Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Which brings up to Ghost Weeks (4).
Today is February 21, 2011. Today was a holiday here. Temperatures were around sixty degrees. Sunny yet again. I spent the weekend in a pensive mood, trying to sort through what dreams happened when through this dark stretch. I can interrogate my wife. I can look at postings she made. I can sort through old scribbles of my own.
Thing is, this past few days I am reminded of how much history I dozed through last winter. A lot of history can happen in three weeks. You might have noticed how much history has happened over the past three weeks this year. I have.
And the strangest thing…a lot of history did peek through. The TV must have been running night and day for the longest time….until someone got all courteous and turned it off.
Advice to future ICU caregivers: Leave the TV on. It’s vastly superior to the medically-comatose than sensory deprivation. I’ll elaborate momentarily.
On to resume our odyssey through the dream world of medically induced coma…
OK.. where were you? Ah, yes…
…
As someone who has read David Wingrove’s “Chung Kuo” series, it occurs to you that your interesting experience as a new employee of a restaurant/mah jong parlor associated with a casino in Atlantic City (that just happens to be frequented by lots of doctors) is probably reflective of that long-ago reading. You are truly not dreaming this – it’s surreal but it’s not a dream. You know the difference. The rules of reality are seemingly the same. People do not suddenly do weird supernatural things. They don’t know things that it is impossible to know. No one is treating you as if you were exceptionally rich or interesting or beautiful. (Darn.) You are not absolutely dysfunctional but you do feel feverish and do most of your new job either sitting down or leaned up against something.
(Your unconscious body state and that of reality will converge in fits and starts and some reversals. At this time your body is sending you signals that you are resting and recovering but you are aware at all times you do not feel all that well.)
So, what’s this new job of yours? Well, mostly you are the eyes and ears of Mr. Wei. (Yes, you know that’s like “Smith” in Putongua but that’s his name and he’s sticking with it.) Sort of a pit boss in training. You learn the how (and the unspoken why) of the mah jong stack assemblies in this particular not-quite-underworld society’s operation.
You learn how this is but part of a vastly larger operation – thousands and thousands of dedicated terminals are being distributed for an incredibly complex interactive game that is only loosely based on tiles, all based loosely on the Mah Jong model. You pick a starting configuration. Each tile has not just pictograms but value traits and special advantages and disadvantages. You remember a card game from the Wingrove series – Chou. The game of State – normally played with four, but played by thousands, someday millions at once. And for stakes. Huge stakes.
Even a sliver of such transactions would be worth tens of billions a year.
One thing you have to hand to the Chinese – they dream as grand as Americans – and they’ve been at it much longer.
Yes, part of you is wondering if this is dreaming. You recall the setting of the Chung Kuo story is three centuries in the future. Are you there yet?
No, but the level of intricacy and security required to support such a system! You are definitely not quite where you once were.
It occurs to you to ask Mr. Wei the month. He looks at you oddly.
“November,” he pointed at a calendar near a wall phone. There is an appointment calendar there. You go over to it. It’s showing November.
What happened to the intervening months?
Then you notice the date.
The year is 2014. You are interested in politics. You size up that you’ve missed not one but three elections. A nearby TV, as if on cue, mentioned President Obama. Well, okay at least that’s the same. You glance around. Plenty of people in here playing games in a casual way.
What happened? How did you forget so much?
You remember the words of the young dark-haired woman from before . Oh, them…
“I have to get back,” you say aloud. Four years gone. Four years. Do they every remember you?
Mr. Wei smiles and shakes his head. “You are back from the dead. This is a good place NOT to go back to.” He rubs the side of this nose, a very American mannerism. He’s learning fast.
“Of course.” You answer. I would not do to make reunion with your family a very impossible thing. Irritating your new employer would qualify as a bad move.
So you learn more about the game currently being played in hundreds of parlors nationwide. You are unclear on how this has come to pass; sympathies toward gaming of any kind were very harsh …. in 2010. And after two years of recession no one was much in the mood for gambling of any kind.
“So.. how’s business in general?” You ask.
Mr. Wei mulls something over in his thoughts then speaks up. “It’s been good, very good. It will be better when the Chou system goes online, though I think locations such as these will go the way of the landline and the dinosaur.” He adds. “Are you feeling well?”
“May I go outside for a moment? I need some air.”
He nods toward the closed courtyard. You accept the limitation. You are not running anywhere.
Outside it is windy. It is cold. There is one side of the court open to the ocean but it is at least 10 stories down to the Boardwalk. You go to the rail and your shoulders sag. What would have made you run off? You are trying to sort out… What is the last thing you remember?
You were sick. You went to the ER in Charlotte. You were put under. You know your name. You know your wife’s name. You…what are the boys’ names?
You realize you have forgotten. You are terrified.
OK, regroup. What’s farther back. You remember work, your boss, the one from the opera… no, a symphony! Yes! You went to a show with your wife… met your boss and her husband..what did they look like? Then this woman was there…
You had been sick and then you were at a show. Yes, that was it. Everyone asking about you. It was Christmas.
Now it is closing on Christmas four years later.
And just like that a cheery voice says “Hi!” and leans on the rail to your left. It is the woman from before. Still dark-haired, eerily similar to your wife, but not her. She leans into you, warm, light, young. You edge to your right and pull away from the rail. You look at her closely – she is the only link you have to your past at the moment.
She wears a red top and dark paints, something you interpret as being suitable for a night club. Or you glance up at the buildings around you, a casino in Atlantic City.
“You’re probably wondering why it’s four years later than you think it should be,” she starts before you can even ask. “You were sick. You woke up, still feverish. You somehow got money, got a cab home, got your car keys and started driving. You wound up in Philadelphia before you ran out of cash and gas. Then you got very sick again.”
“How sick?”
“Meningitis sick. You should not have taken a joy ride.” (It should be pointed out that what you actually had, while it went into your heart and lungs and almost killed you that way, in 19 out of 20 times goes north into the sinuses and sometimes inflames the brain lining which can look a lot like meningitis.)
“So I was in a coma for four years and now I am AWOL from a hospital in Philly in the company of you and … oh, that reminds me. What were you thinking getting me mixed up with the fracking TONGS?”
She giggles. “Frack. Now that’s old school.” See shakes her head, smiling sadly. “You got better in Philly after a few months. Your wife took a job in the DC area. Wanted to move you closer to there but there really was no way to do that. I was your nurse, off an on for that time.
“We would talk about how you were good with numbers and how you used to work in the gaming industry and it got me thinking. We could help each other out with a road trip.”
You blink. “Amazing. I have been kidnapped and now I am up to my eyeballs in trouble with the triads. Are you crazy?” (We’ll withhold judgment on a person in a drug and fever induced sustained delusion making that accusation of anyone else.)
She shrugs.
“I don’t remember being anywhere but in Charlotte… and now here. And I don’t remember much about being there either. Everything is so fuzzy but what’s right in front of me.” You gather yourself. “Alright, so they’re alive. M and the boys?”
“Oh, yes! As far as they know you are still back in Philly. She’s coming to see you again next week.”
You breath a sigh of relief. “So she did not … “
“Oh, no! I meant earlier they’re gone back home! My job really IS to take care of you!”
You relax. You are hurt and confused and there are all sorts of holes in this story but it feels more real.
Which makes the next task much harder.
Mr. Wei arrives. “Is this her, Mr. K?”
You nod and step backward, deeply ashamed.
Two older perfectly unthreatening men with the shoulder holsters show up behind your supposed nurse.
She looks right at you. “It’s okay. Really. I’ll always care for you.”
And that is the last you ever see of her.
You wonder what you have given up and you know. This is for all you know your only link to your real life.
Mr Wei watches the woman escorted away then hands you something. It is your leather coat. You put it on. You have had this… for years now, you laugh. It is the same one you have worn since first going to the hospital long ago.
“I thought you might need this,” he says.
“She was lying, wasn’t she?” you ask after a while.
“Part of it. As you might imagine I have sources of information.” He pulls out his phone and starts reading. He summarizes points. “You were reported as missing in late February 2010.” He pauses. “You are technically alive but your wife is legally separated and about a year ago stopped efforts to find you.” He pauses, seeing the impact this news has on you, then decides to show you something on his phone.
You look. It is her, grey streaks on dark hair, more wrinkles, large dark brown eyes, same full lips only they bear a frown not a little smile. She is standing near two boys, teenagers. No, one would be not quite that but he is immense for his age. Same full straight cut hair. Same round faces though the older one is developing some edges at last.
It is unmistakably your family. The one you fled four years ago.
Wei holds his mouth firm in a straight line. He speaks softly. “Family is everything. You have helped me. Which is why I am going to help you now.”
“Why? How?”
“You made a tough choice. You could have just given up everything then. You had no reason to expect we would know or care about your personal problems.
Wei smiles. “The flaws in life are tests of character. Now it is time to send you back to your life.”
A sharp jab goes into your throat. “Ouch.” It is morphine, a large dose. Wei pulls back the syringe.
“Keep our secrets and we will keep you our friend. Remember this if nothing else.”
Then you fade to darkness but before you go you hear one last thing.
“Much harder tests await you now.”