The Sudden Appearance of Hope

Chapter 74

A question, the only one that matters: where is Byron?

Perhaps also another: why do I need to know? She said “you will come to me” and I am looking for her, is this just a compulsion? Has she embedded something in my brain, needles and antennae and…

… but no. First things first, I get a full medical, all in one day, fast so the doctors can’t forget mid-test. Nothing embedded, no chips, no wires, no nothing, today is not the day I start wearing a tin-foil hat.

Discipline: if you cannot trust in yourself, trust in others. If you cannot trust in others, trust in the scientific method. Everything else is conjecture and doubt, dogma, fantasy and fear. I will not be afraid. I will not be mad.

I looked for Byron, and Byron was gone.

Vanished from America, vanished from the darknet, simply… vanished.

I searched the 106, I searched laboratories and lecture halls, scoured the airports and the border posts, rummaged through the internet, digging for her, luring her out, and nothing.

She had vanished more effectively than I’d ever imagined, and people could remember her, and she was still gone. Maybe she was right; maybe that was a kind of freedom.

Finding nothing, on a whim, I rode the Greyhound bus to Salt Lake City. The bus wasn’t like the old movies; it was air conditioned, comfortable, a coach with a toilet at the back. “Hi there!” exclaimed the driver over the intercom, as we headed north. “There’s Wi-Fi for your entertainment, magazines for your pleasure, lights above your chairs for reading and a toilet for an experience you won’t ever forget!”

Salt Lake City: founded by Mormons, sustained by skiing and industrial banks. A puddle of straight lines beneath snow-capped peaks. I had a very good hot dog while choosing my next destination — so good I went back for seconds and the woman serving exclaimed, “Honey, you oughtta eat more and fatten up, else you won’t never survive the winter!”

I squirted more ketchup into the bun, tipped an extra two dollars, and caught the bus at 3 a.m. down Interstate 80, heading east, towards nowhere much.