Silver Shard

by Betsy Streeter

  “Nah,” Anna replies. “Just some stuff.” She watches the man turn each item over and look at both the back and the front. It doesn’t matter who the people are in the pictures, or what the man finds in the chest. None of it matters. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a black, hexagonal object the size of her palm and tosses it onto the ground.

  Out in the water, the ship begins to emit high-pitched squeaking noises.

  The gray man remains engrossed with the photographs, gears clicking and whirring, failing to notice the debris around him sliding and rolling along the ground only to disappear into the black hexagon. The noises from the ship grow louder, and sections of the hull fold inward like a giant, deflating balloon.

  The man lifts out a slip of paper covered in handwriting. The top section consists of a rectangle filled in with intricate lines and markings. Below that, it reads:

  Dear Friends,

  By the time you read this, you will have scanned in some seriously bad code with your ‘tom here. This code will burrow deeply into your systems. It’s probably gotten pretty far already. Good luck cleaning that up. And, sorry I couldn’t stay longer. It’s been lovely.

  All the best, as always,

  Anna.

  The man’s head pivots up. By this time the ship has collapsed in on itself, folding and shriveling down to the size of a basketball. The ball rolls onto the sand and disappears into the hexagonal object without a sound. More items follow: wads of photographs, pieces of wood. The silver ladle skitters along the sand and then it is gone, too.

  “Look,” Anna says to the man, “I know you’re a ‘tom.” She taps her temple with her finger. “Camera head, right?”

  “I…I don’t know…” the man stammers. He frowns.

  The chest of photographs crumples before getting sucked in, too. The beach and surf are now empty except for Anna and the drone.

  “What’s a ‘tom?” the man asks.

  “It’s what you are,” Anna says. “Short for automaton. You’re here to scout, to watch. That’s your job. You are, for lack of a better term, refurbished. The manufacturers did a decent job, though. Did they wipe your memory blank?” Anna takes hold of the man’s chin and peers into either side of his face. She can hear reel-to-reel tape whirring inside his head. “Maybe they did erase you. Or, maybe you were already dead, and they reanimated you and installed some hardware. Anyway, I regret I haven’t the time to investigate your workings further. I must go now. Your ‘tom friends will be here any second. I saw them already—that’s why I had to come ashore.”

  Anna picks up the black hexagon and hands it to the ‘tom. Baffled, he takes the object from her and looks down at it, the camera lenses in his empty pupils focusing and refocusing. The hexagon sucks in his hand, and then the rest of him, and drops through the now-empty air to the sand. The beach is once again as clean as it was before Anna’s abrupt and noisy arrival.

  “Bye ‘tom,” Anna says, fishing a portal—one that has not been chopped in half and still works—out of her pocket.

  Shortly the roar of hundreds of engines will drown out the surf as a squadron of automaton-piloted airships closes in on the coast. When they find nothing at this beach, they will conduct a scan of their systems searching for navigation errors. With that scan, Anna’s code will run and jumble the airships’ controls until they all dive into the sea or crash into the rocks.

  By then, Anna Helena Silverwood will be long gone.

  “Oh, my GOD, Henry. STOP!” Helen yells.

  “Nah,” Henry says, and grins.

  “Give me that.”

  “No.”

  “Give it to me!” Helen Silverwood grabs at her younger brother Henry’s paper and pencil. Henry pulls them away. In a flash Helen throws Henry on the ground, crushing his legs into his stomach. A fifteen-year-old maintains a significant physical advantage over a kid who is ten.

  “Give it here or I’ll make you puke,” Helen says.

  “I’m going to puke listening to you guys fight,” their dad says from a nearby redwood log. Gabriel Silverwood unfolds his legs from beneath him and stands up, having given up on the possibility of spending a few minutes meditating. This trip was meant to be a peaceful time in a quiet setting. Instead, Gabriel fears that his own progeny are creating a disturbance for everyone—the other campers, the trees, the birds, all of nature.

  The family’s campsite looks out over the fork of a wide river. Fist-sized rocks cover the shore. The opposite bank is lined with a thick stand of pine trees. Each tree has an upside down twin reflecting up at it from the water. Gabriel considers that the trees are like his family—attempting to come up for air and enjoy some peace and quiet.

  “Let’s go skip stones,” Helen says, standing and yanking her brother up by his arm.

  “Okay,” Henry says, and the two of them run off across the rocks. Their argument has dissipated like early morning fog in the forest. Gabriel watches them go—Henry with his wild shock of white-blond hair like his mother’s, Helen with her long black strands that resemble Gabriel’s own ponytail.

  Gabriel picks Henry’s paper out of the mud. It’s covered in caricatures of Helen—Helen with horns, Helen with spots, all kinds of unflattering depictions of his sister. Gabriel turns the paper over. On the opposite side he finds a dense pattern of lines, like a physically impossible subway map. He can make out a few symbols, but nothing recognizable. The Guild had told Gabriel that his son might make drawings like this –shapes that don’t seem to follow a discernable pattern—but the Guild also explained that the confused markings would eventually become more coherent as Henry develops his skills.

  Gabriel doesn’t want to work with his son on developing skills; he wants to relax in the woods with his wife and kids.

  “Urghhhhhh,” a voice says from inside an orange, smallish triangular tent. The walls flutter a little to indicate life.

  Gabriel pokes his head in and does his impression of a voice in a scary movie: “It moooooooves!”

  “Riiiiiight,” his wife Kate says, rolling over. She’s a shock of white hair amongst a heap of sleeping bags and blankets.

  Gabriel crouches down and places his hand on Kate’s head. “Hello, darling,” he says quietly.

  Kate looks up at her husband and her sky-blue eyes brighten. “Hello, husband,” she says. She pokes a hand out from amongst the covers and he takes it. The two of them sit like this for a long moment, grateful to share the same space and time. Both of them are right here, in this tent—together.

  “Food?” Gabriel asks finally.

  “Food. Yes,” Kate replies. She sits up and rubs her eyes.

  Gabriel has made pancakes in various fantastic shapes. He retrieves a few from a warming pan over the fire and slaps them on a plate.

  A high humming noise reaches them through the morning air. The kids hear it first and run toward the riverbank, tripping over the rocks. The sound comes from a small object skimming along the top of the water, scattering birds as it comes.

  Helen and Henry give chase along the riverbank. The object continues its path another fifty yards or so, then turns sharply toward the bank and crash-lands right in front of them. Gabriel and Kate can see the two kids crouch down briefly in the distance, then come running back toward the campsite.

  “Hey! Check it out!” Henry calls, running over the rocks. He’s carrying a contraption in both hands that resembles a beat-up radio-controlled boat. Reaching the campsite, he plunks it down on the table next to the plate of pancakes. Kate stares at it, chewing.

  “A water drone? Those are really old technology,” Kate says through her pancakes.

  “Indeed,” Gabriel agrees, poking at the object and turning it over. “I can’t believe anybody still uses these.”

  “Whoever sent us a water drone must have gotten their hands on it in a past time frame,” Kate says.

  The water drone is the size of a six-pack of soda and gray-brown, with triangular wing-like attachments jutting out of its sides. It is
meant to travel on top of and through the water for great distances. It’s got a rusty square door on top, held closed with a simple latch.

  “Open it!” Henry shouts, jumping up and down.

  “Not so fast,” Gabriel says. He hands the drone to his daughter. “Helen, take a look at this first and see what you can tell us about the technology.” He’s not going to miss the chance to test his daughter. She might be fifteen now, but she’s still got a lot to learn. She needs practice.

  Helen takes the drone and turns it upside down, water spilling out onto the table. “There’s a panel under here,” she says, tracing a rectangle on the drone’s hull. “And these winglets, they contain the antennae that put out the signal. One wing functions, then the other. They trade off.”

  “Good,” Gabriel encourages her. “What else?”

  Helen stares at the drone and the machinery comes apart in her mind’s eye. The metal casing bolted to the outside of the hull gives way in her vision to electronics, connections, and wiring with redundant power sources, including solar and salt. There are explosives inside. Helen can see it all, the layers separating and each component and wire becoming clearer.

  “Why would there be explosives?” Helen asks.

  “Really? Is it going to blow up?” Henry is even more excited now. “Can we make it blow up?”

  “No, the explosives are a security measure,” Kate says. “To ensure that the drone only goes where it’s supposed to. If it were to fly off course, it would go blam”

  “So we can assume the drone stayed on course,” Helen says.

  “That is an assumption we can make,” Gabriel says. “Shall we crack this thing open?”

  “Will it blow up?” Henry asks again.

  “No, kid, it won’t,” Gabriel says, patting Henry on top of his head. “Besides, we don’t want it to—yet. We want to find out what it brought us first, don’t we?”

  “Brought us?” Helen asks.

  “Yeah,” Kate says. “Apparently even on our supposed vacation in the middle of the woods people can find ways to reach us. And this, this drone, is coming to us from some time way in the past. Or from someone with access to the past. That’s for sure. I can only think of a few people who would be able to use one of these water drones at all.”

  Kate sticks a finger under the latch on the back of the drone and pops it open. Everyone leans in to get a look.

  The drone’s guts don’t appear too exciting at first glance. There’s a square box wired to the inside, which Kate pries out without disconnecting it. It must have twenty wires in various colors and thicknesses stuck to ports in its sides.

  “This box is an encryption relay, and this is how it communicates,” Kate says, pointing to a pair of red wires attached to the box. She flips the box over. It’s got a tiny screen on the bottom. “And this display here should tell us what this little doohickey wants.”

  Sure enough, the screen lights up and green letters scroll across it, like a sign at a subway station. The message begins in the middle, so Kate must wait until it reaches the end and starts over to read it all.

  “Wow,” Kate says, looking up at her husband when the message concludes.

  Gabriel takes the box from her and reads the message as it scrolls by again. “Anna. Why now?”

  “Honestly…” Kate says.

  “Is anyone going to say a complete sentence so we know what you’re talking about?” Helen demands. “Henry and I are here, too.”

  “Yeah,” Henry says, crossing his arms and glaring.

  “Well,” Kate says, looking up at her kids, “let me explain. There’s this person, Anna. She’s an ancestor of yours.”

  “Anna Helena Silverwood? Like in the stories?” Henry says. “Remember? There was an Anna in the story you read to us about the old woman who came to the tiny town in the mountains, and there were drawings on the ground, and she had the Book of the Future, and all of that. Remember the story, in the little notebook?”

  “I guess you guys have been reading the Silverwood notebooks,” Gabriel says to his wife.

  “Um, yes, we have,” Kate says. “The stories in the notebooks have provided entertainment when we’ve been on the road. And I do mean, stories.” She shoots a look at Henry. “Anyway, Anna sent this drone because she needs to talk to me.”

  “So, Anna is real! The stuff in the notebooks is real, then!” Henry says.

  “Don’t let her give you the thing,” Gabriel says, pointing a finger at Kate. “No thing. We are not dealing with the thing.”

  “You know as well as I do, if it’s my turn, it’s my turn,” Kate says.

  “No! No thing!” Gabriel says. He sounds like a little kid throwing a fit.

  Kate sighs. “Fine. I will do my best not to end up with the thing. But Anna needs to talk to me, and from the look of this message, it’s urgent. I’ll go into town here and see if I can meet up with Anna there. Obviously this is important, or she wouldn’t have gone to the trouble to dig up this ridiculous piece-of-junk drone to reach us with.”

  “Anna is supposed to be at sea,” Gabriel says. “On a ship. In another time. And place. You know, safe. With the thing.”

  “There’s more to the message,” Helen says, staring down at the tiny screen. “Every so often it blinks on and off and displays a set of coordinates.”

  Kate peers at the series of numbers. “That location is near here. That’s in town. Anna is not at sea—and she’s in this time frame.”

  Kate and Gabriel look at each other. “That’s not good,” they say simultaneously.

  An hour later, Kate has made preparations to go to town and meet up with Anna. But before leaving, she pauses a long time in Gabriel’s arms.

  “This has been nice, here in the woods,” Kate says to her husband.

  “Yes, it has,” Gabriel replies. “Now be careful, and don’t let Anna do anything impulsive or rash. She’s been on a boat. By herself. For a very long time. She might be even more frazzled than usual.”

  “Okay,” Kate says, smiling up at Gabriel and touching the side of his face. “Make sure the kids don’t throw each other in the river.”

  “Why? I was thinking I might throw them in myself,” Gabriel says, and grins.

  “Today is a special day! Do you want to know why?”

  A tall, elegant Tromindox reaches out with long fingers and touches the cheek of a skeleton mounted on the wall. The bones of this skeleton are chalky and dry, half-embedded in a mount of plaster and caked with years of dust. The jaw of the skull hangs open in an unintentional and ghastly smile.

  “This is a special day because,” the Tromindox says, “Anna Helena Silverwood has at last come to shore.”

  The creature turns away from his bony friend, his only companion.

  “And how do I know this information, you want to know?” the Tromindox asks. “Well I know it because of you, my dear.”

  This Tromindox calls himself Monder, a name he much prefers to the ridiculous letters and numbers assigned to his kind by the humans. Monder performs a few twirls in the center of the circular room and the tails of his ornate robe follow him. “Yes, you made it all possible. I am so, so proud of you.”

  Monder moves like a dancer, elegant and refined—nothing like the hunching posture normally associated with Tromindox. He displays no tentacles; his gray-black skin does not glisten. He wears robes, but these are not torn or ragged. They are tailored and elegant, sewn from fabric embroidered with ornate floral patterns in gold thread. His posture is upright; his torso held in place by buckles and straps and a black leather waistcoat. A high collar frames his long, narrow face and his intelligence shines through his enormous yellow eyes. A black mane of hair sweeps back from his face and down his back. He is the closest any Tromindox has ever come to being beautiful.

  “Okay, let me revise my previous statement,” Monder says, spinning back toward the skeleton with one slender finger still in the air. “Given that we, as you know, spend our time here under the ground, I h
onestly have not even the first idea if it is daytime or night. So instead let us just say, this is a special twenty-four-hour period. Or we could say, it’s a special moment. It’s the moment we have waited for. Well, I’ve waited for this moment. While you have been hanging out there, on my wall.” Monder’s long hands move with his thoughts.

  Monder approaches the skeleton, tilting his head. A silver chain loops around the skeleton’s neck and rests on its ribcage. The pendant strung on the chain is encased in a clear box, from which protrude complex webs of wires. The wires snake across a stone wall and attach at various points to a bank of fifty or more screens of every shape and size imaginable, many of them mounted in elaborate gold frames that might be found on a painting in the Louvre or the Uffizi. Some of the screens are filled with rows of characters, a few display maps or photographs, while others sit blank or crackle with static.

  “You lovely thing, you,” Monder says, not to the skeleton but to the item around its neck. Inside the clear box, one half of a mangled portal hangs from the chain. If this portal were complete, it would look like a coin with a square hole in the center and a spiral design stamped on its surface. It would be functional, capable of encoding time and space coordinates and facilitating travel. But this particular portal is nothing but a jagged, bent half-circle of metal, incapable of anything.

  Monder taps a finger on the clear box and then turns and walks toward the bank of screens, scraping one sharp nail along the stone wall as he goes and causing bits of dust and rock to fall to the floor. Reaching the first of the collection of monitors he continues, his nail screeching across the surface of one screen, then another and another until he reaches the largest display situated at the center. Here he stops. This enormous monitor is lit up with a colorful, highly-detailed map overlaid with a grid. Monder pokes at it, and one square of the grid expands to fill the screen. He can see a shoreline and a black square marking where Anna’s ship used to be. From that spot extends a yellow line, moving inland.

  “There she is,” Monder says over his shoulder to the object in the box around the skeleton’s neck. “Your sister. Your twin. My freedom.”