Cloud to Cloud

Episode 53: Oversight from Ahigh

Linc turned a somber frown to Coach as the trio looked on at Evan through life-sized screens within the Akashic library.

"He's a mess," Fred interpreted Evan's melancholy expression as the younger man flopped on the couch. "Even when he's laughing and drinking with the ITower execs, he's not himself."

Coach swirled the mist and Evan's image dissipated. "If we want to help him. We have to work on this side. Not too much help."

Before they returned to the Akashic code, Fred lingered at the misty dome, "Will he learn?"

"There is a path for Evan to follow this time around. As far as he may stray, we must trust he will find it." Coach set a hand on Fred's shoulder.

"He's alone." Fred sighed.

"Only because he refuses to see he's not," Coach offered.

Linc turned his attention to the pair as they approached another screen he claimed as his own for the moment.

"We're still unable to make a connection with Hannah." Linc's voice strained in concern. "It's as if she's fallen off of the universe."

Coach and Fred fell into step behind Linc. They, too, squinted at pinprick lights arrayed across an ever-turning globe before them.

"Is it possible she's dead?" Linc crossed his arms.

Ever the voice of reason, Coach leaned closer to the globe. "If Hannah had left her body, she would be with us here." He rotated the globe with a wave of his fingers. "No. She is alive, somewhere. She has been shrouded somehow. We can only hope Evan can do what needs to be done to find her."

"If he even has the desire to do so." Fred peered over Linc's shoulder at the screen depicting his nephew at yet another lively event. The trio exchanged nervous glances.

"Does he still believe she's helping Wave7?" Fred asked, peering into another moment in Evan's day-to-day life.

This time, Evan was in his office. Alone.

"Linc?" Fred returned his attention to find Linc no longer among them.

Coach raised his shoulder. "We all have our jobs to do."

It was all he offered before he, too, faded to another part of the great library. Fred was left to watch as another day turned to night in his nephew's busy, shallow world.

"We were so close." He whispered to the image of Evan, head-down on his desk, recovering from a hangover, and an all nighter at the keyboard.

"So close." Evan grumbled the words in his restlessness.

"I should have shown you the designs and maps." Fred lamented. "It would mean so much more if you could see the plans."

Fred moved to the globe and flicked his fingers. Blue pins alighted on the surface. He spread his fingers and the image soared to a trio of pyramids surrounded by sparse vegetation.

As Fred looked on the area around the structures came to life with the bustling of workmen and machinery.

"I do hope Coach was right about who's using who." Fred faded from the library to join the others.