NightSide - Asynchronous Mud

Her mother called that night, told her that her father had just suffered his second heart attack, and that this one had been very bad. Could she come home? There might not be much time left...

She asked for a leave from her superiors in Mossad and had flown home, and echoes of the dream chased her through all the passing time zones. She spent the last few days of her father's life in his hospital room at the Mayo Clinic, and she was with him -- and held him -- as he passed. She'd looked in his eyes, watched the humanity in his soul flicker as he took his last breath, and she'd wiped the tears first from his eyes -- then her own -- as he left her, and as his eyes grew calm and still.

She'd spent the next week at his house in Westwood Hills, an affluent suburb out on the west side of Minneapolis, and she'd looked out over the golf course and walked the trails around the lake while trying to come to terms with his passing, but in the end very little about her life made sense anymore. She thrashed around in the memories of that night in Zermatt, trying to understand just what she'd been rebelling against all those many dreadful years ago when she'd left home for Israel. He didn't like the Beatles? Let's have a fight about that. Jim Taylor wasn't Jewish, so let's go out with him, see if we can rub that in the old man's face too. It always came back in a rush, but when her mother asked her to help clean out the closet where he'd keep his clothes, and the little boxes where he'd kept his memories, she'd finally come undone.

Then her kid sister arrived, a few days too late for the passing but just in time for the services. Laura was the late arrival in so many other ways, too. Dana was finishing middle school when Laura was born, and she'd gone off to college before the kid had gotten out of kindergarten. By the time Laura had moved on to the very same middle school over in St Louis Park, she'd moved to Israel.

So the funny thing was, they simply didn't know one another. Two sisters, her flesh and blood, and they'd never once had a chance to sit around and laugh about boyfriends or argue about chores not done; no, they were strangers, complete strangers. And when she drove Laura home from the airport that fact more than any other hit her hardest. Her father gone now, her mother lost in a haze of grief, and here was this girl home from college, her sister, this total stranger. She'd pulled off the highway and cried when all the heartbreak came rushing through the distance between the two of them.

And yet someway, somehow, and against all odds her sister became her best friend over the next two weeks, and suddenly nothing in the world was as important to Dana Goodman as what was left of her family.

Now here she was, lost in LA, still a million miles away from family -- just like always. Still, Laura flew out twice a week when she had the LA run, and now she looked at her watch, checked her appointments. Laura's flight was due to arrive in a little less than an hour, and she was planning to meet her later that afternoon for an early dinner. Laura wanted to talk about Ralph, what to do about her marriage now that it seemed to be in a terminal decline -- at least, that's how she'd put it yesterday when they'd talked for almost an hour. Dana hated to hear it, hated what a split would surely do to her niece, what it would mean for Laura to lose faith in her husband after nearly twenty years together...

This was an evening she wasn't looking forward to, then she turned back to the list of friends whose lives she was about to destroy.

+++++

Lakwan looked at the foot-traffic heading in and out of the bank, then at the clock on the dash. The armored car should be here in about five minutes, he told his boys, then he looked around the streets once again.

Good, he said to himself, still no cops...

+++++

"Two-two heavy, Los Angeles Approach, maintain two four niner degrees, descend and maintain three-seven hundred, report passing SHELL. Winds light and variable, visibility two miles in haze, altimeter two niner niner two. Contact tower one three three point niner."

"Two-two heavy, maintain two four niner degrees, descend and maintain three-seven hundred, report passing SHELL," Richardson said. Douglas was handling the landing while she called out the checklists and handled the radios. She could see the tops of a few of the taller buildings in downtown LA poking up through the smog -- still maybe fifteen miles away -- and she scowled at the bronze-colored air blanketing the city. Her eyes were already beginning to burn, and she knew within an hour she'd be on eyedrops, and her throat would be burning...

She scanned the panel, looked as ILS flags popped on the HSI and as the autopilot locked onto the glide-slope and localizer...

"Flaps ten," Douglas said, and Richardson hit the lever under her right hand and watched the panel indicator.

"Ten, and speed one seven five," she said as the 777 drifted down into the smog...

+++++

"Okay man, there it is," Lakwan said as the armored car turned into the shopping center's parking lot. He started his car and watched as the truck drove up to the bank, looked on as the two men in the back of the truck walked inside the bank. He looked at the clock again. "Usually in there less than two minutes," he said. "When they come out we roll, hit 'em just as they get to the back of the truck..."

"Well, you better start rollin', mother fucker," BigTop said, "'cause they be comin' right now!"

"Fuck..." Lakwan sped through the lot and screeched to a stop just in time; the brothers raced out of the car with their guns drawn and they started shooting at the guards before they had time to react. Lakwan threw a Molotov cocktail under the engine and the pavement under the truck burst into flames. He dashed to the fallen guards and grabbed the bags they'd been carrying out to the truck; one went for his gun and Lakwan shot him in the face then he ran back to the car. They were just getting in the car when a gunshot shattered the rear window, and he heard sirens as pulled out into traffic on Manchester. Traffic was heavy as he slipped through the heavy midday traffic; when he looked in his rearview mirror he saw red and blue strobes a couple of blocks behind and cursed.

He couldn't see the LAPD helicopter overhead, or the KLAX News JetRanger just a few hundred yards behind the police chopper, but just then BigTop leaned out the window and took a shot at the cops.

"Man, they's a helicopter up there, 'Kwan. Better find some trees or some shit, and fast..."

Lakwan saw the Salvation Army store just ahead and turned south on Vermont, just before he saw the cop car heading north. He passed it southbound, and BigTop fired two shots at the cops as they passed...

+++++

"Two-two heavy, LA center, be advised there are police helicopters at your eleven o'clock, report a robbery suspect in a pursuit, bank robbery, shots fired. They're about a mile north of your position heading east, about two hundred feet AGL right now."

"Two-two heavy," Douglas said, concern in her voice as she looked down and to the right, "too much haze, can't see any traffic." She looked at Richardson... "You'd better take it..."

"My aircraft," Laura said immediately. She understood, didn't need to be told why. She had zero view out that side of the cockpit, while Katie had an unobstructed view, and so she'd started scanning her instruments, watching the autopilot's moves. She dialed 157 knots on the auto-throttle and dropped the flaps to twenty degrees...

Lakwan passed through the red light at East 92nd street doing well over 80 miles per hour, and he drifted to the right lane as he approached West Century... He shot across traffic and made a left on Century, but he saw there were now three cop cars behind him now, and they were getting closer. Central Avenue was just ahead now, that little power station on their left, Will Rogers Park on his right...so maybe he could duck into the park, hide in the parking lot somehow, but he saw a cop car was waiting there already. As he sped past the waiting patrol car he was thinking he had nowhere to go now...

+++++

Douglas was peering into the smog when...

"Okay, got 'em. About two o'clock now, maybe a half mile..."

Richardson looked at her altitude readout: 1600 AGL, rate of descent 300FPM. "I don't like this," she said, if only to herself...

+++++

BigTop was leaning out the window again, and he fired at the closest cop car; PeeWee was leaning out the other window in back, now shooting up at the helicopters...

+++++

Will Butner was piloting the KLAX News chopper, and he had the JetRanger crabbed to the right so the camera operator could get an unobstructed angle on the unfolding chase below when bullets slammed into his right leg and hand, and then into the cockpit glass. As instinct kicked in he pulled up on the collective and added power.

He didn't see the looming jetliner overhead...or the right engine nacelle that swallowed the helicopter milliseconds later...

+++++

"What the..." Richardson heard Douglas cry, then lights were going off all over the panel. It felt like something had reached up from below and grabbed the right-wing...then the aircraft was banking right so she instinctively turned the wheel, trying to counter the roll she should have corrected with left rudder...

"What happened," she said calmly -- even as the right-wing dropped further. Now she got onto the rudder and concentrated on stabilizing their speed.

"Helicopter, I think," Douglas said. "It got the wing, into the engine." She was flipping breakers, switching electrical buses, deploying the RAT. "LA Approach, Two-two heavy, one of those helicopter got our right wing, unknown structural damage, hydraulics failing."

"Two-two heavy, state your intentions."

"We've lost two," Richardson said, but just now the roll to the right was really accelerating. "Help me on the rudder."

"On it."

Richardson was looking ahead, out the windshield, and she saw grass ahead, maybe a playing field? If she could just get the right wing up...

"See the field?" Douglas said.

"Yup, she's not responding..."

"You're losing it," Douglas added.

"Kids all over that field. No way are we going down there."

"Right a little, a little right rudder, vacant field there..."

"Got it," Richardson said...

"Well, damn," she heard Douglas say, but just then she was following the caped lady...into the lamplight at the top of the stairway...

+++++

Ralph and Dana were home watching TV when the news broke, when images of the disaster flashed around the world. Laura's sister called a half-hour later, devastated, barely able to breathe. She asked them to fly out as soon as they could, and he called her back a half-hour later, told her they would get in a little before noon the next morning.

When the first investigators at the scene of the crash interviewed people from the playground, they all said pretty much the same thing. The 777 was almost inverted as it passed just overhead, yet it appeared to change course at the last moment. The right wingtip just missed the soccer field before it ripped through traffic on Century, before the massive airliner cartwheeled into the power substation on Central.

The data recorders were located within a few hours, but fires burned through the night. The manhunt for the three bank-robbers was still underway as night fell, or so the breathless news crews reported, but their stolen car had been found, abandoned...behind a church.

+++++

Deputy Sumner Bacon sat looking at his pancakes, completely bored and wishing he was back in his apartment working on his thesis. Instead, he was sitting in a Denny's at two in the morning, listening to an academy trainee drone on and on about all he'd learned about the penal code the past two weeks. He'd been on the streets for twenty-three years, however, and trainee enthusiasm had gotten tiresome and stale -- like maybe fifteen years ago. Not it was all he could do not to tell the kid to shut the fuck up and leave him be.

The biggest thing on days had been the 777 crash up near South Central, the airliner on approach into LAX, and even though that was somewhat more interesting than the inner workings of the California penal code, he'd not even wanted to talk about that incident with this irritating rookie. He'd been to several such crashes in and around LA over the years, and the smell of kerosene-soaked flesh got to him, now probably more than ever before. And as much as this new kid wanted to talk about the crash, and all the carnage he'd seen on TV, Bacon had simply begged off the topic, asked to talk about something, anything else.

But now, after he'd finished only a few bites of the diner's rancid, grease-soaked pancakes, he pushed the plate aside. "You finished," he asked the ur-rookie, hoping the indigestion would go away before they got their next call...

"Sure, ready when you are."

He nodded, took the bill and went up to the counter where the night manager waited, smiling. Bacon handed the girl the bill and she tore it up, tossed it in the trash. "Thanks for coming in tonight, Sum."

"You bet, darlin'."

"Looks like you got a wet one," she said, and he assumed she was referring to the state of moisture behind the rookie's ears...

"Oh, you know, the song remains the same, darlin'. But hey, the night is young, so there's just no tellin' how much fun the night holds..."

She smiled, even though her feet ached. "I'm off at eight if you want to drop by."

He smiled, nodded his head. "Might just do that, Baba. Have to see how the night goes."

"Okay. Seeya later."

He led the rookie out into the night, the docks and refineries down the hill in San Pedro casting an eerie glow over the harbor, and now, to make the air even more fetid, a nice, thick fog was drifting in, casting a strange, deep amber-gray glow over the harbor area...

"Did you call her Baba?" the ur-rookie asked. "What gives?"

"Baba O'Riley," Bacon said with a tired grin. "You know, 'it's only teenage wasteland'?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Not a goddamn thing, Rook."

"Oh. Okay."

He got behind the wheel, checked into service, then he drove to the 110 and made for the southbound onramp. When the light turned green he turned and went to the shoulder of the onramp and turned off the engine, then he rolled down his window.

"What gives?" the trainee said.

"Listening for drunks."

"What?"

"Shut the fuck up and listen, Rook. Who knows, you might even learn something."

He leaned back, shut his eyes, but it wasn't even a minute later when he opened them again, turned on the engine and waited...until a white Lexus coupe drove by, straddling the lane dividers, causing a whining rumble as the tires pounded against the raised 'bots-dots' -- he watched the Lexus for a moment then slipped the car into gear and took off down the onramp. He hung back a moment, watched the Lexus as it swung from lane to lane, then, as it took the ramp onto the Vincent Thomas Bridge he knew this just had to be a DUI...

Yet he decided against stopping the Lexus on the bridge, so he pulled in behind it, keeping about a hundred yards back, but then, as they approached the apex of the bridge the Lexus slowed, then stopped.

"Not good," he said, almost to himself. "Nope, not good at all..." He turned on the strobes as his patrol car rolled to a stop, and he called in to dispatch, checked out on a welfare concern atop the bridge, possible DUI, possible suicide. He knew without having to ask that backup would already be starting his way...

He was getting ready to get out of his Dodge when the Lexus' front door opened and a woman stepped out. She walked around to the front of her car and scrambled over to the anti-suicide fencing, then she started climbing the fence...

"What the fuck!" the rookie yelled, but Sumner Bacon was already out of his squad car, sprinting past the woman's car. She must be stronger than hell, he thought as he jumped up onto the fence and began climbing after her.

She was already at the top, struggling to get a leg over the... "Fuck!" he yelled. "Lady, that's razor wire, stop where you are or you're gonna get shredded!"

Blood started raining down on his face just seconds later, just before he got to her, and he felt the rookie climbing up the fence behind him. Moments later Bacon was on her, with her leg in one hand, his other holding on tightly to the fence.

"Come on, lady, give me a break, would you?"

She was struggling, still trying to get over the wire, only now she was really bleeding. He heard another car approaching, turned to see it was another patrol car coming to back him up, and he relaxed, knew paramedics and firemen would get here soon and help get her free of this wire...so all he needed to do was keep her on this side of the wire.

But then she relaxed, started back down the fence, and he kept pace beside her...until she was back down on the road beside her Lexus...

Maybe he expected her to fight, or to run, but instead she came to him, her eyes awash in tears -- and she put her arms around him and held on tight as, apparently, shock set in.

Two other officers were on him within moments and he held up his hand, told them to back off.

"My sister," she gasped, "my sister..."

"Your sister? What about your sister?"

"Pilot," she whispered, "she...captain of the jet, the crash..."

"Oh my God," he heard himself whispering. "It's okay now, you can let go. I've got you. Just let it go..."

And she did.

She was beyond help after that, lost in grief only a cop with years under his belt could understand. He could relate. Oh God, how he could relate...

She slipped down to the ground, her arms around his thighs, her face turned to rest on the side of his legs, and then he felt infinite sorrow in her wailing words...

"Oh God, they're here!" she screamed. "Please forgive me. Take me, I'm ready, take me now!"

He knelt beside her, held her close, tried to get her to look at him, to get her to come back to the living, but when he looked at her face he almost recoiled from the horror he saw reflected in her eyes. Still he held her, still he looked into the abyss, until he saw a faint amber-tinged cobalt glow within her eyes...and then...

...he felt gray mist encircle them as they knelt out there in the cold, as he fell into the depths of her soul, until he too felt himself adrift. She fell deeper into his grasp, but suddenly he felt like he was falling, falling off a stairway, falling into dark wet leaves...

...then he closed his eyes, afraid of the things he'd seen in her eyes, afraid of the truth he'd seen inside that cool, amber-blue terror, and as his own fear began to push everything else aside he closed his eyes as vertigo clawed the air around them, and he began to sense they were surrounded by hundreds of birds screaming for release...

...and then, infinite warmth. The sound of surf breaking on a distant shore, a warm breeze carrying sweet scents of gardenias and hibiscus. He was afraid now, but he felt her arms around his, and he opened his eyes to confront -- whatever this was...

...then he cried out at the sight, as impossible implications washed over and through him...

...for everywhere he looked, in every conceivable direction, he and this strange woman were floating, adrift within a vast fields of stars...

Part III: Asynchronous Mud v1.1

San Francisco

December, 2023

He walked through Portsmouth Square, up staggered steps into the warm evening, feeling very anxious; indeed, he was really feeling almost excited. Better than he had felt in ages, as a matter of fact. The decision made, now all he wanted was to experience all this evening had to offer. He was tired of the loneliness, the suffocating sense of 'alone' that had defined his life for the past dozen or so years. He'd wanted his life to change somehow, and radically, but he'd always found such outcomes to be an almost impossible dream. Reality, he'd learned, has a way of fucking with your head, sometimes so much that even your dreams can't keep reality from nipping at your heels.