Then I tell Tara the difficult part. I want to keep it hidden, but I find myself unable to lie to her, even by omission. So I allow her to see me for the coward I really am. I confess to running away. To leaving Anne behind, because I couldn’t help her mother, and because I couldn’t stand to see her in pain. She might have forgiven me, in time, but I’d always imagine the accusation, even when it was no longer there.
So I ran. I left Anne, and I left San Antonio. I moved to New York City and lived an unglamorous life of waiting for those brief moments when the spark would flare up within me, and I would become more than a fraction of myself.
We talk for hours, and it feels like catching up with an old, dear friend rather than a stranger I met this afternoon. Neither of us wants to stop, but a day of physical labor has taken its toll. We’re exhausted and hungry.
I drive across the bridge and take Belt Parkway into Brooklyn. Less than twenty minutes later we’re in Bay Ridge, a neighborhood that was largely unaffected by the storm. It feels like another world. There are lights, bars and restaurants are open, and groups of young people laugh as they stroll down the sidewalks not covered in mud and sand.
We wolf down some sandwiches and then drive to my studio apartment in Bensonhurst. There, we undress each other and allow our bodies and our minds to intertwine. Our lovemaking feels like the most natural thing in the world—there is none of the pressure, none of the urgency of a typical first encounter. In this, too, we feel like long-lost soul mates, reconnected at last.
We don’t bother showing up on our designated block the following morning. Not because we shirk from helping people—far from it. We discover that, together, we can do so much more. Tara’s presence acts as some sort of amplifier, fanning the flames of my magic beyond anything I’ve been capable of before.
The next few days are a blur. We walk the streets of Far Rockaway and Breezy Point, Canarsie and Seagate, and we bestow anonymous blessings like a pair of traveling angels.
We lift spirits and cool tempers. We mend foundations of homes that would be condemned otherwise, and prevent sinkholes from forming under the streets. And we cure people, purging ailments they don’t even know they have, shrinking cancers and clearing arteries, lifting depressions. We can’t be everywhere at once, aren’t powerful enough to help everyone—but we make things incrementally better wherever we go, and that’s enough.
Tara’s headaches are epic and my magic is there to help soothe them, a mending she couldn’t work on herself. When I’m with her, my power is reliably there, and while I can’t shake the fear of losing it at a crucial moment after so many years of uncertainty, I’m finding it very easy to get used to its constant presence.
Together, we’re happy.
Even with the two of us enhancing each other’s powers, there are limits to what we can accomplish. By the end of the day we’re exhausted, wrung out like a wet towel. We share a comfortable silence as we wait in a protracted gas line. It stretches on for several blocks, and it takes my car over two hours to inch up to within sight of the station.
Outside, there is a somewhat shorter line for people with gas cans. Forty minutes of freezing outdoors gets you up to five gallons of gasoline. We watch a woman carry a full red canister away from the station like some prized possession, when a man jumps out from the shadows, snatches her canister, and runs.
I search for the spark, trying to summon my magic in time to help. The spark is there but almost dormant, my power spent throughout the day. Then I feel Tara’s anger. It feeds my spark in a wholly different way and fans it into a brilliant burning flame. Her rage is like lighter fluid poured generously onto the fire of my ability. Despite the urgency, I take a moment to revel in so much power, and then I act.
The thief stumbles and goes down, rough concrete scraping his hands and face. He recoils from the horrors I inserted into his mind’s eye. I conjure fears from the deepest corners of his self, his worst nightmares given shape. Then he howls and runs, pursued by phantoms.
I struggle not to do a lot worse. But using magic to cause fear and pain isn’t the path I want to travel. Instead, I enjoy the euphoria of extra power even as it drains away from me. There’s just enough left to assuage Tara’s headache.
We don’t pay attention to the news, since we’re busy helping people, doing stuff that’s actually important. Because of this, I don’t learn about the next storm until it’s almost upon us.
This one is called a nor’easter instead of a hurricane, but it’s malevolent and powerful, and I can feel traces of dark magic in every gust of its icy wind.
I let Tara know that something bad is coming on the heels of the previous storm. Something that’s potentially as bad as Sandy. And then I tell her that she and I should stop it. She balks at the challenge. She believes that, even together, our powers aren’t enough to tackle something on this scale. But I won’t be dissuaded. I won’t hold back, not this time, not when I’m able to access my power.
I believe that storms like this are no accident of nature. There must be evil men out there using their power to strengthen the storms. To aim them at major cities, to hurl them at where they can do the most damage, to cause misery, and pain, and death. I can sense their subtle machinations whenever my own spark cooperates.
If there are people out there evil and powerful enough to control the storms, then such magic can be undone by humans as well. We may or may not be powerful enough to do it, but I argue that we owe it to the millions of people in our city to try.
Reluctantly, she agrees to help me.
We make several attempts, none successful.
With Tara’s help I can reach into the heart of the storm. I can see its inner workings and feel the medley of raw energy and dark magics that power it. But I’m not strong enough to alter its path, to dampen its fury. It feels like trying to move a very large piece of furniture on my own. I might be able to handle the weight if only there was a good way to grab proper hold of it.
Tara wants to give up. Her headache flares up, so much so that I can’t soothe it with my magic. My heart breaks at her suffering, but I know that the two of us must work through it, pay any price, in order to succeed. I know what I have to do.
I say unkind, hurtful things in order to urge her on. I hate myself and vow to apologize later, to make amends. But Tara’s anger is the key; it is the only way to achieve the extra power boost I need. So I force myself to remember the things Anne threw in my face as her mother lay dying in the cancer ward, and I repeat them to Tara. I accuse her of not wanting to help, or being selfish and cruel, of not loving me enough to give it her all.
Her hurt and anger feed my spark until there is an inferno raging within me. I have more power than I’ve ever imagined myself wielding. So much power that, for a moment, I fear it will incinerate me from the inside if I don’t find an outlet for it soon.
I unleash my power on the heart of the storm. My mind untangles the Gordian knot of dark magics, brushes aside the web of incantations binding and directing the storm, and soothes the worst of the natural patterns that drive it. I am like some ancient weather god, laughing as I ride the wind.
It is only as the power begins to drain from me that I turn my attention to Tara. She lies on the floor, unconscious, blood trickling from a nostril. The sight of her suffering jolts me back to reality, brings me crashing down from the supernatural high. I want so badly to make her better. Perhaps I can use what’s left of the power boost to cure her of her migraines, once and for all.
I look inside of her mind and withdraw in shock and shame. Tara’s headaches are not the side effect of the brain surgery. They’re the price she pays for her magic.
Unlike Tara, I grew up with my power. It has been unreliable and frustrating, not always there when I wanted it, but it has never exacted a physical cost. In my incredible arrogance, I assumed that’s how it worked for everyone.
Tara has much greater control over her spark, but she pays a price. The more magic she uses, the
worse her headaches become. My desire to be a hero didn’t merely drain her. It almost killed her.
I tend to Tara, check her vital signs, clean up the blood and drag her over to the bed. I do what I can to heal her, to make her comfortable, until the last shreds of magic drain away. I feel small, insignificant. Human. I plow through the nausea and fight the urge to black out.
Tara’s breathing is a little labored, but steady. Careful not to wake her, I grab my jacket and go outside.
Gentle snow is falling on New York City. The nor’easter, robbed of its supernatural boost, has become just another day of bad weather, a calamity no one will recall. Tara and I have succeeded.
I walk the streets, ignoring the cold and the snow. My thoughts keep racing back to the moment I looked inside of Tara’s mind. I didn’t just mimic Anne when I lashed out at Tara with hurtful words. I became Anne. I demanded more magic of Tara than she could stand to conjure but, unlike me, Tara was strong enough to make the sacrifice. To give more of herself than I had any right to ask.
I never quite forgave Anne for her outburst. How could I hope that Tara would forgive me? I left Anne. Surely, Tara will leave me too, once she recovered and had time to reflect. Surely, she will not be able to look at me the same way, ever again.
Last time, I ran because Anne’s words hurt me almost as much as my inability to act hurt her. This time, running would be a kindness. I can spare Tara any guilt of leaving me, if I leave her first.
I wander the snow-covered sidewalks without a purpose. Tears mix with melted snowflakes on my cheeks.
My entire life, magic has been my gift and my curse. I’ve been careful to use it only to do good, tried to make the world around me a better place. But I’ve also been a coward. I’ve allowed my power to keep me from trusting people. Used it as an excuse to erect barriers and to end relationships. I told myself that it was a part of me no one could understand. Until I met Tara and she changed everything.
This time, I dare not run away. I don’t want to hurt Tara. I would rather cut off my arm; I’d rather never use magic again, then to cause her any more pain. I cling to the hope that she might be able to forgive me, because she is a better person than I.
Tara might leave me anyway. She might walk out cursing my name, and I’ll understand. But I must let the choice be hers. I will be there for her, if she’ll have me. I come up the stairs to my apartment, my body shivering from cold and anticipation, and I open the door.
This story originally appeared at Buzzy Magazine.
Sandy was a difficult calamity for New York City, where residents aren’t accustomed to hurricanes and few have flood insurance. Many of the scenes in this story are inspired by my first-hand experiences after the hurricane. My stepfather’s house in Far Rockaway was flooded with over five feet of water, and the early Rockaway scenes are inspired by my personal experiences helping him pump out water and strip wet carpet. The later scenes about fuel shortages and neighborhoods virtually unaffected by the storm are also drawn from real life. All it took was adding a little bit of magic!
Editors at Buzzy were kind enough to adjust their publication schedule so this story would run on the first year anniversary of Sandy.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
One day Adrian decided to rebuild the world.
Adrian was always a mender. He was a tinkerer of the discarded, a fiddler of the imperfect, and a fixer of broken things. He spent blissful hours in his workshop, prodding at the source code to adjust the shade of the color green which had gone slightly askew, or to alter a perceived imperfection in the sound of a summer sun shower.
“I want to go back to basics,” said Adrian. “Back to the beginning, to help everyone remember what life was like before the upload. Before we all ended up existing in a series of disjointed worldlets with improbable physics and clashing color schemes.”
Evelyn often grumbled about the time and attention Adrian lavished on his projects, but she was quietly proud of his efforts. She enjoyed it when friends and neighbors gushed about how her simulation was always so perfect, down to the tiniest detail. Still, she found Adrian’s latest undertaking to be a bit much.
“Not that nonsense again,” Evelyn said. “Why would you want to recreate the past? The First Simulation is gone and long forgotten. Its source code crumbled to dust millennia ago. Besides, if it was so great everyone wouldn’t have abandoned it in the first place.”
“Ah, but we were so young back then,” said Adrian, “recently gone post-physical and drunk on our newfound immortality. We lacked the capacity to appreciate what we had. The flaws of the original simulation were exactly what made it perfect. It was, after all, an exact replica of the physical world. It had decay and pain and death. Nasty, primal things — but they gave life meaning and texture. “
Evelyn let Adrian be. She knew it was useless to argue with him when he got like this. Soon enough Adrian would tire of his latest fancy.
For years, Adrian spent most of his time in the workshop, obsessed with his project. He would talk of little else, and was absent-minded and irritable whenever he had to spend time away from his notes. Adrian unearthed ancient manuals and abandoned databases. He patiently cobbled together the original subroutines, strand by forgotten strand.
To Evelyn’s dismay, their simulation began to fall into disrepair. Adrian paid it no mind. Evelyn could still bully him into addressing major flaws, but their home lost much of its luster.
“I’ve done all I could with the archives,” Adrian declared seven hundred and twenty four years later. “I’m very close, but some parts of the original source code—they are missing.”
“Will you write new code to replace it?” Evelyn asked.
“I can’t. No one can, these days. We don’t remember how. Best we can manage now is putting things together that were written a very long time ago.”
“So that’s it, then?” Evelyn tried very hard to hide her pleasure at the prospect.
“Oh, no,” said Adrian. “The code I need is out there. All the individual simulations were built from bits and pieces of the original source code. The missing parts I need still exist—I just have to find them.”
And find them he did.
Adrian traveled from simulation to simulation, asking friends, then neighbors, then strangers to let him dig through the software upon which their homes were built. Some mocked his ambition and denied him entry. Others pitied him for what they saw as a fool’s errand and turned him away; they feared letting such an unsettled individual mess with the programming of their abodes. But enough respected his perseverance if not his vision to let him examine their software and copy what he wanted.
On the world where tropical islands floated in the air he recovered a formula for generating the trade winds. A strange realm where sounds manifested in living color yielded the code necessary for creating rainbows. Like an enormous jigsaw puzzle, Adrian was fitting it all together.
“I have nearly everything,” he told Evelyn four hundred years later. “The replica of the First Simulation is ready to be compiled, but for one crucial subroutine. It is something that couldn’t be copied, something I couldn’t ask of the others. Once I have it, the simulation can be put together in only a week.”
“Where will you find this last thing?” Evelyn asked.
“It’s right here, a crucial part of our own simulation. Once unraveled, it can’t be put back together again. A permanent, painful sacrifice.”
Evelyn didn’t hesitate. “Whatever it is, take it. You’ve spent over a thousand years building your new world. Whatever part of our home we must give up to let you make it whole, we will find a way to go without.”
“You are right, as always,” said Adrian.
Then he broke apart the components that made up Evelyn’s program. He sifted through her data structures and algorithms and fished out the last section of code he needed — the subroutine that would allow him to generate souls.
“A week,” Adrian said to no one in pa
rticular. “It will be finally done in a week.” He gathered the pieces of code and went into his workshop, to put all of it together.
On the first day, he created the heavens and the earth.
This story originally appeared in Nine Magazine, was reprinted in Freeze Frame Fiction and podcasted on Toasted Cake.
Post-singularity “digital human” recreating the real world from memory: what can possibly go wrong? Also, did you catch the intentional similarity of Adrian and Evelyn’s names to Adam and Eve? Instead of having Eve be created from Adam’s rib, he uses her code to birth the simulation.
DOMINOES FALLING
Jack Garnell studied his Methene contact. She didn’t seem all that dangerous, despite the rumors. Was it really true she had killed a Vilicus general with her bare hands?
Kana sat across the table from him in the tiny control room of the Stacked Deck. Her face remained passive, her semi-translucent blue skin betraying nothing.
Jack was never very good at reading the facial and body cues of other species. He knew that Kana was a security official for the Antares Federation, and that the intel she offered to trade was solid. He suppressed a shudder as he thought of the body count attributed to her in the early days of the Collapse—the time when her government set out to build a coalition of nearby planets, whether the residents of those planets liked it or not.
He was especially glad to have Ace there, probing inside Kana’s head.
“It’s all here.” Kana pushed a secure data chip across the table toward Jack. “The complete record of Zyxlar and Vilicus ship movements and cargo manifests from all the systems controlled by the Antares Federation.”
Explaining Cthulhu to Grandma and Other Stories Page 21