The Punch Escrow

by Tal Klein

  “Continue to strafe until you find a clear nonlethal shot,” Moti directed his team. “You kill him, I kill you.”

  “We need to turn the power off!” Joel2 yelled from behind him. “He’s going to clear everyone here!”

  Moti turned around. “What are you talking about?”

  Joel2 tried to keep his voice calm. “Taraval expanded the crane’s ecophagy cage. He’s going to clear everyone! All of us”—he pointed at the island to the east of them—“all of Manhattan, maybe. Eight million people. Who knows how far those fucking nanos will go before they run out of juice? We need to kill the power to this whole fucking place right fucking now!”

  “Shit,” Moti said. “No wonder it was so easy to find him. Pull back!” he ordered his team. “Back with me in the van right now!”

  “I need you to give me the grenade,” Joel2 told him.

  “What? Forget about it. It’s a suicide mission.”

  “Give me. The grenade,” Joel2 insisted. His resolve was complete, confident. Despite Sylvia’s deceptions and lies, despite his own self-doubt, despite his existential crisis, Joel2 still loved our wife. Maybe more than he loved himself. And like me, he was ready to prove it. Love makes you do crazy shit.

  Moti studied the determined look on Joel2’s face as rain pattered slightly on their tac vests. I’d like to tell you that what he saw in my doppelgänger’s eyes somehow moved the Levantine spy, making him particularly sensitive to our cause. That would have been nice. But to be honest, I believe what happened next was merely Moti’s pragmatic approach to ensuring his team walked away from this thing alive.

  “Let’s go,” he told Joel2, and started walking back toward the van. Inside, he walked to the front section where Pema and Ifrit sat. He put his hand around Pema’s neck. Joel2 was afraid he might snap it, but Moti just held her by her throat and coolly stated, “Contact Corina Shafer and tell her that if she cuts the power to the Chelsea Piers TC right now, then she has a deal. Understand?”

  Pema nodded. “Understood.”

  Moti released her. “Zaki! Why is everyone not back here yet? Go out there and get them here right now!”

  The big man was already out of the van and sprinting toward the freight yard.

  Moti then walked back over to the locked compartment. It opened at his touch. He gently removed the grenade, examining it. Contemplating the consequences.

  “Tell me, Joel, do you know what a shofar is? Once, outside Jericho—”

  “I don’t care,” Joel2 said, impatiently grabbing the grenade from his hand. “How do you work this thing?” he asked Pema.

  THE LASKER TRAP

  THE GRENADE was significantly heavier than it looked. This made it rather awkward for Joel2 to run with—especially given the grave reminders Pema had etched into his mind about what might happen if he dropped the thing. Its titanium trisulfide coating was smooth, almost gelatinous to the touch—in other words, dangerously slippery. The rain wasn’t helping matters.

  He was careful to stay behind containers, duck around trucks, and crawl under conveyors. Anything that would give him cover. His path was wisely indirect, moving around rather than toward me. Finally he arrived behind Taraval’s crane. Thanks to me, the mad scientist was still expounding upon religious philosophy and historical precedent and justifications of things that “must be done.” It was all hogwash, but I made sure to maintain eye contact. Keep talking, crazyhead.

  As Taraval continued his stupid soliloquy, Joel2 climbed one-handed up the ladder leading to the conductor’s cabin. Considering the metal rungs were slick with raindrops and he was carrying an untested weapon of mass destruction (though I did not realize it in that moment), it wasn’t just difficult—it was terrifying. Worse, I had to keep my eyes on Taraval, who was well into his rant now.

  “If only people adhered to the fundamental tenets of human progress rather than the dogmatic commandments of the so-called arbiters of justice, the world would be a better place. But alas, pivotal deviations from standard operating procedure that pioneers such as Corina Shafer have cultivated are nowadays handled by fat-cat legislators and litigators. Innovation has been distilled to its least common revenue-generating denominator. Our generation has lost its spirit, and I have lost my patience, Mr. Byram.” Taraval turned back to the conductor’s console, tapping a few icons. “Sylvia, my dear, you’re up.” He raised the crane’s magnet then turned it off, hauling her body into the conductor’s booth. The magnet lowered again, until it was about halfway between me and the booth.

  Lifting my wife by the chin, Taraval held Sylvia’s head to the console’s biometric sensor. Thankfully, nothing happened. “Open your eyes!” he yelled at her.

  No more words. Time for action.

  With his attention off me, I jumped up toward the dangling crane magnet. It took a few tries, but I managed to snag it, my fingers barely gripping the slick metal edge of the nearly two-meter-wide disc. As I pulled myself up, my biceps straining, I could see Joel2 was nearly at the conductor’s booth. I clambered on top of the heavy round magnet, thinking I could swing it closer to the console and grab Sylvia. It was the only plan I could think of. At the same time, Joel2 reached the top of the ladder. I nodded to him, hoping to convey that Taraval was preoccupied. And then I saw it.

  The grenade.

  In my mind, I felt relief, not concern. Had I been privy to Pema’s lecture about the danger of the grenade to its wielder, I would have likely tried to dissuade Joel2 from using it. But at that moment, as he and I made eye contact, the pride I’d felt for him earlier returned. There was no longer any jealousy, no existential worry over which of us was the real Joel Byram. Right then I would have been proud to be either of us. Proud that there were two of us, and we were both doing what it took to save our wife.

  With the wind picking up, I tried to swing the magnet back and forth like a pendulum. I did this by running from one side of the magnet to the other, but it barely moved. The metal disc on which I was standing and the steel cable attaching it to the crane must have weighed over a ton. Hoping my impromptu trapeze act would at least distract Taraval from Joel2, I put my back into it, letting out a mighty roar. Surprisingly, the magnet actually started to swing slightly.

  Unfortunately, the yellow lights on the crane and in the portal beneath us started flashing at the same moment.

  Shit, she opened her eyes.

  I reached toward the railing with one hand, leaning into my momentum to increase the arc of the magnet’s swing.

  Here we go.

  My fingers grazed one of the railing beams as the alarms started blaring.

  Focus. Don’t let go. You can do this.

  “Sylvia!” I yelled. “Jump!”

  Both she and Taraval looked down to me. Then Joel2 pulled himself into the booth and stood up. He was now at eye level with Taraval.

  Seeing my doppelgänger, Taraval looked back and forth between me, swinging on the magnet three meters below him, and Joel2, holding a prototype teleportation grenade a mere two meters away. “Fool me once!” Taraval said, wagging a finger. “Fortunately for me, one is all you get.”

  Taraval stretched a finger toward a green triangular icon on the console. He was about to press it when Sylvia knocked him sideways with her hip.

  Joel2 grabbed her by the shoulders. “We’ve got you,” he said, kissing her quickly on the forehead then pushing her out of the conductor’s booth.

  “Joel!” she screamed as she fell downward.

  The magnet, with me on top of it, swung back toward her. Everything you’ve gone through, your entire life, has been about this one fucking moment, Joel. Don’t fuck it up! Now—catch!

  I caught her under the arms, the sudden weight yanking me into a sitting position. The steel suspension cable cut into my shoulder, but I hung on. Gritting my teeth, I struggled to lift my wife onto the magnet with me. To anyone watching the maneuver, I’m sure it resembled a disastrously executed circus act. But I felt like Superman. Slowly, Sylvia’s b
ody came over the edge of the disc, until she collapsed across my lap. I exhaled a sigh of relief.

  Suddenly the TC alarms stopped blaring and the shipping yard went dark. The only light came from the moon reflecting off the raindrops.

  Taraval laughed. “Did you idiots seriously think cutting the power would be something I did not account for?” he said to Joel2.

  “No,” Joel2 responded. But he wasn’t talking to him. His eyes were focused on me and Sylvia. Again, I have no idea what he was thinking. Maybe he’d done the relationship calculus and realized there was no plausible future for the three of us as a “family.” Maybe he thought he needed to be punished for killing Eduardo and hacking Julie. Maybe he just felt the glacier calling to him. All I know is what he did, which was move his right hand from behind his back and reveal the grenade. He pushed in one of the two gray buttons on its side without looking away from me and our wife. The grenade’s opaque metallic surface instantly became transparent. It looked as though Joel2 was holding a weighty bubble in his hands.

  Taraval recoiled, clearly recognizing the grenade for what it was. He was scared. “You fool,” he said. “Use that thing and you’ll merely kill yourself their way instead of mine.”

  Three meters below the booth, Sylvia looked at me in abject horror. She, too, realized what was about to transpire. “He can’t!”

  “He already has,” I told her, and pulled her off the magnet.

  We fell to the container below, striking the metal roof and knocking the breath from our lungs. As my wife and I struggled to inhale, the bright overhead lights blinked back into service. The yellow caution lights resumed flashing, and the alarms revved up their blaring. Taraval snorted a brief “Ha!” and quickly turned back to the conductor’s console. Without hesitation, Joel2 ran toward Taraval at full speed.

  Fuck. We’re dead. Even if he does get there, we’re all dead.

  I turned to Sylvia, uttering a forlorn “I love you.” But she didn’t acknowledge it. Her attention was not on me.

  “No!” she screamed as the light emanating from the grenade in Joel2’s hand became whiter and brighter, until it was as if a million strips of magnesium ignited all at once. I was forced to avert my gaze.

  “Joel!” Sylvia cried.

  There was a loud thunk, and the shipping yard went dark again.

  Moti. He must have cooked up a contingency for Taraval’s contingency.

  Sparks flew from the TC console. The crane’s magnet became untethered, falling toward us at a quick clip. I rolled sideways, trying to drag Sylvia with me—

  But the one-ton disc hit the container, crushing the thick steel as if it were tinfoil. The sound of the impact echoed off the nearby freight containers. Then all was silent, save for the patter of raindrops on metal.

  “Joel,” my wife said in the darkness. “Joel, I can’t feel my leg.”

  “Hang on.” I stretched out my hand, my eyes straining to adjust in the darkness. My fingers found Sylvia’s shoulder, then looked down to her torso. Her left leg was pinned underneath the magnet, but her eyes were on the conductor’s booth. I followed her gaze. The discharged grenade lay where Joel2 and Taraval had stood, a green light blinking on its surface.

  The two men were gone.

  “Joel,” Sylvia whispered. I knew which one she meant. Her face was streaked with tears and rain.

  Is he really gone?

  Without the high-intensity lights polluting the night sky, constellations of stars began to appear. Their twinkling above was cold comfort. Sylvia stared at the space where her resurrected husband had stood just a moment ago, then she began to weep. A deep, soul-purging wail of despair that reverberated off the containers, until it sounded like a choir in a funeral procession. I put my arm around her, too shocked to join in, my eyes also fixed on the empty booth. Knowing—as only twins do—that my other was truly gone.

  ALWAYS SOMETHING THERE TO REMIND ME

  ONCE THE PARAMEDICS ARRIVED, they immediately set to work on repairing Sylvia’s left leg. It had been crushed, nearly severed just above the knee. She refused to teleport to the hospital, so they flew her in an ambulance drone. She allowed them to staunch the bleeding, but would not discuss a prosthetic replacement. She kept saying she deserved to have a piece of herself missing.

  The next day, owing to God’s weird sense of humor or poignant sense of irony, I again found myself deep in the bowels of Bellevue Hospital. Only this time, Sylvia was the patient. I stood before the hospital’s vending printer, trying to decide if a Big Mac qualified as breakfast food. I had just settled on ordering a regular old apple when a familiar gravelly voice spoke behind me.

  “I read my cup this morning, Joel.”

  I turned to see Moti, nattily dressed as always, a cryptic smile on his face.

  “It was interesting,” he continued. “A shape that could be read in two different ways.”

  Shortly before the paramedics showed up last night, Moti and his team had made themselves scarce. Pema briefed us on what to say and what not to say, assuring us that International Transport would handle damage control. Neither Sylvia nor I had mentioned anyone else’s presence at the shipping yard. Our official story was that Taraval had abducted Sylvia, and his disappearance was the result of a deranged work-related attempt at murder-suicide. IT had already set up Taraval as the fall guy; now they were executing on that plan. The news feeds all talked about the actions of a scientist who went crazy and killed a crane conductor. Our names were not mentioned, only that “Two innocent bystanders were also injured, but are expected to make a full recovery.”

  Moti’s tone now was nonchalant, but I knew he was goading me to ask for more detail. Perhaps trying to lighten the mood. I didn’t take the bait.

  As we walked back to my wife’s room, the Levantine spy verified what I intrinsically knew—what Sylvia had realized the moment it had happened: Joel2 was gone. They couldn’t find him or Taraval in the glacier. They’d keep trying, but it wasn’t looking good.

  I couldn’t stop myself from continuously mulling over Joel2’s last action. He didn’t have to sacrifice himself. Moti had things under control. But, of course, there had been no way to know that.

  Still, why had he held on to the grenade while tackling Taraval? Why not throw it at him? Did he think that taking out Taraval that way would stop the portal nanos from clearing everyone else? Or was he already resigned to his end, answering the siren’s call of the glacier? Perhaps he knew there was no future for him and Sylvia, that the weight of what she’d done would always be heavier on his soul than mine. Perhaps he saw his sacrifice as the best and only way to ensure her happiness.

  One thing I knew for sure, I still had a million questions. But for once, I didn’t need to know all the answers. Now I just wanted to appreciate what I had, and what I’d almost lost. I felt as though I’d lived two lifetimes in the last thirty-six hours.

  We entered my wife’s room. She lay on the blue-and-white bed, staring bleakly out the window at the New York skyline. The Sun managed to shine brightly through the hazy atmosphere. The clouds around it looked like perfectly sculpted cotton balls against the bluish-gray sky. Yet, Sylvia’s expression was bleak. The absence of her leg under the bedsheet reminded me of a missing puzzle piece.

  “IT is on the way to debrief you,” Moti told us. “I cannot be here when they arrive. So this must be good-bye.”

  I nodded. Sylvia continued staring out the window.

  “William Taraval knew he was finished, but he still tried to take us all out,” Moti added, despite her disinclination to listen. Maybe he wanted to make himself feel better. “Your husbands acted bravely. Sometimes stupidly, too. But they saved you. I suggest both of you look forward, not backward.”

  “The fail-safe,” Sylvia said softly. Her voice was still hoarse from the events of the past two days. “Bill told me not to worry about his self-experimentation in Honeycomb. He said he’d been testing it for six months with no recorded adverse effects. And he said he had
a fail-safe in case something went wrong.”

  “Interesting,” Moti said, reaching for the pack of TIME cigarettes I knew was in his pocket. “What is this fail-safe?” he asked, knocking the pack against the palm of his hand.

  “I—” She hesitated, looking at me, her face stricken. I squeezed her hand in mine, encouraging her to go on. “In my research, there would be a programmatic mechanism for waking up astronauts when they arrived at their destination. With Honeycomb, it was the same. You could theoretically bring anyone back if you knew where to look and what to look for.”

  “In that case, I’m afraid the matter is hopeless,” Moti said, lighting up his tightly packed cigarette in defiance of the NO SMOKING signs plastered all around the hospital. “As soon as that grenade went off, IT and the Levant were in a race to find and recover William Taraval.”

  But not Joel2?

  He continued, unaware of, or perhaps indifferent to, my thoughts, “We knew where to look and what we were looking for, but there was nothing.” He paused to draw a puff from his cigarette. “They are gone. I am sure of it.”

  “So that’s it?” I asked him.

  Moti nodded. “That’s it,” he said. Sylvia turned her face away again.

  “I must go,” he stated, heading back to the door of Sylvia’s room. “You know, when this all settles down, you two should take another vacation.”

  Moti took another puff, the end of his cigarette glowing red. “If you ask this travel agent,” he said, smiling, a single eyebrow raised, “I recommend Florence. Easy to get to without teleportation. Go see the Mona Lisa there, at the Uffizi. She will help you.” He turned halfway in the doorway, meeting my eye with the corner of his as he took one last drag. “Good-bye, Joel.”

  Then he left us in a cloud of smoke.

  AD FINEM

  For our transgressions have been multiplied before Thee, and our sins have testified against us; for our transgressions are with us, and our iniquities—we have known them.