Unemployment. I’d been working in one form or another since I was a teenager, so the notion of being unemployed for the first time in my life was a strange one. Not that I needed to worry about money. I was the majority stockholder of one of the largest Internet security companies in America — a company I’d built up from the small, local security firm my father established some fifty years ago. My husband was still the President’s chief of staff and we co-owned a house in Georgetown with Jeremy Kimball-Reynolds that was valued at over twenty million dollars. By any standard, we were reasonably well off and I didn’t need to work to support myself, nor even to send our kids to college.
No, what was weird was simply the fact of not having any appointments on my schedule. There weren’t any places I had to be nor holoconferences I had to attend. I was free — so why did I feel so out of place?
I understood why I had to be the scapegoat for the current crisis. There’d been an attempt on the life of the Palestinian Prime Minister and Paul Manning was implicated. I felt horrible about Paul’s death and I couldn’t believe — I wouldn’t believe — that Paul had intended to kill the Prime Minister. Although it was Jeremy who’d made the request to let Paul go to Israel, it was small consolation. As the Vice-President, Jeremy couldn’t very well be fired for his role. Ultimately it was up to me to ensure that Paul was in the Middle East for legitimate purposes, but even that was a secondary issue. The bottom line was that I’d violated the President’s trust — I’d failed to inform him of Paul’s travels.
Frankly I didn’t trust Schroeder and I didn’t think Paul’s trip was any of his business, but it was still my responsibility to make sure he was at least aware of it. Perhaps I’d known the President would have had the good sense to do what I’d been unwilling to do — stop Paul from going. It was a moot point now and, like a dutiful soldier, I’d fallen on my sword when asked.
What really bothered me was being taken out of the loop. For the past two decades I’d been at the center of the stage of world espionage. No one had a better understanding of the ‘big picture’ than I did. America was at a critical juncture and I was going to have to observe it from the sidelines, second-guessing the intelligence on which critical decisions were being made.
The one big question mark in all of this was Richard Samuelsson, President Schroeder’s pick to replace me as National Security Advisor. Would Samuelsson seek out my help, taking advantage of my experience and expertise, or would he see me as a threat and shut me out? Indeed, there was very little that was known about Samuelsson, which was why his nomination would likely sail through the Senate without much opposition. It’s hard to question one’s record when there isn’t one.
Richard Samuelsson was completely inexperienced when it came to intelligence. He had no connections to the CIA, to the NSA, to any private security organizations nor to any kind of law enforcement agency. He was an intellectual — a conservative intellectual — who’d spent his life in academia, ultimately landing a plush position at the highly regarded Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank located on the Stanford University campus. Samuelsson had made a name for himself studying and writing articles on questions of national security and foreign relations. He had extensive knowledge garnered from years of debate but he had no real world experience. How he would handle the current crisis was anybody’s guess.
With nothing better to do, I undressed and lay down to rest. It had been an exhausting week and the lack of sleep was definitely catching up with me. Sleep did not come easily, however, particularly without my Kurt to snuggle up with in bed. Kurt was still the President’s Chief of Staff and he was busier than ever.
After about an hour of tossing and turning, I threw the covers back and got out of bed thinking I might make use of the Underground White House’s gym facilities or maybe go for a swim. No sooner had I donned a pair of boxers, however, than the doorbell buzzed. I knew the kids were out with their friends and, besides which, entry was keyless and so it couldn’t have been one of them. Throwing on a pair of shorts, I went to the door and was surprised to see that it was Stan Meyer, my successor as director of the NSA.
Opening the door, I greeted him with, “Stan, with all that’s going on, you’re the last person I expected to see.”
“I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t important, Trev,” he answered, piquing my curiosity. “And by the way,” he went on, “if anyone asks, this meeting never took place.”
“What meeting?” I replied, now even more curious than before.
As he entered our quarters in the Underground White House, looking pointedly at my body, he asked, “Did I interrupt anything?”
“Nothing important,” I sighed as I closed the door behind him. “I tried to take a nap, but that turned out to be a lost cause, so I thought I’d go work out, or maybe go for a run or a swim. It’s been a long time since I had the time to get any regular exercise and, now that I have plenty of time on my hands…”
Laughing, Stan responded, “Somehow, Trevor, I can’t picture you or Kurt ever having been athletic.”
With a sheepish smile, I admitted, “We probably wouldn’t have exercised at all, had it not been for our jock best friends. David and Jeremy made sure we kept in shape — not that we made it easy for them.”
“So you won’t mind putting off your workout?” Stan asked.
“Not at all,” I replied. “It’s as good an excuse as any to put off until tomorrow what I could have done today.” Then leading him to the table and chairs that served as the hub of the living area of our quarters, I asked, “Would you like something to drink? I have water, water and — I think I have some water, too.”
“Wow, such a tough choice,” Stan replied with a laugh. Then staring off into space as if he were actually pondering his options, he looked back at me and said, “I think I’ll try the water, if you don’t mind.”
“Water it is,” I answered with a laugh of my own and then, filling a couple of glasses from the kitchen tap, I added, “It’s a very special vintage — 2043.”
“I feel honored,” he joked as he took one of the glasses from me and I sat down.
“So what’s this all about?” I asked.
Getting a more serious look on his face, Stan responded, “This is really a two-part question. Now I know you’ve probably already had job offers coming out the wazoo…”
“Actually, I haven’t,” I interrupted. “Oh, I’m sure there are plenty in industry who would kill to get their hands on my expertise and my perceived access to people in high places, but it’s not like they have any way to reach me while we’re down here.”
“I suppose not,” Stan agreed.
“And I wouldn’t be interested in any case,” I added. “If I were going to go back into private industry, it would be to my own company, but I think I’d like to just lay low for a while before I figure out what I want to do next.”
“Would you be interested in working for us?” Stan asked, surprising me no end.
“How in Hell do you think you’d get my appointment past the Oval Office?” I asked. “President Schroeder just fired me, you know.”
“Not all appointments need to go by the Oval Office,” Stan answered, and then went on to say, “and I have the authority to hire any number of private consultants as I see fit.”
“But what about my security clearance?” I asked.
“Although it’s technically true that your security clearance was revoked when you resigned your post,” Stan acknowledged, “I haven’t put the paperwork through just yet and it would be easy enough to extend your clearance if I hired you as a consultant. Trev, I really need your help, but I can’t afford for anyone to know. Hiring you as a consultant is the only way I can guarantee continuation of your security clearance and access to all the databases. I have to pay you something, but it can’t be enough to show up on anyone’s radar screen. I’m therefore prepared to pay you the very generous annual stipend of one dollar for your services.”
“A whole dollar,” I quipped. “I’ll be rich!” Then getting serious, I asked, “What is it that’s so important, you need to hire me as a consultant?”
“Hey, I’m paying you every cent you’re worth!” Stan joked, but then he got more serious and continued, “Trevor, you know the intelligence community better than anyone. You’re plugged in across the board and I had the pleasure of seeing you in action all those years at the NSA. You have a sixth sense when it comes to information. No firewall, no level of encryption is safe from you. If the information can be found, you’re the one to figure out how to find it.
“I don’t need to tell you we’re in the middle of an investigation into the assassination of David Reynolds, and I’d like to enlist your help in getting at the truth of what happened to Paul Manning…”
“You’ve got it,” I interrupted. “I was planning to work on that myself, regardless.”
“I figured as much,” Stan responded, “but there are more pressing matters. As you know, the NSA is charged with assisting the FBI with their background checks for key political appointments. This of course includes Samuelsson. There are a number of things that trouble me about his nomination, none of which alone would be of concern but, taken together, they trouble me. Call it spook’s intuition.”
“I was wondering about his nomination myself,” I replied, intrigued. “I mean, where did this guy come from? He wasn’t even on the long list my husband prepared for the President.”
“Exactly!” Stan replied. “Schroeder isn’t exactly volunteering how he came up with the name, which is mighty suspicious. He’s never been known for an interest in foreign policy. Someone made the President aware of this guy and I’d like to know who that someone is — doing a background check on them could be just as important as the one we do on Samuelsson.
“And then there’s more,” Stan went on. “Samuelsson’s FBI dossier looks clean — a little too clean if you ask me. He never even had so much as a parking ticket before 2019. It’s as if he didn’t even exist before then. No one is that clean. There’s only one explanation I can think of that would explain it,” Stan concluded, and that’s if he…”
“Came through the Witness Protection Program,” I answered.
“Precisely!” Stan agreed.
“Any luck following up on that angle?” I asked.
“If he was in WP, it must have been a high profile case,” Stan answered. “I can’t find anything to connect him to anything we have in any database. And of course all the records are sealed.”
“I assume you tried doing a facial recognition search?” I asked.
With a look of incredulity on his face, Stan replied, “That’s one of the first things we tried. You can be sure he had extensive plastic surgery to alter his appearance — if we’re right about him being in WP, that is.”
“What we need is a sample of his DNA…” I suggested.
“How would that help us, Trev?” Stan asked. “I seriously doubt the mystery man we’re looking for still has his DNA in any database, if he ever did in the first place. Sure, once we identify him, we can use DNA to prove that he and Samuelsson are one and the same, but how does that help us now?”
“Back in the mid-twenties,” I answered, “my firm was approached to work on a top secret project for the CIA. They wanted to be able to create a holographic projection of what a person looks like, simply from a sample of their DNA.”
“Whoa!” Stan exclaimed. “That would be a real game changer. Why haven’t I heard of this before?”
“Because the project became a bit of an embarrassment for some very influential people,” I answered, “and after spending billions on it, it was ultimately abandoned and all traces of the work were eradicated. Heads rolled because of it — mine could have easily been one of them had I not bowed to political pressure and absorbed much of the costs of our company’s work myself. Project Virtual Clone nearly bankrupted me.”
“Wow! So the technology was destroyed?” Stan asked.
With a smile, I answered, “Not exactly. The problems with Virtual Clone stemmed from our utter ignorance. For it to work, Virtual Clone required more than just a DNA sample. To re-create the appearance of a person from their DNA, we needed to decode their DNA, which is a hell of a lot more complex than the DNA sequencing techniques of the time, although we didn’t even know that when we began. Sure, DNA decoding is done all the time today and it serves as the basis for much of modern Medicine. Twenty years ago, scientists were only beginning to understand the difference between knowing a person’s DNA sequence and understanding how their DNA functioned. It was like knowing how to read the letters of the alphabet without knowing how those letters formed words — words that were hundreds or even thousands of letters long. We were already well into the project when Harnekstone proposed the algorithm that bears his name — the one for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize.
“In the mid-twenties, one could completely sequence a person’s DNA for a few hundred dollars. Using the best available computers of the time, decoding one individual’s DNA sequence cost just shy of nine figures…”
“Jesus!” Stan shouted as he practically choked on his water.
“… but even that wasn’t enough,” I continued. “Just as understanding the meaning of words doesn’t translate into knowing a language, we still didn’t know how to turn a decoded genetic sequence into a human appearance. We could deduce hair and eye color, but we could hardly determine if someone would have high cheekbones, for example. Hell, we couldn’t even predict their height reliably.
“The reason I was approached in the first place was because of my dissertation, which dealt with the use of correlation analysis to extract patterns from coded messages and my methods were considered pioneering. Those working on Virtual Clone in the Government thought my approach could be applied to picking out the patterns in human DNA that correlated with particular features that would determine a person’s appearance.”
Sighing, I continued, “It was a very good idea on paper but the statistical power needed to make it work was astronomical. Using DNA sequences alone, we would have needed a random sample of more than a hundred million test subjects. It wouldn’t have been practical. Can you imagine gathering DNA samples from a quarter of the American population and keeping it a secret?” I asked to illustrate a point.
“No way, no how,” Stan agreed.
“The Harnekstone algorithm changed that, but at a tremendous financial cost. We would have needed only a million subjects in our initial sample but, think about the cost to sequence all those people. A hundred million, million dollars is a hundred trillion — several times our entire GDP at the time.
“On top of all that, the computational power required to do the actual correlation analysis would have been greater than the entire computational power of the planet at the time. Twenty years ago, the goals of Project Virtual Clone were simply impossible to achieve.”
“Why do I get the feeling that wasn’t the end of the road for Virtual Clone?” Stan asked.
Smiling, I answered, “For me, it was too good an idea to let go. I knew that, eventually, the cost of decoding a DNA sequence would come down. Today it costs only ten thousand dollars. Further, the cost and availability of super-computing has steadily improved. Most importantly, the Bayesian algorithms I subsequently developed allowed me to reduce the number of subjects in our test sample from a million to only ten thousand, which made it doable. Finally, I was able to enlist the help of Cathy Andrews and her holographic expertise to dramatically simplify the process of rendering a person’s appearance.
“It took us most of the past twenty years, but Project Virtual Clone finally started to yield real results around the time David Reynolds took the oath of office.”
“So I repeat, why haven’t I heard of it before?” Stan asked.
“The implications of the technology are much more significant today than they were twenty years ago,” I answered. “Plus the issue of enrolling ten thousand test subjects for something this important and with such powerful implications needed to be kept quiet. The only way to do that was to make use of existing DNA sequence data, surreptitiously obtained from medical records…”
“You collected the medical records of thousands of citizens without their permission?” Stan exclaimed, wide-eyed.
“Were it to hit the press, the implications would be devastating,” I replied, making clear the obvious. “Only the President, myself, Debbie McLaughlin and a few select people in the FBI and CIA have been in the know. Were this to have become public, we would have done everything to shield David from the resulting firestorm, including going to jail.
“As you yourself stated, this technology is a game changer and it will undoubtedly one day become commonplace. It’s too valuable to make public just yet, however, and we definitely don’t want it in the hands of our enemies. That, in a nutshell, is why the Director of the NSA was kept in the dark. Once the project reached fruition, you’d have been informed of the existence of the technology but not the means by which it was obtained. At least then, you could have maintained plausible deniability.”
“The project’s not complete?” Stan asked.
“We’re only about a third of the way through the validation stage. That’s the stage of development where we put the technology to the test by presenting it with DNA sequences from outside the original test set and determine its ability to identify the associated individuals from a large database of photographs. So far, the accuracy is around 60%, with a sensitivity of 95% but a specificity of only 40%.”
“So there are a lot of false positives,” Stan commented.
“Virtual cloning would never hold up in a court of law — at least not yet, but it’s adequate for identifying potential suspects in a case and we can still use DNA fingerprinting to make a positive ID.”
“And you’d like to use it to find out who Samuelsson really is?” Stan asked for confirmation.
“Why not take advantage of it?” I responded. Then reaching for the secure telephone, I established an encrypted connection to the Attorney General’s office and was soon connected to Debbie McLaughlin.”
“Trevor!” Debbie exclaimed when she heard my voice. “What brings you to use the secure phone, and what can I do for you?”
“Could we meet for dinner?” I asked. “I’m here with Stan Meyer and we were just discussing Richard Samuelsson’s background check and the upcoming confirmation hearings.”
“That’s a touchy subject,” Debbie replied, “particularly with the way the Administration is trying to fast-track the confirmation.”
“I was filling Stan in on the basics of Project Virtual Clone,” I interjected.
“We’re already on top of it, Trev,” Debbie responded. “Our operatives surreptitiously obtained a sample of his DNA from his office an hour ago and we should have his DNA sequence decoded before dinnertime. With luck we’ll have some tentative matches by the end of the day.”
“I figured you’d already be on it,” I replied, “but we’d still like to have dinner with you to discuss things further.”
“Why don’t you see if you can get your brother to work his magic?” Debbie suggested. “We need to keep this completely private.”
“I suspect Sam was planning to have dinner with Paul’s widow and their children,” I replied, “but I imagine we can convince him to put that off in favor of a small private dinner party for the Attorney General, the Director of the NSA and the former National Security Advisor — just an informal get-together, mind you. I’ll see what I can do.
“By the way,” I added, changing the subject, “is there any information on how Schroeder came upon Samuelsson’s name in the first place?”
“We ran traces on all phone calls into the White House proper,” Debbie responded. “Don’t ask me how we did it — you probably don’t want to know. In any case, we’re nearly positive the suggestion came from a close friend of the President — a roommate from their college days, Narendra Nehru.”
“Narendra Nehru,” I replied, “why does that name sound so familiar?”
“In addition to the fact that he’s one of the wealthiest men in the world, he has the same last name as the first prime minister of India, who is no relation for what it’s worth. The heir to a vast business empire, Nehru’s father sent him to the U.S. to study business. The son came to appreciate the American nightlife a little too much, however, contracting HIV from a male prostitute.”
“Schroeder’s college roommate was gay?” I asked in surprise.
“He always claimed he was just experimenting, but the word on the street was he was at least bi and quite possibly gay. For what it’s worth, he’s married now and has three children and seven grandchildren. In any case, he had ‘disgraced’ the family and his father imposed a series of restrictions that he found unacceptable, and so he ended up staying in the U.S. after getting his MBA from Harvard. He always retained close business ties with his father’s corporations, however, and has made his living through joint ventures between Indian and American firms.
“Needless to say, we’re working that angle heavily, looking at the people Nehru was close with in his youth. My guess is that Samuelsson didn’t cut all his contacts with his past and that his relationship with Nehru was just too valuable.”
“And too easy to trace,” I added. “People desperate enough to seek WP don’t risk discovery — not at any cost. No, the more I think about it, the less likely that scenario seems. Now it’s plausible and perhaps quite likely they did know each other in their youth, but I doubt that Samuelsson maintained contact. It’s far more likely that Nehru either came upon his old acquaintance by accident or that he used his vast resources to look for him, but it would have been entirely one-way.
“It’s also quite possible that they didn’t have a relationship before Samuelsson entered WP,” I pointed out. “If Nehru somehow discovered Samuelsson had a dark past, perhaps he thought him a valuable asset — someone he could bribe — someone who might eventually have access to power.”
“But Nehru already has access to the President,” Debbie pointed out.
“Which would have never happened, had it not been for David’s assassination,” I pointed out. “At best he had access to the Speaker of the House, and a rather contentious one at that. He may not have planned it as such but now he’ll have access to both the President and the National Security Advisor. That’s a hell of a lot of power at his disposal.”
“And if he really does have Samuelsson in his pocket, access to a hell of a lot of information,” Debbie agreed.
After a short pause, I responded, “I’ll tell you what — why don’t you continue investigating Nehru as you have been, and I’ll do a preliminary space-time correlation analysis on Nehru and Samuelsson, and we’ll compare our notes this evening at dinner.”
“Sounds good to me, Trev,” Debbie answered. “Oh, and please save a seat at the table for my better half. Cathy played a major role in the final stages of Project Virtual Clone and I’ve often found she has unique insights that can be invaluable.”
“Will do, Deb,” I responded. After chatting for a few minutes on more personal matters, I hung up the secure line and then went over the highlights of my conversation with Stan.
When I finished, he asked, “A space-time correlation analysis? It sounds like something out of Star Trek.” Stan and I were both big fans of the Star Trek franchise and its latest incarnation, a weekly holovision stream called, appropriately enough, The Final Frontier.
“Actually, it’s a method I developed to investigate cases of industrial espionage way back before I joined the NSA and it’s proven to be an invaluable tool to both the CIA and the FBI. I’m surprised you’ve never encountered the term before but, then, you never were a real nuts and bolts kind of guy.”
“I leave the details to the experts and focus on the organization as a whole, which is one of the reasons for hiring you as a consultant,” Stan answered, but I already knew that to be the case. During my tenure at the helm of the NSA, I was sometimes criticized for getting lost in the details and failing to use my assets efficiently. Stan was just the opposite — he ran an efficient, well-organized operation.
“With space-time correlation analysis,” I went on to explain, “we develop a probability distribution function for the likelihood that two individuals came into contact. We look at things such as daily commute schedules, routes taken, conferences attended and trips taken, as well as the more obvious items such as credit card receipts. We also make use of video surveillance data where available and when the subjects are positively identified.”
“It sounds like that could take a while,” Stan laughed.
“The nice thing about the algorithm I developed,” I answered, “is that it works in progressively more detailed circles, so we get general answers to questions such as, ‘were they ever in the same city at the same time?’ right away. The longer the algorithm runs, the more detailed and specific the information becomes.”
Getting my laptop out, I started to enter the parameters of the search into one of the larger mainframes at the NSA while Stan watched over my shoulder. Within seconds, a graphical representation appeared in front of us.
“WHOA!” I practically shouted. “They definitely know each other. They’ve been in regular, physical contact since 2032, and that doesn’t even take into account electronic communications.”
“You can tell that from looking at that graph?” Stan asked in surprise.
“That, and more,” I answered. Zooming in, I pointed to the display and went on to say, “Look at this. There’s a major pattern here, with strong correlations every two years. Wait — there’s something really strange here. There’s a double peak in years divisible by four, and a single peak in the even years in-between.”
“I wonder if it has to do with political campaigns?” Stan suggested. “You know — double peaks in Presidential election years and single peaks during the mid-term elections.”
“That’s a very strong possibility,” I agreed, “but let’s see what the algorithm has to say.”
After typing in instructions for a more specific query, we both gasped in surprise when we got the answer. “The Olympics?” Stan asked aloud.
“Yes, the Olympics,” I noted. “Nehru and Samuelsson have both attended the summer and winter Olympics every time since and including 2032.” Tapping in another query, I added, “And Nehru has attended all but three of them in every year they were held since 2012.”
Thinking aloud, I went on to say, “Let’s assume for the moment that they met unintentionally in 2032 at the Summer Olympics, since there’s only one peak that year. Somehow, there was something about that encounter that allowed Nehru to recognize Samuelsson for who he really was. Perhaps Samuelsson got careless, or perhaps Nehru knew what to look for. For whatever reason, Nehru jumped on the opportunity and threatened to expose Samuelsson if he didn’t cooperate with him.”
“Or threatened to make his identity known to people who would want to harm him if he didn’t cooperate,” Stan chimed in.
“It’s a plausible explanation,” I went on, “but what was it that Nehru recognized in Samuelsson? What drew his attention to the man and made him recognize him from his past?”
“Perhaps 2032 wasn’t the first Olympics they attended together.” Stan suggested. “Perhaps that was the first time Samuelsson attended under his new identity, but perhaps he’d attended in the years before he entered WP. Nehru’s gone nearly every year since 2012. Perhaps Samuelsson attended every year, too.”
Then, getting an excited look on his face, Stan asked, “Wait a minute! Wasn’t 2012 the year those fanatics tried to blow up the Olympic Stadium?”
“The stadium and everyone in it,” I replied as a chill went up my spine. “Of course none of us knew what was happening at the time and the whole thing didn’t come out until months later.”
“You were there?” Stan asked, but then went on to answer his own question. “That’s right! That was the year Jeremy Kimball won all those medals.”
“Two gold, a silver and two bronze,” I confirmed. “We all were there. Of course David was there to cheer his husband on, but Kurt and I were there, too. Back then we all lived together in a condo in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We were about to start our junior year in college, me at MIT, Kurt at Boston University and David and Jeremy at Harvard.”
“Didn’t you say something about Nehru getting his MBA at Harvard?” Stan asked.
Tapping a few keys on my laptop, I brought up the information and read it aloud. “He graduated summa cum lauda from Boston University in 2013 and went on to get his MBA at Harvard a year later.” Then suddenly my eyes went wide and I broke out in a cold sweat.
“Trevor, are you OK?” Stan asked, but I didn’t hear him. My mind was in a different place and time…
<> <> <>
I couldn’t believe the scene that was playing out before me. A boy of not more than fifteen, one of the players on the opposing football team, held my good friend Billy Mathews with a gun pointed at his head. I couldn’t sit idly by and watch Billy get killed in front of me. I just couldn’t, particularly after the boy managed to out himself in front of an entire stadium filled with spectators, not to mention a statewide audience on television.
We were attending the state high school football championship and my old high school team, the Panthers, were ahead, 21 to 3. Minutes before, at halftime, Jeremy Kimball had been honored with a special award for bringing home five medals from the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Earlier in the day a new exhibit had been installed at the State Museum, highlighting Jeremy’s swimming career. In addition to providing a permanent home for Jeremy’s medals, it included a life-size wax figure of my friend in nothing but a pair of Speedos and wearing his wedding band, a look of determination on his face.
But now, another gay kid was in trouble — a boy with a youthful face that seemed to reach out from my past. Unable to live with what he’d undoubtedly been raised to believe was a ‘lifestyle choice’, he’d chosen to end his own life and take a few of his fellow ‘faggots’ with him in front of a television audience. I recognized his act for what it was — a desperate cry for help — but he’d already gone well beyond the point where there could be any good outcome and he undoubtedly knew it. I might not be able to undo what he’d already done but, as one who’d counseled gay youth for many years, I could at least try to keep him from making things worse.
Since we had V.I.P. seats on the fifty-yard line, I literally only needed to stand and walk forward. As I walked out onto the football field, the boy swung his gun around and aimed it squarely at my chest, shouting, “Stay the fuck back! Come any closer and you’ll be joining the other faggots in Hell.”
“I just want to talk, man!” I shouted back as I held up my hands in a show of faith.
“What the fuck makes you think I want to talk to you?” The boy asked.
“Because I’m the one who can make it right?” I answered as I resumed walking.
“I MEAN IT!” shouted the boy. “Stay the fuck back or it’ll be the last thing you ever do!”
“But I can help!” I shouted back. “I know just what you’re going through. I’ve been there, man!”
“What the fuck do you know about me, white boy?” the boy asked.
“I may not be black,” I began, “but I know what it’s like to grow up in a religious household. My parents are Evangelical Christians. As far as I was concerned, admitting to being gay was tantamount to admitting I was a rapist or a murderer. I knew my parents would disown me, or worse, if I came out.” By then I was standing directly in front of Billy and the boy, who had his gun pointed right at my heart.
“So you’re a faggot too,” he spat out.
“Yes, I’m gay,” I admitted. “Every week I sang in the church choir, and every week the preacher told us that people like me were going straight to Hell. I tried not to be gay. I prayed every day and every night to God to make me normal, but the feelings I had only got stronger.
“When I accidentally outed myself at school, I thought my life was over, man. I knew that when my parents heard about it, they’d either kick me out of the house, or worse. I seriously thought about offing myself, but then some friends of mine convinced me I should suck it up and let the chips fall where they may.”
“So what happened?” the boy asked.
“What happened is that it turned out my dad already knew,” I answered.
“Ya serious, man? And he didn’t kick you out or beat you up?” the boy asked.
“Yah, I’m serious,” I replied. “I thought I’d covered my tracks well, but I should have known better. My dad runs a company that specializes in Internet security. He found it strange that there were a bunch of attacks on my computer from gay porn sites,” I added with a laugh.
“Man, I’m surprised your old man didn’t kill ya,” the boy exclaimed.
“I thought he was gonna, but he decided he was gonna try and save my soul. Seems the more he read up on making a gay kid straight, the more he realized he’d lose his only son if he tried. He and my mom didn’t like it, but they accepted it and eventually came to realize that what the preacher taught was wrong. They realized you can’t love God if you turn your back on your own child.
“’Course it didn’t hurt that I ended up marrying the preacher’s son,” I added.
It really looked like I was getting through to him, but then he asked, “Why couldn’t I have parents like that?” and then he started to shake. “NO!” he shouted. “My old man would never accept me bein’ gay. He’d beat the crap outta me. He’d tell me what a worthless piece of shit I am. I’d be lucky if he only threw me out of the house. He’d prolly kill me!
“Well guess what, Pop?” the boy spat out as he slowly turned the gun back toward himself. “You’ve got a gay son! I’m a worthless little faggot. You always said you’d be better off with a dead son than a faggot, and you’re right! You’re gonna get your wish! All faggots must die!”
The sound of the gun going off woke me up as I felt the boy’s blood and brains splatter all over me. I shouted out in horror as I heard my husband soothingly say, “Trevor, it’s all right. It was nothing but a dream — again.” Kurt reached out his hand and gently rubbed it up and down my side. Kurt and I were in the back seat of my Jetta. David was taking his turn at driving and Jeremy was next to him in the front passenger seat.
“Fuck!” I shouted. “Why can’t I get past this?”
“You’re only human, Honey,” Kurt replied. “You’ve saved a hell of a lot of kids over the years but there’s only so much you could have done. If it hadn’t been for you, Billy Mathews would have certainly been killed too. You literally saved his life. I know it hurts that you couldn’t save them both, but that kid was just too far gone by the time you reached him.”
“I can’t imagine what it was like, being right there when it happened,” Jeremy chimed in, “but Kurt’s right. You did good. Even the kid’s homophobic parents issued a statement praising you for what you did.”
“Small consolation,” I replied. “If only they’d shown their own son that he’d still be loved, he would have never gotten so far.”
“And look what happened with your own parents — and mine,” Kurt pointed out. He was absolutely right. It’s only natural to assume the worst as a gay kid growing up in an Evangelical home. My parents had turned out to be great. Kurt’s mom had also been wonderful about the whole thing, but his father ended up skipping town only after failing to have Kurt sent to a ‘Christian’ boarding school for a little re-programming.
Rather than say anything else, I did what I always did when I had one of my dreams — I changed the subject. “Where are we anyway?” I asked, but then noticed our surroundings and added, “Oh, we’re almost home!”
Minutes later, we pulled up in front of Jeremy’s house, where he and David would be spending the holidays. “Whose idea was this anyway?” I asked as I got out of the back seat and stretched.
Clearing his throat as he got out from behind the wheel and, similarly, stretching, David answered with a grin, “I believe it was yours.”
“And who said you should listen to me?” I asked as we all broke out in a fit of laughter. Twenty-one hours and seven minutes earlier, we had all climbed into my Jetta, expecting to make the trip back home for the winter holiday break in about sixteen hours. Google Maps had given us a driving time of fifteen hours and change, but that was assuming we’d be sticking to the speed limit, which we certainly did not. It didn’t take us long, however, to realize just how overly optimistic we’d been when the Boston area pre-holiday weekend traffic came to a halt. It took us nearly five hours to break free of the local congestion and reach the relative ease of Interstate 80.
Even then, traffic was surprisingly heavy for the time of night. We’d also had to slow down quite a few times when we encountered snow, particularly in the mountains of Pennsylvania. At least there were four of us to share in the driving, so we all had plenty of time to rest. Technically Kurt shouldn’t have been driving as he only had a learner’s permit. Although he’d recently turned eighteen, he still needed to be supervised by an adult over the age of twenty-one, an age I wouldn’t reach for another four months. As Kurt’s husband, however, there was a loophole in the law that allowed me to teach him how to drive, which was what I’d been doing over the course of the past eight months. Kurt was finally going to get his license — something he’d badly wanted since he gave up attending Driver’s Ed to page in the Senate.
Although my supervision was legal in Massachusetts, I seriously doubted it was in Pennsylvania, Ohio or Indiana, where our marriage wasn’t even recognized. Ignorance was no excuse for breaking the law but Kurt was anxious to rack up additional experience, and it made a huge difference having a fourth driver. We just made sure he stuck to the speed limit when he drove.
Wishing our friends well, I slipped behind the wheel and adjusted the seat forward — way forward, since David had been the last to have driven — and Kurt joined me up in front. The drive to my house was a short one and we were soon engulfed in my parents’ arms. Sam was there to greet us too, having driven in earlier that day from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, where he went to school. At sixteen he was no longer a kid — he was still as cute as ever, but noticeably taller than I was!
With the events of just a few weeks ago at the state championship still fresh in my mind, it was nice to be spending Winter Break with my friends and family. I was truly blessed to have such wonderful, accepting people in my life! Most of all, I was blessed to have Kurt, my wonderful husband. He’d grown a lot since I’d met him almost exactly four years ago and, yet, he still retained that same boyish quality that I fell in love with even then. He was nearly my height now and he was officially an adult, but he was still the same sweet boy who tried to help me when his father outed me to the congregation.
I loved him so! And I showed him just how much I loved him that night in the privacy of my room, in spite of my utter exhaustion.
The next day was Sunday and, particularly as it was the Sunday before Christmas, lack of sleep was no excuse for missing out on attending church. My mom prepared a feast for us to eat before we headed off to services. She made pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage and even had bagels with real lox and cream cheese. It was all delicious.
As we started to eat, Sam got up and switched on the TV so we could catch up on what was happening in the world. The lead story was about the arrest of a suspect in a failed attempt to detonate a nuclear weapon at last summer’s Olympics — the Olympics at which Jeremy had won his five medals — the Olympics that Kurt and I had attended. However, the fact that we’d come perilously close to being the victims of a massive terrorist attack barely registered.
The last thing I remembered before I felt myself falling forward, before my world faded to black, was the face on the television screen. Prominently displayed was the face of my laboratory partner in a class we shared at MIT — Blake Sinclair.
The author gratefully acknowledges the invaluable assistance of David of Hope in editing, Low Flyer in proofreading and Ed in beta reading my stories, as well as Gay Authors, Awesome Dude and Nifty for hosting them. © Altimexis 2012