Flashforward

by Robert J. Sawyer

  A young man had come into the room. Gaston didn’t recognize him, either. He had been wearing what appeared to be a black leather jacket, and had thrown it over the end of the couch, where it had slipped down to the carpeted floor. A small robot, not much bigger than a shoebox, rolled out from under an end table and started toward the fallen coat. Gaston pointed a finger at the robot and barked, “Arrêt!” The machine froze, then, after a moment, retreated back under the table.

  The young man turned around. He looked to be maybe nineteen or twenty. On his right cheek there was what seemed to be an animated tattoo of a lightning bolt; it zigzagged its way across the young man’s face in five discrete jumps, then repeated the cycle over and over again.

  As he turned the left side of his face became visible—and it was horrifying, all the muscles and blood vessels clearly visible, as if, somehow, he’d treated his skin with a chemical that had turned it transparent. The young man’s right hand was covered over with an exoskeletal glove, extending his fingers into long, mechanical digits terminating in glistening surgically sharp silver points.

  “I said pick that up!” snapped Gaston in French—or, at least it was his voice; he had no sense of willing the words out. “As long as I’m paying for your clothes, you’ll take good care of them.”

  The young man glared at Gaston. He was positive he didn’t know him, but he did bear a resemblance to…whom? It was hard to tell with that ghastly half-transparent face, but the high forehead, the thin lips, those cool gray eyes, that aquiline nose…

  The pointed tips of the finger extensions retracted with a whir, and the boy picked up the jacket between mechanical thumb and forefinger, holding it now as if it were something distasteful. Gaston’s gaze tracked with him as he moved across the living room. As it did so, Gaston couldn’t help noticing that a lot of other details were wrong, too: the familiar pattern of books on the shelves had changed completely, as if someone had reorganized everything at some point. And, indeed, there seemed to be far fewer volumes than there should have been, as though a purge had been done of the family library. Another robot, this one spiderlike and about the size of a splayed human hand, was working its way along the shelves, apparently dusting.

  On one wall, where they used to have a framed print of Monet’s Le Moulin de la Galette, there was now an alcove, displaying what looked like a Henry Moore sculpture—but, no, no, there could be no alcove there; that wall was shared with the house next door. It must have really been a flat piece, a hologram or something similar, hanging on the wall and giving the illusion of depth; if so, the illusion was absolutely perfect.

  The closet doors had changed, too; they slid open of their own volition as the boy approached. He reached in, pulled out a hanger, and put the jacket on it. He then replaced the hanger inside the closet…and the jacket slipped from it to the closet floor.

  Gaston’s voice lashing out again: “Damn it, Marc, can’t you be more careful?”

  Marc…

  Marc!

  Mon Dieu!

  That’s why he looked familiar.

  A family resemblance.

  Marc. The name Marie-Claire and he had chosen for the child she was carrying.

  Marc Béranger.

  Gaston hadn’t even yet held the baby in his arms, hadn’t burped it over his shoulder, hadn’t changed its diaper, and yet here he was, grown up, a man—a frightening, hostile man.

  Marc looked at the fallen jacket, his cheek still flashing, but then he walked away from the closet, letting the door hiss shut behind him.

  “Damn you, Marc,” said Gaston’s voice. “I’m getting sick of your attitude. You’re never going to get a job if you keep behaving like this.”

  “Screw you,” said the boy, his voice deep, his tone a sneer.

  Those were baby’s first words—not “mama,” not “papa,” but “Screw you.”

  And, as if there could be any doubt remaining, Marie-Claire entered Gaston’s field of view just then, emerging through another sliding door from the den. “Don’t speak to your father that way,” she said.

  Gaston was taken aback; it was Marie-Claire, without question, but she looked more like her own mother than herself. Her hair was white, her face was lined, and she’d put on a good fifteen kilos.

  “Screw you, too,” said Marc.

  Gaston rather suspected that his voice would protest, “Don’t talk to your mother like that.” It did not disappoint him.

  Before Marc turned back around, Gaston caught sight of a shaved area at the back of the kid’s head, and a metal socket surgically implanted there.

  It had to be a hallucination. It had to. But what a terrible hallucination to have! Marie-Claire was due any day now. They’d tried for years to get pregnant—Gaston ran a facility that could precisely unite an electron and a positron, but somehow he and Marie-Claire had been unable to get an egg and a sperm, each millions of times larger than those subatomic particles, to come together. But finally it had happened; finally God had smiled upon them, finally she was pregnant.

  And now, at last, nine months later, they were soon to give birth. All those Lamaze classes, all that planning, all that fixing up of the nursery…it was soon going to come to fruition.

  And now this dream; that’s all it must be. Just a bad dream. Cold feet; he’d had the worst nightmare of his life just before he got married. Why should this be any different?

  But it was different. This was much more realistic than any dream he’d ever had. He thought about the plug on the back of his son’s head; thought about images being pumped directly into a brain—the drug of the future?

  “Get off my back,” said Marc. “I’ve had a hard day.”

  “Oh, really?” said Gaston’s voice, dripping with sarcasm. “You’ve had a hard day, eh? A hard day terrorizing tourists in Old Town, was it? I should have let you rot in jail, you ungrateful punk—”

  Gaston was shocked to find himself sounding so much like his own father—the things his father had said to him when he was Marc’s age, the things he’d promised himself he’d never say to his own children.

  “Now, Gaston…” said Marie-Claire.

  “Well, if he doesn’t appreciate what he’s got here…”

  “I don’t need this shit,” sneered Marc.

  “Enough!” snapped Marie-Claire. “Enough.”

  “I hate you,” said Marc. “I hate you both.”

  Gaston’s mouth opened to reply, and then—

  —and then, suddenly, he was back in his office at CERN.

  After reporting the news of all the deaths, Michiko Komura had immediately gone back into the front office of the LHC control center. She kept trying to phone the school in Geneva that her eight-year-old daughter Tamiko attended; Michiko was divorced from her first husband, a Tokyo executive. But all she got was busy signal after busy signal, and the Swiss phone company, for some reason, wasn’t offering to automatically notify her when the line became free.

  Lloyd was standing behind her as she kept trying, but finally she looked up at him, her eyes desperate. “I can’t get through,” she said. “I’ve got to go there.”

  “I’ll come with you,” said Lloyd at once. They ran out of the building, into the warm April air, the ruddy sun already kissing the horizon, the mountains looming in the distance.

  Michiko’s car—a Toyota—was parked here, too, but they took Lloyd’s leased Fiat, with Lloyd driving. They made their way out of the CERN campus, passing by the towering cylindrical liquid helium tanks, and got onto Route de Meyrin, which took them through Meyrin, the town just east of CERN. Although they saw some cars at the sides of the road, things looked no worse than they did after one of the rare winter storms, except, of course, that there was no snow on the ground.

  They passed quickly through the town. A short distance outside it was Geneva’s Cointrin Airport. Pillars of black smoke rose to the sky; a large Swissair jet had crashed on the one runway. “My God,” said Michiko. She brought a knuckle to her mouth. �
��My God.”

  They continued on into Geneva proper, situated at the westernmost tip of Lac Léman. Geneva was a wealthy metropolis of 200,000, known for ultra-posh restaurants and wildly expensive shops.

  Signs that would normally be lit up were out, and lots of cars—many of them Mercedes and other expensive makes—had veered off the roads and plowed into buildings. The plate-glass windows on several storefronts had shattered, but there didn’t seem to be any looting going on. Even the tourists were apparently too stunned by what had happened to take advantage of the situation.

  They did spot one ambulance, tending an old man at the side of the road; they also heard the sirens of fire trucks or other emergency vehicles. And at one point, they saw a helicopter embedded in the glass side of a small office tower.

  They drove across the Pont de l’Ile, passing over the river Rhône, gulls wheeling overhead, leaving the Right Bank with its patrician hotels, and entering the historic Left Bank. The route around Vieille Ville—Old Town—was blocked by a four-car traffic accident, so they had to try negotiating their way through its narrow, crooked, one-way streets. They drove down Rue de la Cité, which turned into Grand Rue. But it, too, was blocked, too, by a Transports Publics Genevois bus that had spun out of control and was now swung across both lanes. They tried an alternate route, Michiko fretting more and more with each passing minute, but it was also obstructed by damaged vehicles.

  “How far is the school?” asked Lloyd.

  “Less than a kilometer,” said Michiko.

  “Let’s do it on foot.” He drove back to Grand Rue, then pulled the car over at the side of road. It wasn’t a legal parking spot, but Lloyd hardly thought anybody would be worrying about that at a time like this. They got out of the Fiat and began running up the steep, cobbled streets. Michiko stopped after a few paces to remove her high heels so she could run faster. They continued on up the streets, but had to stop again for her to replace her shoes as they came to a sidewalk covered with glass shards.

  They hurried up Rue Jean-Calvin, passing the Musée Barbier-Mueller, switched to Rue du Puits St. Pierre, and hustled by the seven-hundred-year-old Maison Tavel, Geneva’s oldest private home. They had slowed only slightly by the time they passed the austere Temple de l’Auditoire, where John Calvin and John Knox had once held forth.

  Hearts pounding, breath ragged, they pushed onward. On their right were the Cathédrale St-Pierre and Christie’s auction house. Michiko and Lloyd hurried through the sprawling square of Place du Bourg-de-Four, with its halo of open-air cafés and patisseries surrounding the central fountain. Many tourists and Genevois were still prone on the paving stones; others were sitting up on the ground, either tending to their own scrapes and bruises or being aided by other pedestrians.

  Finally, they made it to the school grounds on Rue de Chaudronniers. The Ducommun School was a long-established facility catering to the children of foreigners working in or near Geneva. The core buildings were over two hundred years old, but several additional structures had been added in the last few decades. Although classes ended at 4:00 P.M., after-school activities were provided until 6:00 P.M., so that professional parents could leave kids there all day, and, although it was now getting on to 7:00 P.M., scores of kids were still here.

  Michiko was hardly the only parent to have rushed here. The grounds were crisscrossed by the long shadows of diplomats, rich business people, and others whose kids attended Ducommun; dozens of them were hugging children and crying with relief.

  The buildings all looked intact. Michiko and Lloyd were both huffing and puffing as they continued running across the immaculate lawn. By long tradition, the school flew the flags of the home countries of every student out front; Tamiko was the only Japanese currently enrolled, but the rising sun was indeed snapping in the spring breeze.

  They made it into the lobby, which had beautiful marble floors and dark-wood paneling on the walls. The office was off to the right, and Michiko led the way to it. The door slid open, revealing a long wooden counter separating the secretaries from the public. Michiko made it over to the counter, and, between shuddering breaths, she began, “Hello, I’m—”

  “Oh, Madame Komura,” said a woman emerging from an office. “I’ve been trying to call you, but haven’t been able to get through.” She paused awkwardly. “Please, come in.”

  Michiko and Lloyd made their way behind the counter and into the office. A PC sat on the desk, with a datapad docked to it.

  “Where’s Tamiko?” said Michiko.

  “Please,” said the woman. “Have a seat.” She looked at Lloyd. “I’m Madame Severin; I’m the headmistress here.”

  “Lloyd Simcoe,” said Lloyd. “I’m Michiko’s fiancé.”

  “Where’s Tamiko?” said Michiko again.

  “Madame Komura, I’m so sorry. I’m—” She stopped, swallowed, started again. “Tamiko was outside. A car came plowing through the parking lot, and…I’m so very sorry.”

  “How is she?” asked Michiko.

  “Tamiko is dead, Madame Komura. We all—I don’t know what happened; we all blacked out or something. When we came to, we found her.”

  Tears were welling out of Michiko’s eyes. Lloyd felt a horrible constriction in his chest. Michiko found a chair, collapsed into it, and put her face in her hands. Lloyd knelt down next to her and put an arm around her.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Severin.

  Lloyd nodded. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  Michiko sobbed a while longer, then looked up, her eyes red. “I want to see her.”

  “She’s still in the parking lot. I’m sorry—we did call for the police, but they haven’t come yet.”

  “Show me,” said Michiko, her voice cracking.

  Severin nodded, and led them out behind the building. Some other youngsters were standing, looking at the body, terrified of it and yet drawn to it, something beyond their ken. The staff were too busy dealing with kids who had been injured to be able to corral all the pupils back into the school.

  Tamiko was lying there—just lying there. There was no blood, and her body seemed intact. The car that had presumably hit her had backed off several meters and was parked at an angle. Its bumper was dented.

  Michiko got within five meters, and then collapsed completely, crying loudly. Lloyd drew her into his arms, and held her. Severin hovered nearby for a bit, but was soon called away to deal with another parent, and another crisis.

  At last, because she wanted it, Lloyd led Michiko over to the body. He bent over, his vision blurring, his heart breaking, and gently smoothed Tamiko’s hair away from her face.

  Lloyd had no words; what could he possibly say that might bring comfort at a time like this? They stood there, Lloyd holding Michiko for perhaps half an hour, her body convulsing with tears the whole time.

  3

  THEO PROCOPIDES STAGGERED DOWN THE mosaic-lined corridor to his tiny office, its walls covered with cartoon posters: Asterix le Gauloix here, Ren and Stimpy there, Bugs Bunny and Fred Flintstone and Gaga from Waga above the desk.

  Theo felt woozy, shell-shocked. Although he hadn’t had a vision, it seemed everyone else had. Still, even just having blacked out would have been enough to unnerve him. Added to that were the injuries to his friends and coworkers, and the news of the deaths in Geneva and the surrounding towns. He was utterly devastated.

  Theo was aware that people thought of him as cocky, arrogant—but he wasn’t. Not really, not down deep. He just knew he was good at what he did, and he knew that while others were talking about their dreams, he was working hard day in and day out to make his a reality. But this—this left him confused and disoriented.

  Reports were still coming in. One hundred and eleven people had died when a Swissair 797 crashed at Geneva Airport. Under normal circumstances, some might have survived the actual crash—but no one moved to evacuate before the plane caught fire.

  Theo collapsed in his black leather swivel chair. He could see smoke rising in the distance;
his window faced the airport—you needed a lot more seniority to get one that faced the Jura mountains.

  He and Lloyd had intended no harm. Hell, Theo couldn’t even begin to fathom what had caused everyone to black out. A giant electromagnetic pulse? But surely that would have done more damage to computers than to people, and all of CERN’s delicate instruments seemed to be running normally.

  Theo had swiveled the chair around as he’d sat down in it; his back was now to the open door. He wasn’t aware that someone else had arrived until he heard a masculine throat-clearing. He rotated the chair and looked at Jacob Horowitz, a young grad student who worked with Theo and Lloyd. He had a shock of red hair and swarms of freckles.

  “It’s not your fault,” Jake said, emphatically.

  “Of course it is,” said Theo, as if it were plainly obvious. “We clearly didn’t take some important factor into consideration, and—”

  “No,” said Jake, strongly. “No, really. It’s not your fault. It had nothing to do with CERN.”

  “What?” Theo said it as if he hadn’t understood Jake’s words.

  “Come down to the staff lounge.”

  “I don’t want to face anyone just now, and—”

  “No, come on. They’ve got CNN on down there, and—”

  “It’s made CNN already?”

  “You’ll see. Come.”

  Theo rose slowly from his chair and started walking. Jake motioned for him to move more quickly, and at last Theo began to jog alongside Jake. When they arrived, there were maybe twenty people in the lounge.

  “—Helen Michaels reporting from New York City. Back to you, Bernie.”

  Bernard Shaw’s stern, lined face filled the high-definition TV screen. “Thanks, Helen. As you can see,” he said to the camera, “the phenomenon seems to be worldwide—which suggests that the initial analyses that it must have been some sort of foreign weapon are unlikely to be correct, although of course the possibility that it was a terrorist act remains. No credible party, as yet, has stepped forward to claim responsibility, and—ah, we now have that Australian report we promised you a moment ago.”