Connections

The alarm went off at 3:45 a.m. and jarred Oliver out of a deep sleep.

He'd been dreaming again.

It was the same scene as always. He stood in a field vibrant with color and teeming with life. Tall indigo grain swayed gently, weighed down by slightly darker seed pods that clung to his trousers as he moved. In the distance, mountains the color of red clay loomed large on the horizon. Nearby, what looked like an orchard was at their feet, but the trees—if that's what they were—seemed wrong. The distance made it hard to judge, but they looked much larger than even the Ponderosa pines that grew in his hometown of Flagstaff, Arizona. The tallest one ever recorded was 268 feet, but they were more typically between 60 and 130 feet, or 18 and 39 meters tall.

Oliver knows this because he 'Goes Down The Rabbit Hole,' as his mother affectionately puts it. For a while, The Rabbit Hole was trees because he wanted to know if they could communicate with one another.

They did.

Oliver, giddy with the knowledge-high, had pestered his parents for weeks as he explained the vast network that trees build; how they share resources, and in some cases could even employ defense mechanisms. The acacia tree, for instance, when attacked by a giraffe, will release ethylene gas, which warns the other acacias to produce tannins, and THOSE ward off predators. It was just all SO COOL.

The massive height and breadth of the orchard trees astonished him. Their branches extended straight out in every direction, appearing powerful and heavy with clusters of fruit—perhaps berries—that looked as large as bowling balls. In his mind, he had named them "shimmer-fruits," though he wasn't entirely sure if that name was his own creation or something from The Other. The colors of the fruits occasionally shifted in a shimmer when Oliver visited them in his dreams, but he had never gotten close enough to study them thoroughly.

He'd never gotten close enough to them, or to the figure who stood silently at the edge of The Grove.

Oliver had never been able to get a glimpse of the figure's features. It was always swathed in a hooded robe, but he had a sense that it was studying him, just as he was studying it.

He'd learned from experience that the longer he stood still, the more time he had to study his surroundings. If he began walking towards The Grove, the dream would come to an end.

It was the alarm that ended it this time.

The phone was still attached to its charger, tucked just under the edge of his pillow, where he'd put it before falling asleep.

Oliver hurriedly silenced it before it became loud enough to alert his parents down the hall. His online classes didn't start until 10 o'clock, so there would be Questions that he didn't want to get into, especially when he wasn't sure if he would tell the truth. Although he was only ten years old, Oliver had a very refined sense of Right and Wrong. Lying wasn't always Wrong, but it did always feel bad, so he tried to avoid it whenever possible.

Some of this sense had come from his parents. They were both lawyers and even after 15 years were still very much in love -- with each other, and with life. Oliver's education had surpassed traditional public (and private, for that matter) schools years ago, but his parents had a successful law firm and swapped out which days they worked from home so that one of them would always be home with him. Oliver was aware, from a short stint in a prestigious private school, that most of the other kids who grew up in a wealthy home saw more of their nannies than they did their parents. He was also aware that it was something his parents could easily afford. That thought had led to one that wormed into the apple of his heart and wiggled around in there until he could no longer stand to keep it inside.

He approached the office door after midnight one night, his hair disheveled and wearing his unease as openly as he wore his pajamas. His mother, still dressed in her smart work clothes, had kicked off her heels and propped her stockinged feet on a small stack of discovery boxes beside her. Her dark hair was twisted up with a pen, though a glossy strand had fallen across one side of her face. She was speaking into a recorder, discussing an Alford plea, when she noticed Oliver standing in the doorway. Most parents might have asked, “What are you doing up?” in a tone laced with weary annoyance, but his mother switched off the recorder and set it aside, beckoning him in. Her dark eyes swept over his features as if trying to gather clues.

When he got close enough to her chair, she reached out and did a very mom thing. She smoothed his hair away from his forehead, her fingertips tracing along the side of his face. "What'cha thinkin', Lincoln?" she asked lightly, calling him by his middle name in a bit of rhyme she'd used since he was born. Oliver adored his mother for many reasons, but one of the best was the way she always asked him how he was feeling, instead of telling him how she thought he was feeling and why.

"Why haven't you and Dad ever hired a nanny?" he asked abruptly, but continued without waiting for a reply. He knew that was rude, but he had to get the worm out. "You guys would be able to get more work done." He stopped the sentence there because the anxiety worm bit his heart right then, causing his throat to close up on the rest of what he'd wanted to say, which was: And not have to worry about me so much.

His mother's eyes had softened, and she'd touched her fingertips to his cheek as she leaned forward. "And miss one glorious moment of you?"

It was a memory he would always cherish. In seven words, she plucked that stupid worm out and squished it. Uncaring of the papers in her lap, she'd put her feet down and let them all fall to the floor in a mess, pulling him up against her. He thought he was too old to sit in his mother's lap, but maybe just This One Time, it was okay. Cupping his face with one hand, she spoke seriously, even as she held him.

"You're not wrong. We would get more work done if we hired a nanny." There was a pause here as her eyes went far away. "But Oliver," she continued, meeting his again. "The work is a means to an end. And YOU are the end. We planned you, prepared for you, hoped for you, dreamed of what you would be. Wondered. And you...you're the entirety of our dreams and then some. It's a privilege to watch you become who you are. Never doubt that for a moment." The words were a weighted blanket to his heart and healed the wound that silly worm had caused.

Now he paused, listening for the sounds of approaching footsteps down the hall, and relaxed when none were forthcoming.

Alerted through the change in biometrics from his smart watch that Oliver was awake, 3PO's color ring switched into the bright blue of awareness, and the tiny round droid made a rude blatting noise from atop his charging station.

Oliver had programmed and built the little guy, naming him, of course, after C3PO from Star Wars. However, through adaptive AI, it had developed a personality closer to that of R2D2. Sassy and outspoken, in other words.

Oliver shushed it.

3PO repeated the rude blatting noises more softly.

Rolling his eyes, he threw his legs over the side of the bed and exhaled heavily, gaze turning towards the window in a squint. It looked clear enough, but there was only one way to be sure. 3PO already knew the plan and rolled off the charging station in a whir of energized gears that belied his annoyed sounds. Oliver knew he'd been lucky in many regards in life, and living in Flagstaff was yet another one of them. There were many Dark Sky Initiatives here, ones that protected the area from light pollution. It was also dry year-round, which reduced the amount of cloud cover that could interfere with radio waves.

Scooping 3PO up in the crook of his arm, Oliver made his way through the house with the quiet confidence of one who knew all the spots to avoid, and paused at the back door.

"3PO, turn off the back door camera," he requested.

There were a couple of affirmative beeps before it replied in an articulate English accent.

"Back door camera disabled." There was a brief pause, and then a question. "Are you SURE this is a good idea?"

Oliver pushed the door open and walked through, releasing the doorknob slowly to keep the latch from snicking into place too loudly.

"It's an idea, 3PO," he muttered for what seemed like the dozenth time. "We won't know if it's good or bad till the results are in."

He snagged a cushion from the outdoor settee and dropped it on the ground near the base of his transmitter, settling there and letting 3PO do what he willed as he pulled his headphones on. The giant dish and antenna had been built over the years and had allowed Oliver the freedom to communicate whatever he wished into the far reaches of space.

"Hi," he started, as he always did. "This is Oliver Lincoln," he reported, and then leaned back on the settee and talked through the transmitter, relating all of his recent thoughts, observations, and feelings. There were probably more professional ways to go about this, but Oliver placed a high importance on simple communication. He felt like that was the thing that was lacking in the world.

He'd never had an answer before.

Before tonight, anyway.

Oliver listened.

***********************************************************

80 years later

The nurses spoke in hushed voices just outside the partially open door of his lavish hospital room, but Oliver's hearing was still sharp. They were discussing the measures to take to 'keep him comfortable' for these last precious few hours until the inevitable happened.

He wasn't afraid.

With the assistance of his motorized chair, he moved slowly around the room, visiting the things that he had requested the staff put there for him. He traced his bent and shaking fingertips along the golden surface of the Nobel Peace Prize, which bore a Latin inscription. When translated, it read "For the peace and brotherhood of men." That had been granted to him after his company had created nanobots capable of cleaning pollutants from water on a molecular level. He had fought long and hard to make the technology easily replicable and cost-efficient, ensuring it would be available to even the poorest regions of the world, and he'd succeeded.

He had also created other things that further strengthened connections between people, including real-time translation earbuds capable of translating all known languages on Earth. They weren't widely available yet, but schools had begun incorporating them in their welcome packets to children and it wouldn't take long. Oliver wouldn't be around to see it, but that was ok.

He paused briefly at the picture of children, and touched each of their precious faces, as his mother once did his. He had been a seed in the apple of her heart once, and they were his seeds, planted deeply in the soil of his love.

Motoring to the window, Oliver looked outside, watching the sunset and thinking that it was appropriate. The morphine was very strong, and it was making him sleepy.

Just as his eyes were starting to close, he noticed the colors beginning to change on the mountains. They looked like the color of red clay. When he opened them, they were the San Francisco Peaks he'd grown up with his entire life. But when they closed...there it was again. Red clay, and the figure, standing there.

Still waiting.

Death was just the next adventure, if you believed Peter Pan.

Oliver did.