The castle (pt. 1)

He had always hated the desert heat. It just didn’t seem to go with him, the sense of being suffocated in a blanket with no relief in sight, with trillions of busy air molecules pummeling him relentlessly as they drained the minimal water his body still held. This time, he had to admit that there was nothing he was going to be able to do about it. He had been walking for what seemed like an eternity, he was tired, thirsty and hungry, and during the last several hours, as the day grew relentlessly hotter, he was finding it more and more difficult to keep his balance. It took all his willpower to keep taking one step after another when all he wanted to do was to just lie down somewhere, anywhere that sparse shade.  There were a few trees out here, but he didn’t give in to his urge because, quite frankly, he was afraid.  From time to time he would look back over his shoulder. Whatever was out there couldn’t be far behind, and it had already killed his mother. He had no choice but to keep on moving.

He had run out of water yesterday night, but insisted on carrying an empty plastic water bottle. Maybe it was a reminder of better days, or maybe he did it hoping that he might be able to put it to practical use. Who knew? He might find an oasis out here, a pool of water bubbling up from whatever magical reserve had gathered it long ago, and he might be able to fill it after he had had his fill, so that he could keep moving. He told himself that this wasn’t the real desert, not the wasteland he associated with the great deserts of modern imagination. It wasn’t the Serengeti, it wasn’t the Mojave, it wasn’t the dry desert of northern Chile. There were still trees out here, and not palm trees, but the kind with leaves, hardy trees that grew in the hilly and rocky landscape. Where there were trees, wasn’t there water? This was what he told himself in moments of lucidity, when his mind wasn’t wandering and he wasn’t torturing himself with the thought of the last meal he had had a few days ago. The sun was weighing on him and, as he looked ahead, he wondered if he might not be walking in circles. Very funny.

A darting shadow circled around him, prompting him to look up. It was the bird he had seen several times earlier, both yesterday and today, and from the looks of it, it was not a robin or any other type of small bird. He had initially been afraid that it might be a buzzard, mercilessly staking him out as its next meal, but this one was bigger, and he thought it looked instead like a hawk. It crossed his path, returning and circling around him, and it seemed to him as if it were trying to tell him something. Do hawks communicate with humans? The behavior of this bird made him nervous, because for all the world it seemed to be following him, but, on the other hand, it was the first company he had had since the crash two (or three?) days earlier. It let out a high-pitched call, almost as if it were telling him to follow. It had to be a vision, some hallucination. He had received a vicious knock to his head in the accident, and for all he knew, he was seeing birds flying around him, like in some silly Warner Brothers cartoon from 100 years ago. When had he ever heard of a hawk trying to tell a human to do something, other than to stay away or, perhaps, feed it?

At times, he wasn't sure whether the bird was following him, or whether he had been unconsciously following it. In any case, he was glad at times for the company, and whenever he stopped in the shade of a tree to rest, it was never long before the hawk came circling back. There was some connection there, he knew, and he was afraid of losing it. The hawk never got very close in any case, but would alight on a nearby branch or rock and stare at him, making him feel so uneasy that eventually he would get up and resume his trek. There was no way he could out-stare a hawk, and in any case, he had no idea where to go other than to avoid the road. He might as well follow the hawk.

He cupped his hand over his forehead and looked up again as the hawk glided smoothly overhead. It seemed to be trying to show him something, and was flying in a particular direction that took him to higher ground. He stumbled along, telling himself that at some point he would rest, because his body couldn’t hold out for much longer and night wasn't far behind. He couldn't continue for very much longer, of course, because he desperately needed some water and food.  At times, the thought of lying down and giving up seemed almost appealing, but he still felt afraid, and didn’t want to risk another encounter with what he had seen a few days ago. His mind might be muddled, but the thought still consumed him: he had to get to the castle, or at least try. Things would make sense if he did.

He got up gingerly and resumed walking. Whatever the outcome, it wouldn’t be much longer.

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It was growing steadily darker, and despite himself, he found himself seeking out the shape of the hawk up ahead. From time to time he would see it, far above him, circling back then moving forward. It was headed in the direction of a small hill off to his left, standing out in the terrain that grew more and more hilly. 

The hill was part of a rocky outcropping located in a patch of sparse woods. It was unusual, because it seemed to constitute one of the few natural outposts in this terrain. He had left the narrow winding road long ago, the one that he had traversed with his mother with so much ease a few days ago, and for a moment, he felt a powerful wince of emotion. If he could, he would have cried, but for now, the memory of the crash left him heaving with sadness. He gathered himself slowly, and continued on his way. After all, it wasn't safe for him to stay

.

Scrub gave way to sparse trees, and he gradually continued his climb upward. He didn't want to retrace his steps, nor wait on the road, because it felt like he was too exposed. A few days ago, on their drive upward, they had seen little traffic and these considerations had been far from his mind. He hadn't known what to expect, nor had he had any reason to fear. In hindsight, he should have known something was wrong by the way his mother was acting, but he was too entranced by the novelty of this unexpected trip.

The heat that had been so unmerciful during the way was slowly draining away. He thought that it might get colder than he was prepared to support, especially as he climbed up in altitude. The last two nights had been miserable enough, but he had managed to find a cove or shelter that had protected him from the worst of the cold. Now, he wasn't too sure.

The hawk had been circling over the hill for the last hour. Might it have some kill that it was protecting? In a fit of confused and silly paranoia, he wondered if it might not be safe to follow it and see what it was evidently protecting. Was there a dead animal on the hills, and maybe, some coyote or bear or pack of wolves feeding on it? Was he meant to be a diversion, to tempt the predators with a fresh live prey so the hawk could swoop down and take its cut? Even in his desperate state, he doubted that hawks were that clever or premeditated. He had nothing else he could do, other than to get away from the site of the incident and try to stay off the road. He might as well head for the hill.

A thought came to him: maybe he had been going about it the wrong way all this time. Hawks could be trained, after all, to lead their handlers to prey. Maybe this was a trained hawk, and maybe, just maybe, he might find something worthwhile up there. He was hoping for water, first and foremost, but in the back of his mind he wondered if he might catch sight of the castle. He had to admit that he had been lost these past two days, and until the hawk appeared, had no idea other than to keep the setting sun behind him. 

His mother had talked repeatedly about how unusual it was to be able to travel through this restricted area. It was part of a military facility, although he had seen no guard stations nor anything other than what he took to be a surveillance toward far away. She had told them that, when she disappeared for weeks on end, she was usually out here, at the castle, working on delicate matters with her team. Why are we going there now?, he asked. It's time, she had answered. Something is happening, and we'll have to hole up somewhere. What's happening?, he naturally asked. Are we going to have more electrical discharges like during the past few months? Probably, and something else, too. Let's just say it is much safer to go to the castle than to pack you off to uncle Phil's house. But don't worry. We'll get through it. I'll explain when we get there.

And she had continued driving with reckless abandon, hardly even slowing down, at a bare-bones pace that did much to contradict what she was saying. It was serious, he knew. Too serious to even contemplate.

As he got closer to the hill, he looked down and noticed a lizard sunning itself on a small rock. He thought it almost looked scornful, taking no pity on him and his pathetic state. He stopped and gazed at it for a while. Didn't lizards usually scurry away from any looming threat? Maybe it didn't perceive him as any possible threat whatsoever, however gruesome he looked, seeing how he stumbled along, close to collapsing, all peeling sunburnt skin and a thirst only Lake Erie could quench. And why should it? What could he do to the lizard? It wasn't as if he could catch it, and besides, who could be desperate enough to think about catching a lizard bare-handed? Well, he was, but he didn't even waste the energy lifting his arms. 

His attention was wandering again. He turned around and continued trudging forward.

He had always considered himself independent. It came with the territory, being an only child who had lost his father years ago. From an early age he had been entrusted to the care of a neighbor, Mrs. Suarez, who from the beginning had urged him to call her Yoli and to see her as a friend, not a babysitter. She was a solicitous woman, with grown-up children who visited seldom if ever and who supposedly lived on the other side of the continent. He was, then, the next best thing to family for her.

She did her best to provide him with a welcoming environment. She was a little old-fashioned and quirky, but she made sure he was never hungry, always preparing hearty soups and sandwiches and meatloaf that made him groan as he thought about it. He couldn't bare to think that there were times when he hadn't finished his meals, when he had refused seconds.

After school, he would spend a few hours with her, and frequently, a Saturday or Sunday as well, because his mother had far too many important things to work on, far too many projects to complete, far too many people who depended on her, at least, other people, and not her son, who was encouraged to be a courageous trooper, and wait for a little while longer, they would spend time together soon, but now now. He had rebelled at first, and he cringed at the way he had lashed out at Yoli in the early years, as if it were her fault, but they had come to an accommodation that had come to seem as normal as it was bound to get. Yoli would watch him attentively, and had reserved for him a room which he could decorate and consider almost his bedroom away from home. Deep down inside, he thought he was the surrogate grandchild she so desperately wanted, and this made him feel a little peeved at the burden that had been imposed on him.

For the moment, the thought of those sandwiches, with slices of chicken and bacon and avocado, with crunchy pickles and slices of cheese, was both a comfort and torture. He desperately wanted to eat something, but first, he wanted something to drink. His lips were so dry and cracked that they caused him pain when he opened his mouth, which he was doing now that he was climbing higher and higher, on his way to the small hill that was not a few hundred feet away. For some reason, as he thought about the lemonade Yoli would always serve to him, he came to the realization that he hadn't peed during the entire day. He was drying out, he knew, and he wouldn't be able to continue tomorrow.

Step after step, he dragged himself forward. The hawk returned, circled above him, then flew up the hill again. He was at the foot of the hill now, and as he looked up, he thought he would have to be careful. For some reason, it didn't register immediately that the hill was greener than anything else in this sun-burnt landscape.

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It bothered him that he hadn't taken the time to learn about the countryside, about camping and about wildlife. Just his luck, it turned out trigonometry wouldn't help him in life after all. Other kids had been in the Boy Scouts, or had been camping, or knew how to hunt or shoot firearms. he had spent too much of his life curled up with books, reading science fiction adventures and history textbooks, things that told him nothing about survival skills. He had never even been particularly active, and he knew that part of the strain of the past few days came from being so physically out of shape.

When he wasn't reading, he spent most of his time playing with computer programs. He was an adequate programmer, but fancied himself more of a strategist. You didn't need to program very much, after all, to play the games he was interested in playing. He was most interested in imaginary worlds, especially those set in a far future, with exotic beings that took the form of enigmatic aliens and sentient spaceships. This was a passion for him, and he had spent what seemed like a dozen virtual lifespans playing with his band of international friends, with Kip in North Carolina, and Yamaki, in rural Japan, and Sofia in Austria, and others. They would form teams and create scenarios that were all the more stimulating for being unwieldy and novel, and they would create storylines that involved independent heroes in the manner of Robert Heinlein novels who solved impossible problems. He was somewhat shy at school, but in his alternate life, he thought of himself as a misunderstood loner who was adept at crisis management. If he could only have rescued his relationship with his mother.

And now, here he was, with absolutely no access to any useful technology. No cellphone coverage, no GPS access, no guns, no computer, no car, no internet, nothing. He had been warned that the cellphone wouldn't work out her, because of some strange electrical field that had something to do with the castle. He was sure he would find what he needed there, this place where he and his mom had been headed, if only he could find some way to reach it without have to travel on the roads, where whatever had caused the accident might be waiting for him. It was a scary thought, to think that what he had glimpsed might have tracked him out here. He didn't want to think about it.

The fact was, everything was far too mysterious. They should never have abandoned everything as suddenly as they had. It was the middle of the week, why would his mom come rushing in to pick him from from Yoli's place? All she had said was that it was a change of plans, and that they had to get to the Castle, and that something was about to happen. He had asked her over and over, what was so important, what was about to happen, were they in danger, had something gone wrong? She had refused to say anything around Yoli, and during the trip, she had limited herself to giving him curt instructions. She was an important scientist, and he couldn't help but feel alarmed. On a deep level, it seemed so out of character that he suspected it was a prank, but that would have been too impossible to believe.

He saw the hawk perched halfway up the hill, on top of a few large boulders that were surrounded by trees. The whole landscape was half in shadow, and he started to work his way up. He remembered that he had seen television shows where hikers carried some type of stick as they traversed landscaped, and he looked around and picked up what seemed like a sturdy branch. He put the empty plastic bottle in his shirt, and he started up. By now, the orange haze was turning grey, and he could see a few stars. It wouldn't be long now. Maybe the hawk had found a chicken sandwich it was willing to share with him? His lips bled as he guffawed. 

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In what might have been half an hour or two hours, he was no longer paying attention, he reached the rocky outcropping that was surrounded by trees. The boulders were bigger than he had imagined, and he felt lucky because he thought they might offer him shelter. It seemed like a type of enclosure, and for some reason, he had the feeling that it was not natural. Maybe it had been set up on purpose, by native peoples perhaps? He had to admit that it seemed like a perfect place to set up a surveillance station, and part of him wondered if it might not still be in use. For some reason, this brightened his spirits. Maybe they could help him.

The hawk had not moved while he climbed up to the boulders. It continued perched above one of the boulders, not in a branch in the trees, but on a boulder, and looked at him steadily. It seemed as if it might introduce itself at any moment. Maybe it would find a voice, and tell him that he was welcome, and he should make himself at home, and dinner would be served in fifteen minutes, the bathroom is this way, and would you like a cup of water? Yes, no tea, no coffee, no Dr. Pepper, no lemonade, bring me the biggest glass of water you have, and I'll kiss your beak and be forever grateful and sing your praises above and beyond those of the lofty condors sailing the Andean currents in Peru!

He sat down in the enclosure, and looked out at the stars. It made him think for a moment of the quiet times he had had with his mother when, after a full day at her research institute, she would ask him to come outside in the evening after the sun had set and join her on the veranda. "Let's explore the universe for a little minutes while you tell me about school", she would say, as she ate a granola bar and drank a glass of soy milk, something that always brought a smile to his face.

They would sit out there as the sky darkened, and she would start by asking him to find a planet, any planet. "Where would you travel first if we had a starship?", she would ask, and little by little, they would describe an itinerary, starting at the moon, of course, for he knew he needed to grab the flag left behind by the American astronauts from the mythical decade of the 60s, and then, to a Jovian moon or two, then to the nearest planet, and eventually, to any number of sunlike stars that had been catalogued recently by researchers, who had found over a hundred Earth-like analogues with telltale signs of oxygen in proportions that suggested biological activity. There were even systems that had more than one Earth-like planet in their domain.

Eventually, they would meander back to Earth, and she would ask about his Physics classes, trying to be encouraging even though he seemed to lack the same talent his parents had had for the sciences. Maybe it was destined to skip a generation? Maybe a field needed to lie fallow before the next generation could retake what had been nourished and cultivated before. (Nonsense!, his mom would exclaim.)  She would then ask about his friends, the ones that lived in other countries, and about interesting things he might have noticed in the neighborhood, like the raccoons that loved to overturn Mr. Thibidoux's trash cans at night, or the skunks that terrorized the cats, or cranky Mrs. Swanson, who missed her departed husband dearly, twenty five years after his loss.

Sometimes he would take his turn and ask her about her work. It was pointless, of course, except that he felt he should reciprocate. She asked him, he should ask her. She was never very forthcoming, apologizing as always, but did did let out that she had been working closely with Jim, who was apparently another researcher and very, very bright. Jim was on the cutting edge of their project, and sometimes, he would call her on her special phone, the one that had some type of encoding that made it difficult to be intercepted. She would brighten up each time he did, and he would feel a little jealous.

When they talked, there would be a tsunami of impenetrable jargon. He knew it had to do with geology, and about isotopes found in certain deposits along the Pacific rim, but that was about the extent of what he could garner. Apparently, they had some sort of predictive scheme worked out, and they were mapping it out mathematically, to the point that they were getting more and more excited. It just might have something to do with the mysterious electrical fields that were popping up in various locations. Several cities had suffered, because there were blackouts, and the loss of valuable data, and the fears that they might have to do with some sort of cyber-war. His mom would shake her head, and insist it had nothing to do with that. If only it were, she would add. "Is it Godzilla, then? Aliens? A chain reaction provoked by CERN in Switzerland?". She would laugh at his jokes, but never offered any details. The world had become a much more unstable place since the end of the twentieth century, and the apocalyptic promises of global warming were, sadly, becoming true.

She was only doing what any parent could to, trying to hold on to hope, and not trying to demoralize her children. Her work was important, but this didn't in any way provide relief from the guilt she felt about not being able be around him and to share more of herself with him. What parent didn't feel guilty, especially a single parent such as herself? Was she jealous of Yoli, the way he was of Jim?

Frequently she would ask him why he liked history so much. Particularly the recycled Erich Von Daniken doctrines from the 60s and 70s, the ones that had to do with hidden phenomenon and forgotten visitations, things that for her were eminently discouraging to see in the son of scientists. Why his fascination with the Nazca lines in Peru, or ancient Mayan observatories, and the cultural myths of the aborigines of Australia that hinted at past celestial visitations? It was as if she knew that he wanted to escape from the modern world, find a touch of healing magic in stories about past contact. To tell the truth, they had both isolated themselves in their own respective cocoons. He in his virtual worlds, she in her castle and her sacred fellowship with scientists.

He was obsessed with his computer programs, and would have installed the chip so that he had a constant connection with the immersive web of the mid 21st century if his mom had allowed it, becoming a virtual person himself, present but also absent. Instead, he was forced to wait until he arrived home, where he would don the synthetic fiber suit filled with electrodes, and connect to his supercomputer (astonishing power beyond the imagining of any twentieth century tech nerd, for the cost of peanuts), and connect with his friends who also donned their suits, and proceeded to fashion scenarios for world-changing global catastrophes. His mom understood his obsession, after a point. They both saw their world as being on the brink.

How could collapse be avoided? Both he and his mom felt that huge forces were arrayed against them, and were growing more and more uncontrolled. There were, after all, immense global interests at play. Gigantic corporations, and the national governments they held in their thrall, producing a world that seemed to be getting more and more desperate all the time. There were food shortages, and alarming outbreaks of new plagues in places that no longer seemed so far away, and frightening new viruses in Central America and Morocco and Cambodia, accompanied by eerie environmental disasters that swallowed up towns or extinguished plantlife in entire habitats. Seismic activity also seemed to be increasing and manifesting itself far from the boundaries of continental plates, and global temperature patterns were changing as a dizzying pace. They would share the latest dizzying news from time to time during their evening talks.

But it wasn't all alarm. Although they would shake their heads in tandem in the darkness, and grow flustered as they railed against one or another cause, if they were lucky, they would be interrupted by a shooting star heralding the presence of the universe, so much bigger than they could imagine, and more comforting as well. She would reach out and rub his shoulders, and they would become quiet, not needing to say anything else, not wanting to break the spell, hoping to see another. Maybe Ptolomy was right and perfection was to be found out there, in the celestial sphere, with a music that reconciled everything, with no room for anxiety, only a languid type of ecstasy. No cold, no blazing heatwaves, no flooding, no plague, no discord up there.