Ignoring his theoretical babble I continue foisting the gun, turning it over. Lytkin is a grub clinging to the underside of temporal flotsam. In a moment he will disappear forever. He senses my murderous intent and, predictably, begins pleading for his life.
“You cannot do this, you cannot - ”
I fire. Lytkin’s chest explodes and he is flung from the bed. I move slowly, smoothly, taking care not to drop the weapon. He lies between the bed and the wall, panting like a wild animal, sheets pulled to his nose, soaked through with blood.
“No,” he says, between wheezes. “No, no, no.”
I empty the revolver.
He lies lifeless as a mound of meat. But nothing is changed. Reality doesn’t bend. The string winding out, chasing me all through time doesn’t pull tight or drag me off somewhere new. The universe stands unfazed. Or does it? Has reality bifurcated? Am I locked away from Christiana in some newly created branch?
I drop the weapon and depart.
I pass through time, skimming decades in seconds, and there, same as always, is the schism of blue, the bleak prologue, the shadow haunted ruins. I am relieved and disappointed all at once.
“What happened?” asks Christiana.
“Nothing. The event must’ve already severed the past from the present. It exists separate from the things that came before it. And now so does the future.”
A thought crosses my mind. Did Lytkin force the paradox and its resultant collapse on purpose? Did he know what would result? Did he do this to cauterize himself from consequence? When he left me to the experiment, was he jumping ship on the past, fleeing into the future?
“Mom, I think you need to stop doing this. You’ve tried. I want you to stay with me in the here and now. What are you trying to accomplish anyway?”
“I can’t give up,” I say. “I can’t surrender the past. If the past exists apart from me, there may be a way to mend it.”
“What are you afraid of?” asks Christiana. “We’ve got nothing left to fear, and all this time we’ve had - I count it as an undeserved kindness, an epilogue we didn’t know we’d get.”
“But what if there’s a moment I haven’t discovered? What if we could leave this purgatory?”
“All that’s going to happen is you’re going to spend what little time we’ve been blessed with fighting the inevitable. I’d rather have you fully present for ten minutes, than to have you distracted for all eternity. Why is it so bad if the guardians put us out of our misery?”
“What are you saying? That you want us to die? That you want to cease to exist? There may be another way. What if I could take you with me?”
“And what if I’m incompatible with the past? What if going there destroys me? How would you live with yourself?”
Christiana was fascinated by the past when she was young. Her eyes would widen. She would ask me to describe the world as it was before she arrived, but even then bygone days were sealed. I fumbled at nostalgic sketches. Now I wonder if I could take her with me, slip backstage, and show her the world behind the curtain that dropped, and in so doing seal her in the living past, safe from the lifeless present.
Christiana stands, brushing desiccated hair from her face. “Remember how you told me about how when I was a teenager I became obsessed with death? And you said you could tell, behind all my pretense, just how afraid I was. Remember?”
“Yes.”
“I’m different now, Mom. Now death is like a sweater that hangs in my closet. It’s familiar. I’ve grown used to it. I know that it’s in there, waiting for me, and that one day I’ll just reach for it without even knowing. I look at you now, what you’ve become. You’re this ghost kept alive, cursed with endless guilt, cursed with immortal dissatisfaction. But maybe it can stop. Maybe if you let me go, then you’ll be able to let go of your guilt and find peace.”
I say, “No.”
And other than that I’ve little else to say.
I explore the blessings of my curse.
The next time I leap away from Christiana I burrow into an epochal footnote. I spend ages in dark gullies of time, exploring my potential. I learn that, if I concentrate when I release myself, I can peer into the past and the present in simultaneity. I can compensate. I can redirect myself in the present. But the most important thing I learn is how to carry objects with me across time. It doesn’t always work. Sometimes they’re fried as they pass through the event. Other times they slip from my grasp, exploding into particles. But when it does work I can arm myself. And with this possibility comes another. One I’m eager to explore; the possibility that one day I will be able to carry my daughter with me into the past and that we can hide - a pair of mice taking refuge from the fire.
For now, though, I am a pack rat. I smuggle weapons, amassing an arsenal, burying things in moonless fields. I take rifles and grenades, I even manage to take something intended for guardians - a weapon designed to destroy me.
My single-minded plan unfolds in vision. Like Medusa, I transform that which is pliable into stone. A sure path rises from the smoke and I cannot help but follow. I set a bookmark in today and skim ahead into tomorrow.
The nightsmoke thickens, blotting out what’s left of dusk’s purple glow. I’ve gotten used to straining out the clamor, internal and external, the groaning generators that feed the floodlights, the chorus of trailing voices when I hear myself speak. I’ve grown used to the world’s ceaseless moan. My entire focus is on my daughter.
I follow her through the streets as she walks with my successor. I know my role this time through. I am the fail-safe. I am part of a plan that’s still unfolding - nevertheless, seeing my daughter arm in arm with my future self makes me insecure. I pass swiftly from hiding place to hiding place, ducking into shadow, acting the part of the cuckold tracking the mistress.
Today the shadows are especially peculiar. Instead of their repetitious pantomime, they stream through the streets all headed in the same direction, drawn as if by instinct.
Christiana consults my double.
“Where do you think they’re going?”
“To the valley. They want to see the end of the world.”
I overhear snippets of conversation.
“Maybe that’s their purpose,” says Christiana, but I’m unsure what she’s referring to. My mind is drawn with guilt. I’m a careless child that knocked the hourglass from the shelf, making instantly tragic the entire history of mankind. Life has been retroactively ruined by its catastrophic denouement; all hopeful moments, all daydreams and aspirations, culminate in oblivion, and the destroyer - mankind’s Judas - has been granted immortality to flit across the wreckage like a butterfly.
Inside I feel a million years old, stretched as thin as a plastic sheet, the past and the present constantly tugging me in either direction. If I let go the mad rush of time will pull me away, and I’ll swell out like ink does in water, but like all forms of energy I will never disappear. One day, if my way to save my daughter fails, maybe I’ll be curious enough to go back and see how it all began. Or maybe I’ll wade ahead, riding the slow progress of years to witness the dimming of the sun. I’ll watch the universe fold itself up and put itself away like a wrinkled map shoved into a glovebox.
For now I need concentration. I need to assist - to participate in something I’ve yet to live through. I pull a sack from the moistureless earth and retrieve the handgun. I watch the combatants take the field, and clutching my weapon I descend.
My feet are solid; they brush clumps of pallid mushrooms and bend the whitish blades rotting in the turf. The reek of the dying world stings my nose, its rot settling inside my mouth, covering it with a scummy patina. I reach for Christiana’s hair. It feels coarse as straw and wiry. We stand at the entrance to a great, open valley, enclosed by hills charred black by the cancerous event. Shadows drift past us, marching in mindless solidarity. She reaches for me, taking me by the arm. Her hand is wired through with veins like twisted roots.
“I can’t stop
thinking about it,” she says. “Maybe our death - even if it comes at the hand of the guardians - would lead us to freedom. Maybe the shadows are people on another plane, someplace we go to when we die. Maybe they’re gathering in the valley so that they can welcome us once we’ve crossed over.”
“No,” I say. “I’ve spent aeons studying the shadows. I know what they are. The shadows are echoes of the disappeared. They’re all that’s left of the dead and nothing more.”
“And why am I different than they are? The only thing I can think of - ” She looks deep into my eyes. “The only thing I can think of is you.”
“Maybe. Maybe it’s because you’re special.”
“Maybe it’s because I’m special to you. And that’s why. I mattered to you and so,” she says, pausing, thoughts arriving atop words, “you made me into matter. And maybe - even if they kill me - you can will me into existence again.”
My mind races. Is it possible? Is it possible I’ve willed Christiana into existence the same way I did myself? It’s a chance I’m unwilling to take.
“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe. But both of us, we both matter to Lytkin - and that’s what’s important. To rebuild his world he needs us to disappear. How can he reclaim history with someone to testify against him? We’re the only witnesses left.”
“No. You’re the only witness,” says Christiana. “I’m just the lure.”
I ready myself, drawing the disintegrator, checking its settings, knowing the first two portals will swirl open in tandem, seeing exactly where they’re going to be. I lean forward slightly, peering a few seconds into the future, concentrating so as to keep my body tethered to the past. I see them - blurred fore-gleams sharpening into something distinct.
“What are you aiming at?” asks Christiana. “There’s nothing - ”
Energy leaps from my weapon catching the nascent portal before it’s completely open. The circle collapses, disappearing in a vacuum of sucking wind. Another gateway shudders open behind me. This time I see him. He is clad in black, his face closed behind a reflective visor. I fire a shot that catches him mid-stride. He screams. Burns. Dies. Four portals this time in pairs of two. I turn, squeeze the trigger, release, repeat, one, two - but not in time for the third and fourth. They fire. Orange plasma claws through the air with a leonine roar. I fling the gun up and let myself unfurl.
I exist dispersed, stretched across a span of time. They’ve only torched the first in a line of paper dolls that stretches further than their weapons can reach. My fourth temporal fore-ghost has the presence of mind to spin and face them, the fifth sizes them up with steely eyes, the sixth reaches into the air, grabbing the disintegrator, the seventh plants her feet. The leftmost guardian falls, screaming, his lower extremity torched. The next rushes in on me with hurried desperation. I paint him up the center with fire and his arms drop to the ground like a pair of wriggling maggots.
But I’ve moved too quickly. I’ve dissipated. The weapon has slipped from my hand.
Now there are eight. They don’t bother with the fluttering ghost. They sight in on the lure. I see Christiana’s face, my name on her lips as she bursts into flame.
What comes next isn’t the flame of their weapons, but something new: a concussive bubble that wrestles me to the ground. It moves slowly, juddering, collecting me from a series of successive seconds, until I’m pinned as though a moth. A few slivers manage to roll aside, but not enough - they snap into place with the rest of their pilloried kin, handcuffed to the fate of their sisters.
“Looks like it worked,” says one of the guardians.
“Good riddance,” says another.
Their weapons re-ignite. I understand. They will hold me down and scrub my every vestige from existence. This is how they will destroy my inconstant soul. I see the final thoughts of my manifold selves flashing up, blinking out. They pop as would a string of firecrackers. It would work, this plan of theirs - I would cease to exist - if not for the failsafe I’d thought of the last time I was here. The first time I was here.
The burning stops.
The world is silent. I pull what’s left of me back together and stand. There is no need to thank my accomplice. She knows exactly what it is that I’m thinking and she knows what it is we need to do next. We need to try again.
This time I take seventeen of them down. The portals begin opening in sets of twelve. They overwhelm my sisters with numbers and Christiana dies screaming. We need to try again.
This time portals rend their way through the sky and they drop from above like caterpillars from an exploded cocoon. My sisters snipe at them, but we are overcome. Still, we are pressing back. It is several minutes before they manage to kill Christiana. We need to try again.
But all of these battles are yet to be waged. I concentrate on the present, the first step that takes me across a perilous tightrope of tomorrows. I am here, a single woman about to become many. My ambitions loom as though a mountain, no less real for its distance.
I stand over Christiana as she tosses and turns, my body prickly with sensation. I stay the urge to scratch the ants nibbling at my scalp. She wakes. Her eyes scrabble like crabs across my face, my hair, my arms, searching unfamiliar ground.
“You’ve changed. You look so real.”
She reaches out and I feel the sensation of her fingertips, coarse against my cheek.
“You’ve made yourself whole,” she says.
“Because of you,” I say, my voice solid, words absorbing into the room instead of bouncing and twisting in phantasmic spirals. “You were the reason I could wake up and now you are the reason I can make myself whole. You brought me back to life again, sweetheart.”
She leaps from her bed, embraces me, and it feels so good. I almost forget the horrors waiting right around the corner. I want to occupy this moment forever. I will never relive often enough the very first time we are reunited as two whole, flesh and blood people.
Outside, the world is swarming with shadow people.
“Where do you think they’re going?” asks Christiana.
I run through our exchange as if reciting from a script, performing each sentence as if I’m following tracers sailing across the night sky.
“To the valley,” I say. “They want to see the end of the world.”
We stand at the entrance of the great valley. I could draw the jagged outline of the blackened hills with my eyes closed. The shadows form a circle the size of a stadium, and among them stands an army.
“Mom,” says Christiana. “Are those all - ”
I don’t need to answer. She sees them - some exact duplicates others distorted. She recognizes what I’ve done, my future intentions made manifest, that I’ve amassed countless multitudes of self. Their armaments run the gamut. There are blades from antiquity and rifles from the Second World War.
“What have you done?” she asks.
“Nothing,” I say. “Not yet. But don’t you see? This is what I will do. This is what I’m willing to do to save you. I will double and redouble and triple, until I’ve overwhelmed them.”
I will chase the decisions the future demands, obeying Novikov’s self-consistency principle, following my will until it’s all that remains.
The portals open in pairs of dozens and dozens of pairs. My sisters unite. They scream a battle cry and lunge. I feel their determination. If this war lasts forever I’ll spend the rest of eternity here, fighting this fight until there are no more guardians left for them to send.
“You see,” I say. “I’ll never let you go. I’ll never let anything happen to you.”
My distorted twins clash against their opponents, disemboweling, executing, slaughtering en masse. Among them I see brutish warriors, bestial fiends I hardly recognize. Their teeth are sharp, their eyes blazing, their faces painted with blood. Some are winged with mouths full of daggers, others are giantesses, their femininity cast aside like dead weight.
Christiana gapes at the army summoned from my anger, eyes full of terror. Her
head shakes involuntarily. Her mouth is a circle. She says no, over and over again. No, no, no, no, no.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Please,” says Christiana. “Please make it stop. I’d rather we didn’t have anything. I’d sooner we were both dead.”
“But Christiana, don’t you see what I’ve done? What I’m going to do?”
“I see your choice. But - ” she raises her hands to the horde of warriors. “I don’t see you anymore.”
She grabs ahold of me and pleads.
“Please don’t do this.”
“But you know what it will mean if I don’t. You know the price of inconstancy.”
Eyes full of tears, she nods.
“I love you,” she says.
I feel myself capitulate.
I extinguish the spark that begets the inferno and it comes in a second - another flash of blue. This time the destruction is total. The shadows dissipate, the world rends in two, time folds in on itself and everything disappears - every cry, every tear, every single mistake.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR
by Rhonda Parrish
The hockey card pinned to Aric’s spokes clattered as he pedaled over the last few yards of his driveway. As he dismounted and leaned the bicycle up against the house he knew it was going to be a bad night. His father’s truck was parked crookedly in the driveway with the door open and making a soft dinging sound. After checking through the window to make sure his father wasn’t slumped over the seat snoring, Aric slammed the door. The dinging stopped and the cab light went out. Last week when he’d discovered the truck in a similar state he’d left it as it was and the battery had died. His father had been furious and Aric had been unable to sit on his bicycle seat for two days.
As he left the bright sunlight and stepped into the dim light of the house, Aric stopped to give his eyes a moment to adjust. The first thing he recognized as the grey blurs in front of him coalesced into solid objects was the six pack of Ranier longnecks on the kitchen table. Each was empty and had its cap turned up like a crown on its mouth. The air was heavy with their scent and the sharp odor of sweat. An ocean breeze ruffled the curtain of the open kitchen window bringing a small breath of freshness which the house quickly swallowed up.
Kzine Issue 8 Page 10