by A. G. Riddle
I stumble, groping my way to a chair. I sense Shaw near me, yelling something—I think getting his assistant—but I wave him off. I just need to sit . . .
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Nick
I WAS ONLY PASSED OUT FOR A FEW minutes, Shaw told me. I apologized profusely—the idea that my . . . episode might have jeopardized what we were talking about today almost brings on a new wave of nausea—but he assured me he was only concerned for my welfare. The concern in his eyes, the way his hand rested on my shoulder—it was genuine. Is genuine. He ordered a car for me, waited for me to get in, and told me to get some rest.
“Seriously—get some sleep. You’re health’s important, Nick.” He smiles. “Soon, we’re going to have all the time in the world.”
THE MIGRAINE FADED DURING THE ride from Oliver’s home to the hotel, but I can still feel it idling at the back of my head, waiting to attack, almost taunting me, the dread as oppressive as the pain. I’ve been lucky. For my entire life, I’ve been pretty healthy. Now I’m beginning to understand what it’s like for a few of my friends with chronic medical conditions. The uncertainty. The lurking fear. Knowing when you go to bed that tomorrow your health could be markedly worse. Knowing that right when you have to be someplace important, when people are counting on you to be at your best, you might not be able to, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Committing anyway—that takes guts. I know, because I’m scared now. I’m scared this won’t just be an episode, a bump in the road I get past. I’m scared this will persist. I’m scared it will limit what I can do, keep me from this incredible opportunity with Oliver. That’s new. Yesterday I didn’t have that kind of hope, or fear for that matter. Feeling. That’s something.
I need help. I’m desperate enough to risk another flight back to San Francisco. Seeing a doctor there, at home, where I know people, feels a lot less scary. I’m sure I’ll need to find a specialist.
In my room I instinctively turn on the TV to the six o’clock news—my postwork ritual—and get my laptop out, ready to search for flights.
The travel site flashes my most recent trips, and my eyes lock on one.
Flight 305: New York (JFK) London (Heathrow)
A bolt of pain shoots from the back of my head to the front, bulging there. The pressure pushes at my eye sockets like water from a fire hose. The surge passes, the pain tapering to a drip.
My eyes still tightly closed, I stand and stagger to the sink. I feel around, find a glass, fill it with tap water, and gulp it down. What could help? Advil. Anything. I don’t have any. Maybe the front desk does.
I’m reaching for the phone when the newsreader catches my attention.
“. . . lost contact with the plane around four fourteen p.m. Eastern time. At this time, authorities don’t believe the flight was hijacked. However, they have activated search-and-rescue teams to begin . . .”
Every word is a sledgehammer to my head. I stumble toward the table, grabbing for the remote, almost blind from the pain.
The report about the missing plane goes off before I can reach it, and the pain fades.
Sight returns. I glance at the papers strewn across the table.
The sketches of the Gibraltar Dam. They’re wrong. I pick one up. The buildings—they’re too short. They look like nubs. Nubs of what? Fingers. Fingers that have been cut off. Why would buildings be fingers? Makes no sense. But they were. That’s what I remember. Not imagine—remember. I rifle through the rest of the papers, everything from the last two days of meetings. This is the only sketch of the dam. It’s wrong. It should be a giant hand, reaching out of the dam . . . a symbol.
A wave of pressure. I squeeze my eyes shut. A single tear rolls down my face.
This is it. The origin point. I think.
It all started after the Gibraltar Dam meeting. Or did it? Was it after the Podway meeting? Or the flight?
I glance at the stack of papers. The letterhead reads RAILCELL. It’s wrong, too. It will never be called RailCell. Why am I so certain? The cars are off, too. They’re too big. They’ll be smaller.
Another pulse through my brain, like a balloon being inflated, pushing out in every direction.
I lay my head on the table.
The first attack was on the plane back from London to San Francisco. I must have contracted this before then.
When?
What do I know?
What was the next event?
Yul Tan. Q-net. That meeting. The entire time I felt a nagging sensation. His voice echoes in my head.
It works with quantum entanglement. Particles encounter each other and become linked. After that, their states become dependent upon each other. I use that quantum phenomenon to transmit data across space and time.
His research is the key.
Key to what?
Q-net.
No. That’s not right. It’s not about Q-net.
What’s happening to me? I rub my eyes.
Yul’s voice is in my head again. I’ve had some interference the past few days, like static on the network. I was worried, but it just stopped.
It just stopped.
But something started for Yul after we met. He was sick, too. Just like me. He felt something, as if we had met before. Memories he couldn’t reach.
The next attack: the flight to New York. But it wasn’t as bad. Wasn’t the same.
Breakfast. The orbital colonies. The pitch that was wrong.
Shaw knew it was wrong. The way it was presented was wrong. But the idea was right.
The whole time with Shaw, everything was right.
Sabrina.
When I touched her hand, I was gone, on a hard, cold table, staring up. The lights. She was there.
She knew. I saw it in her eyes.
The touch was the key.
The woman on Facebook. The biographer. The sensation when I saw her. Sabrina looked at her, too. Knew her.
I focus on my laptop. My eyes catch on the open window, on Flight 305, and a strike splits my head, sending me reeling back.
That’s a flash point. Flight 305. What does it mean? Is it because the flight from London was total agony?
My eyes closed, I find the Windows key, hold it down, and press M, minimizing all the windows. I open a new browser and navigate to Harper Lane’s Facebook profile.
The instant I see her face, chills run through me, growing stronger, numbing my body.
I replay the moment we met. On the plane. In the aisle. It was dark, and half the plane was gone.
No. Wrong.
Our plane was whole, sitting on the tarmac at Heathrow.
The tarmac at Heathrow. A sea of grass.
I shake my head. That’s impossible.
Planes overturned, crumbling.
Not right.
Our plane was whole, sitting at the jet bridge. She was there, in a first-class seat, waiting to get off. I stood up, helped her with her bag. She peered up at me, her beautiful eyes wide.
I blink and she’s trapped in the seat, her leg caught.
Water all around her.
She’s scared, can’t get free.
No. Impossible. A flooded plane at the jet bridge?
Focus.
I scan the screen.
There’s a new post on her profile.
Harper: Indecision 2015 Update. Finally slept for a few hours and dreamed I was on sinking plane after it crashed. I was pulled underwater and couldn’t get out :(
She saw it, too. How is that possible?
Sweat springs up on my forehead. I feel the memories slipping away, the two versions of reality separating again, a kite I can see clearly at first, carried away by the wind, drifting up until it’s just a tiny speck and then invisible, as if it were never there.
I reach for the remote, intending to turn the TV off, but the words from a new report stop me cold. “Authorities say if the plane did crash into the water, that makes it much harder to find and decreases the chances that there will be any survivors—�
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A new wave of numbing spasms battles with the surging pain in my head.
I close my eyes.
The plane did hit the water. But they lived. Some of them.
I tried to save them.
How could a plane hit the water without disintegrating? It would be like hitting concrete at six hundred miles per hour.
The answers are in my head—how, I don’t know.
Facts emerge, as if answering my unspoken question.
The plane slowed down after the turbulence. The pilots deployed the landing gear to further slow it down. It broke apart and the tail section spun and dragged against the trees, which also decreased its speed. It hit the lake backward, tail first. Something—trees under the water, maybe—kept it from sinking right after impact. I can almost see it sticking out of the water.
I feel dizzy. I’m going to throw up. I grip the table, then push myself up. I stagger to the sink, push the handle back quickly, and watch the water pour out, gushing down the drain, which has a single bar across a round circle. The water flows in, like water into a sinking plane, a plane torn in half.
For a second I don’t see the sink drain. I see a plane in cross-section, a jagged dark circle.
Then it’s gone.
I splash more water on my face. It’s so cold, but . . . it helps. I remember the feeling. Cold water on my face, numbing it as I swim. I turn the faucet all the way to cold, cup my hands until my fingers tingle, start to burn, then go numb. With each second it hurts more, but I can feel less. As the burning, numbing sensation creeps up my hand, my mind becomes clearer. I splash the water on my face and inhale, shivering.
I’m running through the woods. A dozen points of light bounce in the dark forest before me. My breath flows out, white steam against the beads of light.
Then I’m back in my hotel room, the water flowing from the sink, the TV silent in the background.
I’m giving a speech. On the lake bank in the dark. No one will save those people if we don’t. Their lives are in our hands. . . .
I look at the laptop screen. At her eyes. I hear the running water. Like a waterfall.
My head explodes. Waves coalesce into a bolt of pain. A hammer strike. Pain so bad I lose feeling in my extremities, and for a brief moment I think I’m paralyzed, but I can see my hand moving in the mirror.
I bring another handful of water to my face, pressing it into my eyes, and when I take my hands away, I’m standing on a muddy bank before a torn plane sticking up out of the lake. Every exhalation sends white steam into the night, and there’s no sound, no other sensation. The world, save for my breathing, seems frozen.
Slowly, with great effort, I turn to my right, where a woman stands still, her face unreadable. “How about you?” I ask.
“Yeah . . . I’m good. I’m a good swimmer.”
I turn back to the plane in the lake, but it’s gone. I’m in my hotel room. The newscast is ending. The glowing computer screen stares at me. The face. The woman on Facebook. It was her.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Nick
I’M LOSING IT.
My hands are slick with sweat. The voice over the loudspeaker booms, “All passengers, this is a final boarding call for Flight 314 to London Heathrow. All passengers . . .”
But I’m the only passenger left in the waiting area for this flight. I sit, staring at the woman working the counter. She’s holding the radio with its curling cord, the button depressed as she speaks, staring directly at me.
She knows there’s only one booked seat unfilled, one person left to board the flight who has cleared security and is somewhere in the concourse. She figures it’s me.
This is crazy. I should turn around and go home, get my head checked.
Instead I stand and walk over, hand her my boarding pass. She glances at my sweat-drenched hair and pale, clammy skin. “Are you all right, sir?”
“Fine . . . It’s just . . . I’ve had some bad transatlantic flights recently.”
I DON’T KNOW HARPER LANE’S number. I searched for it. No landline. No way to find her cell. Don’t know her e-mail. I thought about a Facebook friend request, but . . . how creepy is that? What would I say? “Remember me? I got your carry-on down after a flight we shared. Hey, do you happen to remember that flight crashing in the English countryside? ’Cause I do, and things got really crazy after that . . .”
What I do know—about all I know—is where she lives.
Because I’ve been there. In 2147.
And now I’m walking there. In 2015. The thing I need to figure out at this point is what I will tell the police when I’m arrested.
An elderly man wearing an argyle sweater and a flat cap holds the door to her building open for me as I approach.
I skip to catch it, thanking him.
Up the first flight of stairs.
Second.
Third.
On the fourth, I see her door.
Crazy.
I knock, every tap sending a sensation like an electric shock from my fingers to the pit of my stomach. I fight the urge to turn on my heel and run.
On the other side of the door, I hear the sound of socked feet on the wooden floor. I wipe the sweat from my forehead.
The tiny point of light in the peephole goes dark.
A thud on the other side of the door. The peephole is light again. She’s likely going for her phone, calling the police.
A clicking sound.
The door swings in slowly, and she steps into the narrow opening.
My voice comes out a whisper. “Hi.”
Her jaw falls as she turns white as a sheet. Her eyes go wide, making them seem even bigger, more endless, more captivating, than they already are.
“Hi,” she breathes, barely audible.
She lets her hands fall to her sides, and the heavy wooden door creaks open, revealing the room. It’s a wreck. Wadded-up pieces of notebook paper lie in drifts at the edges of the room. Layers of construction paper cover the floor like unraked autumn leaves. Markers are scattered everywhere. It looks like a day-care center. Maybe her children? Nieces and nephews?
On the couch and two chairs, seven big sheets of poster board are propped up, facing out, like artworks on easels at an exhibition. Actually, they’re more like scientific papers at a conference: titles scrawled at the top, rough drawings and timelines below. Dragons. Ships. Pyramids. And endless notes, scribblings. Arrows and strikethroughs. And a name.
Alice Carter.
They’re all about Alice Carter.
Who the hell is Alice Carter? Another passenger? Possibly. I only got a few names.
As the door swings completely open, I see an eighth sheet of poster board. A final exhibit. FLIGHT 305 is scrawled across the top in big block letters. Below it: “Stand-alone novel? Sci-fi? Thriller? Time travel?”
She thinks it’s all in her head. Another story she made up.
Below the subtitle, there’s a sketch: the round, torn end of a plane jutting above a placid lake, a crescent moon in the sky.
Names fill the space below.
Nick Stone. Sabrina Schröder. Yul Tan.
Not fiction?
Hope fills me, gives me the courage to step into the room. She keeps her feet planted, her body still. Only her eyes follow me.
Time to take a chance. “How much do you remember?”
She swallows, blinks, but her voice comes out clear, confident. “Everything.”
I exhale. For the first time the pounding in my head subsides, every passing second washing it away.
She steps closer and scrutinizes my face, especially my forehead, where the gashes were after the Titans invaded the camp, the wound she cared for in the abandoned stone farmhouse. She reaches up, touches that place where my hairline meets my forehead, just as she did in the Podway, in the only moment we had alone in all the time we spent in 2147. I wrap my fingers firmly around her wrist and let my thumb slide into her palm, just as before.
“What do you want
to do now?” I ask.
“I want to finish what we started on the way to London.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Harper
WE LIE IN THE BED WHERE I FOUND the notebooks, where I read them, a few days ago—or 132 years from now, depending on how you choose to see it. Either way, this is the exact place where I saw what my life had become. I was horrified then, and I’m terrified now. But more than that, I’m excited.
Then, when I found the journals, Nick walked in, sat on the end of this very bed, beside me, and told me that the journal wasn’t my future, that it didn’t have to be. That I could make a different choice.
It seemed like an empty promise at the time, kind words said to ease my pain and quiet my mind.
But it came true. Here I am. Back in my time. With the knowledge of everything that happened.
The terrible future I almost repeated will never be.
And Nick Stone is here in this bed with me. With all his memories. And none of his clothes.
Perfect.
WHEN THE SUNLIGHT THROUGH THE wide window in my bedroom becomes too bright to ignore, Nick sits up and pulls his boxers on, then his trousers.
I panic a little.
How clean is the shower?
Not as clean as I would like it to be.
And breakfast. I bet a starving vagabond wouldn’t eat what’s left in my fridge.
He pulls his shirt on and glances back at me. “Gonna get some breakfast. What would you like?”
I want to go with him, but I’m a fright. I didn’t get a great deal of sleep last night—not that I’m complaining about that. But I could use every precious second he’s gone to address the previously mentioned domestic concerns. I request a muffin and coffee and suggest a reliable spot around the corner, and then he’s gone.
I turn over in bed and put my face in my hands. Why am I so bloody scared?
It’s not about the memories anymore, or the decision that has haunted me. It comes down to this: I like Nick Stone very much, and I’ve no idea what he thinks. In fact, I don’t know him at all.