BROKEN REALMS.

THE CHRONICLES OF MARA LANTERN.

D. W. MONEYPENNY.

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

- Albert Einstein.

CHAPTER 1.

"I DON'T USE MY crystals to talk to dead people."

"I bet you know someone who does." Mara spoke into the innards of the open cell phone casing without looking up at her mother. "I don't understand your hang-up. If it makes Buddy feel more secure, what's the big deal?"

"You're feeding his delusions by keeping that old thing working. Buddy needs to accept he can't call his father anymore," Diana said from behind the wheel of the Toyota RAV4. "The man's been dead for three years."

They barreled down the ramp to Interstate 205, descending from urban sprawl onto the forest-bound highway. Mist speckled the windshield. Diana flipped on the wipers, maneuvered into the left lane and pressed the accelerator. They sped north to Portland International Airport.

Mara glared out the corner of her eye. Parking her car at the airport would have been a small price to pay for a less convoluted commute from Oregon City. Apart from leaving late, her mother had insisted on making a short detour south to West Linn to pick up Dramamine at a friend's pharmacy. To make matters worse, her former schoolmate Buddy had called in a panic last night saying his phone had died, so he took the bus out from southeast Portland before the sun came up so Mara could look at it. What should have been a simple trip to the airport had become an obstacle course.

Mara reached up, flicked a little aquamarine crystal dangling from the rearview mirror. "We all have our quirks. Don't you think it's the pot calling the kettle black, questioning Buddy's belief system?" Holding tweezers used to wrangle loose wires, she pantomimed air quotes around "belief system," mocking her mother's oft-used phrase.

"There's a difference between a belief system and a delusion. Talking to your dead father on an obsolete phone is not a belief system. It's unhealthy."

Mara exhaled, rolled her eyes and leaned her head toward the back of the vehicle. "Hey, Buddy."

He pulled out an earbud. "Huh?"

"Tell my mom where your dad is."

"Dad is dead," Buddy said, looking at Diana.

"Are you ever going to see him again?" Mara asked.

"Only if I am good and I go to heaven." He reinserted the earbud.

Mara raised an eyebrow at her mother. "Sounds like a 'belief system' to me." More air quotes. She looked back down at her work.

"Whatever you call it, at some point he's going to have to face reality. You can't keep that phone working forever. You've been fixing it, what, more than a year?"

"About five years, since middle school. His dad gave it to him for his eleventh birthday. A bunch of bullies who used to pick on him because of his learning disability had smashed it into the sidewalk. I put it back together and have been keeping it going since."

The phone had been old and used when Buddy first got it. Mara had long ago replaced the internal components with those from a more modern device. The original phone would not have worked on present-day cellular networks-its outdated technology could not have picked up and processed a signal. All that remained of the original was the oversize plastic casing featuring a hinged plate that covered the keys and folded out when a caller spoke into it. It even had one of those nubby antennae on top. The challenge had always been keeping the smaller modern components connected and integrated with the larger device's external features and b.u.t.tons.

"Bridge," Diana said.

Mara took a deep breath as they crossed the Willamette River on a modern, featureless span that sloped slightly toward the lower bank on the north side. The interstate crossing, elevated high above the river, provided stunning views of Northwest greenery flanking the water, but the structure itself was generic, unremarkable compared to the smaller Oregon City Bridge, visible to the east, or any of the more ornate and historic bridges in Portland. Given there was no traffic, the crossing took about a minute.

Mara exhaled and continued working without looking up.

Five minutes later as they approached an overpa.s.s, Buddy yanked an earbud free and said, "Bridge! Hah, I got one."

Diana looked into the rearview. "That's an overpa.s.s, Bud. And we're not even on it."

"I thought it was a game, like blue car, red car," he said.

"No, Mara doesn't like bridges. So I give her a heads-up."

"What's wrong with bridges, Mara? There are lots around here."

"It's not the bridges, Bud. It's the water under them I don't like," Mara said, poking her tongue between her teeth, concentrating on her work, twisting her wrist, trying to get a better angle on an unruly lead.

After being herded through zigzagging queues on a pasture of blue-and-teal industrial carpet, Mara felt a twinge of accomplishment when she stepped through the metal detector and set off no alarms. She heard only the clatter of belongings tossed into plastic bins, slid onto conveyor belts and fed into the scanning machine amid the drone of flight announcements. All that faded into the background when a baggage-screening agent crooked a finger at her.

Mara pointed at herself inquiring if she was the target of the finger. The agent, a large African-American woman wearing a bright blue shirt and a Maggie name tag, nodded.

"Step over here, ma'am. Can I see your ID?"

Mara dodged a briefcase heaved into her path by the huffing mountain of a businessman ahead of her in line and padded around the end of the baggage-screening station in her stocking feet.

Maggie, the agent, handed Mara her shoes, yanked her roller bag from the conveyor and slung it onto what looked like a metal autopsy table. Mara held her shoes against her side with her left arm and held out her driver's license using her right.

Maggie raised a finger as she pulled a vibrating phone from her shirt pocket.

"Bring me a Cinnabon, and I want one of those things of extra icing," she said, wiggling her eyebrows at Mara. "Gotta go." She unzipped the main compartment flap on the side of the suitcase and flipped it open.

"What have we got here?" She reached into the bag, heaved an oblong brown crystal into the air and pointed it at Mara.

Mara rolled her eyes. "Ironically it's a cinnamon stone, a garnet. Sort of a metaphysical insurance policy. It's supposed to protect travelers from harm," she said, deadpan. The rock looked more weaponized than magical, especially under the glare of airport security. "My New Age mother put it in my bag."

"I see. Maybe a little Dramamine would have been a better choice." Maggie snorted to herself.

"We stopped off for some of that as well. Mom likes to cover all the bases."

"Where you headed, Miss Lantern?"

"Down to San Francisco to visit my father for a few days."

"I see. Unfortunately this is a little too big and sharp for carry-on. You'll need to check your bag or leave it with me. Tell your mom to try something smaller and less pointy next time."

Mara glanced at the time on her phone. "You can keep it. I'll pick it up when I come home."

"Jeez, I hate taking your good luck charm, especially one from your mom." Maggie handed Mara a flyer with instructions on how to retrieve the rock upon her return, zipped up the bag and set it on the floor.

The departure screen suspended from the ceiling above the bank of seats in front of Gate B2 indicated Flight 559 to San Francisco was running half an hour late. Relaxing a bit, Mara rubbed her neck and looked down. The gate area still had plenty of empty seats. No ticket agent stood behind the podium next to the closed door to the jet bridge.

A sour expression from across the room caught her eye. Doing a double take, she recognized Mr. Ping, the owner of the ceramic shop-which was next door to where she worked, a small gadget and bike repair shop on Woodstock Boulevard in southeast Portland. He glared at her. He always glared at her, as if he had only one expression.

Bruce, her employer's grandson and the repair shop's bicycle mechanic, calls him Wo Fat, after a Chinese villain on Hawaii Five-0. Probably not politically correct. However, Ping is Chinese American, and he is fat. His villainy, thus far, is limited to wrongly accusing Mara of causing power outages in his ceramic shop. Though she is certain she could resolve the issue, he refuses to allow her access to his shop to investigate. He prefers to lodge complaints with whatever authorities will listen-the city, the power company, even a local state legislator.

"Going to San Francisco, Mr. Ping?"

"It appears so." He got halfway through an eye roll when he noticed the plane pulling up to the gate. "Excuse me," he said, walking toward the men's restroom across the terminal walkway. A few feet away, he stopped, turned and said, "Please don't plug in anything on the plane. I'd prefer not to have any midflight outages. Would that be too much to ask?"

CHAPTER 2.

TEN ROWS FROM the back of the plane, Mara took the aisle seat next to an older woman who was reading in the middle seat with her grandson sitting next to the window. The kid, who looked to be seven or eight, squirmed while alternating between staring out at baggage handlers on the ground and playing with a mobile game console. Grandma was stylish, with short-cropped silver hair, high cheekbones and a trim figure. She did not look comfortable dealing with children, leaning away from the boy, watching him from the corner of her eye. Mara guessed she had married into a family later in life.

Just as the flight attendants shut the plane doors and began their safety demonstrations, the boy announced his game console was dead. Grandma looked panic-stricken.

"You want me to take a look?" Mara asked.

"I said it's not working," the kid said.

"I know. Maybe I can fix it. It's what I do. I work at a gadget repair shop."

He looked dubious. The girls-don't-fix-stuff look.

"Let her look at it, Jeremy."

He reached across his grandmother, handing it directly to Mara.

"Thanks. I'm Mara." She shook hands with grandma. Jeremy had already turned away to watch the tarmac roll by.

"Sarah Gamble. Not that I don't appreciate the help, but you don't look old enough to be an engineer."

"Engineer would be overstating it a bit. I'm more of a gadget mechanic, I guess."

Mara turned over the game console and fished a key ring out of her jeans pocket. It held a couple minitools including a Phillips head screwdriver. Probably as illegal as oversize crystals as far as airport security is concerned but handy nonetheless. Once the back panel was off, she found and fixed loose fittings connecting the console's rechargeable battery to the rest of the mechanism in a couple minutes, a common problem with this brand of Korean console. She worked on dozens of these back when they were the hot new thing. She closed up the back, slid the Power switch and the device announced itself with a high tone that drew the boy's attention.

"Hey, you fixed it! Thanks!" The boy reached for the console, but the accelerating plane pressed him back into his seat before he could grab it. Mara handed it to his grandmother who pa.s.sed it along.

Mara smiled, sat back and closed her eyes. What a geek.

She snoozed.

Her eyes snapped open in a tunnel of spinning lights. Blue-and-black bands strafed the pa.s.senger cabin. Vertigo swept over her as the plane slid upward into what felt like an unseen maw. A wave of gasps and cries rippled from the front of the plane. Something tussled around up there; Mara could sense movement and feel thumps in the floor.

"Please remain seated with your seat belts fastened. The plane is still ascending. The seat belt sign is still on. Please remain seated." False composure from the flight attendant.

The plane dropped into a pocket of calm air, lifting people above their seats as far as their seat belts would allow. Pa.s.sengers gasped in unison. Some cried out. Others flailed, looking around for help.

Panic took flight.

Mara leaned into the aisle for a better look. There was nothing to see but silhouettes of heads and shoulders also stretching for a better view. She leaned forward to look above the headrest in front of her, but gravity and the slope of the climbing plane pulled her back. Giving in, she fell deeper into her seat.

A scream sliced through the cabin. Distinct from the spreading sounds of hysteria, it was less primal. More hate or anger than fear.

Mara unhooked her seat belt and stood up, too fast. The unnatural angle of the ascent, the pitching and yawing of the plane, and the gyrating blue-black strobes disoriented her. The vertigo was worse up here. Her stomach dropped. Her mouth went dry; her brow grew damp. Despite the pounding at her temple, she tried to stay detached, observant, her mind-set whenever she had a technical issue to resolve.

She could not get her bearings and found it difficult to focus on one point. The spinning light pa.s.sed through pa.s.sengers and seats, creating a living, moving X-ray, transforming everything to transparent shadows. Mara could see through everything and everyone. The source, whatever it was, alternately emitted bursts of blue-and-black light intensifying the strobing effect.

Trying to focus, she widened her eyes.

She saw double.

Two of everything and everyone overlapped. One version darker, more opaque. The other, more transparent, slightly misaligned, out of sync. Everything still strafed by, light and dark, blue and black.

She held out her hand to steady herself and froze. Wiggling the fingers of her right hand in front of her face, she could see only one hand. She looked down. There were two Sarahs and two Jeremys next to her empty seat, but she saw only one hand.

There was two of everything on the plane, except her.

"Unreal," she said. She waved at her seatmates. "Can you see me?"

One of the Sarahs leaned over to wrap an arm around her grandson.

"Of course, dear," Sarah said. "Please have a seat."

The transparent version of everything wheeled farther out of sync, sliding apart from the darker reality, deviating more, rotating on a different axis. Mara teetered over the aisle, turned toward the front of the plane, trying to get her balance.

Streaks of light washed through the man sitting across the aisle. Blue-and-black flashes revealed two versions of him. The darker one was normal. The other had scales, gill slits opening and closing on his neck, breathing like a reptile. His features alternated-man, reptile; man, reptile-keeping the beat of the blue-black strobes careening through the cabin.

His head twitched toward Mara. She froze.

Blue irises turned to yellow then disappeared behind lids that slid from the corners of his eyes. A long split tongue flicked at her.

She gagged and grabbed for the headrest in front of her. Her hand pa.s.sed through it, and she fell into the aisle, closer to the lizard man. She landed facing the front of the plane where she saw blue flashing feet running toward her head. Desperate to get out of the way and to put s.p.a.ce between her and the creature across the aisle, she grabbed a hand rest and pulled herself up into her seat. She took a deep breath, hazarded a look across the aisle.