find the words to describe him. Standing roughly three inches over six feet, Sherlock Holmes, the most brilliant detective on Earth, was a combination of cylinders, tubes, and vents. His head was an oddly shaped oval with two lenses for eyes and a round speaker screen for a mouth. His body was a large circular cylinder, not unlike a flattened barrel. His arms and legs were thin tubes with circular knobs for shoulder, elbow, hip, and knee joints. His feet were flat pads, in the shape of a turtle, while his hands were square blocks with even thinner tubes and knobs for fingers. His voice, while not unpleasant, was slightly mechanical as was to be expected.

  As a doctor, I found his internal workings to be particularly interesting. The bulk of his torso was taken up by an internal combustion engine that ran on a derivative of oil. Inside was a series of pistons and gears that were more suited for diagnosis by an engineer than by a physician. The engine, or so we deduced it to be, sat in the cavity where a normal man’s heart would be and ran all Holmes’s other systems. Not only did it provide his locomotion but it generated the electricity that kept his remarkable brain running.

  That was the vital point of Holmes’s construction. All other pieces could be replaced if needed, but if his mechanical brain was deprived of its electrical fuel, everything he was and had ever seen, thought, or been would be lost. He was so like us in so many ways, and yet so different as well.

  Normally Holmes took great care with his appearance. Although his existence was well known by virtually everyone in England, he did not like to call attention to himself. So he took pains to dress like a typical Englishman with clothes from head to toe. Shoes, especially made for him to give the illusion of normal boots, pants, shirt, coat, long coat, gloves, and hat were his uniform whenever he left our rooms. Today, however, all his clothes were ripped and torn. His gloves, hat, and long coat were all missing and his shirt and pants were in ta
tters. There was dirt and mud all over him and his hands showed signs of deep scratches and scuff-marks. I had never seen him in such disarray.

  “Holmes!” I cried. “What the devil has happened to you?”

  “My dear Watson, I cannot express how happy I am to see you. There have been many times this past fortnight when I was convinced that my functions would permanently cease!”

  I rushed to help him to his favorite chair as Mrs. Hudson came into the room with a bucket of steaming water and we got to work cleaning off all the mud and filth. “Holmes, where have you been?”

  “For the last two weeks, Watson, I have been running for my life.”

  “What do you mean? What case have you been working on?”

  “The biggest case of my career, Watson. Everything else pales before this. It is my most important case, the only one that has ever mattered: Who built me?”

  An hour later and Holmes was restored to his normal state of composure, although there was now a nasty dent on the back of his head which I know irritated him but which he tried desperately to ignore. And yet, he was filled with an intensity I had never seen in him before.

  “We have no time to spare, Watson; we must be off to follow the thread of my current investigations. That is, of course, if you are willing to join me. I must warn you that this will be extraordinarily dangerous for us both.”

  “I shall stand by your side as always, Holmes.”

  “Excellent!” he almost shouted. “I knew my ‘Boswell’ would say nothing less. Bring your revolver, though; it may have no effect on me, but our opponents do not share my natural armor!”

  With that he was out the door and down the steps, nearly knocking Mrs. Hudson down in the process. I rushed after him, mumbling my usual apologies to our landlady, and followed him into a steam-carriage that had appeared almost on command.