Chapter 21 of No Romance

This one needs some revising, but it's acceptable enough that I'm putting it up here.

Chapter 21 “Not Your Grandmother’s Retirement Plan”

“About that...” said Ann Paula, a little nervously. ‘Ann Paula’ seems a little strange, but I was unsure what to call her---I could swear there was some Paula still inside. “I---”

She was interrupted. By me. I decided right then to stop hiding from people who were no threat to me, like I had done to such ridiculous extents last night. So before Ann Paula could say anymore, I stood up from behind the stainless steel sinks. There was no reason to hide from this man. If he were with the real actual flesh and blood Paula, sure, but he wasn’t, although I would have to act like he was. I didn’t know if he knew about Annie’s persona anyway.

“Golbez,” I said to the startled man. “Or, Dad. I don’t know, that still sounds strange. Golbez. I’ll just call you Golbez.”

It was immediately and embarrassingly then that I realized I had nothing, absolutely nothing, to say. Words of comfort? I had no pity for him.

Golbez began tugging at his white mane of a beard. “What! Jackie, old boy, where have you been? Were you listening in?”

“I was listening in. I wasn’t sure of the situation, and needed to be clear on whether or not you wanted me dead. I do hope that Vanasmas didn’t order my arrest and death on your authority.”

“Is that what that little rat did?”

“If that’s what getting shot at by your men on his orders is, yeah,” I said, nodding. Golbez looked like he was about to erupt, and worked up to it by swearing up a storm. I was used to that kind of thing, being a swearing man myself, but I observed Ann Paula as she covered up just one ear with her hand. Interesting.

When it seemed he was winding down, having lost much of his energy and sweating and heaving like a fevered hippopotamus, Ann Paula spoke up.

“That, Golbez, was the other part of my secret mission. Helping Jack,” she said. “And investigating Vanasmas in the process.”

“And you followed him? Why didn’t you stop him from finding my gold?”

Both Ann Paula and I looked at each other and turned away simultaneously. We didn’t want to let Golbez know that we had accidentally led his mortal enemy to his treasure. That would be cruel, and a rich old man in the twilight of his phase didn’t deserve cruelty. Maybe he did, but still.

“There was no stopping him,” I said. Lies came to me easily when the situation required them. “He had guns on me. And her. A crossbow, actually. The Johnson tribe knows now, too. It was impossible to keep them from knowing the secret.”

“I thought they might,” said Golbez through clenched teeth, still catching his breath. “But how? How? How did they find it? They’ve been looking for it for ages, my sources tell me! Why now? What changed?”

I said nothing. If he was going to find out that I, his son of all people, was the stick in the spoke, he would have to figure it out himself. But I was pretty sure he wouldn’t. The gods would keep it from his mind, if that’s what they wanted. That raised a question: what did they want? What were they trying to get at through all of this? I honestly didn’t know.

I unconsciously reached behind me and passed my fingers over the map-wrapped scepter. As I touched it, the question was...answered. But not to me. Not consciously, anyway.

Now the question for myself: what did I want from him?

“Golbez, you were talking a lot about retiring and leaving this isle. I want to go with you.”

Golbez’s mood turned on a dime.

“That would be splendid, old boy, splendid! You know, all I want to do is make up for lost time. Get to know you some more.”

“I know, I know, you said that before. But really, there’s not much to know more than we’ve talked about. Unfortunately I don’t have much depth of character.”

Golbez wasn’t listening to that. He had apparently gained an idea right in the middle of my words and began bouncing up and down with excitement.

“I know what to do! I know what to do. Right now. Jackie, old boy, I want you to meet someone. Come with me. You too, Paula. Oh wait---before we go, there’s something else I want to tell you. Are you ready for this?”

Golbez looked at both of us gleefully, like he was withholding an evil secret.

“Didn’t I ever tell you...that you two are brother and sister?”

Wow. Talk about an evil secret.

We looked at each other, mortified. But no, that didn’t quite work. She had told me about her parents...and Golbez had talked about trying to force himself on her...

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding!” Golbez guffawed. “But still, now you can’t get the idea out of your head, can you?” And he roared with laughter as he led the way out of the kitchen.

Ann Paula and I were slow to follow after him. Our eyes looked every which way but at the other. Embarrassment and relief at the same time. When finally our gazes did lock, we paused for a brief moment before laughing nervously.

“Yeah...” I said as I passed her and entered the restaurant’s empty dining area before going out the same door Golbez went through.

“Jackie old boy, come walk alongside your old man! I have woes that need listening to,” he said as he strolled down the deserted roads. I jogged to catch up with him. “You see all this? Boxcutter Bay. Soon Butterknife Bay is going to look exactly like this, as well as all the other desolate blade bays out there. Sad, isn’t it? What’s the word I’m looking for...mournful? No. Melancholy, it may be melancholy. A grim fate it is to have to retire because you lost, and not because you won. Sad. Very sad. Business just isn’t what it used to be.”

            ”Oh, is hot air not worth as much anymore?”
            “No, no, no. It’s worth more than ever in today’s world.”
            “Then why quit?”
            “This business model just doesn’t work anymore. Smugglers aren’t needed. Things can now be transported using ray guns and magic dishwashers.”
            “I’m pretty sure none of that’s real.”
            “Really? How can you be sure?”
            “I suppose I can’t.”
            “Hm. I thought I read about it in a book somewhere. It was written in a very easy to believe manner. Tip top, that writing was.”
            “Doesn’t make it any truer.”
            “Oh hush with that, old boy. Let an old man take pleasure in self pity. Look at it!” He stretched out his arms to the empty facility. “The ruin of my kingdom.”
            “So what are you doing here, if it makes you so sad?”
            “For exactly that reason. It’s comforting to feel sorry for one’s self, even when no one else will. That just makes it better. But I’m ALSO here to---well, to visit the person I want to show you. You came to this place to visit me, did you not? And prove yourself damn useful in solving my problems, but that’s secondary, that’s secondary, I know. Say, what’s that you got on your back?”
            My mind blanked as I realized I had the map and the scepter (which had stopped glowing for a particular reason) out in total plain view. But luckily words came to mind eventually.
            “An interesting stick I found.”
            “That’s wonderful, that’s wonderful. You remind me of Blake. Taking pleasure in the small things of life. The stuff of nature. May I see it? It just may offer me some cheer.”
            “I can’t do that. It’s very breakable. That’s why it’s wrapped up.”
            “Then describe it to me.”
            “Oh, I’d rather leave that to Blake. I’m no poet.”
            “Excellent! Because there he is!”
            Golbez pointed and I looked. There was Blake, over near the train station---the last station the train would pass through before leaving Rainswept Isle. Golbez turned his pointing finger into a fluttery dance and Blake waved back.
            “Let’s go visit him after this appointment. Say, where’s Paula?”
            “She’s right---”
            I checked, and no, she was not right behind me. Hm.

Then I looked at the rest of my surroundings. We were approaching a giant tent. A tent shaped like a building, but with canvas and cloth instead of bricks and mortar. Long curtains colored mauve and maroon draped over its sides, and a very powerful scent emanated from it, something like ginger. It reminded me of the tent I woke up in at the Cardaccians.

“Jackie, old boy, I may have shown you her before, but this is the home of good old Mother MacDowell, your grandmother. Or gran-gran. Maybe gangy. I’m not sure what you usually call her.”

My grandmother. Mother MacDowell. Scot MacDowell’s wife? Still on the island. Or had she come back with Golbez, after many years away? That didn’t matter. This was my grandmother. A woman I’d never met, but who was vitally crucial to my very existence, as ancestors are. I wasn’t really sure how I felt about that. (I felt similarly awkward about Golbez being my father.)

He opened the tent flap invitingly with his arm, motioning for me to enter. I had some reservations about this, but meeting family was what this trip was supposed to be, after all. I just found it hard to meet new people, especially new people who I was supposed to grow to care for as family even if I was just meeting them for the first time. That’s a heavy responsibility, and all you married folks know what that’s like.

But I went in.

The tent was so elaborate that it had a foyer with corridors going to the left and the right, presumably to other rooms, and another room, separated off by another curtain of canvas, right before us. Golbez, after following me in, went to this curtain and spoke through it.

“Mata, may we come in? It’s Golby! And I have a surprise for you!”

“Enter, my boy!” croaked an old, accented voice on the other side.

Golbez pushed back the curtain and I got my first glimpse of my grandmother.

She sat cross-legged on the floor. Her skin was a deep brown, much darker than Golbez’s, and folded and creased with thick wrinkles, especially in her face. Her long white hair was tied in a braid that fell across her shoulder. Her eyes were closed; I wasn’t sure if they were like that because of the wrinkles or because she was just old or because she was blind. She looked ancient, and spoke in an elderly, ominous voice.

“A great storm is coming, my son.”

“How can you tell that, Mata?” Golbez said.

“It’s very windy outside, dear boy. But I suppose it may pass by the island without harming it. That is up to the gods, is it not?” And she laughed. Quite heartily, for an old woman.

As the curtain had been drawn back, the smell of ginger penetrated all my senses; I felt I could practically see it, hanging in the air over everything inside the tent. When I opened my mouth it was like breathing the herb in straight from the plastic bottle.

“Hmm...” she said. “I sense something. A presence I haven’t felt since...”

“It’s Jackie, Mata! Your long-lost grandson! I’ll leave you two alone.”

And he disappeared back through the curtain. Leaving, as he said and intended, me alone with her, a grandmother I never knew. I huffed and sat down opposite her on the soft floor.

“Oh, yes, Jackie’s such a fine boy, isn’t he?” she said sweetly, apparently intended for Golbez though he had left the room. It seemed she was indeed blind.  “My grandson is such a kind young man, so loyal and loving to all his little friends and brothers.”

But wait, why am I telling you that when---

How did she know about me? Enough to call me a ‘fine boy’? Old age, maybe? Dementia? The mother of Golbez, I did not doubt.

If that was the case then, Oh Great. What Am I Supposed To Say Now? was the feeling I was feeling.

But I didn’t have to say anything. She supplied enough words for the both of us.

“Jackie, for some reason the gods are making me think of a possession I possessed a very long time ago that has been since been stolen from me. And it has probably been stolen time and time again afterward, as it is a very valuable possession which I possessed. To me it was more valuable than it could be to anybody, because it was the last gift given to me by my sweetheart soldier before he vanished. Oh, how I miss him!”

She spoke remarkably good English for having such a thick accent. Indian, it was. Of the East Indies. Just like the Cardaccians. I wondered if there was a blood connection.

“Jackie, that is really you, isn’t it?” she said in a cracked voice.

Wrong-footed, confused, but hesitantly I answered in the affirmative.

“Yes...”

“He always talked about treasures. Treasures this, treasures that. But when I became his bride, his exotic bride, I became his true treasure!”

Great. An old woman going off on a story from her past. Sure, I could have made her day and listened attentively, caring and all that, but I, quite literally, had a train to catch. That became my goal. That became my motivation. And suddenly I felt anxious. My body and mind were filling up with stress and restlessness. I wanted to get up and run somewhere.

“Before treasures, it was Beverly, Beverly. The girl he had hooked back home that was trying to hook him back. But I showed her! I got him. I married him. And I knew I would be rich and living fancy for much time to come. Beyond the dreams of my village, who I promised to come back to one day and save. But when I came back, they were gone. I do not know where. I wanted to share my riches with them, the glories of the west. But they were gone. And so, I knew, was my handsome Scot.”

Scot MacDowell. He married an Indian girl and took her---or sent her---back to England. Or Scotland. Maybe Wales. Didn’t matter.

“He sent me one last parcel before he disappeared. In it was the thing I sense around me today. The thing the gods are whispering about to me right now. The treasure that my Scot gave his life to give me. It is here. I know it! It is here!”

Aaaaand that’s when I grew very self-conscious about the bleeping treasure map I was wearing on my back, and knew I had to get out of there, even though it had been less than a minute.

“Excuse me,” I said, rising to my feet and bowing to her. “Excuse me.”

I pushed aside the curtain.

And found Golbez standing there. He had been listening. It wasn’t hard; the curtain wasn’t too thick. He was staring at the map on my back.

---

Let’s skip all the human drama. All the father-son crap about disappointment and failed expectations, about trying to sneak past a sleeping parent who knows you’re three hours past curfew, about hiding guilt from your indignant dad’s perceptive gaze. Let’s skip all that, because it’s really not what this story is about. Human drama? Pah.

But it did happen. And I felt like a child.

“Let’s go for a drive and talk about things,” Golbez said.

Hoo boy.

“I’m disappointed in you, son.”

“I know.” Wasn’t I supposed to be wishing that he was outraged, not disappointed? Wasn’t quiet disappointment supposed to be worse than red hot anger?

“I thought you’d be helping me out. Like sons do with fathers in the yard on a Saturday afternoon.”

“I know.” What an awkward car ride.

“To be perfectly honest, my boy, you’ve hurt me deeply.”

I kept my eyes on the jungle outside the jeep.

“And I’m considering taking you out of my retirement plan.”

As long as I’m still in the will.

But wait, maybe that was the will.

“Am I still inheriting?” I mumbled into my hand.

“No jokes from you, old boy. I’m being serious here.”

“Where are we going?”

“Now don’t try to distract me. I just want you to know the seriousness of what you have done, in leading a descendant of your grandfather’s mortal enemy to the treasure that was keeping this family afloat. And now, because of you, we may have to downgrade and move into some apartment somewhere.”

“I thought you were already planning on downgrading. Isn’t that what the retirement plan was all about?”

“Yes, but that happened because of your actions! You had my map somehow and you let the enemy---our enemy---manipulate you!”

“Dad, I couldn’t have helped that. The gods forced me to---damb it, I called you Dad.”

I sighed.

“What’s wrong with calling me Dad? Though I would prefer ‘Super Pops’.”

“I just don’t feel a connection!” I burst out. “That’s why I’m not affected by your disappointment. That’s why I don’t really care what you feel about me at all. I don’t feel like you’re my father. And I’ve only known you like three or four days. So how is anything we have between us a legitimate link? How are we a father-son duo? I’ve given it a chance, and I haven’t gotten any of the answers I came here for. I’m even more confused about myself than I was when I got on that seaplane.”

With that outburst I really did feel like a teenager again. I couldn’t think of any other way to express those particular feelings. Is my maturity imprisoned too?

Golbez, though, got really mad.

“WHAT---!” he roared after my rampage. “That’s it, old boy! You can---”

“---walk home?”
            Golbez left his mouth hanging open after I finished his sentence. Then he frowned grumpily and his tone turned into blue fire.

“You can say goodbye to any inheritance.”

“Fine,” I said.

“And you are completely left out of the retirement plan.”

“What is the retirement plan?”

His tone suddenly changed to a very business-like one, anger forgotten.

“Golbez Industries will be relocating. We’re packing up shop and moving to a nice beautiful Italian countryside. I’m taking my top staff and the Cardaccians as servants and we’re going to enjoy the spoils of our smuggling for the rest of our lives. And we’re leaving all of this behind. No one’s going to have it in the end. Dr. Aperture’s diabolical volcano will see to that. Haha!”

At this point I echoed Golbez’s earlier exclamation, except in my head.

            WHAT.

And memories of all the loose threads in this story came flooding into my brain, accompanied by fast, intense, revelatory music. The kind that is supposed to blow your mind as images flash across the screen.

Annie’s struggle with Paula and Poppy.

Vanasmas and the Johnsons in the temple.

The liberation of the Cardaccians.

The rivalry between the tribes.

The purple cantaloupe seed that symbolized peace and brotherhood.

The fate of the gold.

Golbez’s melancholy.

And most of all: the eruption sequence. Nineteen hours. A countdown, damb it all.

With this quick-cut montage, I felt like I had been given an infusion of...caring. I actually cared about how these things would turn out. I wanted to help the Cardaccians. I wanted to pass the purple cantaloupe seed on to Djetta, and perhaps unite the warring tribes. I wanted to make sure Annie turned out okay in the end...

But I was sure it wasn’t real. Mostly sure. Caring, at this point, was not my style at all. And in this I felt the greatest intrusion of the gods in my mind I had felt so far on this island. Isle.

So I decided to finally face them.

---

“In the name of Dalton, stop that music!” Jack cried, shaking his fist at the heavens.

They always look up. Really, Jack, do you think we live in the clouds? We’re always above you, and always around you. We inhabit another spatial dimension. We can see you, but you can’t see us.

He, meanwhile, was still in the jeep with Golbez, who we caused to notice nothing. In fact, Golbez actually started humming to himself.

“Just stop the damb music!” he shouted, hearing us speaking directly to his brain.

Sure. We’ve stopped the music. The music has stopped. Now what do you want from us, Chosen One?

“I get it. I get what you’re trying to do here, with me, on this island.”

And what is that, Jack McDowell?

“You want me to do all these things, jump through your hoops, so you can have a nice little adventure story with chase scenes and action sequences and plot twists and character revelations. You want me to solve all these problems so whoever it is reading or listening or watching this stupid story can feel satisfied by conflict resolution.”

Interesting theory.

“But you never take notice that I’m a real person, too! I have my own private conflicts that you just ignore! You care about the Cardaccians, but not me! You want their plots to be resolved, but not mine! I’m completely neglected, and I’ve had enough of it!”

Jack, never suppose to tell us what our purposes are. Because while you claim yourself to be an individual with thoughts and feelings and emotions, you forget that we, too, are individuals, and we have our own problems that we need solving. Our world is as limited as yours is. We, like you, must act within our medium, and this is the medium---the world---that we’ve been given. In sending you here to this isle, we have set about accomplishing our own goals. Goals of which you are unaware. Goals that need to be achieved. And you are vital to that work. We’ve chosen you for that.

“You’ve chosen me for far too many things,” Jack grumbled. “I’m not a slave---”

But then he stopped and thought. He was kind of a slave. Like the Cardaccians. The Cardaccians were imprisoned too. Jack started to sincerely care about them, about their plight. Though he wasn’t sure if this feeling was from the gods or from himself. But either way, he wanted to help.

“Okay, you’ve got me there. The Cardaccians. I’ll help the Cardaccians. But nothing else.”

That matters less to us than our true mission. Our focus is on someone else. For our own reasons, we cannot give you specifics.

“Then I’m not doing it!” Jack said petulantly, even going so far as to fold his arms and frown like a child.

Then you will not leave this island.

“Are you offering me a deal?”

You always have this deal. You do our work, and when the challenge is completed, we release you for a time.

“I want more than ‘a time’,” he said. “I want to be free.”

Oh, Jack. If only you knew what that meant. Sadly, no, we cannot do that. You were willing and able, born to do this work, literally.

For a brief time it looked like he was thinking, and somehow we were walled out of his mind. Then he broke, easier than we had anticipated.

“I’ll do it if you give me more reasons to care,” he said, a hint of desperation in his voice. “If you can make me want to succeed, I’ll do whatever the hell you people want.”

We already have, Jack McDowell. We gave that to you at the very beginning.

The image of a short-haired brunette in a trenchcoat and hat, scribbling notes on her pad of paper, floated in the air in and around the jeep. Jack stared at it desperately, his heart sinking as he realized what he had to do. The primary help we had given him.

            “No...” he said, shaking his head. He looked weak. “No, you can’t make me do that. You can’t make me do it that way, depend on her for this. That’s unfair. Please, no.”
            But even as he tried to deny it, the truth pressed down on him. He liked her. He did. And knowing she had chosen to be Annie, knowing she was on his side...well, it caused a little light to enter his lonely soul.
            Though it had originated as a convenient, nigh inevitable, relationship---he was there, she was there, so it might as well happen---it had come down to choice. California Poppy Ann Paula Palamander didn’t just like him because he happened to be there; she chose, actively chose, when given other choices, other lives to lead, to be with Jack, and at the same time, be a better person.
            And now Jack was given the same choice. Success and completion of the tasks he had been given, and a fulfilling relationship with a woman, or constant weariness, discomfort, isolation, and rebellion. What he wanted or...what he wanted.

The tension was hardening, growing taut, and Jack knew that sometime soon it might very well snap.

The gods faded from his mind and “reality” returned.

Golbez had started belting out a few lyrics.

---

“This is a wonderful drive, isn’t it, old boy? It’s nice that the sun is shining again. In fact, it’s melting away my bad mood! Maybe I can include you in the retirement plan after all. Here, take a look at it, tell me what you think.”

He leaned over, opened the glove compartment, and pulled out what looked like a folded-up map. Not a treasure map, but one of those travel maps that families use when they’re on vacations. But it wasn’t that, either. I unfolded it to discover the full, documented retirement plan. Diagrams and graphs and charts, the major finances of Golbez Industries and descriptions of ideas in impossibly illegible handwriting.

I looked at it without seeing it. My mind was whirling. My brain was hurting.

Then came crackling words over the jeep’s radio.

“Golbez, sir, the train has come in. They’re ten minutes early. We apologize.”

“Apology accepted,” Golbez said gruffly into a handheld receiver. “And?”

“And we await your keyword.”

“Hold off on that for now.”

“Roger that.”

“My name is Golbez, you twit. Not Roger.”

“Sorry about that, Golbez, sir.”

“How dare you address me by my first name!”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Now what’s your name, sergeant?”

“Ignadjus, sir.”

“And you’re in charge of the train?”

“Just the station, sir. I just started at this position two weeks ago.”

“Well you’re doing a damn fine job, you hear that? Tell everyone around I said that. And hand out punch and cookies while you’re waiting for me. You’re doing good work.”

“Yes, sir!”

Ignadjus.

The train. My escape.

“Are we getting on that train, then?” I asked Golbez with no small measure of anxiety.

“Eventually yes. But you’re still on probation. So I should say, eventually maybe. Like a flock of doves maybe surviving a humble hunter’s AK47. But we do have a time limit on it. Gotta beat that volcano!”

            And again that flood of subplots rushed back into my brain. The volcano. I had to stop the volcano. I had to free the Cardaccians. I had to get Hilti and Clara Higgins out of there. And I had to make sure Annie got on the train safely too.
            In that moment, I accepted my fate. But only on the surface.
            But really, where was Annie?
            The radio came alive again.
            “Golbez, sir, something’s happening here at Butterknife Bay.”
            “That’s where I’m headed, Indigo Man.”
            It was indeed. We had just ascended a series of switchbacks leading up a cliffside, and now we were traveling down the winding road alongside the cliff’s edge---the Cliffs of High Depth. Retreading the route I had first taken with Golbez a couple days ago.
            “We’re going to need your authority here as soon as possible, sir.”
            “Indigo that,” Golbez said, then put down the radio. “Well that doesn’t sound great, does it old boy?”
            I said nothing. But I remembered Annie having disappeared behind me as I followed Golbez to Mother MacDowell’s tent. I wondered what she had been doing that required stealthily escaping the both of us.
            Whatever it was, I suspected it would set something off that couldn’t be undone.

---

The scene was stunning.

On the clear, open beach of Butterknife Bay, right under the supports of the train track, groups were forming up, being organized. Scuffles, scraps, wrestling around on the beach. Punches being thrown, spittle being spat, swears and colorful phrases resounding in the air. The groups were gradually coalescing into two distinct sides of about a hundred each; one side wore dirty rags, the other wore camo-themed attire. Both sides had men with guns in their hands, though not everybody was armed. One lone black-clad figure was moving amidst the guards’ ranks, shouting more of those colorful phrases at each man she passed. Her long, gold-streaked hair danced in the sea breeze, dazzling against the patchy gray clouds in the sky.

Paula had freed the slaves. And given them guns.

Act III, Chapter 20, "Choose Your Own Adventure!"

The first chapter of Act III!

Act III. Snap

Chapter 20, “Choose Your Own Adventure!”

It’s time to choose your own adventure, folks!
            Jack just woke up, in the cool blue of early dawn. Annie, Paula, whoever she is, had disappeared. She had taken his words seriously, and left. Where to? Jack’s not sure. But he isn’t worried about it. He’s more worried about what he’s going to do. There seems to be nothing compelling him to move in any one particular direction. No push, no pull. So you lovely readers get to help determine his fate. Here are the options that came to his mind:
            A. Swim across the lagoon and try to find the hole in the cliffside that Golbez and Blake took their motorboat through, and go wherever it took them.
            B. Jack remembered Golbez mentioning a secret route to the treasure via some sort of mine. He could try looking for that passage in the vicinity of the temple and ride the cart wherever it took him. To the Cardaccians, they had said.
            C. Trek on foot through the jungle in the direction of the smuggling facility and see what comes up. Do some exploring.
            D. Lie down and get some more rest. Wait it out. Something’s bound to happen if he waits, isn’t it?

---

A.
            Jack sat for a while, still waking up. His back hurt. Sore everywhere, sure, but his back most of all. Even if one is tired from walking and running and deceiving and shooting and felling rope bridges all day, a bed of pure rock is still not a good idea.
            The best way to wake up, he knew, was to just jump in the water. He felt no doubt in his mind that he was meant to follow after Golbez and Blake. If they could make it down the river in an old motorboat, Jack felt sure he would be safe swimming it. Going down that tunneled river would most likely take him directly to Golbez. As to why he needed to see Golbez, he did not think much. It just felt like the right thing to do. For some reason or other.
            And so, with that choice planted firmly in his mind, he dove into the lagoon, leather jacket and all. Well, he didn’t really dive, it was more like stepping. He stepped into the turquoise lagoon, slogging through the shallow part until it was deep enough for him to actually swim. He swam the breaststroke, of course. Faithful readers will know why.
            The water felt great. Not cold at all, and actually quite warm. Like when one gets used to the cool water of a backyard pool, except in this case it was instant.
            Given that it was an isolated body of water, the lagoon pressed no currents against him and he was able to cut through the water sharply, in a direct line from the rocky beach to the opposite side’s cliffs. The real challenge was going to be finding the passage the motorboat had disappeared into.
            And that’s where Jack failed. He made it to the other side successfully after about ten minutes of swimming, and searched the entire edge of the lagoon, checking between every crevice, behind every crag. At least he thought he did. But nowhere did he find any space large enough for a five-foot wide motorboat to pass through, let alone open up into a full-on underground tunnel river thing.
            The one upside? He got his sore muscles moving again, and his back pain had been soothed by the work. But overall:

Wrong choice.

So he breastroked it all the way back to the island shore.

Try B now.

---

B.
            The idea of a hidden minetrack passageway from the Cardaccians had intrigued him since Golbez first mentioned it last night. He remembered Annie telling him that she had been shown the location of an abandoned mine by Djetta’s wife Madje. It was only a brief mention, and Jack hardly remembered even being told, but as soon as Golbez had said the word “minecart” it had popped instantly back into his head. He just hadn’t had occasion to bring it up with Annie.
            But he decided to search for it, the entrance to the secret mine. From the Cardaccians he could find his way back to the facility fairly easily. It might even be as simple as boarding the train once he got back to Butterknife Bay. He had a slight suspicion that if he got on the train then it would be a horribly boring and anti-climactic climax to this whole journey, and it would leave several questions unanswered, several plot threads incomplete, several character arcs unfinished.
            But getting out of here was his primary motivation, was it not?
            Anyway, he didn’t give it much further thought. His curiosity about the mine passage needed to be sated, in any case. And he could give the purple cantaloupe seed to Djetta while he was at it. That seemed important to him, for some reason.
            He started searching up the stairs, on the upper part of the island. He didn’t have a system, nor the presence of mind to come up with one, so he spent a lot of time crashing through huge jungle ferns at random, expecting at any second to come upon it. It wasn’t until at least a half-hour into his search that he thought to check the rockier parts of the island; it eventually made sense to him that a mine would be carved into a rock, but who even knows if that makes any sense.
            So he found the shipwreck again, and worked his way in a pattern from there, following and feeling every curve in the black rock, examining every nook closely for a place to press a button or pull on a pointed stone to make a secret passage reveal itself.
            And to everyone and no one’s surprise, he found it! Nowhere near where he was looking, however. It took him the feeling of failure to find it; he had surrendered and was descending the stairs to the beach when he thought to look out over the side. See, while the stairs led down to the beach, the beach did not necessarily lead only to the stairs. There was an area of the lagoon that he had not explored or even known existed until that moment, and after rushing down, he made an immediate turn to his left and followed the stone staircase wall along a tiny shore till it met a secret little cove. The beach here had white sand, but was uncomfortably boxed in. And here, in a corner, he found the secret mine passage, bored into the black rock of the island. At first it was something of a cave-like corridor, lit by a random flaming brazier hanging on the wall. It then opened up into something...bigger.
            The beginnings of three railway tracks were laid next to one another on the ground. The one on the right had an actual cart on it, some kind of dual-motor device on its sides. The tracks themselves were less like railways and more like roller coasters, and the huge cavern beyond was big enough to hold them. The tracks went up and down like hills and valleys, with banked curves twisting and turning in and out of each other like Medusa’s hair, and leading so far into the darkness that the torches on the walls weren’t enough to illuminate them in their entirety. The scariest aspect of all this is that the ground, about ten feet out from the tracks’ starting points, ended. Jack neared the edge and looked down, and found nothing---just blackness, as if it went on forever. The supports for the railways went all the way down into the black nothing. How far down that was, Jack hoped he never came to know.
            Theoretically, this led to the Cardaccians. That was a long, long ways away. Could it be trusted to take him that far?
            He might as well find out.
            After making sure his leather jacket was on snug, he climbed into the lone cart and sat down; it was roomy enough for two people. He found two lighted buttons on a little control module. One was green, the other was red. He glanced at the other two tracks beside him, noting their lack of carts and wondering why only this one remained. One must be at the other side, he determined, already at the Cardaccians’ “abandoned mine.” At the moment when he was about to push the green button, he hesitated, and followed the track with his eyes as it swam serpentine into the darkness. He almost clambered out of the cart, a little too nervous, but then remembered his stance that he wasn’t afraid of anything. Well, he was afraid of something, but not of this. Not of the darkness, not of heights, not of hyper speeds. He would do this.
            He jammed his finger on the green button.
            A sound like a chainsaw roared to life, and a headlight on the front of the cart came on. It put-put-putted for a while, before suddenly lurching forward, pushing Jack against the back of the cart. It hurtled forward on the track, zooming this way and that. The cart banked to the right and Jack, gritting his teeth, had to lean hard against the right side of the cart to keep it balanced. Then another turn, this time to the left, and Jack had to do the opposite. Then it went up, up, up, and the slope became so steep that the cart had to chug, chug, chug ahead to reach the peak, peak, peak. Jack, sweating furiously, breathed a sigh of relief as it found level ground at the top. But with every crest comes a trough, and when the cart started forward and Jack finally saw the near-vertical slope the cart was tipping towards, and the nothingness below it. As it began its plummet, he screamed.
            Don’t worry; it was a masculine scream, not a little girl’s. No, that would come later.
            But he did nearly faint. It leveled out fifty feet later in an almost cruelly perpendicular fashion, and that’s when Jack nearly lost consciousness. In any case, he didn’t have the presence of mind to properly balance the cart on its turns, but it didn’t matter; the cart did not tip as it did a mighty U-turn, swinging around till it started going back the general direction it came. Given Jack’s absence of mind, he did not notice it, and after a few more ups and downs, across and arounds, the cart, fast as ever, approached solid land again. At the last possible second, a device on the track caused the cart to brake, and it screeched to a halt a mere two inches away from the end of the track.
            Jack, breathing heavily, climbed out of the cart, making sure to hold onto it until he was sure he was on solid ground and away from the void’s edge. He walked in a daze out through the torch-lit stone passage and emerged...
            Into the secret, uncomfortably boxed-in cove.
            “Wha...?” he said. Then, as he realized that particular track only led him in a big circle back to where he had started, “Damb it!”
            Wrong choice.
            He meandered his way back to the place where he had awoken.
            Go ahead with option D.

---

C.
            He chose to walk, but only because he wanted to check something first:
            The green glowing plinth.
            So he trudged up the carved-out stairs, back aching and mouth grumbling. Walking might not have been the best choice after all. So he withdrew his choice to trek all the way through the jungle and made the temple his only goal.
            As he arrived in the clearing, he saw that the temple door had opened. Little Sophocles must have begun. This thought made Jack smile. More of a smirk, actually, but not meant to be mean. A pleasant smirk, it was. Happy for the Higginses.
            He crossed the clearing and was halfway up the stairs when he saw that the green glow around the far-right plinth had disappeared. He dashed over to it and gripped the sides of the stone top. The symbol carved there offered no insight as to what the artifact was. He glanced around and found that the other plinths had all retained their color and glow. He remembered their names coming to his mind as he gazed upon their symbols, but no voice spoke as he stared harder and harder at the damb thing below him.
            “Gah!” he finally shouted.
            The thought struck him that maybe he should go inside the temple. The door was open, after all. He had no pressing appointments, other than the train.
            Oh yeah, the train. That was his motivation, wasn’t it? Tired, grumpy old Jack had come close to forgetting about it. He felt lost on this island as if in some kind of personal hell. Though he had been here only a few days, it seemed more like forever, more like September through June to an elementary-school-aged child.
            But today, supposedly, was to be his summer. Right? Today he would be leaving. Finishing his tour.
            He looked up into the sky. Overnight, a group of gray clouds had gathered. Definitely not summer weather.
            “Then what the hell,” he muttered. And he took a few steps toward the open temple doorway. But he stopped short of the threshold. He heard yelling---he looked to the clearing and saw, of all things, Vanasmas sprinting toward the temple.
            Ryan again? Jack thought.
            But no, it was not Ryan. The cause that propelled Vanasmas to the temple steps was Jack himself.
            “Nooooooo! No no no no! It’s my turn! Get away from there! It’s mine! My turn!”
            Jack looked at him with the confusion and curiosity of a dog having just been swatted at by a cat.
            Vanasmas leaped up the stairs three at a time, finally landing right before the open entrance, where he stopped to regain his dignity.
            “By the spirit of Swiftfast, I have beaten you here,” Vanasmas said with a triumphant arrogance as he caught his breath and adjusted his clothes. “And by the power of Burro Bill’s hind legs, you will not enter this temple and steal my prize.”
            With that he strode in, as if he owned the place. He might have; Jack wasn’t sure about the origins of this temple.
            The door started sliding down. Jack heard a high-pitched yelp from Vanasmas before the stone hit the ground.
            Jack sighed and frowned, then made his way back down the steps.
            Wrong choice.
            You might want to try A from here.

---

D.
            Jack sat and waited, trying to figure out exactly what he wanted and why he wanted to do it. That had to be decided before he did anything.
            He was in a strange place right now: a main character without much drive or desire. The train and all, and leaving the island, yeah, but that all felt so empty. What was it that made it so?
            He watched as the clouds darkened overhead, an astonishingly subtle parallel to his mood.
            I’m burned out, he realized. Yeah, that’s exactly what it is.
            He had been running, chasing, shooting, jumping, for far too long. Not just on this island, but everything that came before it. Every bad guy punched, every damsel rescued, every master plan foiled...all were converging on this point. This day.
            Yesterday he had felt similarly; it had been a day of irritation---the first signs of a burn-out. He had thought it to be mere tiredness, exhaustion from moving around so much. But sleep clearly hadn’t helped. It had merely made it settle in more permanently.
            What would help? That’s the question he had to answer.
            Getting off this island. Crawling into a real bed with blankets and pillows and sheets. Modern plumbing. A nice character-driven book to read. A real, genuine love life to pursue. Something apart from all the adventuring.
            It sounded nice.
            But it all revolved around successful rebellion against the gods. That would require cleverness, deeper thinking. Jack didn’t know if he had the strength or even presence of mind to do that. One more day. Could he even last that long?
            He wanted to give up now. The question arose, though---would the gods let him? Were they even still in control? Nothing had been happening to him for far too long...
            But Jack, in this version, didn’t know about the other choices he could have made. He didn’t know that things were happening, just not in his presence. Yes, Jack McDowell: things do happen when you’re not looking. Life occurs off the pages as well as on.
            If you chose D, go back to the others and catch a glimpse of what this Jack is missing. Try C first.

---

See? See what I have to live with? How every choice you try to make leads you back to where the gods want you? That’s what I have to deal with. On a constant basis. While I might appear to have options, they never affect the outcome. And what’s a choice if there is no consequence attached? It’s meaningless, that’s what. Not a real choice at all. Remember that.

Now, as a result of any of those choices, I’m here, sitting outside this door, doing nothing, waiting for something, perhaps my death, perhaps global warming, but all the while definitely and truly and completely alone. At least Annie had her other selves to talk to. I’ve just got you.

---

Jack decided to write a note to Hilti.
            He didn’t have paper, but then he did, and a pen, too. On it he wrote the following:

We both need to get off this island, and unless you’ve got a plan already, I have a way you can help all of us out. You once piloted an airplane; now I ask you to drive a train. Catch the train that will be circling around this island today at Machete Bay, to the west. Take over as engineer, and we may be able to leave Rainswept Isle together. There may be a password or series of passwords to get through checkpoints, and I intend to find out what those are. Don’t worry about me; I’ll find you.

-Jack

            P.S. Your wife looks lovely. And probably, “Congratulations.”

            He was just thinking of a place to put it so Hilti would find it when all of a sudden the gray slab sliding door slid open. He spun on the spot and found...Mortimer.
            “Mortimer!” he said.
            Mortimer almost leaped backwards in surprise, which would have been terribly detrimental, as the stone door slid down again, closing off the exit.
            But now Jack’s attention leapt immediately from Mortimer himself to the long green glowing thing he held in his arms. The glow enraptured him, and he stared at it a long time, almost rudely, immodestly so. It looked like...
            The Sonic Scepter, said a voice in his mind.
            It was indeed a scepter, like one a stylish and flamboyant king might wield as a symbol of his reign. At the top it had something that looked like the head of a Phillips screwdriver. The scepter itself wasn’t green, but it gave off the same kind of glow the plinth by the entrance had.
            And that’s why the glow had disappeared. (Jack decided.)
            “That’s...” Jack said, still gaping.
            “Oh, is it a real thing?” Mortimer said conversationally. “It was one of the four optional prizes I had the chance to receive upon completing the challenges!” He sounded excited. “Do you know how many puzzles I had to solve to get out of there? Do you know how many symbols I had to interpret? It was an AMAZING ride! Although I may have accidentally drunk an elixir of immortality in there, too...”
            “That’s one of the sacred artifacts,” Jack breathed. “Do you know what it does?”
            “I don’t, actually,” said Mortimer.
            “Then why did you choose it?”
            “I’ve always liked the color green. It’s always been mysterious to me, I suppose,” he said with a shrug. “It’s why I came to this island.”
            “Isle. Mortimer, can I...ask you for it?”
            “What? Oh, sure. I don’t need a prize for doing all that. Those puzzles I had to solve were totally worth it just for themselves!”
            Jack drew back a little. “I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not.”
            “Of course not! Here, take this. I want to go on the ride again!”
            “What, you mean go through the temple again?”
            “Yeah. I think the puzzles might change each time someone solves them. So if I went back through it, I’d have brand new mysteries to crack! Especially with the rising lava levels. Though I did find it interesting that the lava didn’t make the entire thing an inferno; it wasn’t hot at all in there.”
            “Yes...” said Jack, weirded out. “I’ll just take this, and you can---oh, wait. I should tell you. It’s closed right now; someone went in a little while ago. Plus, I have a favor to ask of you. Can you wait here and deliver this note to Hilti Higgins when he comes out with his wife, Clara? It’s about getting off this island. If you want to, you can include yourself in our plans.”
            “Sure,” Mortimer said, taking the note and looking at Jack ambiguously.
            What a useful character, Jack thought.
            “What is this thing, anyway?” Mortimer asked as he handed the Sonic Scepter to Jack.
            “Something very special,” Jack said. “I’ll let you know when I find out for certain. But I do have a hunch. Oh hey, whatever happened to the three Johnsons that went in with you?”
            “Oh, they got stuck on one of the puzzles, I think. I went way ahead of them. I think I may have seen the couple you mentioned, but only for a second. They were trying to play through. Like in golf.”
            “Interesting. Vanasmas might catch up and help them out then. Hm. Mortimer, may I borrow your belt?”
            Mortimer again consented without question. Without even a word. He just loosened the buckle and pulled it out. Jack took it, then withdrew the treasure map from his pocket. Then, with some engineering that was clever beyond description (literally), wrapped the scepter up into the map (they were of the same length, about two feet long) and attached the belt to the wrapped-up scepter in such a way that he was now able to sling it over his shoulder and wear it on his back like a quiver of arrows, except without the arrows or any cavity in which to deposit them.
            “NOW I’ll be able to find that damb tunnel in the cliff! It’s all about the timing, Mortimer. Remember that. All about the timing.”
            “Yes sir!” Mortimer said, even going so far as to salute Jack.
            As Jack once more dove/slogged into the lagoon, he reflected on his emotional state. He sensed that even though he had gained some much-needed excitement from Mortimer’s appearance (and all that came with it), this had not totally solved his feelings of burn-out. Indeed, as he found quite easily the cliffside cave, and the river that flowed through it, he was already feeling tired again. But...the random rowboat floating just inside the tunnel, tied to a rock, cheered him up a bit. It was called the Ex Nihilo.
            “That was a freebie,” he murmured. And then, as he started paddling, he woefully wondered why he had yet to be called “Captain Jack” so far in this story.

---

The trip was fascinating. The tunnel was not a natural occurrence; its sweepingly circular overhead arc made that quite clear. It looked to be built with the same stone and in the same architectural style as the temple.

            Occasionally it emerged into daylight, and when it did it felt like a fun little family vacation safari trip. Jack finally got to see all the jungle animals that had so far eluded him---a family of gorillas, a boa constrictor, monkeys chattering in the trees, insects as big as his hand crawling on overhanging branches, and even, he thought he saw, a moving, carnivorous plant. Jack thought he might have even seen a glimpse of Ryan the T-Rex. Maybe he was lost? Regardless, the water flowed at a steady pace (though not especially quickly), so Jack was never in danger of being eaten or stung or bit or rammed.

A few shafts of sunlight pierced through the rain clouds, lighting up the greenery and displaying some of the most beautiful rainbows Jack had ever seen. But soon enough, the water took the Ex Nihilo underground and into the darkness again, and he let it do so. He laid back in the boat during the dark periods, but it didn’t help his fatigue.

This particular stretch of tunnel seemed to be lasting a longer time. Eventually, though, it emerged into sunlight, and this, he knew, was his destination, as it was Golbez’s. He rose in the boat to get a better look at the facility.

Boxcutter Bay. It had to be. Looked very much like Butterknife Bay, with all the same kind of buildings and ugly chain link fences, and the long curved cove, but...but there were no people there. Or rather, very, very few. There were a couple figures here and there, but no work was being done. And in the background, Jack could see the lonely train tracks, and the last station the train would have to pass through. It all looked desolate. Silence reigned in this dead place.

The gods tipped Jack out of the boat by placing a waterfall ahead of him and making it louder in his ears than it actually was. He got to the grassy bank successfully, but the rowboat fell down the waterfall and into the nothing from whence it came.

Where Golbez’s motorboat went is another question entirely. Suffice it to say, it doesn’t really matter. Stop caring about all the little details. No god-writer is perfect, all right? If you’re so worried about something so small, go right your own damn story.

The clouds temporarily receded as Jack made his way boldly down the hill to the facility, giving the sun leave to dry off his wet clothes. When he was sufficiently dry, the clouds once more passed over the sun.

Minutes later, Jack was down in the compound, wandering brazenly through the barbed-wire fences and empty warehouses. It had the look and feel of a place that was about to be shut down. No one but him and a couple of people in the distance.

And a third one crossing just in front of him, facing slightly away.

Jack froze, made no sound, as the woman walked across the sand---tight black clothes, dark hair with streaks of gold, and a figure to kill for.

His heart sank as he recognized Paula.

So, he thought. That’s her choice.

And once more he was hit with a sudden weariness. He took a deep breath before following silently behind her. As always, his eyes were drawn to the curves of her figure, but he refused to take pleasure in the sight. That was exactly what she wanted; it gave her power over men, and Jack refused to let her have that power with him.

It was hard, though.

She gave the impression of nervousness, looking back and forth quite frequently, but conveniently never over her shoulder. Jack wasn’t quite sure why he stayed in the shadows, why he didn’t just confront her and be open about everything. Maybe he wanted to see the results of her choice, what she meant to do by choosing Paula. He also imagined that she might be heading for Golbez, and Jack wanted to know where that was without giving himself away.

They were passing through the usual smuggling staples into a different part of the facility. These buildings looked smaller, different. Like law firms or small businesses. Maybe even a dentist’s office. A whole collection of them gathered together, empty and abandoned. Just beyond the these, Jack could see, was the train station.

Paula entered one of the buildings through what looked like a back door. It seemed to be a restaurant or diner. He stealthily entered after her and found a kitchen, counters covered in stainless steel and filled with ovens and dishwashers and sinks and shelves and pots and pans and bowls and plates. The second Jack heard Paula speak he ducked down behind one of the kitchen’s multi-sink islands.

“Why meet here, Golbez?” Paula said in something of a flat voice, not typical of her at all.

“I was feeling hungry,” Golbez said in his cheese-grater of a voice.

“There are no cooks or food here.”

“See, that’s the no-fear truth-telling I’ve been missing. You took a long time getting back to base. Where’ve you been, lassie?”

“I’ve been around,” she said. “Doing that secret mission. So how have things been?”

“Hungry,” Golbez said miserably. “Something’s off. Like my best friend moved away. I feel like...no, here it is. I feel like it’s the end of a party. Most people are still here, but one or two people have left and one by one it’s all just dropping off a cliff. I don’t know why. No, please don’t look at me while I’m crying.”

“Huh. Maybe it’s the clouds and the rain,” Paula said, sounding supremely uninterested. “Seasonal depression?”

“Maybe,” Golbez sniffed. “Could I...could I get a hug?”

Jack heard Paula pause.

“You know if you try anything I’ll break your shins.”

“Oh good heavens, lassie, you’re thinking of that now?”

“I just need to know that you know.”

“Yes, yes, I know. Though getting my shins broken by you might be worth it...”

“Okay, no hug.”

“I was joking, joking!”

“Then you’re in good spirits already and there’s no need for a hug after all.”

“No, no! I’m in terrible spirits! Terrible! Have pity on a poor old man, in the twilight of his phase.”

“What does that mean?”
            “It means...it means that this is the reason I’ve called this unofficial staff meeting. I have plans, Paula. I’m thinking of uprooting and settling down in Europe somewhere. A beautiful countryside with butterflies and romance. And I’d like you to come with me.”

“With you?”

“With us.”

“Why.”

“This island---”

“Isle,” Paula corrected. Hm?

“---has been my life’s work. And it’s been a glorious run. But there’s no place for me here anymore. I fear that Butterknife Bay will soon look like this place, and all the other failed facilities. Desolate. Miserable. Alone.”

“But why would that happen?”
            “I don’t know! Well, no, I know some of it. My treasure was found, you see. The one I inherited from my father.”

“Do you know how or who?”

“I have my suspicions, but---”

“Because I can tell you who. That was my secret mission. I heard what happened to you in getting into that coma and figured it out immediately. Then I tracked down who did it. And the same person who poisoned you is also the one who threatens our gold.”

I decided to raise up my head and take a peek through some pans. Yeah, it’s me again. Shh. The gods went to get a sandwich, I think. Don’t let them know.

Golbez, the bulbous man covered in a tarp of a pink-and-blue Hawaiian shirt, looked excited and even jumped up and down on his feet. “Who? Who who who?”

“Who else? Vanasmas. And the Johnsons. They might be coming for it right now. You have to forget about your troubles and act. Act like a man!”

Golbez groaned, sighed, and said, “Old age! Why must these things happen to me, a poor old man in the twilight of his phase? This just confirms all my fears. Including the one that I’m no longer capable of defending my fortress from invaders. This is a young man’s island. No place for me anymore. I want to take my boss staff, Blake and North and the bad doctor and Jackie. And you, of course. I’ll no longer have my advisor to make me feel good about myself, and I won’t have my army to destroy anything that might offend me, and I won’t have a wealth of gold coins and statues to admire and polish, and I won’t have a business I built with my own two hands and the backs of a tribe-full of captured native slaves, but...at least I’ll have you. Right, sugarbutt?”

            Paula said nothing, but blushed.
            Blushed.
            Damb it, that wasn’t Paula at all! It was Annie!

Chapter 19, end of Act II

Chapter 19, “Talk About Cathartic”

“Where’s Carl Sagan?” she asked as we made our way down the steep rocky slope of the crag.

“Haven’t the mistiest, as you told me once. Maybe tracking Vanasmas or something. I’m sure he’ll turn up.”

We followed quickly after Golbez and Blake, Annie proving unsurprisingly (to me) to be quite nimble and steady in her nocturnal footwork. My reason for tailing them was just to see how they got down to the lagoon, and after that, where the entrance to the underground river lay. Some crack or crevice on the far side of the lagoon, not visible to the naked or clothed eye, I guessed.

We did indeed find a way down to the lagoon: a long, curving black staircase carved into the rock of the isle itself. I thought it was a rather cool find, and I had fun going down it, though I can’t explain why.

It took us all the way down to a rocky shore at the base of the black island (which wasn’t really an island, more like a small nub of a peninsula surrounded on three sides by the turquoise lagoon). This shore had a bit of a roof to it; the wall of the island jutted outwards about ten feet up, forming a kind of overhang over the entire shore. For a completely unrelated visual, think of a Christmas tree, where the lowest branches hang over the ground, and think of the sheet spread below the tree to catch falling needles as the shore. It gave off a cave-like feeling, or maybe that of a parking garage. Sorry if I can’t provide you with more elegant prose; I’m a malcontented hero, not a writer.

            But we didn’t have time to properly take in any of those details quite yet, for as Annie and I stepped off the last of the stairs we heard Golbez’s voice again, and soon Blake’s, right around the bend, and we threw ourselves back on the staircase, out of view. I didn’t catch what they said, but I remember the moment of silence while we held our breath being filled with noises that didn’t really match the environment we were in---the first, a series of beeps, as if punching in a number on a phone, and the second, the click-click-clicking of a degree-based dial being turned. Then one more beep, and Golbez from around the bend said, “That’ll do it. Eighteen hours to lift-off.”
            We heard the two get into their motorboat and speed off across the lagoon. We watched as the light disappeared into a hidden hole in the cliff-face that would not have been visible from above. Then we ran down around the roofed shore to where Golbez and Blake had been.
            Apparently Golbez had been pressing numbers (or letters) into a number pad (with letters) that was built into the stone wall, a screen display above it. Next to that was a metal plate with a gray plastic dial with the words “Eruption Sequence” above it. The dial could be spun to indicate anywhere from one to twenty-four hours. Currently it was at nineteen. Golbez must have accidentally bumped it up an extra notch.

Next, a quizzical look passed over my face as just to the left of the technology we found a stone slab down-sliding door that looked exactly like the one at the temple’s entrance. It was gray against the black rock of the island.
            “Well shoot, that beats me,” I said with an exhalation of breath and a scratch of my head. “Any theories, Annie?”

That moment, everything changed. All it took was a simple question to trigger it. A request meant more to be a tiny tidbit, a mere morsel of small talk, acknowledging her existence.

But in Annie’s fractured, pitiable mind, an acknowledgement of her existence entailed another simple little thing: hope. Hope for that enemy concept I had, until then, so successfully kept at bay.

Romance.

“You...want me, Jack?”

She stood apart from me, perfectly straight, perfectly still. The air took on a calm but eerie atmosphere. Her voice felt...strange. Different.
            “...No---” I said, hesitating, unsure how to play this. “I just asked---”

“You told me ellipses were key things when talking about secrets. Do you have a secret, Jack? A secret you want to share with me?”

“I don’t, but I think you do.”

She didn’t respond. Not to that, anyway.

“Hold me, Jack,” she said, staring at me like she was hypnotized. “Please?”

I shook my head. But maybe this wasn’t the time for refusals. She took it poorly.

“Jack, please. Please hold me. Please hold me. Hold me, please, Jack! Hold me! HOLD ME!”

That last one was said in a near scream. Had I broken her brain?

No, her brain was already broken. That I knew. Then was it my responsibility to fix it? I was the hero, after all.

So I embraced that role, and I embraced her. Not a full, loving embrace, but I caught her as she practically fainted into my arms. In fact, she did faint into my arms; her body went limp, her head fell into the crook of my elbow, and so I kept her upright.

I held her.

She awoke a few seconds later, blinking. She looked up into my eyes, her face radiant with happiness.

“You...saved me,” she said, wrapping her arms around my neck.

She tried to kiss me. I leaned back and turned away, denying her. I was not going to fall for this. Her sweet strawberry lips weren’t worth it. Not even worth sparing her the crestfallen look in her once-sparkling eyes, or the disappointment that any other man would see and pity her for. Not worth giving in to romance. I had already neared giving in, back when we found Carl Sagan. It wouldn’t happen again. This wasn’t a casual battle for me. This was about the survival of my soul. The autonomy of my being. My own self-sovereignty. What was left of it all, after being metaphysically ravaged by the gods.

After the disappointment, a darkness crossed her features. An angry, vengeful look. But it passed. Then things got weird.

“I have to do the right thing,” Annie said, as if to herself. “I have to do the right thing. That’s how it’ll work. I have to do the right thing.”

“What’s the right thing?”

“Doesn’t matter, just do it.”

“How can you do the right thing without knowing it?”

“Other people do it all the time. We have to do it. We have to.”

“No. I will do as I please.”

            Except---that wasn’t me. I was not the one replying to her words. I wasn’t speaking at all. Annie still was. Kind of. I said “as if to herself” up there, but I really should have just said “to herself.” It was monologue, not dialogue. Or maybe it really was dialogue.
            Scary. But I knew it had to happen at some point.
            I backed away, pushing her out of my arms. Her face had taken on Paula’s visage, Paula’s aura. The same as had happened at the smugglers’ encampment earlier today. And as I stepped back, she stepped forward, moving with seductive grace.
            “Jack,” she said with a sultry smile. “Jack, you know what this is about, don’t you?”
            “Paula,” I said with a slow, careful nod, acknowledging her arrival.
            She simply smiled wider as she backed me up against the gray stone door. Her soft hands curled around my biceps, then moved under my jacket to my chest, then slid down to my sides. She leaned forward, apparently after another kiss.
            I stood on my tiptoes and raised my chin, trying to keep away from her, prepared to slug it out with this woman if it came down to it, when her hands, wandering around to my back, gripped my gun and pulled it out.
            Once it was in her hand, she backed up very quickly, aiming it at me. It was very odd, to see Annie, or at least the appearance of Annie---short brown hair, white button-down blouse, nose cute as a button, whatever the hell that cliche means---pointing a gun at me, the long-time object of her tender affections.
            But I knew what was going on. And because of that, I was in control.

“Paula, why did Dr. Aperture tell you that you and Annie are genetically identical? It’s not because you’re twins, is it?”

She paused before shaking her head no.

“You just happen to inhabit the same body,” I said. “I can understand that. I’ve seen villains like that before.”

“I’m no villain!” she cried. “You don’t---you don’t understand.”

“Go ahead and shoot me,” I said, groaning inwardly at stealing a line from decades ago. The problem was it was true. And I couldn’t think of anything else to say. “You’d be doing me a favor.”

“I don’t want to have to, Jack,” she said. “I just want to run away with you. Take the gold and get out of here.”

            “You know that’s never going to happen. But tell me---who was in control the majority of our adventures together?”

She smiled. Different from her seductive version. This one was wicked. “She was the one with you. But under my control the entire time. She is weak. She needed me to help her.”

“So you took her hostage, is that it? You threatened her.”

“I guided her. We both have the same goals.”

“Which are?”
            “The gold...”
            “And?”

“...you.”

“Me, romantically?”

She gave the tiniest of nods. I took a deep breath and let it out with a long, tired sigh.

“That makes you my antagonist,” I said. “My background antagonist. The one that’s working against me the entire time without me knowing it. Paula, I’m afraid I can’t let you win. That would be contrary to my nature.”

“Rejecting me is contrary to your nature!”

She had a point. I decided to change the subject.

“Whatever happened to that crossbow you had?”

            “Ad nihilum. Who knows. Quidquid. McDowell, if you don’t take the gold and then take me right now---”
            “Like I said, try and shoot me. See what happens.”
            Her eyes flared open and she shook with anger. Then she cocked the hammer and fired. But of course, nothing happened but a click.
            “See, thinking you can use my own weapon against me is foolish in the extreme,” I said, perfectly calm. “That’s Wrench you’re holding there. He won’t turn against me. But apparently a part of Annie would. Here’s what I think about you, Paula. I don’t think you want me the same way Annie wanted me. She wanted love and romance. You know what your deal is? You want power over me. You came to this island for one reason or another and made your conquest. You took power over the most powerful man on the island, Golbez, my father. And now that I’m in town, I’m the most powerful man around, and you wanted power over me. Annie’s so sweet and docile and humble, and you’re so---”

“I HATE HER!” Paula said furiously, throwing Wrench to the ground. “She’s weak, she’s a coward...”

Annie suddenly took over. I could tell by the look of hurt and innocence that emanated from her face.

“No, Paula!” she said. “I’ve never done anything wrong to you! I’ve never tried to hurt you! Why do you have to be so...mean, so calloused, so...so loose?”

“I want to kill! I want to seduce! I want to destroy!”

            “No! That’s bad! The wrong thing! I want to love! I want to be loved!”
            “VENGEANCE! BLOOD! SEX!”
            Annie blushed at that last word.
            “Shut up, Annie!”
            “I didn’t say anything!”
            The two personas continued to wage warfare against the other. I...had no idea how to react. Would you? Honestly, would you? Would anyone know what to say or do in a situation like that? And it was because of that paralytic feeling that I could have sympathy for whoever the core being of Annie and Paula was. ‘Conflicted’ doesn’t begin to describe it.
            “You have a man’s name! Do you want to be a man?”
            “It’s got an A on the end of it! It’s feminine!”

“But you act like a man all the time! Obsessed with...sex! And violence! Killing things!”

            “And what about you? Do you just want to be rescued all the time? Be something useless? Something that hinders plans?”
            “I don’t want to have plans. We don’t need to have plans at all! We can just ask nicely! Be kind to people! Do the right thing! Remember, Paula? How you wanted to do the right thing, like Jack said?”
            “But that would give him the power! I can’t believe how naive you are. Letting yourself be tossed around like that. How dare you call yourself a woman!”

I sat down on a nearby rock formation to watch. I admit, the Golbez inside me made me want a bag of popcorn to accompany the show.

            “Hey!” the women said, turning on me in a completely different persona. “I heard that thought. My name is California Poppy and I will have you know that if you so much as even think of this as entertainment, I will make it so you can never have children!”
            “No!” Annie cried, voice coming from the same body. “I won’t do that because I want to have his children!”
            “Oh, you’re so hooked up to the system!” screamed California Poppy. “Just look at all of us, women struggling to find our true identity in a male-dominated genre! Look how awful it is! We only have the two choices---femme fatales or damsels in distress! What is WRONG with us, that we can’t be more?”
            “Shut up, Poppy!” said Paula. “You learned all your feminist nonsense from precious Daddy! Listening to him, a man, trying to tell you how to be a woman! Well damn it, Poppy, I am a woman! Look at the power I have!”
            “You’re not a woman, you’re an object to be used and admired!” Poppy blasted back. “A sexpot designed to entertain males! Bending to their every whim! They want sex? You have it. They want violence? Bone-crunching, spine-shattering, patriarchal-thuggery violence? You do that too! The power you have is just enslavement to men’s desires!”
            “Damn you!” screamed Paula, spittle spewing from her mouth. The words echoed beneath the overhang, then all around the cliff-bounded body of water.
            “Please!” said Annie, covering her ears. “Please just stop! Everybody! Please...please. I just---we all need to rest. Please...”
            And silence again returned to the lagoon.

In her weariness, Annie crouched down and held her head in her hands.

“Are you...Annie...again?” I asked with some tenderness that I confess was genuine. But not out of romantic feelings for her. That’s what I told myself, anyway.

            She nodded slowly. Then she shook her head with vigor, still not looking up at me. “I don’t know---I don’t know which I am anymore. Maybe both. Maybe all three of us. Maybe there’s even more in there. I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.”
            “Well, maybe...maybe it would help if we just talked. Will you talk to me?”
            She nodded but didn’t speak.

“Can you tell me about how this all came about?”

            She shook her head with the same vigor as before, but remained silent.
            “So maybe...maybe it would help if I shared some of my past first?”
            She nodded again, still without looking up. So I sat down against the gray temple door (probably the exit, though I hadn’t had time to think that theory all the way through), and we talked. Talked to each other like human beings. No plot development. Just two people sharing their stories. A human connection.
            “Okay. So let me tell you about my parents. Mom was a martial artist and an excellent homemaker. She really loved me. And my dad used to work for Golbez. My stepdad, I mean. It’s still weird that that man isn’t my father. He did all those dad duties, raising me, teaching me how to ride a bike, how to shoot a gun, how to pull off hipshots, how to shoot a gun while doing a shoulder roll, how to take advantage of moments of slow motion to kill multiple guys at once, how to throw a ball...all that dad stuff. I even look a little like him, too. But no. Not my real dad. Apparently. They told me after I tried to kill myself for the fifth time.”
            Annie---it must have been Annie---looked up for the first time in a while.
            “You tried to...kill yourself?” she said.
            “Five times,” Jack said, nodding. “But it wasn’t because I hated myself. I just wanted to escape. It took me a long time to accept my fate. It was some random movie that clued me in to who I was. I had survived a motorcycle accident without more than a single scar on my chin. But that just helped to serve the image. The gods were watching me from a young age. Grooming me. But the movie that I saw showed me who I was when I was just nineteen. At first it was wonderful. I tried all sorts of crazy things, and I got to experience the thrill, the raw thrill of immortality. That’s what I thought it was. That’s how it looked to me. I could do anything I wanted and I wouldn’t get hurt. Well, it would, as I came to find out, but I was never totally incapacitated; I could always walk away and I could always manage to punch another bad guy out cold before losing consciousness, or rationality, or whatever it is that happens after the adrenaline leaves you alone with your bruises and breaks. I was like a superhero, but after some time fighting crime and megaomaniacal villains, I got…well, I got bored. But it wasn’t just boredom. It was a prison. And that’s what that thrill turned into. Slavery. Don’t let anyone tell you anything different. So yeah, I tried to escape that prison five times over the years. Each time I tried to commit suicide, it was somehow foiled or rewritten or something, and I got sucked into a new story. I tried to crash my motorcycle but those just turned into chase scenes with bad guys chasing me, and every time I tried to do something lethal, it just turned out really cool-looking. The fifth time I went out on my motorcycle with the intent to kill myself, a film producer visiting my dad saw me in the fields behind my house and hired me on the spot to be a stuntman. So I did that for a while until I couldn’t take it anymore. I was being a lesser copy of what the gods of pulp fiction wanted me to be. And as a result, it wasn’t very fulfilling. I wanted to be the best person I could be at whatever it was I was doing, but it turns out that I didn’t have a choice of what it was that I was doing. So the sixth time I tried to kill myself, I kind of succeeded. I didn’t kill myself, but I did get hurt. A word came into my head in the very moment I jumped my bike off a cliff: mercy. And it was like someone else was taking over, taking command. But in taking command, they gave me the command. They let me decide for myself. I didn’t die then, but I did go to the hospital. And my parents finally took note. Well, to be fair I didn’t tell them about any of it. But that’s when they told me who I was, where I came from, and where I could go to learn more. And, you know, frankly, I haven’t really learned anything. I’ve just gotten more confused.”
            “What has been confusing you?”
            “Mostly Golbez.”
            Annie actually smiled here. “He confuses everyone.”
            Annie fused with Paula. I doubted “Annie” had ever met Golbez in person.
            “But to me...I’m still trying to figure out how that man is my father. One thing I don’t understand is that I have pretty white skin. Tanned, maybe, but not the brown skin Golbez has. I guess it’s a recessive trait. Or maybe my mom drop-kicked it out of my chromosomes. Anyway, Golbez is such a different person from Johnny. Oh, Johnny’s my stepdad. Johnny Hit. He was a reformed hitman. But he changed, got his life turned around, realized the something or other of his ways, and he’s an actor now. Mostly in mob movies. I don’t know how he got so many roles, because he was a terrible actor. But apparently he used to work for Golbez, some thirty years ago. She did too. They told me they left the business together, but I learned the other night from Golbez himself that he had sent a hitman after her and it was easy to put together the puzzle. He sent Johnny Hit out to kill her, and somehow they fell in love and had me, I suppose. Oldest cliche in the book. They even explained that they fell in love as he was trying to kill her, in a weaponless, suggestive wrestling match thta ended up with them passionately making out. I kinda wish they hadn’t told me that part, but they never explained why he was trying to kill her in the first place. Now I know it’s because she stole me away from Golbez as a baby.
            “But my mom told me the truth about it all, except for that last part, after that last suicide attempt. And that explained why she had kept my last name “McDowell,” and some other little things. She actually gave me a sealed letter to take to Golbez. I think I left it back at the Moon Base in my room. I never opened it; I assume it was just some reconciliation or closure or some bullcrap like that, and I didn’t want any part of it. But they were kind enough to pay for everything and use their connections to get me out here, on that flight in the jungle and everything before it. And that’s what led me here. Into that plane. Where we met, where this whole crazy adventure started.”
            Annie looked...healed. Maybe not all the way. But after a catharsis like that, tears are bound to flow, and then they’re bound to dry. And nothing conveys the image of recovery like dried tears.
            “Now it’s your turn,” I said encouragingly.

“My full name,” she said, “is California Poppy Ann Paula Palamander. I know I’m not right. In my mind, you see. But yes, you saw.” She gave a nervous chuckle, as if unsure what my reaction would be. “It’s something that’s hard for me to control. Hard for the Annie part of me. For Paula it’s a little easier. She can direct Annie to do things. Poppy hardly ever comes out. She never has, on this island. Isle, I mean. She’s as...straightforward as Paula but she doesn’t have much use in a place like this. Paula took control early on, and led me, us, here. She only used Annie in specific times. Like when she needs to disguise herself. Like on that plane.”

“Was that Paula in the plane, then?” I asked.

“No. Well, sort of. I was doing what Paula told me to do, but it was me doing it. I’m really not a bad investigative reporter. That’s what I wanted to be before things got messed up a few years ago. I like writing, but I was there to figure out who you were and why you were coming here. I was...investigating you. That was my job.”

She hung her head in shame. I recalled figuring out the whole “investigating” thing a while back, but for some reason or other, had forgotten about it. Too many distractions on this stupid isle.

“It’s okay,” I said to her. “I understand. Like Golbez said. It was just doing what you were supposed to do. Just like it’s my job to save people. Including you. You needed it several times, so I did it. We’re characters, remember. We don’t have much control over our lives. But I remember seeing you as you dove out of that plane, into the water. I remember seeing something more than what you presented on that flight. Something underneath that trench coat.”

“There was a reason I never took that off,” she said. “I was wearing Paula’s clothes underneath. And I had a wig in that big pocket. Paula’s wig.”

“When were you being controlled by Paula, and when were you Annie?”

“Always,” she said. “It’s like I said. When I was Annie, I was Annie, with all her traits and inhibitions and everything. But it was like Paula was constantly behind me, holding a gun to my back.”

“But why?” I asked. “What did she want you to do so badly?”

She paused a moment. “You said it earlier, Jack. We wanted the same thing. Just for different reasons.”

I thought back. Ah, yes. They both wanted me, but for different reasons and using different methods. “Paula wanted power over me. You...just wanted to be with me.”

“I thought I loved you. And maybe I really do. But right now I don’t know much. Once I figure out who I am, I’ll let you know.” And she smiled weakly.

It felt nice to see that smile. It meant I was doing something right.

“Maybe we can figure it out together,” I said. “What about your parents? Your dad was mentioned a couple of times in your little catharsis.”

“Oh, Daddy was a free spirit. From the sixties, you know. A hippie minister. Loose. On drugs, some of the time, but none of the really scary ones. I don’t know why he married my mom. But he named me partly after him. His name was Paul. My mom’s name was Cowbell. Paul and Cowbell Palamander. My mom---she was very...withholding. Of... information.”

“What kind of information?”

She blushed, and I knew for certain it was Annie in control right now. “Growing up, blooming, that kind of thing,” she said, blushing deeper. After a little silence, “Sex, okay?”

This was one psychologically messed up girl.

“Living with them,” she continued, “It’s like I knew everything and nothing at the same time.”

“And that’s where the split is,” I conjectured. “Paula knows everything, and you know nothing. Or perhaps very little.”

Annie looked away, obviously embarrassed at the whole subject. But it was beginning to make sense to me.

“I don’t know when I began being more than one person. Not specifically. It happened over time. Different voices starting popping up inside my head. Telling me to do different things, or displaying different...desires. I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about that too much. It’s really scary for me to think about.”

Thinking about it all, I guessed that these varying characters in her mind were never wholly separated. Each hidden, latent identity, seemed to have subconscious influence over the surface identity, and they used that influence to subtly obtain what the latent identity wanted. For instance, Annie wanted to be with me, and badly so, but because she was so shy, the desire was pressed into Paula’s identity, who then tried to seduce me. And when I refused her, she attacked me. Annie would never do either of those things, but Paula would. They were always there, implicit in her subconscious mind.

            And thinking back on it, I realized that always the change between the two were triggered by something I said or did. When I refused her that first night in the woods, she stormed off into the jungle and became Paula. When I rejected Paula’s advances in Golbez’s villa and told her what I liked in a woman, she reverted back into Annie and tried to be good. All the while taking unconscious orders from Paula so the both of them could get what they want.
            Me.
            “Well, Annie, if that’s who you are right now, it’s been quite a day, and I think it’s time for a nap. And I believe we both need some time to think about things, so I suggest we split up for the night and part ways for now. I’m going to curl up on this nice comfy rock here, and I guarantee you I will be asleep in twenty seconds. When I wake up in the morning, I don’t want to see you here.” Her eyes, not meeting mine, plummeted at this, and I quickly explained further. “Don’t worry, this isn’t a personal thing. It’s because we’ve hit a crossroads in the plot, and I am very pleased to admit that I don’t know what’s going to happen next. So here it is, something that I think is a little more important, to you at least, so listen carefully: as seemingly the only significant female character on this island, you have your choice of roles, and where the story goes now is up to you. What you choose to do. Where you choose to go. With whom you choose to converse. And most importantly, who you choose to be. Remember that. It’s always a choice. Maybe not for me; I’m not so lucky. But for you.”
            She just nodded silently, looking miserable. I hated to leave her alone, but now that the adrenaline of that incident had faded, I too was fading. Fast.
            “Good night, California Poppy Ann Paula Palamander.”
            And like that, both of us were gone.

End of Act II