Jordan's Fall

Jordan's Fall

A Novel

by

Stephen P. Scott

Mudpuzzle Publishing

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Stephen P. Scott

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

Copyright 2012 Stephen P. Scott

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher. For information, address:

mudpuzzle@mail.com

Cover illustration by Micah Petrone

www.solumearth.com

Cover design by Nancy F. Furner

webmaster@quillerworks.com

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For my wife Kathryn, who has been so supportive for so much of my life. Without her I would not have the courage to try or the strength to continue.

Jordan’s Fall

Chapter One

Jordan was expecting the young woman standing on his doorstep, but he hadn’t expected her to be so beautiful. A warm spring breeze swirled her straight, brown, waist-length hair around her, sending reflected sunlight dancing up and down like red electricity. Set against a backdrop of dogwood blossoms and red bud trees she seemed almost elfin, almost magical.

Jordan’s crude but practiced eye appraised the sweet young thing like a piece of real estate. Starting from a foundation of three-inch black high heels, he observed, she stood on strong, shapely legs, the legs of a dancer; she had nice lines, smooth and curving, not too thin.

Jordan guessed her to be around five-feet-one-inch tall and just over a hundred pounds. He found himself hoping he’d get the chance to more accurately assess her weight.

She wore a short, tight black skirt and a sleeveless red knit blouse and carried a small black purse on a shoulder strap. Overall she looked great, but Jordan found himself staring at her high, round breasts--breasts that seemed almost too large for her petite body. He finally tore his gaze from her chest and found himself peering into deep, emerald-green eyes that also seemed almost too large for her petite body.

Her luscious red lips parted in a smile which seemed half amusement, half uncertainty.

Um, hi, she said in a voice that was soft and musical.I’m Terry?.Sharon sent me over?

Oh, yes, Jordan finally managed to say without stammering. He ran his fingers back through his hair and attempted to force his leering grin into some semblance of a charming smile. Please come in.

He stepped back and allowed her just enough space to squeeze by so he could appraise her property from the back side. A quick once-over told him her south forty was every bit as prime as the rest of her real estate. She turned and gave him a quizzical look.

You’re Jordan? she asked.

I’m sorry, yes. I’m Jordan. Sharon told me you just lost your job. I’m really sorry to hear that.

Yeah. She frowned at the floor for a moment. I’ve been having a lot of bad luck lately. I’m sort of getting used to it.

Jordan smiled pleasantly, not knowing quite how to respond. After an awkward moment, he realized he was keeping Terry standing in the entryway.

Please, he said, I’m forgetting myself. Come on into the living room.

As he led the way, Jordan did some calculations. From her appearance, Terry could have been anywhere from a very mature fourteen years old to a very pleasing twenty-two years old. He had developed a habit of thinking of the women he lusted after as investments, creating a mental prospectus of sorts. If she’s in the former half of the age range, he thought, then she isn’t ready to go public, but I might consider her for my futures portfolio. If she’s in the latter half of the age range, then it’s a simple matter of getting a feel for the risks versus the returns and she might be ripe for a friendly take-over.

Wow, this place is really nice, Terry said, gazing around the room.

I like it, Jordan said. He decided not to tell her that his decorator quit in disgust after an argument over a few of the items he wanted to include in the decor (she said his tastes were baroque and called him typical nouveau riche, whatever that meant).

Who cares what some decorator thinks? he decided, I still like it better my way.

The pit group was upholstered in soft black leather; the bookshelves were zebra-wood veneer; the carpeting was white, deep-pile plush and the coffee table was chrome with a smoked glass top.

Jordan had track lights installed on the ceiling and positioned so that they spotlighted the various works of art strategically placed around the room: paintings and reproductions on the walls, plundered pre-Columbian artifacts arranged on accent tables and African fertility statues on pedestals in various niches.

In truth, Jordan knew as little about the pieces as he did about decorating and good taste, but he had an art dealer’s word that these were all good investments with a virtual guarantee of increasing in value over the next few years. Besides that, they looked expensive and he liked showing off his wealth.

Um, Sharon said you’d pay me fifty dollars? Terry ventured.

That’s right, Jordan said, smiling. A hundred if things turn out as well as I expect. Please, have a seat. Relax.

Terry slipped out of her shoes and settled onto the couch, tucking her feet beneath her. Flashing Jordan the mixed-up smile again, she opened her small purse, drew out a long white cigarette and lit it with a red disposable lighter.

Terry smiled again, showing her perfect white teeth. She had a thin, straight nose, a round delicate chin and a dimple which appeared in her right cheek when she smiled.

I’d better be careful, Jordan thought, I could lose my heart to this one. He had no idea how that thought would return to haunt him.

This is really an amazing place, she said. Is all this art real?

Most of it. A few of the paintings I couldn’t afford, so I bought expensive reproductions--almost as good.

I actually know what that means. Terry gave Jordan a serious look. People expect me to be pretty basic, y’know? But I’ve studied art. I thought about becoming a broker and maybe opening a gallery.

Really? Jordan hoped he managed to sound fascinated rather than amazed. Why didn’t you?

Actually, I haven’t really decided against it yet, it’s just that I need to move somewhere like New York or San Francisco if I want to deal in the really classic stuff. Oklahoma’s collectors are more into the Southwestern art. Georgia O’Keeffe and like that.

Jordan smiled, hoping something intelligent would come to mind. Nothing did.

So, did Sharon explain the project to you? he said at last, deciding to change the subject before his ignorance of the art world became an issue.

She said it was some kind of experiment with meditation?

Basically, that’s correct. Jordan smiled again, relieved to be moving the conversation in the direction of something he knew a little about. How old are you, anyway?

Oh, everybody asks me that. I’m twenty-five, almost twenty-six. I just look young.

Jordan suppressed a triumphant smile as he recalculated his mental balance sheet. Terry’s prospectus was looking very promising.

Have you had any experience with psychic phenomenon or the occult?

I went to a séance once. Does that count? Terry chewed on her lower lip.

Sure. He gave her a reassuring smile. That’s just fine. This is a little like that, only not as spooky. Would you like something to drink before we begin? In case this goes well, I’ve got a bottle of champagne in the fridge, but we should avoid anything with alcohol until afterward.

No, I’m fine, Terry said. I had a Diet Coke in the car.

At that moment, Jordan’s thoughts were running more in the direction of the physical than the metaphysical. He was trying hard not to imagine Terry draped nude across the soft, cool cushions of the couch, but it was a struggle. Only the importance of the work ahead kept him focused on the business at hand. He stood to make an awful lot of money if things went according to plan.

The best way to do this is for you to lie down on the floor, with your legs straight and your arms at your sides, He said. Be strong! he told himself, as Terry obliged. There will be plenty of time to get acquainted with the young lady’s body later.

Should I have my eyes open or closed? she asked.

Closed, he said, as he knelt down beside her. Try to imagine yourself floating in outer space.

Terry nodded.

Now, this isn’t really complicated and I’m going to talk you through it. Jordan tried to make his voice soothing and reassuring. What I’m about to teach you is called ‘essence-divergence-with-non-corporeal-zone-transfer,’ or something like that. I guess it’s sort of like what they call astral projection. Do you know what that means?

Terry shook her head. I know it’s, like, out-of-body or something, but what you said sounds so--I don’t know--technical. She opened her eyes and gazed up at him with a child-like trust in her features.

It’s not a very good name for it anyway, he said. Can you swim?

Sure, I love to swim.

Well, this is like learning to float on your back in warm water.

Terry smiled and nodded, then closed her eyes with a look of eager anticipation. Jordan resisted the urge to cuddle her in his arms and continued the lesson.

I have to go on a very long ‘out-of-body’ trip, so I have to teach you how to make sure my body keeps working while I’m gone. In order to do that, you have to learn to leave your body. Do you understand, so far.

I think so.

Okay, I want you to relax and think about drifting around, weightless, in outer space. Now, lift your right leg and hold it. Think about how it feels. Now put it down and forget about it. Now, lift your left leg--

Jordan continued to talk Terry through the exercise in self-hypnosis, admiring each part of her body as it became the focus. When at last she was in a completely relaxed state, he moved to the next phase of instruction.

You feel yourself drifting in space, but you can control it. You’re floating, but you can shift your body and orient yourself so you feel right-side-up. Can you feel it? Can you move at will?

Yes, she whispered, seeming to struggle to push the words out.

Now, I want you to look around. You see planets and stars. Yes?

Yes.

You also see light, but it isn’t normal light. You can see a spectrum. The light is in long beams that run parallel and go on forever as far as you can see. Do you see all the different colored beams of light?

Yes.

Now, there is light coming from a different direction and all the beams cross to form a grid pattern in space. Can you see that?

Terry parted her lips to say yes, but the sound didn’t come out.

Jordan took a tuning fork from his pocket and struck it on his knee. The sound rang out, not loud, but audible, A below middle C.

Can you hear the note? he asked, knowing he would no longer receive an answer. It sounds like one note, but listen carefully. It’s a spectrum of notes, just like the spectrum of colors. Look closely at the beams of light. See how each beam vibrates with a different note? See how the entire grid vibrates and each beam is vibrating at a different rate? I want you to concentrate and bring the beams into harmony. I want you to gather the notes in your mind and draw them together until there is only one note vibrating at one rate. The session stirred distant memories of his own training when he was fourteen or fifteen years old.

Jordan doubted that Terry really understood what she was doing, he never really had, but he knew she could accomplish the task with a little coaxing. Briefly, he wondered if he should tell her that the target rate of vibration was 440 cycles per second, but decided against it. Why confuse the issue with science?

It was time for Jordan to join Terry in that other place. He stretched out beside her and entered his own light trance. The light in the room dimmed and shifted, coming from a different spectrum as he crossed over. He wasn’t sure where it was he crossed to, because his knowledge of such things was limited and his memory was vague on all but the most mechanical aspects he’d been taught of such things.

It was no longer necessary for Jordan to go through the lengthy process he’d talked Terry through, just as he no longer needed to go through all the muscle twitching stuff to achieve a trance. He could slip easily in and out of the condition that allowed him to leave his body.

Beginning at the head, Jordan peeled himself from his mortal shell, like stripping a latex cast from a mold. Once out of his body, he reached into Terry’s body and took her by her non-corporeal hand.

Come with me, he said, and gently tugged, feeling her follow him out. They drifted together above the expensive carpet, looking down at themselves on the floor below. Terry’s amazement showed on her spirit face, but she didn’t say a word. Our bodies will be all right on their own for quite a while, but it’s best to make sure our heart rates and such remain normal. If we stayed out too long, the vital signs would fade and our bodies could die. That’s why I need you here.

Terry nodded, wide-eyed Jordan thought, though it was hard to tell from one with eyes so large.

All you have to do is lie down in my body, sort of like getting in the bathtub. Then you think about the heart and you will see it in your mind and you think for it to keep beating normally. Then you think about the lungs and, when you see them in your mind, you think for them to keep pulling air in and pushing it out. As long as the heart and lungs are working, everything else should be fine. Understand?

Terry nodded again.

Great. After you monitor my body, float back out and then go into your body and do the same thing. Just don’t think about becoming one with your body or you might snap back in and I don’t think you’re experienced enough to break free again. For the most part, just float around out here and enjoy the experience. I’ll be back just as quick as I can..Jordan smiled. He was already shifting his thoughts to a place two thousand miles away, but as important as his business was, he still wished he could stay and play with Terry. There would be plenty of time for that later. This out-of-body stuff was a great lead-in to the physical stuff.

Are you going to be okay? he asked.

Terry nodded, but Jordan could see she was a little frightened. He gave her another smile and drifted through the ceiling.

******

Floating up through the roof, Jordan gazed out at the beautiful spring day. Trees were budding, tulips were in full bloom and the sun was shining down. It occurred to him that he should be taking Terry on a picnic, not snooping around in corporate America, but business is business.

Jordan's methods of navigation were very crude. Had he known someone on the other end it would have been a simple of focusing on that person, then homing in as he flew. But Jordan not only didn’t know anyone at Earthworks International, he had never even been east of the Mississippi--at least not in his physical form. That meant he was going to be flying two hundred miles a minute from Oklahoma to Maryland without any familiar landmarks for reference.

Fortunately he had no substance, so anything he might collide with in the air would pass harmlessly through.

In preparation for his trip, Jordan had used a map and a protractor and figured out the approximate angle from his house to Baltimore. By taking a heading from his satellite dish to the water tower and staying on a straight course, he would, theoretically end up in the general area of the city he wanted. Then he could look for the big buildings and he would eventually find the place.

Jordan knew it sounded crazy, but he’d been doing it this way for years and for some reason, possibly due to some strange nature of the process, he always seemed to find his way.

The flying was the part Jordan liked most. It was the same flying that he’d experienced in dreams as a child. He simply stood on his roof, put out his arms and went. As far as he knew he could probably assume a sitting position, place his hands at ten and two o’clock on an imaginary steering wheel and fly just as effectively, but the Superman thing was too much to resist.

Sailing above the big white globe of the water tower, Jordan accelerated until the world below was zipping by, then a blur, then nonexistent. He could concentrate his attention and see clouds or look at the landscape, but there was a corresponding reduction in his rate of progress and he couldn’t afford to spend hours, let alone days, getting to that board meeting.

Cruising along at a thousand feet, flying faster than anything on Earth had ever flown, Jordan felt clever, wise and possibly even immortal. He was doing what no one else he knew had ever done. He was alone in his own universe.

And then, just for an instant, he could almost swear he saw a dark figure fly past going the other way.

Chapter Two

By some miracle, or some combination of stupidity and dumb luck, Jordan managed to fly straight to Baltimore as though nothing else existed between his roof and the city. It was a feat he could never have accomplished in a plane. It seemed unlikely anybody could. As he understood it, navigation was a much more complex process, requiring a knowledge and view of landmarks or other points of reference and a means to judge velocity, direction, distance, altitude and any number or other factors.

To further confuse what should by all rights have been a travel disaster, Jordan couldn’t keep Terry out of his mind. He felt a strong desire to become better acquainted with her taut little body, to possess her physically, to know her intimately.

While it was true that Jordan often felt that way about women he had just met, it was rare that he had someone he lusted after waiting back at his house while he was out on business. He found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on his reasons for being in Pittsburgh--er, Baltimore--and he wanted to get business taken care of and get back to pleasure as quickly as possible.

As he slowed to a more pedestrian rate of speed and homed in on the forest of tall corporate buildings, Jordan had a strange momentary twinge of guilt over his thoughts about Terry. His mind inexplicably turned to Sharon and he wondered how she would feel if--when--she found out about his coupling with the young lady she’d sent over to substitute.

Jordan tried to push Sharon out of his mind. She should be used to his callous, womanizing ways by now. He didn’t owe her anything, after all; they had no commitment. She knew what he was like and she knew he didn’t want to settle down anytime soon. The fact that she had stuck around for eight years didn’t obligate him in any way. It was her choice.

Jordan continued rationalizing until his attention was diverted by the sight of his goal.

A tall tower of brushed steel and smoked glass loomed up ahead. The forty foot tall Earthworks logo at the top of the building told Jordan he was in the right place. At the time he didn’t catch the irony of a company named Earthworks using a sterile chrome emblem for its corporate symbol.

******

Jordan entered Earthworks at the ground level and floated over to the brushed aluminum and black Plexiglas directory next to the elevators. Naturally, the boardroom wasn't listed, but he managed to pick up a few clues from the things that were.

The company occupied the entire building, which was unusual for a company with so little name recognition. Even some of the biggest companies only leased space in structures this size.

It figured that the CEO was probably on the top floor, with executives on floors below, descending floors in order of descending rank. It also figured that the big guy wouldn't travel very far for meetings even in an elevator. While it seemed possible that the boss might occupy and entire floor, Jordan doubted it, and headed all the way to the top to begin his search.

There was really no necessity for taking the elevator shaft, since he could fly through walls, but after his first unnerving experience of sailing out of a floor and right through a secretary, Jordan had chosen to avoid such encounters. Passing through a human body is creepy enough, but crashing into a human soul without warning is like coming around a corner in the dark and running head first into the bogey man. And that poor woman. She didn't know what hit her, but she screamed anyway.

******

As it turned out, the boardroom wasn’t even close to where he’d expected. The meeting was already in progress when Jordan entered and took a seat near the ceiling at the side of the room. A guy in black framed glasses (who looked like he might rush to the nearest phone booth in the event of trouble) was stabbing at an overhead screen with a long pointer as slides flashed up from a projector in the back of the room.

The boardroom was fairly typical: long, not too wide, with a long, narrow table and straight-backed, leather cushioned chairs. Occupying the chairs were the usual corporate types: rubber-stamped, 2.8 grade-point-average MBAs from all the best universities, showing intense interest in information that would numb most people--information they’d probably seen a dozen times already.

At the back of the room, in a huge overstuffed, black leather chair, sat a man with a face and body like a toad. Jordan half expected a long tongue to lash out from the huge wide mouth and snatch the nearest executive from her chair. This man, Jordan assumed (since he was wearing the largest pinkie ring and the most expensive suit in the room), was the CEO.

The walls of the room were papered with dark blue pinstriped material and lined with pictures that appeared to be representative photographs of various industries the company was involved in. Jordan didn’t pay much attention to the photos at the time, but later recalled them in great detail.

Jordan turned his attention to the Clark Kent guy, watching the slides and attempting to listen carefully to the droning voice.

A jump in earnings during the first quarter of the new calendar year has more than served to offset the one-time charge against profits in the second quarter of the fiscal annum, once again positioning--

Jordan found his mind wandering back to Terry and her garden of earthly delights. It was an interesting exercise, staying in one place while letting his mind wander, when, at that moment, he was little more than focused thoughts to begin with.

Several speakers made their boring, agonizingly detailed presentations, self-congratulatory show-and-tell, and Jordan did his best to pay attention while waiting for the information he’d really come to hear.

During one of the more tedious flow-charts, Jordan experienced the out-of-body equivalent of nodding off. When he suddenly jerked back into awareness, he had the uncomfortable sensation of being stared at. Looking around the room, he discovered the toad-like CEO frowning up at the ceiling where he sat.

Just my imagination, Jordan assured himself, trying to ignore the man