“But did you see the moose in the third video? In the fifth one there was a black bear that ran right in front of the camera. Oh, and an elk, too. Did you ever go back?” Evelyn said.
“No, we were too poor at the time. We knew we might never make it back.”
“Didn’t you have regrets about the other paths?”
“No. I learned not to waste my time on regrets. Takes too much energy. Too much study wearies the body and all that. You ought to take that back inside and watch the videos from Old Jerusalem. That camera almost got us kicked out of the country.”
“Come back inside. Monica’s here now. Tell us about Glacier. And Jerusalem. Please?”
Bernard sighed as he tore out the vine one root at a time. This vine was twenty feet long and nearly filled out the garbage bag. When he was finished he stood up and looked on at Evelyn. Despite the emotions the videos churned up, he conceded that maybe now was the best time to see them again.
* * *
For the remainder of the afternoon, Bernard narrated his overseas travels with love. His two daughters, Evelyn and Monica, sat in rapt attention while the camera replayed a video of a tour through Old Jerusalem. As the camera navigated down the narrow streets and between stalls filled with dates, pomegranates, rugs, books, and clothing, suddenly the hologram spun and was plunged into darkness.
“What the…what happened?” Evelyn said as she drew back from the image. She put a hand to her mouth and started to laugh.
“That was an Arab merchant. He got angry and grabbed the firefly with his hand,” Bernard said as he sat next to his daughters on the couch. He sipped his coffee. He thumbed the playback button on the camera to move to the next video of the city. “After that he called an Israeli soldier over and complained.”
“Did they take your camera?” Monica said.
“No. But they did interrogate us.”
Monica became terrified. “Did they haul you away?”
“No. We did it on the spot. Your Mom and I had just bought some schwarma when two soldiers and the merchant came up to us. The merchant kept bickering about us and showed the soldiers the firefly. One of the soldiers looked at it and asked us a thousand questions. But they let us go.”
“And the merchant?”
“He was spittin’ nails, he was so mad. He threw the firefly at us. I put it back in the box. We were about to leave and then the last firefly came in. He swung at it but it flew back into the camera before he could catch it. We ran out of there after that.”
The hologram played on, but instead it showed the firefly being picked up by the soldier and examined. Finally it turned off.
“I thought you said the merchant tried to catch it,” Monica said.
Bernard paused before answering. “I thought he did. Maybe I didn’t remember right.”
“You have a great memory, Dad. You okay?”
Bernard skipped the last video. Up popped a graph of all the videos and how many times they were viewed. Again, the first video listed showed the highest usage.
“Is that the path you walked with Mom?” Evelyn asked.
“Yes.” He slid the camera over to Monica. “Are there any videos you wanted to see?”
“Just the ones with you and Mom.” Monica smiled broad but seemed uninterested in the possibilities of the camera.
Always the anchor of the family, Bernard thought to himself. Steady and grounded.
“Don’t you want to see all the videos of Texas?” Evelyn said as she positioned the camera in front of herself.
“No,” Monica said.
“I’ll let you two explore a while,” Bernard said. He stood up, stretched his muscles, and took his coffee cup into the kitchen. He knew Evelyn loved to travel and endlessly explore and in time Monica would get bored of her antics.
In the kitchen he poured a half cup of coffee and surveyed the setting sun. Peach, pink, and vermillion hues flooded the neighborhood, giving it a dreamlike glow.
When he came back into the living room, both daughters departed. He overheard a discussion of photo albums as they went upstairs. He stared on at the camera and suddenly an idea came to him.
He picked up the camera and slipped out the back door of the house. He informed no one of his departure and instead made haste down the paved path that ran behind his backyard. Once on the serpentine path he followed it through a nearby stand of aspen and birch trees until he arrived at Mallory Park, a county park where he proposed to his wife thirty-five years earlier.
At the entrance to the park he passed an empty parking lot, a bike rack, and a set of portable outhouses. Just past the parking lot, the walking path split into two. At the split there was a freshwater spring in the middle of grassy clearing. He walked up to the spring. Next to it was a small granite monument. The monument depicted a pitcher at the edge of a well and attached to the base of the well was a blackened plaque. He knelt down, brushed the dirt and grime from the raised lettering, and read an account of a small settlement in 1827 that survived a bitter winter with the water that flowed from the spring. The bottom of the plaque listed verses from Ecclesiastes 12:1-7 and the last verse jumped out at him. It read: “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”
Upon closer inspection of the pitcher, he eyed several deep cracks in its side. Although he visited the monument as a teenager, he did not remember the cracks. Maybe some kids tried to break the pitcher as a prank. Maybe time took its toll on the sculpture. Either way, the thought jarred him. Maybe, like the merchant and the firefly, his memory was starting to fail him.
He stood up and eyed both hiking paths. The path on the left bent away and disappeared into the woods yet somehow, its secrets no longer interested him. He knew there were parts of the path he never explored and that path led to other paths that branched off this way and that way.
The path to the right led to an old wooden footbridge. The bridge, decayed but usable, arched over the nearby Pioneer Creek and was where he first met his wife. It was his favorite path by far. The sun slipped below the horizon now and he knew he only had minutes to spare. He strode down the path to the right until he reached the top of the bridge. As he stood at the apex he stared into the bubbling creek below. He opened the shutter on the camera and let a swarm of fireflies spill out.
With his right hand he grasped as many of the fireflies as he could and pitched them at the creek below. The fireflies dove toward the creek and hovered in an arc just above the surface of the water. He carried the camera down the other side of the bridge and waited.
A few minutes later the camera beeped. He looked down to see it had stopped filming because its memory was full. With a sense of melancholy, he pressed the fourth button on the box. The fireflies rose up from above the surface of the creek and swarmed back into the camera. With a heavy heart he closed the shutter, put the camera under his arm, and headed home.
The dreamlike colors of the sunset were gone now and the sky filled in with dark clouds. By the time he made it to within a quarter mile of the entrance, his eyesight faltered. Up ahead a canopy of oaks cast shadows on the path and his steps became measured and slow. As the darkness encroached on him, he realized he miscalculated his return time. His breathing turned fast and shallow until a cloud of real-life fireflies sparked to life in the grass along both sides of the path. With zigzag precision they drew him forward through the shadows of the trees and toward the parking lot.
* * *
When he entered his home through the front door, he was not greeted with a round of smiles. Instead, Evelyn rose up from the couch and rushed over to him. Although she threw her arms around him and squeezed hard, she looked disappointed.
Monica remained seated and stewed in anger. “Where were you?” She scolded him. She rose up and crossed her arms. “We were ready to call the cops. We thought you wandered off and got lost. Where’d you go?”
He cradled the camera in his hands. He ran his fingers across the smoo
th black surface of its top before looking up at his daughters. “I…I wasn’t lost.” He fought back a tear and wandered into the living room. He reached down to the glass-topped coffee table and brushed aside a picture book of the oceans. A program from his wife’s funeral tumbled to the floor. In its place he set up the camera.
“I want to know what you were doing out there,” Monica said. “Everybody was worried to death about you.”
Bernard ignored her plea and pressed the playback button on the camera. A holographic video of the bridge at the park floated above the table as they gathered around. “Evelyn, you asked me before about alternatives. I told you I didn’t care about alternatives because I was happy with the choices I made. I wouldn’t change any of it. You see, this camera can take a lot of pictures. But without someone at your side, what does any of it mean?”
As the hologram video played, the water in the creek bubbled away from the camera while a brown eagle circled overhead. The view then shifted so that it looked up toward the top of the wooden bridge. The bridge consisted of a simple arc of planks that spanned the creek with a faded gray railing on either side. He paused the video and knelt down in front of the coffee table. “See that?”
“See what?” Evelyn said.
“Renata. She’s standing there. Right there.” He pointed at the top of the bridge. There was a defiant undercurrent to his voice that none of his daughters picked up on.
Monica leaned in and put a hand on her father’s shoulder. She whispered into his ear while brushing her wet eyes with a finger, “You know she’s in heaven, right, Dad?”
Bernard nodded but carried on anyway. He reached out and imagined taking his wife’s hand while looking up at the bridge. “Renata, will you marry me?”
Tomorrow Was Tuesday
Ethan cradled the black electric crow in his hands like a baby chick. He propped it up on his workbench and stepped back. This prototype was more realistic than the last one, but he wondered how many more of these birds he could build and fly without getting caught. After all, sending a crow out to prospect the streams of time for technological gold was bound to eventually set the wrong person off.
The crow’s shiny beak and coal-black feathers indicated nothing about its true purpose. Inside it was all electronics with black camera eyes, sensors, and microphones. Tonight’s mission was purely for reconnaissance purposes and, depending on the footage retrieved, would help the head of research at Optinimous Corporation to make a determination as to whether or not to retrieve the target object. The crow was to fly into a conference at the Los Angeles Convention Center, record a video of a demonstration, and make haste back to his lab. The initial surprise was difficult enough, but a second flight with a high-profile extraction could undo years of work in a moment.
Ethan wiped his hands on a blue, crumpled, greasy-smelling shop rag and then gave the crow a series of verbal commands. “Wings out,” he said. The crow extended its wings.
“Flap wings, no flight.” The crow flexed its shiny black wings in slow motion.
“Standby.” The crow retracted its wings and lifted its head before it became motionless again. He carried the bird out of his workshop and into the backyard. The October sky was sharp, clear, and painted thick with stars. For a moment, the scent of a distant bonfire reminded him of camping as a child in the woods of northern California. He knelt down, set the bird inside a gilded cylindrical cage, and shut the cage door. The cage rested on a square concrete pad that was three feet by three feet and rose a few inches out of the ground. The top of the pad was covered in a metal mesh and served an electrical conductor to charge the batteries embedded in the base of the cage. He activated the control panel on the cage, examined the mesh, and traced the connecting wires along the ground with his flashlight until he reached the workshop. Inside the shop, he flipped the power switch and peeled back the black curtain on a side window to watch.
The walls of the cage burned a deep amber color as hot blue sparks spewed out onto the grass below. The sound of hissing sand filled the air. In a cloud of smoke and in less than a second, the cage was gone.
* * *
An hour later, while he was sweeping up metal filings from the floor of his shop, the return detector sounded off. He pressed a button to disable the alarm and ran back out into the yard wielding a flashlight.
There, out on the concrete landing pad, he found the birdcage with the electric crow inside. The cage was warm to the touch. He pulled a shop rag from his brown jumpsuit pocket and opened the door. With his other hand he reached inside the cage and withdrew the crow. He carried the bird back to his workshop and set it onto the workbench. He then plugged a communications cable into the underside of the bird and connected the other end to a laptop computer.
After the recording from the crow was downloaded, he replayed the stream of images on the laptop screen. The video started with the arrival of the cage on an empty beach with the Los Angeles skyline in the background. The video then followed the flight of the crow through downtown Los Angeles until it reached the front doors of the Convention Center. Dozens of people roved about the plaza near the front doors, yet the crow stayed just above their reach. In a moment when the doors were open, the bird swooped inside.
For minutes on end the crow fluttered just above the heads of the conference attendees. Past the registration booth, past the hanging technology trade show banners, and up the escalators it flew until it reached the second level. The bird veered down the hallway to the theater, which was an intimate venue that seated less than three hundred people.
After dozens of startled looks from conference goers the crow reached the theater but was forced to circle about until someone let it in. The crow locked in on a red-haired woman, whose hands held two coffee cups, and needed help opening the door. A man in his early twenties with dreadlocks and a conference badge let her in and at the same time the electric crow flew in, too.
The crow flew up to the top of an exit sign and turned around to face the stage. The audience flowed into the theater like an endless river until all the seats were flooded with enthusiastic attendees. On the stage, a man in his late thirties strutted out, welcomed everyone, and introduced himself as Brian Waite. On a giant screen behind him a colored pie chart flashed statistics of the market share for projection devices.
The pie chart dissolved and was replaced by the phrase “The World In Your Hands” in white block letters on a black background. Ethan skipped ahead on the video stream until the next presenter, Tim Antessa, entered on the left side of the stage. Ethan knew Tim was the CEO of Luminodyne, but the man appeared to be in weaker health than his current public appearances. It was as if Tim lost thirty pounds overnight and his gray-bearded face appeared gaunt.
Applause filled the theater as Tim smiled and waved at the crowd. He shook hands with Brian and took center stage. He then launched into a highly rehearsed slide presentation. The opening minutes were filled with back stories about the history of projection devices augmented with colorful graphs on the screen behind him. Ethan skipped ahead on the video until Tim gestured to a black cloth-covered stand on the stage. What unnerved Ethan was how Tim stared straight into the electric crow’s eyes and gave it a sly smile as if he knew its real purpose.
“Before I unveil our latest creation,” Tim said, “I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge our friends watching us online from around the world. I’d also like to especially welcome our visitor up on the wall, who’s dropped in to check out what I have to share with you today.”
A ripple of nervous laughter swept through the crowd as many heads turned to face the crow. The crow kept its gaze fixed on the stage, flexed its wings, and cawed once to appease the audience. The crowd roared. The bird stared.
Ethan felt his heart race and drummed his fingers on top of his workbench. He took a deep breath and froze the video. Along the side aisle a security guard dressed in black approached the bird with a white cloth net. He took a picture of the frame and started the
video again.
Seconds later the net swung in front of the bird’s eyes. The crow flew off and raced toward the door. A final scan of the room revealed no safe place to rest and soon the crow zipped back out the doors of the theater. In desperation, it wove between the pillars in the hallways until someone opened the exterior doors again.
Ethan stopped the video and picked up his cell phone to call Oliver Bannon, the head of research and development at Optinimous. No one answered so he left a breathless message. “Somebody is on to us. We need to reconsider this target. I told you five years out was dangerous.”
A minute later his cell phone rang. It was Oliver.
“You need to go back and retrieve the target,” Oliver said in a calm but firm voice. “I don’t care how many trips it takes or if it takes you all night. Nobody is on to us. Get it together or this will be the last research job you’ll ever have.”
Before Ethan could reply, the phone call ended. With a sigh, he set his cell phone onto the workbench and proceeded to make a copy of the footage before he wiped out the crow’s memory. He made a handful of adjustments to the bird’s navigation and response protocol. When he finished he unplugged the cable from the bird and ran back out into the yard with a sense of urgency in his step. He put the crow in the cage, checked the connections, and shut the door. He marched back toward the workshop and only looked back once to see if anybody in the neighborhood was watching.
* * *
When the crow and the cage returned, Ethan ferried them back to the workshop and plugged the communications cable into the bird. For this flight the crow flew in ten minutes later than the previous attempt in order to get multiple aerial shots of the target device. He fired up the video viewer and played back the footage. Minutes into the video, as Tim removed the black velvet cloth from the device on the stand, Ethan felt his heart jump in his chest. He leaned in to watch.
There, on the black cylindrical stand was a silver orb that had no buttons or apparent user interface. The orb rested inside of a white cradle-shaped holder. Tim picked up the orb and rolled it between his fingertips like a toy ball. He then held the orb out to the audience in his left palm for all to see. With his right hand he touched the surface of the ball and a ring of blue dots appeared around its equator. He poked at some of the dots and then tossed the orb up high into the air.
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