The Traveler's Companion Read Online Free PDF

blessings that his billion-dollar creation hadn’t been destroyed before going on active duty, the lights in the corridor suddenly flickered. A disconcerting sound of declining electrical power in the building preceded the overhead fluorescent tubes fading into murky ineffectual shafts. They stood in an eerie silence. After a few seconds the auxiliary generator kicked in. Red bulbs behind caged sconces saturated them in red light.
    “Now what?” Dr. Adler asked.
    Iverson stuck his head into the infirmary to make sure Melissa was all right.
    “Oh shit! She’s gone!”
    * * * * *
     
    Iverson rolled back the surveillance video once more, yet after viewing it four times he didn’t expect to see anything different. In slow, frame by frame playback, he watched the attempt to strangle Angela, the sudden and mysterious flash of white light that exposed the camera completely, and then the power outage. When the auxiliary lamps came on, the video revealed nothing on Melissa Fleming’s hospital bed but knotted sheets. She was gone. Like magic.
    “What’s that?” Angela asked, pointing at the monitor. “There’s something in that flash of light.”
    “Probably one of our shadows filtering in from the hall,” Iverson said.
    Angela interfaced with the computer, hijacking it from her superior, and rolled the video back. She selected the frame she wanted, highlighted a portion of it, and then magnified it. Affectionately, she put her hand on Iverson’s shoulder and asked him, “Are you okay? Your blood pressure’s a little high.”
    “I’m fine,” he said.
    Angela’s highlighted image on the monitor revealed a dark patch inside the flash of light, something that looked vaguely human. Was someone reaching out for her?
    “It looks like a hand,” she said.
    None of the cameras or surveillance equipment had reported anyone in the room except cleared personnel. To Iverson that was sufficient. He rejected Angela’s findings and pondered out loud, “How the hell did she slip by us?”
    He turned his attention to Angela and finally noticed something. “Angela, your badge.”
    Like a heart attack victim, she put her hand to her chest and let out a gasp. Her badge was gone.
    Iverson dropped his hands into the low pockets of his lab coat and extracted one cigarette from a pack. “Let’s go outside, Angela. I need a smoke.” He stood and made his way to the exit.
    “Building security is going to have to take care of this,” Iverson mumbled to himself. Angela had to hurry to catch up with him. “Either way it’ll still be my fault. A socialite miraculously goes missing from one of the most highly secured buildings in the world and I’m to blame.”
    Iverson scanned his access card to open the door and went into the staircase.
    “But cigarettes are bad for you,” Angela said, reluctantly following him out.
    “I have something I want to show you!” Spryly, with the use of the staircase railing, he ascended the stairs, skipping steps. When he got to the landing, he scanned his card again and was allowed through the exit door.
    “Your wife died from cancer, Doctor Iverson.”
    On his way to a cement ashtray, he put a cigarette in his mouth. “That’s correct,” he said, the sound of a faulty lighter as accompaniment.
    “Don’t you think you should quit smoking?”
    “Why? She can’t get any deader.” He shook the lighter, trying to get it to work. “Look up at the stars. You see them?”
    She looked up, seeing splatters of white specks in the night sky.
    “As you know, all stars are suns. And as you’re also aware, planets are created by supernova remnants. The elements inside a star cook over billions of years and then the star eventually begins to die and finally it explodes and out goes the stuff to create other stars and planets. All life comes from stars. You know all of this, of course,” he said, the cigarette propped between pursed lips, his hands cupping a lighter that was only offering