Flyday

by Laura E. Bradford

  “Thanks,” said the journalist, a bit embarrassed. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  She paused. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

  When she later sat down on the set, she was surprised to see him sitting opposite her to conduct the interview. She answered the questions quietly, and said that no, the band would not continue. Biochemical Pathways had ended. Jamie would try a solo career, and Damien was taking time off to think about his future.

  Later, in the break room, she watched the interview go on the air, and the journalist approached her.

  “You did a good job with this tie,” he said, glancing down. “It’s perfect.”

  “You’ve never learned to tie one?”

  “I did, but I can’t function on mornings when I’m going on the air.”

  “Nerves?”

  “Sometimes.” He put his hands in his pockets. “I really am sorry. I always liked that band.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’ve seen you on the show sometimes. You’re ... Thomas Huxley?”

  A nod. “It seems we already know each other.”

  Throughout their romance they felt something else moving them, making them feverish and dazed. The world went on with its smoke and drudgery, while they floated in a bubble, protected. They were deliriously happy and totally sure of themselves, when neither of them had ever been sure of anything before.

  Zoë had put the brakes on the relationship at first, and turned Thomas down for two weeks, thinking it wasn’t appropriate to date so soon after the tragedy. She would have gone on longer, but she realized she had thought of him at least once every day, and then finally called him. From then on they had only one life, each other.

  In an era when paper was nearly obsolete, they sent each other handwritten letters, often coded with inventive lettering that the other always deciphered within seconds, as if they had the same mind. They realized that they were both quiet and private people, but Zoë compensated with a sunny personality and Thomas with his intellect and curiosity. He was born in the autumn, and she in the spring; he loved spicy foods, she preferred sweet; he always kept his feet firmly on the ground, and she loved to fly.

  Both had their secrets, too: Zoë out of sadness and Thomas out of necessity. When Zoë was thirteen, after her mother had died suddenly, she packed a suitcase and boarded a plane to live with her diplomat father and the older brother she barely knew. Her father traveled as part of his job and vacationed often, so she seemed caught in a whirlwind and could never quite form a home, just long series of trips.

  As far as she knew, Thomas’s childhood and young life had been uneventful. Zoë knew he had a younger sister, and knew he studied journalism at the Tenokte Academy, a well-known college, but there was something else, something missing. She could feel it like a tear in a piece of cloth, but she could not identify it, so for a time she simply let it go.

  During the summer’s worst heat wave, when they had been dating about a month, they ran into a problem. Or, rather, Thomas did. He practically wilted in hot weather, and one day the temperature hit 102 degrees. The world seemed set on fire, and before long the city’s electricity finally burned out. “Too many air conditioners,” Zoë said, sighing.

  He walked back from the studio at 4 p.m., heading for the cool subway, and saw the world bend and twist around him. He collapsed. Two kind souls dragged him under the shade of a tree, one of the few cures for the burning air, and poured cold water on him. When he awoke, they handed him a cup of an electrolyte drink.

  “You don’t look so good,” said one of the strangers. “Must be heat stroke.”

  “No, worse than that,” said Thomas, delirious. “I’m in love.”

  They gave him a ride home. He thanked them when they dropped him off and he tried to remember their names, but he barely made a phone call to Zoë before he blacked out again.

  When he awoke, he felt chilled to the bone. He was lying on the floor with a wet cloth over his forehead, and a wet towel over his chest.

  Zoë stood over him, and asked him questions: his name, the year. When he answered, she said, “Well, it’s probably not the falling-sickness.”

  “Did I pass out?” he asked.

  “I think so. How do you feel?”

  “Dead,” he replied. He sat up, and the towel slipped away, revealing a crisscross of thin scars on his chest. He pulled up the towel again, but Zoë acted as if she hadn’t seen it. She handed him a cup of a flavored electrolyte drink.

  He realized he had never seen ... well, he would have to wait. She was Catholic, and her modesty could not be surpassed: she thought doctors should perform open-heart surgery with the patient’s clothes still on.

  All around him in the city, people were cooling themselves with paper fans and still mourning a dead bass player. Zoë believed there was an afterlife for Kyle, one where the instruments were always tuned and the power never went out. What could heaven contain for Thomas Huxley? Ice cubes in the summertime. Memories printed out in pages, so he could tell what he’d imagined and what he had missed. Terrible, awful things he would enjoy.

  Zoë reached out a hand and felt his forehead, then pulled it away, but he took it and put it back.

  “One bullet, entering the prefrontal area,” he said. He moved her hand. “Came out ... here.”

  She took in a sharp breath. “And you’re still alive?”

  “Barely.” He explained his injuries, the coma, the miraculous recovery. “I don’t think it was a random attack,” he finished.

  “No?”

  “No. I can’t explain it … and I can’t even remember when it happened, I just … don’t know.”

  Neither of them spoke for a minute, but a clap of thunder sounded outside. Zoë walked over to the window; rain had started to pour down.

  “It’s the first time it’s rained since Kyle died,” she murmured.

  So he told her the story of when he interviewed the band, and she laughed as he recalled Jamie’s drama-queen tendency, Damien’s one-word responses, but how Kyle sat down and genially answered all the questions. “He seemed down-to-earth, like an old friend. Calm, normal. Showed me a picture of his son, just a little baby then.”

  “That’s Kyle,” she said, charmed.

  The air conditioner clicked on with a whir, sending a stream of cool air at them. She knew Thomas would be all right now.

  “If you want, we can talk about all this another time,” she said.

  He knew she didn’t mean the discussion about her friend. “Another time,” he agreed, and his smile put her at ease.

  But they never talked about it. Zoë held off on piloting for weeks, still angry at the skies for letting Kyle fall, and instead threw herself into charity and diplomatic work, which she had dabbled in while her father had been alive.

  She lobbied for better safety features for flying cars, and before long all new vehicles were manufactured with them. She raised money for hospitals and made visits. Critics accused her of trying to be a celebrity in spite of the band’s disappearance, and one day when Jamie asked if that upset her, she shook her head.

  “The only thing that upsets me is that I’ll never hear Kyle play again,” she said.

  One of their songs had been playing on the stereo, and Jamie turned it up. “Can’t you hear the bass line?” he asked.

  Zoë bit her lip.

  The next morning she decided to fly again. Thomas watched her, stunned, as she packed her things and left his London flat. He was no less anxious when he watched the golden ship take off at the airport, watched it grow as small as a firefly and then blink out of sight.

  Over the next few days he wandered, dazed, and went to work but rarely slept, and when he dreamed, it was of her. He tacked a map of the world to his wall and traced her path with yellow string. She called daily, sending photos and video clips over e-mail from places all over the world.

  One day he left a message on her phone: “Zoë, when you get back, I have to tell you something.”

&n
bsp; A week passed before he could see her again. When she saw him standing at the airport, she smiled, her blue eyes making twin mirrors of the sky.

  He hugged her, and he told her everything right there: his dreams about the secret police, ending with his thoughts about his attack.

  “I mean, a shot in the head, a broken leg, a broken wrist? It doesn’t sound like a mugging. I didn’t even have a watch or anything expensive. If they robbed me, what did they take?”

  “Maybe that’s why they shot you,” she said quietly.

  “No. Zoë, you have to believe me.”

  Anyone else would have told him he had lost his mind, but she leaned over and whispered, “You were there. Whatever you think happened, it probably did.”

  And that was it: he knew they could outlast anything.

  May, 2507

  One morning they sat together in a park, shaded by apple trees covered in blossoms. Pink-white petals drifted from the tree. It was the second of May, Zoë’s twenty-third birthday.

  Thomas held a video camera steady as she opened her presents. A bouquet of daffodils, her favorite flower, were already lying on the table. She opened a box containing a golden charm bracelet, and adored it instantly. The charms were a small spaceship, a clock, and a heart.

  The next gift was an advance press copy of Biochemical Pathways’ last album, which at the time had not yet been submitted to censorship review.

  “How did you get this?” she asked, amazed. “Jamie didn’t even give me a copy.”

  “We had a few extras kicking around the studio. Production company sent them. I thought you’d enjoy it.”

  She hugged him. “Thank you, Thomas.”

  He steadied the camera. “No problem. Oh, and there’s one more thing.” He reached into his messenger bag and took out a small box wrapped with a yellow ribbon.

  She opened it, gasped, and put a hand to her mouth. Thomas moved the camera over to the inside of the box, which contained a diamond ring.

  He sat back. “I was just thinking about my future, and the only thing I wanted to include was you. What do you say?” he asked.

  “Yes, yes, of course.” She kissed him. “I’ll marry you.”

  Thomas put down the camera, then leaned over to kiss her.

  June, 2507

  Zoë thought she had avoided disaster when she chose to wait in the rain, but she only delayed it.

  They were not Romeo and Juliet; they were the journalist and the pilot, the secret police and the music scene, the melancholy and the surprises. There are only two ways a story such as theirs can end, with bliss or with broken hearts. They hoped for a lot and gave everything they had. In the end, it didn’t matter.

  Alone in her ship, Zoë watched the clock tick away the minutes. Hours had passed since she left the man who had been her fiancé, and still she stayed awake, troubled by a pain she could not name. She turned over and tried to sleep, but as usual, she found herself thinking more of Thomas than of anyone else.

  Chapter Twelve

  June 18, 2507, 11:20 p.m.

  Zoë knocked on the door. She waited a moment, then wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. She knocked again, but before she could pull back her fist, the door opened, and Jamie stood behind the screen, his dark hair messy.

  “Are you okay, Zo?” he said. “It’s almost midnight.”

  “I just need to talk. And I knew you’d be awake.”

  He unlatched the door and opened it. She stepped inside the dim living room. From one of the windows she could see the shadows of a lush garden in his backyard, filled with sunflowers and trellises.

  Jamie disappeared into the kitchen, and she sat down on the couch, still trembling. She turned on the TV, saw a report about the king’s funeral, and turned it off.

  A moment later, Jamie re-appeared with a mug of coffee, and handed it to her.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  He sat down. “So what’s wrong?”

  “It’s me and Thomas. We got into a fight.”

  “What happened?”

  Zoë’s fingers traced the edge of the mug. “He’s in love with someone else.”

  “What? He seemed to really like you. Maybe it’s just a misunderstanding. I mean, what did he say?”

  “Well, he’s been seeing this girl. I asked him about it, and ... he just started mocking me. Called her a time traveler, or something.”

  “A ... a time traveler?”

  “Oh, it all sounds so stupid now. I’m sorry to bother you. Maybe I should go.”

  “No, no. Uh, why don’t I talk to him? Maybe in the morning.”

  “I can’t ask that from you.”

  He took her hand. “Just wait here a minute,” he said. He walked over and grabbed his guitar from its case. A platinum pocket watch—the one Ariel had given him—tumbled out.

  “Stay as long as you need,” he called over to her.

  He turned over the watch. History was supposed to go one way, breaking Zoë’s heart over and over again—but then, history could change.

  2.

  A year before Kyle died, Zoë Martínez was twenty-one and Biochemical Pathways was at the height of its fame.

  It was 2505, and a national magazine decided to do a profile of the young woman. She sat for a full-page photo dressed in white and wearing a pearl necklace, her red lips a flat line, her eyes sparkling: the lovely and mysterious socialite.

  Not by any action of her own, Zoë had become a high-profile member of the music scene. She had attended the Grammy ceremonies twice with the band, appearing on stage when they collected their awards. Though she recorded some vocals for the band’s albums, and played synth live when the songs called for it, she did not consider herself a musician.

  “I’m a pilot,” she said to the article’s reporter. “The open sky—that’s my song.”

  She had thought the article would be a minor piece, but while on tour in London, Zoë stopped in the middle of the street and saw a rack of magazines with her face on them. She pursed her lips, and asked Jamie what he thought.

  He didn’t reply. He couldn’t tear his gaze away from a billboard showing a slim brunette model. The advertisement was years old, and the model, disappointed by her fading looks, had long ago started a military career. But the image of eighteen-year-old Kira Watson still made Jamie’s heart flip.

  Zoë was many times more famous than the former model, but had never had someone fall in love with her, let alone as much as Jamie had with Kira. “How can you still love someone who never gave you the time of day?” she asked.

  “There’s a simple reason,” Jamie had replied, “but I have no idea what it is...”

  No one knew where they had met, and Jamie would never say, but when he was nineteen he fell deeply in love with young Kira Watson. They lived five streets apart in Tenokte, in different worlds: he was a penniless musician, and she could make thousands of credits in a single photo shoot.

  The model politely declined all offers for a date. So Jamie composed a song for her: “Dame de la Pluie,” the moody tune that would become one of his biggest hits. A local DJ, knowing and sympathizing with Jamie’s plight, played it over and over again early in the summer of 2501 in the hopes that Kira would hear it. She did, and finally she said yes: she would give him a chance.

  Jamie was elated. The summer of love, as he called it, saw him write nearly a song a day. But the relationship wore down, and though Kira couldn’t think of a single thing she disliked about him, she also couldn’t find anything she did. She left him.

  A week later, at a friend’s party, Jamie attempted suicide. Paramedics rushed him to a hospital, where he spent three days under evaluation and was then released. “I’ll never be free,” he lamented. “Cupid didn’t hit me with an arrow. He shot me with a bullet.”

  He dropped out of sight for two days, not returning calls or answering his door. His friends, alarmed and fearing the worst, phoned the police. A dozen officers searched his apartment, but found nothing. Jamie Parson
s had vanished.

  Rumors sprang up immediately. Had he successfully committed suicide, and if so, where was the body? Had he run away to start a new life? A search went out for him for days, including monitoring his ID cards for any activity. Nothing showed up. The musician had dropped off the face of the earth.

  Then, later that week, Jamie walked back to his apartment building, a guitar case on his back, and saw the yellow crime-scene tape. He spent an afternoon in an interrogation room, but only gave the following explanation: “Sorry for worrying you all. I lost track of time.”

  Kyle and Damien chased his song all summer, and finally caught up with him to start the band. As the songs rose on the charts and the three boys’ bank accounts gained a string of zeros, a reporter asked Kira if she had made a mistake.

  “No,” she replied. “And my leaving him says more about my personality than his. I couldn’t make the relationship work. I’d like to put the whole incident behind me.”

  By the time she’d left Jamie, she had already quit modeling and, against her mother’s advice to become an actress, joined the military. There, the poster girl found an obsession of her own: the secret police. And in her years of pursuing time travelers, she never knew that she had missed them by just a few days.

  3.

  June 18, 2507, 10:35 p.m.

  Kira sat in a taxi, headed for a party, when her cell phone rang. “Hello?”

  “Lieutenant, I found something that I think will interest you greatly.”

  “Caxton? What’s up?”

  “Agent Nineteen returned to the base earlier today.”

  “What? Did he remember anything?”

  “No. He asked a lot of questions, though.”

  “Anything about the girl?”

  “No, but I found something rather interesting. Random cameras throughout the city have been only showing static for the past few days. We found the signal interfering with them, and someone was able to block it. I think you need to take a look. I’m sending a clip to your phone.”