Once Again

by Catherine Wallace Hope

  “Lights out, ladies,” Jin said. He tapped a key three times on his keyboard and stood. Zac stood too.

  Mark said, “Well, let’s just see what we’ve got.” His voice sounded tired. Then he looked at Jin and said, “Oh, you mean the actual lights.” He rose. His feet scuffed against the tiles as he crossed to turn off all but one work light. He returned and situated himself near Zac’s dock. The three of them stood together, waiting for Walter to join them, but he stayed in his seat.

  On the large screen, the sim brightened. The creamy wavelets of the white hole sea lapped toward them. Strewn over the surface, a vast population of refractive beads bobbed and glittered, like a great flock of lights at peace. Walter sighed.

  “Here’s where we are,” Mark said, and he laced his fingers at the back of his neck. “So we’ve got the evidence that gravitational waves create micro-rips in time and that the contents of the gap do not survive. But it might be … well, let’s just see …” He let the silence resume.

  Zac watched as the wavelets grew larger and moved faster toward the perspective of the viewer, as if a storm were gathering. The beads seemed to dim and scatter toward the upper quadrant of the image.

  “Give me one good reason to put that in,” Walter said, “like there’s something coming after them.”

  “We didn’t put it in,” Jin said. “It’s the sim trying to find an analogy for the interactions.”

  “Watch this,” Mark said. “As the white hole drives everything away from its core, tidal forces at the horizon reflect in both directions simultaneously. A mirror of past to present and present to future.” Mark looked intently at Zac and then at Jin. “Unfathomable, right?”

  As the storm became more violent, huge white swells dropping the stranded beads into deep troughs, Zac stepped closer to the screen. The point of view of the sim drew backward to the outside of the white hole’s exit horizon. The beads of light mirrored at the border were torn apart, and they exploded one after another in fatal blasts of radiation.

  The sim zoomed out from the white hole and revealed the approach in the distance of two enormous opposing waves. The blast fronts. Zac’s hands balled into fists, and he shoved them into the pockets of his coveralls as the waves climbed the screen, closing in over the white hole, huge raging cliff faces rushing at each other.

  At the moment of collision, the screen flashed explosive white and then went black.

  Nothingness.

  Zac blinked at the darkness.

  Walter flipped on the monitor next to him, and when the guys turned, it threw a blue glow over their faces. “And?” he said.

  Wrestling against the ponderous heft of it, Zac said, “That’s it.”

  With a tinge of hostility, Walter said, “That’s what?”

  Zac heaved out all the breath in his chest. “That’s the sim trying to show us what will happen.”

  “Which is what?” Walter said, as if to accuse Zac of some kind of trick.

  Zac stood up to him as well as he could, but he felt as if he’d taken a blow. “The entire thing is obliterated. The white hole will be gone.”

  Walter hunched forward with his elbows on his knees. When he looked up, he said, “Let’s be realistic. This could simply be a metaphor for something we’ve screwed up.”

  “I don’t think so,” Zac said, even though he wished that were the case. Exhaustion weighed on him, and he sat again next to Walter.

  Walter patted his arm. “Let’s do this: Let’s step back and find a different way to look at it. Shift our perspective. Can we do that, please?”

  “Sure,” Zac sighed, futility taking all the fight out of his tone.

  “Guys?” Walter pressed Mark and Jin for their agreement.

  “Why not?” Jin said, and he and Mark retreated to their posts.

  Zac faced his monitor. His intellect sped down the track in one direction, but his emotions circled, separate. With each flash of the seconds indicator in the corner of his screen, with each glance through the glass of the doors toward the dark face of his phone, he was more and more aware that Dan hadn’t been able to find Erin.

  Two worries circled each other—one, that she’d done something insane, and another, that something had happened to her, that she was somehow missing.

  He tried to clear a space in his mind and visualize that bizarre note Erin had written. What could all of that mean? Today’s date, that scatter of times. Was that some sort of countdown? A countdown to what? Korrie in her box. “To Korrie first?” First, before what? God, she wasn’t planning to do something to herself, was she? Maybe he should call Dr. Tanner. But what could he do?

  Dan had thought the box was a casket.

  In Green Mountain.

  Zac stood so quickly his chair skittered away across the tile floor of the Clean Room. “Guys,” he said, “I’ll be right back.”

  Walter stood. “What now, Zac?” Chin tucked, body stout and adamant, he looked like a Tyvek-clad bull. “What is the problem now?”

  Zac felt cold rising as if from somewhere below him. He couldn’t take the time to grapple with Walter’s opinions. “I think Erin’s in trouble,” he said, heading toward the door.

  “So that’s what we’re doing?” Walter stopped him with the force of his tone. He made a gesture with his hands palms up and open wide. “We’re dropping the most important work that’s ever been done for some domestic melodrama?”

  Zac met him head-on. “I need a few minutes.”

  “For what?” He cocked his head. “To indulge her fixation? I don’t think you’re doing her any favors.”

  “What does that mean?” Zac snapped.

  Walter shrugged a shoulder. “I’m telling you, it probably doesn’t do her any good for you to coddle her. In fact, it probably makes her worse. I mean, when I saw her outside this morning, she looked like a lunatic.”

  A frigid shock ran down Zac’s body. “Outside?”

  “Yes,” Walter said, guiltily defensive. “Earlier. Saying all this stuff about your—your tragedy …”

  Zac couldn’t slow the anger that flew out of him. “Fuck, Walter! She was here? And you didn’t tell me?” All the glass in the room seemed to shudder at the volume.

  Jin and Mark sat watching, as if unable to look away from a wreck in slow motion. Walter’s chin jutted, his lips parted as if he meant to smile. “She wanted to get into the building to talk to you. Just nuts. And in front of Schacht too.”

  “How could you not tell me!” Overwhelmed, Zac pulled his fingers through his hair. “I can’t believe you said nothing!”

  “Wow.” Walter stepped back. “You are really overreacting.”

  “Fuck, Walter!” Zac said, “For hours you said nothing!” and he slid through the doors and tore off his coveralls.

  When he grabbed his phone off the top of the property lockers, it was powered on but there had been no calls. No contact. As he sped toward the exit, he tapped his phone to call Erin’s number. The call failed. He had to get out of the building and cross the street and go to Green Mountain. To Korrie’s grave. Maybe Erin had gone there. Maybe that’s what her note was about. Trying to be close to Korrie.

  He shoved through the doors and out into the ivory light of the summer evening. The campus was deserted, quiet, pulsing with calls of cicadas, a slight smell of smoke in the air, a cloudless sky. He ran to the back gate, slipped around the security arm, and crossed the road into the green peace of the cemetery. Running down the main path, he passed row upon row of headstones, their long shadows touching in unbroken chains.

  The path curved and then forked in front of a pine grove, and he took the gravel walkway toward the spot where Korrie lay in her grave. There was no sign of Erin. He scanned the entire layout of this section of the cemetery. Nothing moved. No sign of anyone. He listened, but there were no sounds except the rhythmic droning of the insects.

  Ahead, at the end of the row, was Korrie’s headstone. Blue granite, inscribed with the silhouette of a dove and her name and
her dates, the inscription. His father had helped him choose the stone. The two men had nearly had a nervous breakdown, having to sit in the funeral director’s office and look through the endless options. It all seemed like a mockery of the unreality they were trapped in. Teddy bears, angel wings, and syrupy, sentimental epitaphs.

  The funeral director, after a long wait while they sat frustrated and incapable of deciding, asked them, “Which one do you think little Korrie would have liked?”

  A hideous, bitter laughter had slipped from Zac’s lips. His father looked horrified and stood as if he could shield Zac.

  They’d eventually chosen the epitaph “Casting off one shore to find another yet undreamed.” And now Zac wondered what that had meant to him then. What had he been thinking? Poor Korrie, saddled with his confusion for all time. But her dying had been so confusing. Still was, even now.

  Dusk arrived slowly at this point of summer—the solstice. Zac gazed at the stretch of green leading to the Flatirons and the Rockies beyond, a weary, romantic texture created by the severe angle of the light. Old peaks worn down almost smooth. What histories had they witnessed that had been snatched out of existence by a passing wave? How, in the course of a day, this mere day, had the impossible become the truth?

  He crossed his arms and let his gaze linger over the name on the stone. Erin had decided to take his name when they got married, said she loved the old Scottish sigil of his clan, the motto—Lux in tenebris, light into darkness—and they’d chosen the baby’s name only seven weeks into the pregnancy. Korrie Andrea Fullarton. Still a pretty name for you, down there in the dark.

  Lux in tenebris—that’s what he should have put on the stone. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Because he couldn’t think. Still could hardly think.

  And now he had to get back to the Clean Room. Go deal with Walter, he told himself. Nothing here could help him find Erin. He had to turn away from the reddening sun, away from the green hills, and get back to the vortex of his work—the betrayal by his friend, and the breaking news, when they released it, that would splinter everyone’s idea of their lifetime.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  November 1, 2022 | Southwest Approach to Green Mountain Cemetery

  In the last hint of light, Erin searched for the NIST service road. Where it should have been, a collapsed slide of frozen mud and torn branches sloped into the ravine. Erin’s ice-bitten legs were cumbersome and unmanageable beneath her as she stumbled toward Green Mountain.

  Beyond the ravine, the open field lay before her, moon-washed pale and smooth, and she had the odd sensation that the earth was reaching up to meet the soles of her boots, impact against the liners where she should have been able to feel her footfalls, but the ache had stopped as if her feet had disappeared. Korrie slumped against her back.

  The cemetery rose ahead of her. She took deep frozen breaths to sharpen her dull mind. She would have to cut through the graveyard to get to the NIST campus, to get to the phone at the back security gate. Nothing remained of the landscape as she’d last seen it. The half-moon laid down a vague wash of dusty light on all the rows of stones. All the trees were gone, and in their place were small, desiccated stumps. The building where the cemetery’s office had been was gone. A front-loader sat at the end of one of the rows where the wide path led past Korrie’s plot, her headstone. Erin’s mind struggled with the idea. She was stricken by the thought that fire might have damaged Korrie’s headstone, and yet here was Korrie, still alive, with her. She hurried up the path until she reached Korrie’s plot, her blue granite stone, the dove, the words. How was this even possible?

  She rounded the curve in the path and searched the terrain ahead. Across the road from the cemetery, there was a skeletal construction of a new building framed up next to the NIST lab.

  In the distance, it looked as if there was a dim little shard of light. She hurried to where she could see it better. Yes. A construction trailer. There was a light.

  “Look, Korrie,” she said, “the light’s on.”

  Korrie murmured back to her, but Erin couldn’t make out the words.

  “What, baby?” she said.

  Korrie’s voice, only a hoarse whisper, “My feet on fire?”

  Erin looked down at the small pink socks against her thighs. “I’m so sorry, sweetie,” she said. The socks had been all she had to warm Korrie’s feet. When she’d pulled them out of her pocket—

  Oh, no, Erin thought. The ring. What had happened to her ring when she’d pulled out the socks? She balanced Korrie with her good hand and reached her battered hand into her pocket. The ring was still there. It was not lost. Okay. She thumbed the ring onto her swollen little finger. Zac’s time crystal. Thinking his name brought up his beautiful face. Remorse swirled through her. All those months since she’d driven him away, he’d been alone. She was the only person who could feel what he’d been going through, but she’d sent him off to deal with it by himself.

  She would return Korrie to him now and all would be forgiven. She nudged Korrie with her shoulder. “Squid?” There was no response. “Korrie,” Erin said, “wake up.” She jostled her, tried to look back at her face. “Wake up.”

  The warm, golden light of blinding summer suddenly radiated all around them. Green grass and trees glowed with vibrancy, and the scent of pine saturated the air.

  “Oh thank God!” Erin cried.

  She rushed forward through the tangerine of dusk, toward the far edge of the cemetery grounds.

  “Korrie,” she said, “it’s okay now.”

  The interval had finally changed. They glided forward in the sublime kindness of summer.

  “Squid.” She shrugged against Korrie’s cheek with her shoulder, but there was no answer. “Korrie,” she said louder, “you have to wake up.”

  Her hands tingled with life, and the feeling in her feet was returning like a vise grip as they thawed, but she couldn’t get a sound from Korrie. She stopped, untied the arms of the hoodie, and lowered herself to her knees. Clumsy still as her hands warmed, she slid Korrie off her back. Pouring from Erin’s grasp, her body was like liquid. Her face was the color of frost, there in the balmy, creamy light. Her lips were blue.

  “No, no, no!” Erin cried. She put her ear to Korrie’s chest. She heard nothing but her own pulse rushing in her ears. “Korrie,” she cried. She put her maimed hand on Korrie’s cheek. “Breathe.” She watched for a moment to see if her chest moved. Nothing. She tilted Korrie’s head back, pressed her lips around those open blue lips, and forced in a whoosh of air. She watched and saw Korrie’s chest fall, but it didn’t rise again. “Come on,” she begged, “please.” She leaned over again and blew in another breath.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  7:34 PM

  June 20, 2021 | Green Mountain Cemetery

  Zac felt the heat of the low western sun soaking through the back of his shirt as he approached the curve where the stand of pines lined the cemetery pathway. He decided that if he didn’t hear from Dan in the next few minutes, he would call Erin’s doctor. Maybe she’d told him things Zac didn’t know about. He was startled out of the cyclone of his thoughts when he saw a figure hunched in the middle of the path. A woman with hair like Erin’s knelt there, leaning over a small body. With horror, he recognized that it actually was Erin. And that the body was Korrie’s.

  He pulled up short, paralyzed. “Erin?” he called.

  Her head jerked upward. Confusion and recognition crossed her face. She looked crazed. “Zac!” she cried. “Call nine-one-one!”

  He stepped toward her, faltering, feeling stunned, as if someone had shot him. “What have you done?” he said. He looked at the small body. His mind went scattershot, trying to understand what he was seeing. He saw his daughter, but he’d just stood moments ago at the untouched grave.

  “Right now!” Erin screamed. “Call nine-one-one!”

  He couldn’t speak. He could only shamble, mystified, toward them. Erin leaned over and blew a breath into the body.
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  “My god, Erin, what are you doing?” His face goosefleshed with sweat.

  “Just do it,” she yelled. “Call an ambulance! She’s not breathing!” She put a hand on the child’s chest, a hand mutilated, bloodied, crooked, and purple. She leaned in again and blew another breath. She sat back and looked down at the face. He looked too. His Korrie. Her jaw hung slack. Her lips were blue.

  “Help me, Zac,” Erin cried.

  He crossed the last yard toward them through the thickening length of time it took to get close, and then he knelt opposite Erin. She looked insane, her eyes round and her brows tight. He looked at the body and reached his hand toward the face of his girl. He touched it. It was soft with the give of living flesh. Warm. The impossibility of it flashed through his mind.

  Giving in, he pulled his phone from his pocket and pressed “Emergency.” He watched his wife breathing rescue breaths into the motionless form of his daughter.

  A male voice on his phone asked about the nature of his emergency.

  “I need an ambulance.” He sounded calm to himself, detached from the cataclysm his body was going through. The dispatcher asked about the location, and Zac answered, even though he disbelieved his own words. “Green Mountain Cemetery,” he said, “where it borders Compton Road is the nearest street.” It sounded as if someone else were speaking for him, his voice disembodied.

  The dispatcher confirmed that he had their location and that paramedics were on the way and said Zac should remain on the line with him. “What’s happening?” he said.

  “My daughter’s not breathing, and my wife’s doing mouth-to-mouth.” Let the words go, he thought. Let them tell. Because how could he answer otherwise?

  Erin gave another breath and then straightened up. “Are they coming?”

  “Yes,” he told her. He grasped for some shred of comprehension. The dispatcher asked how old his daughter was. He looked at Korrie, her skin still that smooth perfection of baby skin, freckles. “Six,” he answered. But then he didn’t know if that was right. What did it matter? When the dispatcher asked him what had happened, he couldn’t answer. “I don’t know,” he said. That was all he was sure of.