Fumbling Toward Ecstasy

Chapter 1 - You Get What You Pay For and More

Brynne Larence turned off the lamp in the living room of her new apartment and walked toward her bedroom. The 27-year-old had moved to Washington, D.C. nearly a week ago to take a new job with an architecture firm. She still had a sizeable number of boxes to unpack, but she'd already been unpacking non-stop for nearly two days. It was 11:00 p.m. now, and she was dead tired.

Brynne's orange cat, Moocher, trotted in front of her into the bedroom. Once they were both inside, Brynne closed the door. She removed the clip that had been holding her long, dark hair and picked up a brush. She began to rake the brush over her hair, but stopped mid-motion and leaned in closer to the mirror. What was that on her neck? She leaned in as closely as she could and studied her reflection. A prominent black spot that she'd never noticed before marred the side of neck. What was that? She reached up and rubbed it with her hand. To her surprise, it smeared. She looked at her finger and found some of the black mess on finger. Was that ink? How did that get there?

Brynne pushed the questions aside. She was too tired to contemplate mysterious ink marks. She looked away from the mirror and turned to her bed. Moocher was lounging innocently on top of the bedspread.

"Come on, Moocher," Brynne said sternly. "Move it." She gently shooed the cat off the bed. It hopped off and landed lightly on the carpet below. Brynne pulled the covers back and fell into bed. She slid under the covers. "Goodnight, Moocher."

Moocher sauntered over to the closet door, which was cracked open a bit, and meowed.

"Come on, Moocher," Brynne pleaded. "It's late. I'm tired."

The cat meowed again, this time louder and longer than before.

Brynne was quickly losing patience with her pet. "Mooch, give it a rest, already."

Moocher gave one more small meow before nudging the closet door open with his head and walking in. A few seconds later, a sea of bright, white light invaded the room.

Brynne opened her eyes, sat up, and squinted at the light emanating from her closet. "Moocher?"

Moocher came bounding out of the closet and hopped onto the bed, into his owner's lap. Brynne looked at the blinding light again. Was this a dream? Had she fallen asleep so quickly without realizing it? Was this a hallucination? She placed Moocher beside her on the bed and pulled the covers away from her body. She brought her bare feet to the floor and stood. Cautiously, she approached the phenomenon in her closet but stopped at the entrance. Staring into the light, she realized that it wasn't as sharp now that she was so close to it. It was like the light that emanates from a television screen in a dark room: not bright but … unique.

Brynne took another step toward the light. It was actually quite beautiful. She boldly brought her hand up to the light. She took one more step and, with her curiosity building, placed her hand into the light. It disappeared.

xxx

Lance Roberts took another bite of his candy bar. This would be the last time he had one of those for dinner. He only had one more bite left, and his stomach was still rumbling with hunger. He popped the last piece of the bar into his mouth and dropped the wrapper into the small trashcan beside his desk. He hadn't spent four years at MIT just so he could sit in front of a computer screen and eat candy bars for dinner every night.

He looked at the computer monitor again, looking over the grid that filled the entire screen. Something wasn't right. One of the squares on the grid was flashing excitedly.

"Dr. Duvall," Lance began, "do we have any links active at the moment?"

Payton Duvall, the head of the Central Office of Scientific Intelligence, or COSI, walked over to the small monitoring station and looked over Lance's shoulder at monitor as Lance pointed to the blinking red box on the blue screen. A trouble expression formed on Payton's face.