Broken Pixels Read online

  BROKEN PIXELS

  The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 4

  D. W. Moneypenny

  The Chronicles of Mara Lantern on Amazon:

  Broken Realms (Book 1)

  Broken Souls (Book 2)

  Broken Dragon (Book 3)

  Broken Pixels (Book 4)

  Broken Dreams (Book 5 - Coming soon)

  Learn more about the books at my website.

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  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. No part of this book may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise—without express written permission of the publisher.

  © 2016 David W. Moneypenny

  Published by Nevertheless Publishing

  E-book ISBN: 978-0-9960764-6-3

  Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9960764-7-0

  Copy Editor: Denise Barker

  Cover Design: damonza.com

  Table of Contents

  Title Page | Copyright Page | Quote

  Chapters:

  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52

  Author’s Note

  “The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.”

  —Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  CHAPTER 1

  Mara felt self-conscious rummaging around in Ping’s kitchen, but the urge for coffee overcame her reticence. After opening several cabinets without success, she spotted four black ceramic canisters lined up along the wall. The first two yielded flour and sugar. The third released the aroma she sought, but just a light dusting of dry coffee grounds lined the bottom. She groaned with frustration.

  “Ping’s out of coffee,” Sam said, speaking into a pillow pressed into the arm of the couch in the living room adjacent the kitchen. After the most recent events, he’d spent the night there because Mara had slept in Ping’s only guest bedroom.

  “That won’t work at all,” Mara said. She closed the canister and slid it in line with the others. “I guess I’ll run out for a cup.”

  Sam rolled over and rubbed his eyes. “He went to the bakery to get some coffee and something for breakfast—doughnuts or Danishes, I think he said. It seems like a long time ago when he left, so he should be back soon.”

  Mara slumped onto one of the bar stools, placed her elbows on the counter and cupped her chin in her hands. “I hope he hurries. I really need the caffeine.” After a moment she looked up and said, “That doesn’t make sense. How can he return with coffee and breakfast after he opens the bakery?”

  “It’s Sunday, sis. The bakery’s closed,” Sam said, sitting up. “You look like you didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  She straightened. “I got a few hours, but it was stupid to think I’d be able to go to bed and forget everything that’s happening. It might have been better to talk it out last night and then get some sleep.”

  “Ping wanted you to sleep on it before you made any decisions,” Sam said.

  The sound of a key inserted into the front door drew their attention. After a rattle, the knob turned, and Ping stepped into the house. When he looked up to see them staring at him, he smiled and said, “Good morning! I’ve got breakfast.”

  “Bag the food, hand me the coffee and let me make a pot,” Mara said, approaching him at the door.

  Ping held up a house-shaped cardboard carton with a plastic knob on its roof. “That’s not necessary. I brewed a pot at the bakery. The heavy-duty urns there do a better job than my little drip machine. Don’t worry though. I did grab a bag of beans as well, so we don’t have to make a trip every time we want coffee.”

  “You are a lifesaver,” Mara said, taking the carton from him and rounding the counter into the kitchen. “I was beginning to wonder if I would make it.”

  While she poured a cup of coffee each for her and Ping, plus a glass of milk for Sam, Ping handed a large bag of pastries to Sam and then hung up his coat. By the time Sam and Ping sat at the counter, Mara had arranged a drink and a napkin for each of them. She remained standing in the kitchen, sipping her cup, while they each pulled out a cheese Danish from the bag.

  Licking frosting from his fingers, Ping eyed Mara and asked, “How are you feeling this morning? Did you get some sleep?”

  Mara looked up from her cup. “Howdy Doody here has already informed me that I look like death warmed over, if that’s what you are getting at.”

  “It was not my intent to comment on your appearance. To be honest, I was more interested in your mental state than your physical one,” Ping said.

  “She thinks she would have slept better if we had stayed up half the night discussing what to do about Cam’s message,” Sam said.

  Mara glared at her brother, decided to ignore him for the moment and turned to Ping. “My mental state?”

  “I suppose that sounds like I’m concerned about your psychological well-being—which I am not. Sometimes, when we’ve got a number of interrelated issues to resolve, it’s best to sleep on them instead of reacting to the last one that made a grab for our attention. I believe that is the situation in which you find yourself. After receiving the message from your robot friend, I thought it might be best that you sleep on it to see if your subconscious would help you put it in context with everything else you might need to consider.”

  Mara arched an eyebrow at him, while she took a sip of coffee.

  Sam interjected, “She’s hoping the caffeine will give her some kind of clue to what you’re talking about.”

  Mara set down her cup. “No, I understand that Ping wants me to look at the big picture instead of just running off and helping Cam without considering everything.”

  Ping tore off a corner of his Danish and pointed with it before popping it in his mouth. “What exactly do you mean by that?”

  “First off, we don’t even know what helping Cam means. As far as I can tell, when Abby—the Aphotis—took Cam’s head from our living room, she used it as a guide to Cam’s realm. The other people she kidnapped using the Chronicle were abandoned between realms and presumably died. I assumed Cam was lost as well.”

  “Because his head was taken?” Ping asked.

  Mara nodded.

  “And without a brain, what good is the rest of him, correct?”

  Mara sat up straight. “His brain …”

  “What?” Ping and Sam asked simultaneously.

  “His brain isn’t in his head. It’s in his torso. He called it his core, and he connected to it wirelessly, while I was working on him at the hospital,” she said.

  “Where is his body now?” Ping asked.

  “It’s on a gurney in a locked storage room built beside the hospital’s parking garage.”

  “Even if his head is lost between realms, it’s possible for this core of his to communicate with you wirelessly, even without a head?”

  “I suppose. His head was communicating with his torso the whole time we were with him, so I guess it’s possible.”

  “Assuming that is the case—that somehow Cam is still alive without a head and that his body reached out to you for help—it still begs the question, what can you do to help him?”

  “I don’t know. My basic instinct would be to say that we could fabricate another head, but the technology involved is far beyond anything we have imagined in this realm. We don’t have the materials or the know-how to eve
n attempt it.”

  “You said you repaired him at the hospital?” Ping asked.

  Mara shook her head. “Not really. He had me reattach his head, but then a circuit shorted, and I had to detach it again so he could talk.”

  “Your ability to repair mechanisms didn’t manifest itself when you came in contact with him, like when you repaired the Tamagotchi during the exercise we did at the warehouse?”

  Remembering her introduction to Cam, Mara paused, cocked her head and said, “Actually, when we first saw him, his faceplate was detached from his head, and he initially became conscious after I picked it up. He asked me at the time how I had repaired it, so I suppose it’s possible I did it inadvertently, metaphysically. It might be worth taking a closer look at his body, but replacing an entire head seems out there, even for someone with metaphysical abilities.”

  “So let’s assume that Cam is alive and that you find a way to help him. What else have you to consider?” Ping asked.

  “There’s the Aphotis,” Mara said.

  “Your friend, Abby.”

  Mara shook her head. “I don’t like calling that thing Abby.”

  “Very well, what is it that you wish to do concerning this Aphotis? Is it your intention to engage it?”

  “If it shows up here again, yes. I’ll work with Detective Bohannon to get in touch with all the passengers to give them a heads-up about the danger she poses.”

  “That’s quite a commitment, contacting all the passengers, explaining that they have crossed over to this realm during the crash of Flight 559 and warning them that this entity is now hunting them. Are you sure that is the best course of action? It strikes me as somewhat passive.”

  “How can you call doing all that work and coordination passive?” Mara asked.

  “Because it requires the Aphotis to come to you, to this realm, before you are willing to do something about it. Strategically do you think that is the best thing?”

  “I get the feeling you are walking me to some kind of realization. Why don’t you just state the point you want to make?”

  “You’ve left out one piece of your strategic puzzle—the haiku from your future self, Continuity now travels through other realms. Therefore, so must you,” Ping said.

  “You’re telling me that I should use the Chronicle of Creation and visit other realms. Why? What am I supposed to accomplish?”

  Ping shrugged. “I think that is something you should ascertain for yourself. However, I would recommend that you not ignore the advice. If you recall, the previous haikus gave you instructions that turned out to be beneficial, even when you followed them without initially understanding their meanings. Remember, the haikus said you didn’t need to do anything about the dragon, and it most likely would have been less troublesome to follow that advice. Also they told you how to find this realm’s Chronicle and how to track down what the Aphotis was up to by seeking out the passengers.”

  Mara raised her hands. “Okay, okay. Other realms. I’ll consider it. At the fix-it shop. I do my best thinking there.” She turned to Sam, stuffing a third Danish into his mouth. “You’ve been awfully quiet. You have an opinion about me and other realms?”

  Through a mouthful of pastry, Sam said, “Depends.”

  “Depends on what?”

  Sam swallowed and said, “On whether I get to have that last Danish.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Mara returned to work and, by Wednesday, had restored the shop to its former glory and then resumed her repairs. The black candlestick phone from the 1920s emitted a high-pitched chirping sound just seconds after Mara attached it to the cable usually connected to the black rotary model on the counter of Mason Fix-It Shop. She chuckled in a self-satisfied way, picked up the bell-shaped receiver and held it to her ear while leaning forward to speak into the transmitter cup mounted atop the device.

  “Mason Fix-It Shop. This is Mara. How may I help you?” she said, her voice raised slightly.

  “Hey, Mara. It’s Bohannon. You got a few minutes to talk?”

  Mara recognized the Portland detective’s Southern accent from the first word. “Sure. What’s going on?”

  “You remember, after your plane crashed in September, the investigation by the feds, right? The NTSB? They recovered the jet from the river and ran the whole thing from a hangar by the airport?”

  “Yes. You and Suter arrested me and Ping for breaking in there. I remember. It’s where they kept a secret morgue to hide the bodies of the passengers who died in the crash,” she said.

  “I had almost forgotten about all that. You know, it’s probably a good idea not to get into this on the phone. How about I stop by in about half an hour?”

  Mara frowned at the antique phone and said, “No problem. Should I be worried?”

  “Let’s talk when I get there.” Bohannon hung up.

  Replacing the receiver into the arm extending from the candlestick telephone’s neck, Mara stared up at the stained-glass light fixture suspended above the counter and wondered what could be happening now. After a moment she shook her head, deciding she didn’t have enough information to worry yet. She’d just wait the few minutes until the detective arrived. She lifted the repaired antique telephone, disconnected it from the shop’s phone line and placed it in the box used to transport it. Grabbing a roll of tape, she sealed the box and slid it under the counter.

  She grabbed from the shelf nearby what looked like a small brown suitcase and placed it on the counter. After flipping open the metal clasp mounted under the plastic handle, she lifted the top half of the casing, revealing a vinyl record turntable centered in the bottom half. The old portable record player had been knocked around when the zombies possessed by Juaquin Prado’s dead spirit had broken through the shop’s front window. She was just now assessing the damage, if any.

  At first glance the arm seemed bent which held the stylus—the needle that rested on the grooves of a record as it played. Mara wrapped her fingers around the aluminum arm and pressed it with her thumb against the angle of the bend. She rested the arm on the tiny stand that held it when not playing a record and lowered her head level with the countertop. Eyeballing the arm, she decided it was no longer warped. She focused on the needle itself, reaching out and touching it with a fingertip. It felt well-seated. It was time to give it a whirl.

  Standing upright, she felt along the back side of the player’s lid for the cubbyhole that held the power cord. Finding it on the left side, she extracted the cord and pulled it over the edge of the counter and down to the floor, where she plugged it into a power strip. Straightening once again, she eyed the empty turntable and then glanced across the shop at a stack of albums on the floor under the shelves holding other record players and radios. She retrieved the record on the top of the stack—Bing Crosby’s Merry Christmas—and slid the black disc from its sleeve as she returned to the counter. Holding the record by the edges, she lowered it to the player and flipped the control lever to Play. The arm lifted and played what sounded to Mara to be a very tinny version of “Silent Night.”

  Just as she decided to disassemble the player’s arm, the bells above the shop’s door jangled, and Detective Bohannon stepped through the entranceway, nodding in her direction. Mara manually lifted the stylus from the record and set the arm on its tiny stand again.

  “Detective, don’t tell me that it’s been a half hour already,” she said.

  “Looks like traffic was flowing in my direction, and all the lights decided to be green today. I made good time,” he said, walking up to the counter.

  Mara sat on her stool. “So what’s so sensitive that you didn’t want to talk on the phone?”

  “George Pirelli, the guy who headed up the crash investigation looking into Flight 559, is on his way to Portland. He saw that video of you battling the dragon on the news a few days back,” the detective said.

  “So the NTSB is investigating dragons now?” she asked.

  Bohannon chuckled. “I probably don’t need to
tell you this, but I don’t think Pirelli actually works for the NTSB. I’m not sure who he works for, but the fact that he could hide more than a hundred corpses and then make them disappear without it becoming public knowledge is a good indicator that his return to Portland might be trouble. Especially for you—and Mr. Ping if he gets connected to the dragon somehow.”

  “So this Pirelli guy knows I’m the person in the video?”

  “No, he only knows what my lieutenant has told him, and I haven’t told my lieutenant that you’re the one in the video—and I haven’t said anything about Ping being the dragon.”

  “Why haven’t you told him?”

  Bohannon leaned against the counter. “The lieutenant knows this whole situation is a little funky, to say the least, and doesn’t want to be in a position of reporting things that will make him look like a nut—stuff like there’s this Chinese baker who turns into a dragon. If Pirelli needs to know something with regard to public safety, something he can do to prevent people from getting hurt, then he’s all ears. Understand?”

  “I guess that makes sense. So what’s this federal investigator up to?”

  “I’m not sure, but he knew, when he left Portland the last time, that something strange had occurred on the flight, that the passengers had somehow been replaced with clones or doppelgängers or something. For whatever reason, he decided to ignore that and move on. If I know anything about bureaucrats, they like to paper over their mistakes. Given some of the things that have happened with the passengers—here in Portland and elsewhere—I’m sure Pirelli is feeling pressure to figure out what’s going on and deal with it somehow.”

  “If he doesn’t know I’m the girl fighting the dragon, why should I be worried?” Mara asked.

  “He’ll probably identify you eventually. I mean, you were arrested for breaking into his hangar-slash-morgue and don’t be surprised if he finds something to tie Ping to the dragon.”