My lack of abilities in the metaspace and the future’s aggravating trend of hiding light switches foils my efforts to illuminate the space around me. When I had gone to bed the hallway had been glowing softly from the walls, a soothing, pale blue light, dimmed and sleepy. Now the house is eerily lifeless.
“Darius, could I get some lights?” I query the walls, hoping the chief of house is up. The house remains silent and bathed in darkness. I stumble down the hallway to the stairs and finally glimpse some light in the foyer below. The front door is open, no doubt left that way by my fleeing girlfriend. I descend the stairs and move toward the door, but stop short at the sight of the figure lurking just inside the entrance to the living room. In the darkness, it’s hard to make out features, but as I step closer, I recognize the glint of metal in the dim moonlight.
“Darius? Did you see Mym?”
The synth remains silent. I approach cautiously, thinking he may be in some sort of sleep mode. It’s only when I’m mere steps away that I see the wires dangling down the front of the metal man’s chest. They are encased in a gooey sort of membrane and the goo has run down Darius’s breastplate, leaving a trail of glistening slime. The wires have been ripped from his throat and left there. Oh God. I recall Darius’s words from earlier. “All of the manor’s security protocols route through me…” I take a horrified step back and slip a little. When I look down I realize I’ve stepped into a puddle of Darius’s internal fluids.
I freeze in place, taking a frantic new assessment of my surroundings. Something is very, very wrong. “Mym?” I whisper this time. Hearing no response, I abandon Darius’s disabled form and move through the foyer to the front door. It’s standing ajar just as it was before, but I’m seeing it anew. Was it just Mym leaving, or did something else get inside?
I linger, frozen in my uncertainty—listening. In the darkness my other senses are clamoring for primacy, the oily scent of leaked lubricants from Darius, the faint rustling of the wind through the trees outside. Was it all wind, or someone breathing?
Just inside the door is an ornamental metal cylinder. There is a hand carved wooden walking stick protruding from among a collection of umbrellas and a pair of canes. I ease the walking stick out from among the umbrellas as quietly as I can and grip it with both hands, wielding it like a bat. Thus armed, I poke my head out the door and then take a few cautious steps.
Once outside, I walk into the drive and look around the grounds. The shrouded moon is a feeble companion tonight, but what the moonlight does reveal is more quiet woods around the property. The shadows of the trees stretch out for the house like fingers.
Mym is in the open grass at the side of the house, arms wrapped around herself in the chilly air, her bare legs freckled with moisture from her run across the dewy lawn.
Seeing me emerge from the house, she takes a step back. “What was that, Ben? What’s happening?”
I reach for her, though I’m still fifty feet away. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t me. I promise it wasn’t me.”
“How can I know it’s you now? What happened to you? You just woke up and grabbed me.”
“I know. I’m so, so sorry.” I take a few steps closer to her, but Mym backs away. “Look, something is going on here. Come back to the house.” I gesture for her to come closer, holding the walking stick away from myself, to let her know I’m not threatening her with it.
“I don’t like this. Whatever is going on in your head needs to stop.” She clenches herself even tighter. “I want you to figure this out, but not if he’s going to be like this. It’s too scary. You’re scaring me.”
“Mym, I’m so sorry.” I drop the stick in the grass and hold my arms out to her. “Please, just come back inside and we can figure this out.”
“You need to make sure he—” Mym freezes mid-sentence, staring beyond me now. Her expression changes from fear of me to fear of something else. Out of the corner of my eye, the shadows around the house are moving, coming alive.
“Ben! Watch out!” Mym jerks an arm up and points past me. I spin in place in time to see a liquid blackness spring up and charge me from the flowerbed. The figure hurtles forward, striking me hard in the stomach before I have time to react. Another moment and my legs are swept out from under me. I crash to the lawn in a twisted heap.
“Mym! Run!” I gasp, just as the shadow knees me in the back, flattening me to the ground. Mym flees, sprinting around the side of the house, one hand clenching at her tank top, grasping for her pendant chronometer. But the shadows have sprung up around her, emerging from the edge of the house, from the trees, from the very ground. They converge on her as she runs. She vanishes around the corner with the hooded figures in pursuit.
“Ben!” Her shout comes out as a shriek from somewhere around back of the house, but gets muffled. I come unfrozen, rolling over and lashing out wildly at the shadowy person above me. A fist materializes from the darkness and strikes me hard, slamming my head back into the grass. I know I’ll suffer from the blow later, but for now my rage won’t let me feel it. As I ricochet upward again, my own fist aims downward and crushes the groin of my attacker with all the fury I can muster. The shadow above me groans and I strike again in the gut, and then again, unseating him from atop me. I roll out from under him and scramble to my feet, dizzy but pumping with adrenaline.
I dash around the corner of the manor, my bare feet slipping in the wet grass. As I sprint to the back of the house my senses are slow to pick up the changes in the darkness. Nothing seems to be in the right place, the clouds blur with the watery horizon and the house seems to slant sideways. My vision is swimming and I waver.
I stumble to a stop in the middle of the back lawn, searching the darkness. The sound of the water against the bluffs at the back of the property guides my eyes to the edge of the cliff and the figures silhouetted against it. Multiple dark forms are outlined there, and in their midst is Mym, pressed tight between two hulking men in hoods. The darkness at the tree line births more figures, also shrouded, their features indiscernible in the darkness. It’s the voice that I recognize, slithering across the grass and into my ears.
“Benjamin, it was so good of you to send Miss Quickly out to us. The butler was rather impolite and was set against letting us in. We would have made it inside to get her presently, but we appreciate whatever you did to inspire her exit.” The venomous voice is coming from the bent form of a man just to the right of Mym’s position. My vision finally focuses as he takes a step forward, his head bare in the moonlight.
Elgin.
Mym struggles in the grip of her captors, but one of the men has his gloved hand across her mouth so whatever she says comes out only as a murmur. Both of her arms are pinned behind her so she has no chance to escape via her pendant chronometer. My fingers find my own wrist and rest on the dials, my mind racing for some way out of this. My options are limited, however. I have no idea how long these people have been here or what they plan to do with Mym. If I made a jump now, I would almost certainly end up with grass fused through my bare feet any time I chose to arrive. It would be painful and possibly debilitating, and ultimately pointless if I don’t come up with a way to free Mym. Out of the corner of my vision I see more shadows closing in on me from behind. There must be at least twenty of these people altogether.
One of the men next to Mym is pointing something at her. A box with a meter on top. A temporal spectrometer. He scans Mym and shows Elgin the results.
“How excellent,” Elgin murmurs. “Even better than we expected.”
“What do you want with us?” I meant for the question to come out demanding, but my voice is more tremulous than I can control.
“Still catching on too late, aren’t you Travers? Didn’t see any of this coming? Did you really think you would come here and not have us notice?” Elgin asks. “Here of all places. And to show up with the daughter of Doctor Harold Quickly so neatly in tow? It’s almost as if you wanted us to have her.”
“Let her go, Elgi
n.”
The old man narrows his eyes and takes a step closer. “You are in no position to make demands. If you are interested in Miss Quickly’s safety, I would suggest you cooperate. You can make all of this go away if you are willing to be reasonable.”
My heart is racing and my mind is struggling to process all that has happened in the past few minutes. It’s a nightmare, but the look of terror in Mym’s eyes is all too real. She’s staring at me, but I can’t read the meaning she’s trying to convey.
“Whatever you want, you can take me. Let her go. I’ll go with you.”
“Oh, aren’t you the chivalrous one,” Elgin says. “But I’m afraid you would be nowhere near as useful to us as Miss Quickly. You can do us a service, however,” Elgin continues. “You will get a message to Doctor Quickly. He has proven stubbornly elusive and unwilling to talk, but if he would like to see his daughter alive, he’ll learn to cooperate with our demands.”
“Why do you need her?”
Elgin merely leers at me. “The business of The Lord Gnomon is not to be questioned, Mr. Travers. If you would like to see Miss Quickly again, you will simply do as we say.” He hands something to one of the other hooded figures who then approaches me. Up close I’m surprised to find the face under this hood is an old woman’s. Despite the darkness, there is something very familiar about her. She hands me a square device with a black screen approximately two inches wide.
“Doctor Quickly will find the instructions he needs inside,” Elgin says. “I suggest you be punctual. We don’t like to be kept waiting.”
“You Eternals have to resort to kidnapping to get people to talk to you? I can see why you’re lacking any decent members.”
Elgin glares at me and then his eyes flash to the woman next to me. I don’t have time to wonder what’s been implied because the answer comes in the form of a sharp jab to my ribs. The old woman has struck me with something dull, but pronged. She’s looking me full in the face now, and I finally recognize the scowling expression. The gold chain with the hourglass on it is still dangling around her neck. She’s the woman from the Academy Liaison office.
What the hell is she doing here?
A numbing shock ripples through my body from whatever she’s struck me with. My vision blackens as the ground comes rushing up to meet me.
“Ben!” Mym’s voice comes to me through the haze.
Smashed against the lawn, my last view is through blades of grass as the hooded figures drag Mym away toward the bluff.
I’m scared that her struggles might cause the whole lot of them to tumble over the cliff. I never see the outcome. Someone steps over me, headed to join the others and blocks out the view of the horizon as my body finally surrenders to the black.
11
"It’s sometimes difficult to tell if you are the first time traveler to visit a given timestream. Sometimes not. I once visited the wedding of Isabella and Ferdinand only to hear a speech that was entirely the lyrics to 'Wind Beneath My Wings' by Bette Midler. I felt a bit cheated, but at least the food was good.”- Journal of Doctor Harold Quickly, 1469
The Neverwhere- St. Petersburg
Staying alive is my new obsession. Getting alive, anyway.
Sitting in the park near St. Petersburg’s downtown marina, staring at the hazy memories of my old life, I can finally recognize it for what it is. Just the past. Life—lived, used, and imprecisely catalogued. This Neverwhere—this space without time—is just the lingering attachment to a world I remember but no longer occupy. This is not an infinite beyond but rather a finite space defined by the limits of my own memory and those of whoever else shows up here. Suddenly it feels claustrophobic. It makes me long for new territory, something fresh and unexplored. A life yet to be.
It’s an odd struggle. It makes me wonder if there are other minds or consciousnesses, loaded with potential but unfulfilled, stuck in a limbo like this, just waiting their turn to inhabit bodies. Is that what it’s like before we’re born? Are we a vast collection of unmade memories—blank pages waiting to be filled?
I look around the park I’m in. A familiar pub sits on the corner across the street and a parking lot where they host a weekly market. For memories to hold on to, these are not especially exciting.
I have a quarter century worth of life under my belt. A pittance really. The majority of my presumed lifespan still left un-lived. I’ve seen my share of the country, and traveled the globe a little bit before becoming a time traveler, but I had just begun to experience a world beyond my time. A journey home from an accidental displacement, and a mad dash across history. Both were amazing journeys, well beyond anything I could ever have dreamed up—in both wonderful and terrifying ways—but then that was it. It ended. I ended.
I never made it home again. Never got to tell Mym how much I had fallen for her. Never got to stop the manipulative and murderous men and women corrupting the chronothon. Never got to avenge the deaths of my friends.
Except I did.
Having spent a few brief moments inside the head of my alter ego, I know he survived. Somehow, some way, he lived. It seems unfair that if there was a way out of my demise at the Temporal Studies Society that no one bothered to inform me. It’s a cruel twist of fate that I am the one who had to take the fall.
I’m not angry.
Not completely anyway.
I can’t hate my alter ego, despite his good fortune and my rotten luck, because he has given me a tremendous gift. He’s let me feel alive again. He’s let me see Mym.
The question now is where I go from here. It’s proven that I can get back. I can occupy the same mind—the same living body in the real world as he does. Does that mean there is a real way to return? Can I stay that way? Would he let me, or is this going to be a fight?
Benny showed me that there is a way you can take control even against your other self’s wishes. It’s what Zurvan does too. That isn’t what I want, but if it is a choice between that and being stuck here, I can’t say I’m not tempted. Would I be willing to sacrifice my other self’s mind to escape this place?
Losing control was terror. The moment I lost touch with Mym—the moment Benny invaded my mind and took over—was horrifying. The worst feeling I have ever experienced. I could sense the shock in my other self as well. He was paralyzed with fear. It happened to both of us. I can’t imagine losing myself to someone else permanently. How hellish would it be to watch someone else live my life and have no control over it?
The thought gives me pause. If I were to attempt to hijack my own mind in some sort of hostile takeover, who’s to say that I’d win? Might I end up the passenger in someone else’s mind unable to do anything at all? There are few fates that I feel would be worse than being trapped in the Neverwhere, but that might be one.
No. I don’t want to fight my way in. There has to be another way.
Getting up from the park bench, I head toward the water, putting some distance between me and the site of Benny’s disappearance. He might come back at any time and I don’t want him commandeering my memories again. This time I need somewhere he hasn’t been—a memory he and I wouldn’t share. I wrack my brain, thinking of my most recent life experiences. I don’t know exactly when his timeline split from mine, but it had to have been before the chronothon. A memory from then ought to work. I just need to find myself again. Explain what happened.
I recall the way I succeeded before, then concentrate on a specific memory and open a portal, stepping through, this time into dim twilight. The air is humid, moss hanging down from the trees. The night is warm and tropical. The Caribbean. Yes. I remember this.
I realize I’m back inside my own head from that time and I’m speaking, talking to Viznir again. It’s working.
“The objective might be underwater. It points out here to this cove.” I poke my finger at a mark on a treasure map. I wasn’t the one who moved my arm, or the one speaking, but I can feel the texture of the map against my fingertip. “But that’s not the only issue. W
e’re on an island, but it’s not the same island as our repository. We’re going to need a boat.”
The thrill of contact swells through me again. “Ben?” I ask. I can almost feel myself smiling. It feels so good to be alive, relishing the sounds of insects in the canopy of trees and the subtle rustle of the palms. I feel so . . . so . . .dizzy. I stagger backward.
Shit.
I lose my balance and tumble onto my backside, then collapse to the sandy earth. The mind of my other self fades to black.
I can’t believe I did it again. I’ve really got to stop knocking him out . . .
But then the other me is back. This time he’s fighting the blackness, struggling for control again. His consciousness swirls through mine and I glimpse his thoughts, his memories blending with my own in a past/future soup of imagery—moments from the chronothon, snippets of life at home—detached from any chronological limitations. In one scene, Mym is seated on my bed reading my copy of The Neverending Story. She’s smiling. Wait, when was that? I don’t remember ever seeing . . .
The other me is processing through the visions too. I can feel him in parallel with me, trying to hold onto the vision of Mym the same way I am. He misses her too . . . For the moment we’re functioning in tandem. I can feel the subtle hum of his unconscious mind at work. I can see him now. A mirror image of myself in the void. Only it’s no longer a void. We get a vision of something else. Something new.
We’re standing in a flat desert. Pale white, like the salt flats of Utah, but with great rivers of color rising into the sky. I look upward and see the way they arc over me, thick tangible rainbows. They course through this place like electric currents, pulsing against eternity. The sky around them is lavender colored. Thin wisps of fog or cloud linger in the spaces between, shimmering and refracting the multicolored light, celestial and otherworldly.
Dragging my eyes from the scene above me, I look back at my mirror image. He’s studying me. Inquisitive. I remember that confusion. He’s already struggling with the turmoil of the chronothon, but now he has to process this, too. I can feel his thoughts and anxieties. The race. Mym. Struggling to get home. This isn’t the right time to explain it all, but the right words come back to me—a resurfacing memory. “You’ll have to find me. When this is over. Find me, Ben.”
In Times Like These Boxed Set Page 132