Wish World

bad?”

  “Was,” Marcus corrected her, “and yes she was, until she got Sparkled. That was just luck. And everything was looking up after that. Ben was cutting back his hours and thinking about writing down his daydreams. He always had a lot of those. Nobody went to the copy shop much so he spent most of his time there sitting behind the counter and imagining other worlds. He told me he was starting to care again, about living, about life, but then it happened to him.”

  “The Sparkles?” Veronica asked.

  “The Sparkles,” Marcus nodded “we met up at The Lake House, it's a bar down on Broad and Tantee”

  “I know it well,” August interrupted.

  “And we were just about to sit down – there was a wait of about twenty minutes. It was a Sunday and so you know about the brunch crowd.”

  “Oh yes,” August said. “The brunch crowd.”

  “I offered him 'the man seat',” Marcus said, and had to explain, upon Dolly's query, that 'the man seat' is the better seat at the table, the one with the best view, where you could see all the people and/or scenery depending on which was more interesting.

  “I took the bad seat myself,” Marcus continued, and then had to agree with Dolly that if the good one was 'the man seat' than clearly the other could also be referred to as 'the woman seat', but said he himself never called it that, only 'the bad seat'.

  “And then it happened. He was half-standing, half-sitting, when the lights appeared around him and they were accompanied by a sort of crackling noise. Everyone in the restaurant turned to look at him. Some of the people shouted encouraging words, others laughed and clapped their hands. A little boy asked his mother if this is what she meant when she talked about the sparkling and she said yes and the little boy said wow and Ben had a startled look on his face at first. I knew it was only a matter of a few seconds, so I asked him how he was feeling and he said that it didn't hurt, not like with mom, but it didn't feel right either.”

  “It didn't feel right?” August asked.

  “His exact words,” Marcus nodded “'It doesn't feel right. It feels wrong'. I asked him what he meant by that and he said 'this isn't it. This isn't it'. What isn't it? I asked and he shook his head and looked straight into my eyes and the last thing he said was 'find me', in a pleading tone of voice he said 'find me', and then in a flash he was gone.”

  “So you see, I had to go and look for him. It was what he wanted.”

  “I wonder what he meant by those words,” August puzzled. “I've heard a lot of last words at sparkling, but I've never heard anything like that. It doesn't feel right?”

  “It feels wrong,” added Veronica.

  “This isn't it,” Makima pitched in. “This isn't it.”

  “It isn't what?” Dolly wanted to know. “What isn't it? Or is it what it's not? Oh, I'm so confused.”

  “Like it was a mistake?” Snake offered.

  “That's what I was thinking,” said George. “He didn't want to get Sparkled because Gloria just did and everything was looking up for him in his life, so it wasn't what he wanted so it didn't feel right.”

  “That's sort of what I thought at first,” Marcus agreed.

  “What does everyone else think?” August asked, looking around the table, and indicating those who hadn't spoken up yet.

  Ham was the first to voice his opinion. A smallish, tough-looking guy, he'd seemed especially interested in the ore aquatic parts of Marcus' story, which was not surprising to those who knew him, for he'd been a seaman in his time, and bore the scarred limbs and weathered skin to prove it.

  “A fisherman knows about feel,” Ham said. “He knows the touch of the wind and the flow of the water. When a fisherman says that something doesn't feel right, he knows what he's talking about. In a word, there was something fishy going on, and Ben caught the scent of that.”

  “Everyone harbors a secret hope about The Sparkles,” Finika Wallis said. Finika was a poet and a thinker and a professor of literature at a local community college. “To my mind when he says this isn't it he means it doesn't match his own private desire. It's said that everyone knows at the moment of Sparkling exactly what is in store for them, though for some reason no one has ever been able to utter it aloud”

  “That's what I hear,” marveled Suleia, the helmet-haired beautician sitting next to Finika. “There's a look on their faces, like the expression of angels in those ancient paintings. They're in on it but they're not allowed to say.”

  “Nonsense,” Niryan Jarvis sputtered. Niryan was usually the quietest member of the Brigade but whenever she spoke she spat, and this time was no exception. “Nothing good ever comes of a Sparkling. It's all just show and pretense. Everyone makes believe they got what they really wanted but the truth of the matter is we all get what we get and don't dare make a fuss because, after all, we might get a second sparkling in our lifetime. It's known to have happened, and maybe if we just put up with whatever crap we get the first time around, the second time will be the real deal. It's all garbage if you ask me.”

  “Nicely put,” August smiled. “And what about you, Morris? What do you think about Ben's final words?”

  “Hmm,”, Morris murmured. “I'm not really sure. I don't quite have an opinion on the matter, if that's quite all right with you.”

  “Quite all right,” August said to reassure him, as Morris looked fairly worried.

  “Spy,” Veronica hissed. She was always convinced that Morris was a secret agent of some agency or other, maybe even sent by the Sparkler itself. He never had an opinion, and never contributed anything to any discussion.

  “Now, now,” August said mildly, and gently patted her hand. “We all agreed, remember?”

  “Oh yeah,” she remarked facetiously, acknowledging their acceptance of Morris' presence, whether spy or mere idiot, as harmless in any event, as they themselves as a group were utterly harmless to anyone.

  “So where did you begin to look for him?” Dolly prodded Marcus.

  “I honestly had no idea what to do,” Marcus began. “I mean, Gaia's a big place and there are lots of people in it. Ben could be anywhere, anywhere at all. He might even be "n a ship in the vast Oceania for all I knew. There seemed to be no possible way to find him other than sheer luck. I tried to think of all the places he'd ever indicated any interest in going to, but soon realized that all those places were fictitious. He'd never wanted to go anywhere for real. Even on those trips he and I took up and down the coast, it was always my ideas, my choices, my destinations. Ben was content to ride along, or drive when it was his turn. My best guess was simply to retrace those steps. Perhaps there was one place we'd camped or passed through that made a special impression on him, that might end up the impetus for his sparkling.”

  “Nonsense!” snorted Niryan, but Marcus ignored her.

  “I rented an old blue pickup truck, like the one we used to have, and set my status on 'autopilot' so that my programs would take care of any problems my clients might come up with during my absence. Of course I kept tabs on the business and checked in periodically, fixing stuff remotely that my programs couldn't handle, but otherwise I took to the road and made the old journeys once again. I was surprised to see how little had changed in the intervening years. It seemed like progress was a thing of the past, perhaps something I'd invented in my own imagination. Those small coastal villages looked exactly as I remembered them, even down to the waitresses in the diners and the watchmen in the campgrounds, I had the strangest feeling that everyone I spoke too was somehow recording our interaction and storing the details in some special repository. I'm sure this was just my own imagination. I was after all doing the thing that none of us is ever supposed to do after a sparkling. We're supposed to respect the fates, and let the person go. But my brother had asked me specifically to find him. I felt I had a greater obligation. Still I sensed that other people knew my purpose and were judging me on it.”

  “People are idiots,” Niryan spouted. She was squirming in her chair by this point.
August knew it was only a matter of time before she knocked over a cup or a bowl and stomped off to the restroom to cool down. It happened every year. Morris continued looking blank, while Ham's face expressed the certainty that he already knew where the story was going to lead. Dolly was all eager for more details and leaned forward, barely able to stay in her seat. The rest of the group was relaxed and attentive. Marcus took a deep breath before continuing.

  “I reached the southernmost border town. Jaliyo, perhaps you know it?” He looked around but no one said anything.

  “It's a sleepy place,” he continued, “not unlike this town. There's a pier, a main street with a couple of restaurants and motels, a handful of houses and a school. The town's most known for its friendly beach campgrounds to the south and the west of town. I'd thought maybe this was the place, out of everywhere we'd been, that might have appealed to Ben the most. It's nowhere near tropical but it is as warm as anywhere on Gaia, and I could envision a hut or two along the shoreline. But he wasn't there, no one was there on the beaches. I thought this was strange, since it was such a nice day, especially for January.”

  “When was this?” August asked, suddenly intensely curious.

  “Yesterday,” Marcus sighed.

  “Then you did find him there?”

  “Yes,” Marcus admitted, “but not on the beach.”

  “Where was he, then?”