Chase Baker and the Da Vinci Divinity (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book 6) (20 page)

“Today,” I say. “For sure.”

“So, you’re Ava Baker’s father?”
she says. “Tell me something. How do you stay so young?”

“Oh,” I say. “I’m not her dad. I’m
her older brother. We were split up when we were kids. She went to live with
her mom in Gramercy Park. I stayed upstate in Albany. Until I went off to
school and then Europe and Africa.”

“Well, that explains why you’re off
the grid, I guess. Chip mandate has only been in effect for a year. Still four
months of the grace period left. But that will fly by.” Shoving a guest tag
through the glass opening. “Put that on and you’re good to go.”

“Thanks for your help,” I say,
grabbing the laminated ID.

“Keep the visit short,” she says. “The
patients on that floor aren’t exactly the best conversationalists.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

On the wall, a sign says, Elevator
A – D. “Psychosis Treatment.”

I head for it.

Arriving at the fifteenth floor, I
go to the circular front desk, show my ID to one of the nurses working there.

“I’m here to see Ava Baker,” I say.

She’s a petite, red-haired woman.
Young. Maybe in her late twenties. She stands.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you
before,” she says.

“I’m Ava’s older brother. I’ve been
away. Africa.”

“How exciting,” she says. “Terrible
things happening there. The drought. The wars. The famine. The disease. You’re
lucky to be alive.”

“Hell of a world we live in, I know.
I don’t recognize any of it.”

We start walking down a long,
brightly lit corridor occupied with patients wearing pajamas and slippers. Some
of them wear robes. Most of them look like they can barely keep their eyes
open, much less work up the energy to form words.

“You are aware of Ava’s condition?”
says the nurse after a time.

“I just know she lost somebody
close and now she’s having some trouble.”

The nurse stops dead in her tracks.
She looks into my eyes.

“It’s true she lost someone close.
She lost her husband and her young son in an automobile accident up in the
Catskills. She, alone, survived without a scratch. She never forgave herself
for surviving, or so her doctors will tell you. Her world, as you can imagine,
fell apart then, rather rapidly. She turned to alcohol and drugs. Enough to
destroy her liver after a five-year constant diet. Now, with synthetic organs,
we were able to save her life. But, trust me Mr. Baker, they still haven’t
invented a synthetic brain that can replace the real thing. A brain erased of
the terrible memories.”

She stops before the open door of a
room.

“Listen, Mr. Baker,” she says, “I’m
not sure of the last time you laid eyes on your sister, but I’ve seen plenty of
pictures of what she looked like prior to the accident, and no amount of explanation
will prepare you for what you’re about to see.”

Entering into a room, I follow
close behind wishing to God I’d wake up from this nightmare.

How do you handle seeing your own
daughter who has overnight gone from a beautiful little girl full of life and
promise to a bloated, gray-haired, early middle-aged woman who resembles a
corpse? A portion of your brain refuses to believe it’s the same person, but
the nurse with you is proof that this is the flesh of your flesh, the blood or
your blood. Your divine creation. And you have no choice but to beat the living
hell out of yourself because if you’d only been there for her … if only you’d
been her protector … maybe none of this would have happened.

My eyes fill with tears. I try to
speak, but I can’t. The only thing I can manage is to take hold of her hand,
squeeze it.

“Can she speak?” I ask, the words
difficult if not impossible to put together.

“She hasn’t spoken a word in five
years, Mr. Baker,” she says. “She’s catatonic and will be for the rest of her
days.”

The oxygen seeps out of my body,
along with any desire I have to live.

“How on God’s earth could she do
this to herself?”

“Your sister should have never
taken that first drink back when she was a youngster,” she says. “One of the
benefits of advanced genetic technology is the ability to identify the specific
genes in people that make them drink, or partake in illegal drug use, or get
depressed, or even commit murder, or acts of terrorism. Your sister has the
gene that makes alcohol a much more inviting escape than it is to those without
the gene.” She exhales. “If only someone had told her when she was young to
stay away from the first drink, perhaps she would have learned to cope without
alcohol in her life. She would have been able to move on after the death of her
husband and child without booze and drugs as a crutch.” She looks me in the
eye. “If this were even ten or twenty years ago, she would not have survived.”
She steps back from the bed. “I’ll give you some time alone with her, but I’m
going to have to ask you to make it quick. Ava is in a state of perpetual coma,
for lack of a better term, but she still reacts to overstimulation, and it’s
not a good reaction.”

A tear runs down my cheek. “Does
that mean she can hear me?”

“It’s quite possible,” she says. “Well,
then, I’ll leave you two alone.”

When she’s gone, I hold my daughter’s
hand to my heart, and I begin to weep. I place my face in the nape of her neck,
and I beg for forgiveness.

“If you can hear me, honey. If you
can hear my voice, can you ever forgive me for leaving you alone? Please, please
forgive me.”

I squeeze her hand and I await the
sound of her voice. It never comes. But, I swear to God, I feel her squeeze my
hand in return. Maybe I’m just wishing it to be true, but I feel something
there. A slight tightening of the fingers that tells me she forgives me. That
she still loves me.

I stand there with my face in her
neck until there’s a knock at the door, and the nurse tells me it’s time.
Standing up straight, I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand, then kiss her on
the forehead.

Leaning down so my lips are close
to her ear, I whisper, “I love you. I will always love you, my little girl.”

Turning, I give the nurse a nod,
and I leave the room a defeated, shattered shell of the man I once was.

Outside, the day only seems to be
getting hotter, quieter, more hostile, more lonely … closer to death.

I look up at the sun and it seems
to be concentrating the entirety of its heat upon me. As if God is punishing
me. And perhaps he is. I’ve gone from dizzy to near faint. I can’t feel my
extremities. Maybe if I had something to drink. Something cold, something hard.
Something to make me forget this nightmare.

Across the street, a gin mill with
an old neon sign mounted to the exterior brick wall spells out BAR in
vertically positioned capital letters. Without giving it a second thought, I
turn, step out into the road. I hear a horn, the clash of brakes locking up, the
squeal of rubber burning the pavement, and then the nightmare goes black.

When I open my eyes, I’m seated on the stone floor only feet
away from the pool of water. Da Vinci is seated before me, lotus style, lit
candles set out on the floor, the dancing flame creating shadows inside the dim
stone chamber. Directly to his right is the circular pool. Mounted to a perch above
the master’s head is the hawk that lead me here, his black eyes reflecting the
candle’s flame.

My eyes are still wet with tears,
my body still trembling. But, I know for certain I am back. Back to the real
world, however strange it appears to be inside this cave.

My God, Ava, could it possibly
be true that you are still okay? That you, and your mother, are still alive?
That you are still just an innocent little girl? That there’s still time to
save you? …

Da Vinci pulls on his beard, exhales.

“It’s time I answered your ultimate
question,” he says. “Think of this cave as a portal. A place where knowledge is
not distributed, like a university, but a place where you are transported
directly to the knowledge. From this cave, you are not only able to view both
the past and the future, you are able to go there, be a part of it. When I first
came to this cave as a young man, I was shown the future and it’s many
marvelous, and sometimes frightening, inventions. When I returned, I used my
newfound knowledge to attempt to recreate what I witnessed. The tank, the
machine gun, the airplane, the diving suit, embryonic research, and so much
more.”

My daughter flashes into my head.
Her lying on a hospital bed.

“I saw the future. Is it real?”

He nods.

“The things you saw of the past,”
he says, “were
they
real?”

My stomach sinks. “Yes, they were
real. I saw history in the making. It felt real, like a vivid dream feels real.
But, what I saw of the future … my
personal
future … my daughter’s
future, Leonardo. It was tragic and terrible. How can I change it?”

He stares into me with glowing
eyes. Eyes that pull me into his immortal soul.

He says, “The price of knowledge is
a steep one, I’m afraid. We have been gifted with knowing the future, but we
have been burdened with fact that we can do nothing to change it.”

“But, what if I attempted to change
the past? What if I pulled Jesus down from the cross, for instance? Or what if
I destroyed the Declaration of Independence?”

He shakes his head. “History and
time would find a way to balance itself out. You would be destroyed before you
set your actions into motion.”

A stiff, cold wind blows through
the tunnel. The candles flicker. It’s like the ghosts of the dead are passing
through this chamber one by one.

“Listen, my friend,” da Vinci goes
on, “during my lifetime, I did my best to educate the people by sending them
messages, symbols, riddles … anything I could to pass on what this cave has
taught me. I wanted to share the knowledge so that people living in misery
could enjoy richer, more productive lives. I believed that knowledge, in the
right hands, would be power.”

“Why not just tell the people what
the future will bring them?”

“Because that would have gotten me
burned at the stake, or my bones crushed on the wagon wheel. I had no choice
but to encrypt my messages in my paintings.” Reaching out, he pats my satchel. “Remove
the art book from your bag. I wish to demonstrate something for you.”

I pull out the art book. It’s a bit
beat up, but still in good shape. He flips through the book to a place that bears
a full page rendering of the
Mona Lisa
. Carefully, he rips the page out
of the book. Reaching behind him, he retrieves a square mirror about the size
of a dinner plate.

He sets the
Mona Lisa
on the
stone floor before me, her lovely face beset with the mysterious smile
strangely illuminated in the candlelight. He, then, sets the mirror parallel
with the image maybe two inches from her left shoulder and arm. What begins to
emerge in the candle flame doesn’t just take me by surprise, it causes me to
lose my equilibrium.

“Some might say the messages I
attempted to convey in my works of art were subliminal, but they were much more
obvious than that. Much more,
in your face
, as the young people like to
say nowadays.” Then, as he shifts the mirror just slightly so that more of the
flame shines down upon it, filtering it, I begin to make out the entire image
of a man. But then, this is not a man necessarily, but a being that bears an
alien-like head, gray/black skin, impossibly thin lips and nose, the eyes insufferably
dark and ovular. He’s wearing a cape, or a shawl, over narrow shoulders.

I swallow something cold and
bitter. “Who the hell is that?”

“It’s the being who created this
cave, and many others like it around the world. He is also the being who belongs
to a species far, far away from a here. An ancient species that you and I might
refer to as, God.”

“And why would I refer to this
creature in the painting of the
Mona Lisa
as God?”

Leonardo da Vinci pinches his
beard, smiles.

“Because he is the entity that
created you and me,” he says.

I take a moment to digest
everything he’s revealed. That we human beings were not created by God the
divine, necessarily, but God the extra-terrestrial. That creatures like the
being depicted in the
Mona Lisa
have created caves, or portals, that
serve as knowledge sanctuaries but also double as time machines. That the past
is the past and the future is the future and it cannot be altered. That somehow
the rule of universal law doesn’t allow for it. This is my new reality. Or
maybe, just maybe, this is all some kind of vivid dream cooked up by an over-zealous
adventurer who has hit his head against one too many fists and one too many
solid objects one too many times. Because, if I were to mention even a word of
this to some of my friends who frequent my favorite local bars in Florence or
New York I’d be tossed out the door onto my ass.