A couple of minutes into the interview, Erin’s phone started to vibrate quietly in her pocket. Instinctively, she reached for it, but when Bethany looked up at the first sign of movement, Erin froze. The phone continued to vibrate, humming gently. It could be the school. Or it could be Zac.
The moment seemed laden with the testing of her mettle. She contemplated nine-hour days in a cube, proofreading FDA Product Information Forms for a mega-conglomerate, sacrificing her identity as a freethinking and unruly food designer, hearth-keeper of her little family’s home life. Would she excuse herself and interrupt the interview for a personal matter or would she put the interview first? She watched Bethany’s finger hover in midair above the screen of her tablet.
But it could be the school, or it could be Zac.
Erin laced her fingers and rested her hands on the table, giving Bethany the sign that she was ready to continue with the interview.
Bethany asked, “So what attracted you to the packaged-goods sector?”
Erin was stumped. This question was not in her research. She could not fathom the idea of being attracted to packaged goods. Packaged goods were the anti-Erin, the opposition. She rifled through everything leather-bound, dog-eared, and hand-worn on the shelves in her mind: antique cookbooks with illustrations of vanilla beans, nutmeg trees, allspice groves.
“The challenge,” she ad-libbed, hoping to make up something better before anything else bumbled out of her mouth, anything else that might ruin this interview.
“How so?” Bethany tapped again on her screen and looked up at Erin, waiting for an answer.
Chapter Seven
10:20 AM
Sunday, June 20, 2021 | National Institute of Standards and Technology | Clean Room
“You motherfucker,” Jin laughed.
Zac pulled his gaze from the smooth black glass of his own monitor and swiveled toward Jin’s dock. In white Tyvek coveralls and booties, Jin sat like a giant, foul-mouthed, middle-aged toddler clad in snowy footie pajamas.
Jin grinned at Zac and said, “Unfuckingbelievable, Fully! You nailed it.” He swiveled closer to the light of his monitor. “Look at this.”
“Yeah?” Zac stood and tugged at his own baggy coveralls. He rolled his chair next to Jin’s, sat again, and centered himself in front of the monitor.
“Ready?” Jin said.
Mark rose from behind his horseshoe of silver monitors. “Just a sec.” The oldest of the physicists on the team, he blinked down at his screens with droopy, puffy eyes, and said, “Okay. Yep, this data set is transformed … now. We’re in.”
“Lookie here,” Jin said. He tapped on his keyboard as Mark and Zac watched.
Out of the blackness of his monitor, the simulation began to fade in. A vast rippling plain, like an infinite and waveless gray sea, spread from the foreground to the horizon’s vanishing point in the background. Slowly, in the long-distant perspective, a dark violet swell began to arch upward out of the gray. As it appeared to move closer, its height climbed the screen and its velocity rose in magnitude. As the wave took shape, its color intensified, the peak turning electric purple now, as Zac had requested because that had been Korrie’s favorite color. The wave roared closer, and at its crest, reflections of light formed into small, bright beads like droplets of mercury. As the wave approached the screen’s full capacity, duplicate waves piled in front of it, different hues of the spectrum overlaying the image and flashing text for the title of each location, showing where the measurement came from: Hanford, Boulder, Livingston, D.C., Hanover, Pisa, Hingoli. All of the waves coalesced into one stunning spectral cliff face, huge and almost alive with energy, surging forward toward the watchers, showering blazing-white beads at the crest. As Zac began to feel the vertigo of the visual effect overwhelming him, the wave slowed and began to smooth out. Its colors eased back toward dark violet and then, as the surface flattened, it faded to gray as the expanse lost energy, settled, and stilled.
“You see that?” Jin said. “Each location measured that puppy identically.”
“Wow.” Zac smiled and let the spectacle of the imagery settle behind his eyes. Evidence that the first wave matched the prediction in his twelve-hour countdown. This meant his model had elegance, and the data was confirming the likelihood that a miniature black hole could form in the hours ahead. Warmth flooded in.
Mark looked down at one of his screens. “From all the sites, the signatures align to our sim at ninety-seven point four percent.”
All three of them laughed at the absurd degree of accuracy in the result.
“Holy fuck,” Jin said, “we’ve got to get rid of you, Fullarton. You’re a danger to us all.” With a bootie-covered foot, he shoved Zac’s chair so it rolled away, across the white tile of the Clean Room.
Mark sank back down behind his monitors, only the percussion of rapid clicks on his keyboard showing his doggedness as he worked with Zac’s equations to reconfigure the simulation.
Zac rolled himself back to his own dock and said, “Pretty cool, huh?”
“You know what would be cooler?” Jin said. “If you could cook up a second time crystal that would tether to this one so they’d become an entangled pair,” and he gestured toward the atomic clock. “Then it could ride like a buoy on the wave and we wouldn’t have to wait for data from all the other sites. We’d be linked and we could tweak the sim as a wave rolls by, from within it instead of after it’s gone.”
Zac thought for a second. “Actually,” he said. “This is the second time crystal. My wife has the first one.”
“No shit.” Jin tilted his head to the side. “Same frequency?”
“Yep,” Zac said. “Same setup. Same frequency. Same everything.”
“So that’s pretty fucking interesting,” Jin said.
Mark interrupted. “Okay, the new data is laid in and we’re reconfigured.” He hit a double keystroke. “I’m sending it to the big screen,” he said as he stood and faced the large wall monitor. The flat, gray sea appeared on the screen, and far against the distant horizon the violet wave began to form. “And this,” he said, “is what the next one should look like.”
Zac gazed at the screen as the wave rose, light just beginning to glisten at the apex. He let an unfamiliar feeling play across his chest. What was it? Joy? It’s okay, he told himself. You can have a little bit. His hand reached by reflex for his phone so he could call Erin and tell her about this dream coming true, but, of course, he didn’t have his phone on him. It was locked in his drawer in his office.
And what if he did call her, after the end of the whole thing, tonight? Went back to the house? Made a late dinner with her, opened a bottle of wine? They could make their special farfalle pasta, butterflies’ wings of Italian semolina with marinara and spicy sausage. He could make a salad with feta cheese and black olives, and he’d open a nice cabernet. He could describe to her how he and the guys saw all of their work come together like pinions, jewels, and wheels behind the smooth watchmakers’ crystal of the black glass monitor. But would his news somehow breathe life into her again and bring the old Erin back to him? Unlikely. She and Korrie had exited the stage as a pair, mother and daughter.
He wished the Erin from before was still where he could reach her. He longed for her to be there for him, to acknowledge this victory with him, this one tiny blip of relief from their situation, for just one minute before she disappeared beneath the ice-cold surf again like some half-drowned, green-skinned, silk-scaled Nereid. If she had her way, she’d pull him under with her, and he found it exhausting to fight so hard to resist her when all he wanted was for her to ask him to come back home. He imagined pushing her away as he struggled toward the surface.
Korrie, he said silently, your dad did something cool; and then from his precious storage of memories, he called up the scent of watermelon baby soap as if she were curled against him on the sofa, leaning into him the way she used to. You’d be proud, Squid. Your friends might see me on TV. They’re probably getting big n
ow, your friends. They’d be eight, right? Emma and Abby and Brennay? Eight years old? But you’re still six.
Morbid thinking, he told himself, pathetic. He was almost starting to get past the initial fixations of grief, but he doubted he’d ever get rid of the feeling that she was out there somewhere, waiting for him to get off work so he could come pick her up and take her home.
With a monumental effort, he divided himself in two, and the stronger part went back to the unassailable beauty of the simulation and his friends who understood what it meant.
Chapter Eight
10:32 AM
Sunday, June 20, 2021 | 371 Nysa Vale Road
Erin woke and opened her eyes, and tears welled as she turned her mind back to Korrie’s bedroom. It had been one of the great joys of motherhood to decorate that room and fill it, year upon year, with everything of Korrie’s choosing, all the things she loved that made the place her own little realm.
After Korrie’s death, everyone promised Erin there would come a time when she could let go of her daughter’s belongings, that she would one day feel ready to put them away. But that day never came, and it had been such anguish to watch as her mother did it for her.
And now, something had happened in her mind, as if she had re-created that room again, the way it had been on the day Korrie died. And it had seemed so real.
She shivered beneath the covers, tears running warm across her cold cheeks. She really should tell Zac about her hallucination, she decided, in case something worse happened. He would need to know. He might have to check on her. Nothing like this had ever happened before, and she needed to leave a message so he would call back.
She fumbled her phone awake and touched his image. How could she word this message? Hey, when you get a chance, I’ve had a psychotic break, and I can’t decide if I should go to the emergency room or just let the show go on. Thoughts?
The ringing sound went on until his voicemail picked up, but his voice had the lighthearted cadence of his old recording: “No time like the present to leave a message.” She jumped out of bed. Again? This again? What could be going on? She’d hoped some sleep would reset whatever was wrong, as if her brain could reboot and the strangeness would clear out of the system like a glitch of crossed software. She disconnected the call and examined the face of her phone. The display read February 7 again. But now—10:33 a.m.? So it was showing The Day Of—from the past—but in her mind’s eye the hours were moving forward just like in any other day?
She pocketed her phone and threw open the curtains. Outside, the snowfall was heavier now, the flakes drifting like feathers. She ran to the door of Korrie’s room, nursing some small, impossible thought that she might see her there, but the room was filled only with the light from the lamp and the hodgepodge of every lavender, ruffled, and glittered thing Korrie had ever loved. Erin stumbled down the stairs to the front entry, stepped into her old boots, and dashed out into the storm.
The sky was no sky, no delineation between the light and the cover of the storm, and the air filled with snow. The trees drooped under the weight of their soft mantles. She jogged to the end of their road and looked both ways along Fourmile Canyon Road into the heavy white silence. Nothing moved except the snow. There was no sound except the hiss of a million flakes as they fell. Nothing extraordinary in either direction—except everything.
She turned back and ran toward the house. As she rushed up the road through the frozen woods, she searched for any clue that this strange episode might include Korrie, but nothing marked the new-fallen snow except the tracks from Erin’s own boots.
Once she reached the house and crossed the threshold, she closed the door behind her. “What can I do?” She was up the stairs in seconds and back in Korrie’s room, the jumbled vibrancy of a six-year-old girl’s world. Her heart drummed in her chest.
Korrie had been making valentines, and on her desk were safety scissors, a glue stick, and several hearts cut out of construction paper. The top one was bordered with glitter, and in the middle, concentric hearts swelled outward. Erin hadn’t been the one to clear off the desk and hadn’t seen the finished product. She turned the valentine over. On the back, Korrie had printed:
4 Daddy. Love 4ever, Korrie
Erin felt its wholeheartedness and tried to keep herself pulled together as she touched the lettering, traced over it with her fingertips. Had Zac ever gotten to see this? Or had it been packed up with everything else? And there it was: the problem. All of these things were packed away. Yet here she was, surrounded by them.
She remembered Dr. Tanner mentioning once that in some types of mental illness, a patient experiences during their waking life what they would see if they were having a nightmare. The interior floods the exterior. Was that what this was? An illness of dreams?
Though she didn’t want to do it, she put down the valentine and took out her phone to call Dr. Tanner’s office. She would have to tell him about this because he was in charge of her care. He was the director of her so-called recovery.
The receptionist answered the way she normally did, her voice soft yet sturdy. “Good morning, GRT Group. This is Marina. How can we help?”
“Hey, Marina.” Erin’s voice rasped with the roughness of sleep. She cleared her throat and sat on Korrie’s bed. “It’s Erin.”
“Good morning.” Marina sounded removed and cool, though usually she was friendly. “How can we help?”
Puzzled, Erin continued anyway. “I have to talk to Dr. Tanner. I know I’m supposed to schedule time for a call, but I need to talk to him. Right now, if that’s okay.” She pulled a corner of Korrie’s comforter up to her chest.
“Dr. Tanner is with a client, but I can take the name of the referring physician, and we can get your information into the system to get you started.”
For an instant, Erin hesitated because this person, who knew so much about her, seemed not to know who she was. “Marina,” she said, “it’s me. Erin Fullarton.”
“Yes, ma’am … and we’re here to help you.” It was as if Marina had never spoken to her, hadn’t offered her tea dozens of times, hadn’t said she’d see her the next week after each session for months and months.
“Listen to me,” Erin said, “I need to talk to Dr. Tanner right now. I’m sitting in my daughter’s room, and—”
Marina interrupted. “I understand, ma’am, and I do want to help you. The first step, though, is for us to get your information into the system.”
“Marina.” Erin pulled her knees up and wrapped her arm around them. “I’m already in the system.”
“Well, no,” Marina said, “I’d know if you were. But it’s no problem. We can get you started now.”
“Would you please look me up? Erin Fullarton. I’m in the system; I’ve been in the system for months.”
“Erin,” Marina said, “can I call you Erin?”
“Of course.” She stopped herself from saying it was what Marina always called her.
“It’s part of my job to manage the database, so I’m very familiar with everyone in it.” She enunciated gently, as though she were calming the tantrum of a child. “And another part of my job is intake. I can hear your distress, but we can get you the attention you need if we do this one step at a time.”
“You really have no idea who I am?” Erin said.
“You’re Erin,” Marina said, “Fullarton, I believe you said. You just told me that.” And she left it at that, as if her patience might be starting to fray.
“But you’ve never heard of me before this?”
“No.” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Even though you’ve seen me every week since last February?” Erin tried to keep from lashing out at this woman she felt fondness for. “Every week for sixteen months?”
“It’s February now, Erin.”
That feeling of blood draining from the skin washed down Erin’s face. “For you too?” she asked.
“What do you mean ‘for me too’?” Weariness with the back
and forth was beginning to creep into Marina’s tone.
“Can you please tell me what day it is for you? The calendar date?
“It’s February seventh.” Her voice again took on a soft timbre. “Twenty-twenty.”
This can’t be possible, Erin thought. She stood, and the comforter dropped over the edge of the bed. It’s not just in my head. It wasn’t an illusion, not something that was happening only for her. If it was the same for Marina as it was for Erin, then it was not something she had created. It was something beyond her mind.
“Erin?” Marina said, “Are you still there?”
“Could you—tell me—” Erin stumbled over the pileup of her words. “Have you seen any—anything today when things slipped into a different—when time shifted?”
“Do you mean literally?”
“Yes.” Erin surveyed the room, a hodgepodge of Korrie’s treasures.
“I haven’t, Erin,” Marina said.
So it was only Erin who was out of place. What is it about me?
“I think the best thing,” Marina continued, “would be for your physician to call Dr. Tanner, and I can set that up if you like.”
“No,” Erin said. Something about her whole world was slipping, and it couldn’t be the kind of thing doctors might straighten out. “That won’t help.” She tried to put an end to the conversation with some composure. “I’m sorry I bothered you, Marina. Thanks anyway.” She disconnected the call.
Once Again Page 4