by Proehl, Bob
“How many more?” Sarah asks.
Fahima shrugs. “We don’t know how narrow of a bottleneck Bishop built. What percentage he thought was acceptable. Only way to find out is to break it open.”
“And this does that?” Sarah asks, pointing at the chair and the devices that surround it.
“No,” says Fahima. “This lets someone do that. I’ve got one more person I have to grab.”
* * *
—
The dorm room is dark. Fahima hears Emmeline breathing into her pillow. There’s something cruel about asking anything of the girl two days after her mother died. Fahima should go talk to her, tell Emmeline she knows what it’s like to lose a parent. Or better, be there to listen. Instead, Fahima’s recruiting her, using her. She tells herself there’s no time left. She tells herself it has to be today, now.
“Hey, Em,” she says. Sheets rustle as Emmeline rolls over. The light from Kimani’s room shimmers in Emmeline’s teary eyes.
“Did you bring my dad?”
“No, it’s just me,” Fahima says. “We can go find your dad. I’ll help. There’s just something we need to do first.”
“The thing we’ve been working on?”
“The thing we’ve been working on.” The lessons have been tense, none of the light back-and-forth they used to have. Every time Fahima takes the bracelet off Emmeline, she can feel the girl’s body seize up. They both half expect Emmeline to explode.
“I don’t think I can,” Emmeline says.
“Em, the thing that happened to your mom and all those people?” says Fahima. “It puts all of us in trouble. We’re not talking days. Hours. If we’re going to do this, it needs to be now. Can you help me?”
There’s a pause. Fahima thinks it would be better to be thrown into cells, into camps. Better for all of them be rounded up and shipped off to a desert island than to do this to Emmeline, to force her to help when she is so hurt. Before she can rush back through the door and close it behind her, Emmeline’s hand slips into hers.
“Let’s go,” Emmeline says.
Sarah is on her feet the moment they step in. “No,” she says. “You are not putting one of my students in danger to—”
“I would never put her in any danger,” says Fahima. It’s a lie. What she means is I’d rather it was me, but it has to be her. What she means is If she gets hurt, there is nothing you can do to me that’d be worse than what I’ll do to myself.
“It’s okay,” says Emmeline. “I’m ready.”
She clambers up into the chair, which now seems outsized, a throne. She sets her hands on the armrests and leans her head back as Fahima affixes a series of wires. When she’s done, when Emmeline is part of the machine, Fahima turns to the rest of them, her audience.
“It’s going to look strange,” she says. “She’ll be here but not here. She may flicker.”
She turns back to the device.
“That’s it?” Sarah asks. “That’s all you’re going to tell us?”
“You’ll see,” says Fahima. The word isn’t right. They’ll feel. They’ll register. Sight will be a component but not the most salient one. You’ll know, she thinks.
Fahima gives Emmeline a nod. Emmeline takes off the bracelet and closes her eyes. She begins to flutter in and out of existence like the signal on an old television. Her eyes shoot open, icy blue, staring forward at something no one in the room can see. Emmeline is in the Hive and in the real world simultaneously. If Fahima is right, simultaneously is no longer a word that matters for Emmeline. Emmeline is everywhere at once.
“What do you see?” Fahima asks.
“I don’t…see,” Emmeline says. Her voice is curious, like a child exploring a new space. Space may not be a word that matters anymore either. The machines around her hum, soaking up the energy she’s tapping into and dispersing it. They’re an exhaust system, coolant rods for a nuclear reactor. “There is something deep. It’s in me, and I’m in it. Is that what we’re looking for?”
“Yes,” says Fahima. She isn’t sure. They are off the map.
“It’s on the other side,” she says. “Some of it is here, but there’s more of it there. It comes through.” She looks directly at Fahima, eyes unfocused. “There’s some coming through already. It’s in you, too.” Emmeline’s head turns the way a cat turns toward an imaginary sound. “Look over there.”
“Emmeline, stay here with us,” says Fahima. “Stay now.”
“There’s a candle in the desert,” she says. “Mister Bishop is watching it from a hill. He’s younger than my dad.”
“Emmeline, come back here,” Fahima says, sounding like a scolding mother. Emmeline ignores her, stretches out her hand, extends her finger. She gives it a little twitch like she’s bopping a baby playfully on the nose. Her hand falls back onto the armrest.
“What is she doing?” Sarah asks. “I feel it in my head.”
“Sarah, be quiet,” Patrick says.
“Is she okay?” Kimani asks.
“Emmeline,” says Fahima sternly.
“I’m sorry,” Emmeline says. “It’s hard to move here, but it’s hard not to move, too. I’m flying through everything.”
“Is there a wall, Em?” Fahima asks. “Something like a wall? A blockage?”
Emmeline laughs at her. “It’s not like any of those things,” she says. “But I know what you mean. It’s part of the Hive. It’s what it’s for. It’s supposed to be there.”
“I need you to get rid of it, Em,” says Fahima.
Emmeline turns her head toward Fahima. Her open eyes search around Fahima, everywhere but her face.
“All right,” Emmeline says.
The machines are in high gear. Fahima can feel heat coming off them. She doesn’t know their upper limit. She doesn’t know what an explosion of Hive energy inside Kimani’s room, embedded in Hivespace, would do. It’s possible she’s killed them all.
Then it comes. A pulse, a rush. For Fahima, it is inspiration and communion. Her mind floods with a thousand immaculate gadgets. She can hear and touch everything with a wire or a circuit. For a heartbeat she is the god of machines, godlike in the sense of an embodiment, a form that contains all iterations of itself. It washes over her, a wave of infinite potential, crashes onto the shore, and disperses.
“What was that?” Sarah says. “I felt everybody.”
Patrick’s face has gone doughy, and he pushes it back into shape with his hands. At first he gets it wrong. It’s sharp and sculpted but not his. Someone else’s. Then he pulls together, looking amazed but afraid.
Emmeline’s eyes return to focus, a little girl again, no longer a conduit, no longer the holder and shaper of unimaginable things.
* * *
—
When they manifest in the Hive, it’s in the place where Emmeline was held captive once, years ago. Where Fahima got the first hint of what the girl was and what she potentially could do. If the Hive was built, it could be unbuilt. If it was a valve, letting some amount of energy into the world, that valve could be opened further, letting in more. From there, Fahima saw two possibilities. All of them, everyone with abilities, could become like gods. It was what she felt the moment after Emmeline opened the floodgates. It was terrifying. Fahima is relieved that it wasn’t permanent. She couldn’t stay like that forever. No one could. You’d go out of your fucking mind.
The other possibility was that the energy could be shared. Like a tuning fork struck against a piece of inert metal so that both ring. Only times a million. Times a hundred million. This ringing wouldn’t die the quick death of the tuning fork’s tone. It would resonate with a hundred million other ringings, form into one great note, the start of a song.
Fahima, Emmeline, Kimani, Patrick, and Sarah stand on a hill within the Hive and watch as people appear. They come faster and faster, crowding the infi
nite space.
“How many?” Patrick asks.
Fahima tilts her head to one side, then the other. “Two in three,” she says. A guess. “I’d say somewhere from half to two thirds within the signal range.”
“What’s the range?”
“North America.”
“I’ll call Lowery,” Patrick says. “Tell him they’re going to need a bigger camp.”
“Bet he already knows,” Kimani says.
It doesn’t stop. Fahima remembers a story. A flock of birds fly by. If there’s a definite number of birds, God exists. If the number is indefinite, he doesn’t. There’s no counting them, Fahima thinks, watching the Hive crowd to overflowing, feeling like a creator god herself. In the Hive it lasts long enough that Fahima and her friends can recognize it for what it is. A people become a nation, Fahima thinks. The wall between us and them torn down until there’s just us.
“What did I do?” asks Emmeline.
Fahima doesn’t have a full answer. She has a suspicion about the candle Emmeline saw in a desert, the massive implications of Emmeline’s tiny hand gesture. A notion of circular time. You might have started everything, Fahima thinks. Alpha and omega.
Patrick puts a hand on Emmeline’s back. “I think you saved us.”
The biggest contributing factor to the day, the one she won’t ever mention to Miquel, is that Carrie’s lost all hope. Months have passed with no word, no response, and she’s stopped expecting one. She’s stopped looking at the fence line. She’s started keeping her head down. You have to make a life here or die, she tells herself. Those are the options now.
Travis made the dress out of fabric Carrie helped smuggle in. It was teal and shiny, like the face of the ocean. Every fitting, Diane talked about what Travis could have done. “He could have dressed you in the true ocean,” she said. “Glimmers of fish and the roil of waves. It would’ve been beautiful.” Her hand traces the juddering seam lines of the dress, jagged like a cartoon shark’s grin. Last fall, Mister Mosby cracked Travis in the back of the skull with a rifle stock for mouthing off in the commissary line. Carrie can see the bright red blood on pale green tile. The camp doctor, who reeks of gin and a faint whiff of piss, gave Travis a clean bill after a cursory exam with a penlight. Travis’s hands still shake. Every time Carrie leaves the two of them, Diane rests her hands on his to steady them as he works.
“It will be beautiful,” Travis said to her, kissing her on the cheek. Carrie and Miquel would never be a couple like this, united in a project, a craft that demanded its own language. She wished Miquel wanted to fight with her, but it wasn’t something they shared. She looked at the dress and saw the Atlantic from Coney Island at night, Ferris wheel lights dancing in the surf. She worried that all that brought the two of them together was their past. She was trying to give weight and solidity to something that had already evaporated.
Miquel’s suit is borrowed from Sidney in Hall B, who was wearing it when he was taken. The camp gets thrift store clothes, mostly tee shirts and sweaters. The suit doesn’t fit well, although Travis did his best. We’ll do it again on the outside, Carrie thinks. We’ll get everything right. On the outside has a fairy tale ring to it. There’s only this making do: borrowed suits and dresses that are not the true ocean but a memory of it superimposed onto bootlegged cloth.
The ceremony is held in the laundry. Mister Bailey guards the door for them, an armed usher. It’s damp inside but cooler than the July desert night. The room is bright with the smell of mildew and bleach. It’s perfect.
Felix, who cooks in the commissary, serves as the officiant. He was a minister once, in the last life. On the outside. It’s good to remember that they were all something else before. The sermon is overprepared, more than they needed. It’s as much for him as for them. Maybe that’s what weddings are like, Carrie thinks, never having attended one as a guest. The way funerals are to remind the living they’re alive, weddings call lovers back to the day when their love was worth celebrating. An infinite regression, new loves placing themselves in conversation and context with old so that one day they can be recalled, too.
All this overthinking as she stands facing Miquel, the one she loves, the one she’s loved so long she can’t remember a version of herself that didn’t feel defined in relation to him. She has his hands in hers, the sleeves of his suit coat nearly covering them. He looks at her the way he did the first time they met, when he was the first one at Bishop to see her. A look that affirms that she is real and solid. He grounds her in the world when she feels most at risk of floating away.
There is a kiss that almost escapes her. She catches the end of it, returning to her body from her thoughts before their lips part. Their friends clap, and the sound caroms off the walls as if everyone they know is in attendance. Thinking of the people here as their friends is strange. Some of these friendships are old; some started in Topaz. They don’t seem real. Bryce and Hayden, Jonathan and Rafa, who lost an eye while in custody. An accident, of course. These are the relics of their past life carried over into this one. Travis, Diane, Felix. All new to them but no less dear. Topaz has fused them all. If they ever get out of here, they’ll be different from everyone else, everyone who’s never been inside. She wonders what will happen to those friendships, then reminds herself that there’s no point wondering.
“Waylon’s going to be so pissed he wasn’t here,” Bryce says to her, kissing her on the cheek. Tricia passes around paper cups of hard cider, mulled at the end of last fall and hidden in oak barrels through the winter. It’s bitter and crisp. Rafa and Jonathan play quietly in the corner on an improvised drum kit and a guitar Hayden had smuggled in. The comforts of the real world, leaked into Topaz Lake.
“That’s the thing with destination weddings,” Bryce continues. “Not everybody’s willing to travel for this shit.”
“When you guys get married, I’ll get arrested so I can be there,” Carrie says. She immediately regrets it as his smile becomes brittle. She gets so caught up in her own unhappiness, she can’t see how much worse it is for others. Bryce hasn’t had any communication with Waylon in the year and a half they’ve been here. She wonders what’s worse, the separation or the disappointment that Waylon hasn’t managed to find him. Bryce holds out hope of rescue not because of the message in a bottle Siu threw into the Hive before Christmas but because he can’t let himself think that Waylon would stop looking.
Hayden sings “I Found a Reason” by the Velvet Underground for their first dance. The words take on new meanings from the situation and their surroundings.
Something borrowed, something blue, Carrie thinks as she and Miquel sway and slowly turn. Something old. Three out of four.
The guests at the reception rotate in and out. Everyone wants to be here because of Miquel. For him. There are satellite receptions throughout the camp, and except for their close friends, guests leave to let others in, then come back, drunker, happier. Carrie imagines the other parties like lights on a string, connected but individual.
When the feeling comes over her, Carrie mistakes it for love. It’s a pulse of warmth and strength, a rush. Like a chord sustained on a piano, it lands and holds. She’s dancing with Miquel and feels like something has been lifted off her. Then she looks at his face and sees the shock there.
“Carrie, you’re gone,” he says. Carrie holds up her hand, which is wrapped in his. It’s transparent. She looks out the small, high windows of the laundry, but the pale green of the inhibitor lights is glowing outside. This is something else. Carrie hardly has time to imagine what it could be when the door flies open. Mister Benavidez and Mister Herschel and Mister O’Keefe swagger in like gunslingers, hands on their hips. The whole contingent guarding the western fence in this sector. Miquel shoves Carrie behind him.
“I guess our invites got lost in the mail,” Mister Benavidez says. “It’s a good thing Mister Guzman let us know. It’d be a sham
e if we missed it. Congratulations, teach.” He slaps Miquel on the shoulder. “Hey, Shakes, pour me a drink, huh?” Travis obeys. The cider sloshes in the paper cup as he hands it to Mister Benavidez.
“Did you know I’m a big reader, teach?” says Mister Benavidez. “I love reading history. Medieval times and shit? You know they used to have this thing called prima nocta. The lord of the castle, he had the right to fuck a man’s wife on their wedding night. Prima nocta’s Latin for first fuck or some shit. So tell me, teach. Where’s the bride?”
Mister Benavidez is looking right at Miquel and Carrie. Carrie’s eyes are locked on his, but he can’t see her. He can’t see her.
Carrie glances at Bryce and Hayden, who look like themselves again. She sees the glow in Jonathan’s chest brighten. Carrie steps out from behind Miquel. She can feel her ability, like a radio signal muddled in static. But the volume’s way up, and she can hear the song. They all can.
“I can see you’re upset,” Miquel says, patting the air between them with his hands. Warm waves come off him. Carrie rests her hand on the knife next to the cake. It’s dull, useless. She eyes Mister Benavidez’s gun, unclipped in the holster, his hand near it but not blocking it.
“You trying to put a whammy on me?” asks Mister Benavidez. He takes a threatening step toward Miquel. As he does, Carrie grabs the gun out of the holster. It hangs in the air, leveled at Mister Benavidez’s head. He turns toward it and nearly has time to mutter what the fuck before Carrie shoots him in the forehead. Mister Herschel screams. Mister O’Keefe pulls his gun, but Bryce smashes him in the face with the thick branch of his arm. Blood sprays from Mister O’Keefe’s nose and leaks from his eyes as he crumples to the ground. Edith Fowler, the nice old lady Miquel gave smuggled marmalade to, who just stopped by to say congratulations, gently pats Mister Herschel on the head, and he drops. The room is silent, the high whine of the gun’s retort echoing in Carrie’s ears.