The Enthusiasts

26

Emerson entered the quiet, empty house while going over the imagined scenarios of what they would encounter tomorrow during the covert operation they had planned. He walked up the stairs leading to his room. He lay down on the bed. The thoughts running in his head seemed to dissolve faster than normal that evening. Something beyond him was whispering him to sleep that night.

∞

At some point, Emerson became very aware of something. He stood outside an old house in the dark of night, and saw it was on fire. Smoke was billowing out of the pane glass rectangular-framed windows of an old two-story house that he seemed to recognize. He soon realized that it was the house he had grown up in. He moved in closer, like the zoom feature on a camera lens without the effort of physicality. He watched a fireball spew out of the bay window of some quarter-sectioned glass that he remembered overlooked a small planter's box growing an assortment of vegetables in the city. Then he heard the voice of his mother calling him. He ran toward the sound that sent a reverberating echo through the darkness surrounding him. Suddenly he spotted her, standing at the center of the large, shattered opening where the fireball had bellowed ferociously out of, super heating the glass to near boiling in an instant before shattering it with its intense combustion pressure. He tried getting closer to his mother but he was stopped by a feeling of incredible heat from what he saw behind her as a now raging inferno. He tried shielding himself with his coat, but the flames' intensity was too great and he was forced to back away. He stopped fighting the fire and stood back to look in at his mother as best he could through the surrounding turmoil. She wasn't moving. She was just standing in the lake of fire that had now incinerated the entire building. She was wearing a nightgown which Emerson recognized from childhood. He remembered tugging at it with little fingers to get her attention. He felt the flames hot on his face still from where he was standing.

"Mom! Get out of the house! It's on fire!" he shouted back to her as loud as he could, trying to overpower the roar of this massive blaze. A large section of the roof collapsed then, and no resemblance of a house remained as the fire had consumed the whole dwelling. The image of his mother was fainter now. She looked more like a ghost from a movie Emerson had seen. Then he remembered it was a movie they'd watched together called Casper. Emerson's system calmed as he saw that she was seemingly unaware of the turmoil around her. She didn't seem in pain, but she was struggling to communicate something to him. He watched the image of her from where he stood and listened as closely as possible with the sounds of the imminent destruction layered over the dialogue.

"Those games that you played... It's like those games... Remember those games you loved?" The struggling voice of his mother spoke quietly, but Emerson still heard them over the surrounding commotion. He tried to make sense of what she had said. She appeared to be thinking for a moment. Emerson anxiously watched her face and listened, wanting desperately to hear and know more. "Symbols... You match symbols... symbols. You'll have to match the symbols."

The image of his mother started to fade, and he watched her eyes close. Her ghostly image seemed to be backing slowly into the fire now. All that remained was the charred remains of the old house set in darkness, smoldering with the glowing red to fading amber remnants of his imagined dream home. He recalled then that this house was not his childhood home. They had lived in a small one-bedroom apartment in the city. But this was the type of place they had always talked about living in. They would stay up past his bedtime on occasion and discuss where they'd live someday. Mother and son would sit dreaming on their single loveseat which, along with their beds and the kitchen table, was the only furniture they owned. They would sit there in the dim light and assure each other that they'd 'have it all' someday. Even in the dream he longed for that time on the couch with her. Then suddenly, as if she'd been listening in on him and felt the need to knock some sense into his lamenting little head, she appeared as an apparition, her image now stronger than ever to his senses. She was somehow gasping to relay an important message to him, as though she'd almost forgotten to tell him something before leaving. She spoke more frantically and clearly to him now. Her face took up his entire sight for a moment. "The machines! Those computers you love. They know you. They want to help you. They need your power."

Emerson struggled to respond, but he was shouting jumbled nonsense in his head. He didn't understand what she had just said, and her words seemed to leave his memory immediately after hearing them. He wanted to remember them. He knew he was receiving some clues, some special information about the future. He had to remember what she had just said, yet every time he reached back for it, the entire sequence shattered into oblivion. He'd recall what she said, then attempt to ask her, and she wasn't there... And now the burning building wasn't there... He was sitting in an open field of hillside grass which seemed to go on endlessly in all directions. Then he noticed a small wooded area off to his side where he sat now. He noticed it was daylight but felt no heat from the sun burning him; it was just bright and empty. He sat on grass and no dampness came up from the soil. Finally, he managed to form a response to his mother's words. He asked the questions to no one, as he appeared to be alone in this quiet, natural wilderness.

"What do I need to know? What do I need to do?" he asked.

Someone answered. A voice. It's her voice, Emerson insisted, and he was right, as always. "Lay down, sweetie... Rest for a while."

She was nowhere to be seen. He didn't need to know all of a sudden. He was aware that everything he needed to do was already being done. Emerson felt a sense of comfort he hadn't known for quite some time. He listened to his mother's voice and obeyed. He lay down in the open field which felt shaded, though there were no trees or shadow in sight. Then all of his thoughts, cares, and worries left him. He slept very deeply that night.