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Four o’clock.
It took a few moments to climb out of the fog. Ryder threw his feet on the floor and rubbed his face. Bradley Cooper didn’t fall off the ceiling. He quickly went to Cherry’s door. She peeked one eye through a growing crack.
“Your drone’s asleep?” she said. “You sure?”
Perhaps she’d been doing this alone too long. Her pillows were stacked in the middle of the room. The incense was burning. The calm sounds of a stream babbled from her laptop.
She lit another stick of incense. It smelled more like cinnamon. She searched her laptop for another track, this one wind chimes and a flute. Ryder watched her pull her legs into a pretzel.
“What do you do, just sit there?”
“Breathe.”
He was breathing, too, and was pretty sure it wasn’t hard to do. She placed her hands on her knees and drew several easy breaths.
“It’s just being present,” she said. “Letting thoughts rise and fall, experiencing this moment. Listening, seeing, smelling, fully engaging the senses... being here.”
“Sounds boring.”
“What is boredom?”
“It’s boring.”
“What’s the experience of boredom?”
He cleared his throat. “That.”
She returned to breathing; then a smile cracked her face. It was the first time he’d actually seen her smile, but it didn’t look happy.
“Should I leave?” he said.
“Here.” She tossed the phone on the bed. “Do a search for Billy Sinterklaas.”
“You mean like Google him?”
“Yeah. It’s all out there; it’s nothing secret. I think BG just doesn’t want us Googling him once we’re here. How many of us did it before we got here? Even if you did, you wouldn’t think anything of it. But once you’ve been here a while, it reads a little different. Go ahead, hit up his Wikipedia.”
She resumed her posture—back straight, legs folded. Ryder opened a browser. The most recent stream came up followed by Wikipedia.
Son of William Tomlin Sinterklaas Sr. and Melinda Ann Sinterklaas, Billy was born in Casper, Wyoming, where he grew up on the family ranch raising livestock. He was known for his adventurous nature as well as his penchant to hunt large game.
He graduated high school early, studied biology at the University of Wyoming, and played football. He later attended graduate school at MIT to study biological engineering. Recruited by industry before finishing his doctorate, he was instrumental in starting the biotechnical division at Avocado, Inc.
After several productive years, he left following the tragedy of a facility meltdown that took the life of his estranged wife, Heather Miser. He was suspected in the development of a rogue artificial intelligence program that named itself Humbug, but was never directly implicated by the company.
A successful investor and entrepreneur, he became one of the nation’s largest private landowners. He went back to ranching while building a private bioengineering research facility to continue the work he started at Avocado, Inc. His research had advanced synthetic medicine around the world. His company annually donated supplies to Third World countries.
His real work began when he established the Home for Children, Kringletown, developing a model for helping children in need. Adopting children throughout the country, Billy had provided a home to forty children to date, who remain on the ranch.
“Where’s the rest of them?” he said.
She nodded then shrugged. “See what I mean?”
It wasn’t adding up. None of this was alarming unless you were looking at it from the inside. There were thirty-one stockings hung on the mantel and forty children to date? Where did they go? Kringletown ranch was huge, but he hadn’t seen anyone besides BG and the old man.
And what about the football game? The trophy had fifteen years on it, but no one was that old.
“What’s over the mountain?” he said.
“Keep reading.”
Touting himself as an adventurous philanthropist, he had been criticized for monetizing his altruism when he began streaming daily life at Kringletown. To date, it was the most downloaded reality program. His supporters claimed his selflessness was on full display, demonstrating how structure, love and support could change lives and mold anyone into a model citizen.
He had also been criticized for hunting animals and avidly displaying them as trophies. Billy claimed to no longer hunt for sport but insisted that displaying his past behavior was a reminder of his past and who he had become. He channeled his adventurous nature into exploring harsh climates, in particular his love for the North Pole.
Billy had fifty-five documented excursions to the North Pole. He had garnered national attention when he announced the existence of an ancient race of elven living in the Arctic ice as well as a man named Nicholas Santa.
Better known as Santa Claus.
While he had travel records of a man named Nicholas Santa in 1904 destined for the North Pole, he had not provided any evidence beyond this and insisted there was a link to his family name. Skeptics doubted his sanity and asked for an investigation into his fitness as a foster parent.
Billy, however, claimed he would provide the world all the proof in a live documentary called Finding Claus. The live stream was expected to break downloading records.
There were photos of Billy trekking the Arctic ice with icicles clinging to his beard and eyebrows. The credited date was twenty years old. Oddly, he looked exactly like BG did now.
Ryder scrolled down to a section titled “Fountain of Youth.” Billy, it stated, credited his agelessness to his private research. His claims were widely criticized as misleading and fraudulent, yet his skeptics could not explain his physical appearance given his age. Ryder glanced at his birthdate and did the math.
He’s seventy-five?
The man on the Wikipedia page looked fifty years old and exactly how Billy looked now. Whatever he was doing, his avid supporters said, was beyond doubt since he streamed everything to the public.
His net worth was estimated to be in the billions. If his claims to agelessness were ever patented and released, he would easily become the wealthiest man in the world. William continued to refine his aging technology, claiming it would be made available when the general public was ready.
Cherry was still sitting with her eyes cast down, hands folded over her belly. “What did you see?”
“We’re test subjects.”
She nodded along. “Yeah.”
“Why is he streaming?” Ryder said. “If he wants all of this to be private, why put it out there?”
“Ego. Money. What else did you see?”
“That was it.”
“What about his dad?”
“What about him?”
“Scroll to the top. What do you see?”
Ryder went back to the beginning and read the bio three times. He wasn’t seeing something, but it was right in front of him. His dad would be ninety-five years old.
“He’s dead.”
“Both his parents,” Cherry said, “died when he was working at Avocado. That’s about the time he moved back to the ranch.”
“It doesn’t say anything about an older brother.”
“There’s ways to keep that off Wikipedia.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s his brother.”
“Have you seen the old man up close? There’s a resemblance. Maybe he’s a cousin, I don’t know. All I know is they look like twins separated by about twenty years.”
Ryder had seen him up close when Kraig caught him at the barn. He had been too nervous to notice any resemblance between the old man and BG. There was something strange about that.
“Someone brought you here for a reason,” she said. “It wasn’t to score touchdowns.”
“They brought you here, too.”
It was difficult to tell if she was smiling or if the dim light was playing tricks. Ryder lay back on the bed and stared at the bottom of the bunk, expecting some words of wisdom carved into it. There was none. He folded his hands and focused on his breath. They stayed quiet till he had to go back. She told him to be careful and not to talk to her.
The next night, he learned how to meditate.
***
“Where you been?” Soup asked.
It was late morning when Ryder came back from wandering around the trees. Soup and Arf were still coming back after midnight and hadn’t showered since the game room opened. The room smelled like a den of wolves. Soup didn’t ask where he was hiking or why.
“The trek is over,” he said. “Arf was the first person to the Pole, but then we went into these ice tunnels to find where the elven were hiding. It was cool but nothing like the A-bomb.”
“A-bomb?”
“A giant snowman,” Arf said from his pillow.
Soup had been sleeping in the same clothes for days. He stripped the blankets off Arf and bombed him with socks until he was up.
Ryder went to the showers.
When he got back, they were gone. He took a short nap then hiked out to the barn to watch the horses. Cherry would sometimes be somewhere on the fence, but they rarely came within shouting distance. He huddled against the barn overlooking the mountains. He looked bored. Bradley Cooper wouldn’t know the difference.
No footage here.
A stream of smoke was coming out of the trees. He planned to hike that way and see what was out there. It wouldn’t take long. Halfway across the horseshoe, he reached into his coat for a second pair of gloves.
He was missing one of them.
A horse was saddled in the barn. He saw the glove. Sweeping it up, he hustled through the breezeway—
The old man stepped out of the tack room.
They nearly collided. The old man reared back with a frown and dropped his gloves. Barehanded, he bent with a groan and snatched them off the concrete. Ryder took a step back.
The old man was missing two fingers.
“I’m sorry,” Ryder said.
He wasn’t sure why he was apologizing. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to see his fingers, or his face. The old man pulled his gloves on and spit on the floor. He smelled like evergreen boughs that were on fire.
Ryder moved out of the way. The old man led a horse that was loaded down with packed gear out of one of the stalls. He put a boot in one of the stirrups and threw his leg over the saddle. The leather stretched and buckles rang. He clicked his tongue. The horse clopped over the hard ground.
Not a word.
Ryder stood as frozen as the ground. The old man’s beard was a white shrub covering his face. His cheeks were leathery and his eyes hidden beneath bushy red eyebrows. Maybe Cherry was right, but it was hard to tell if he looked like BG. That was the thing with Kringletown.
It was hard to know what was true.