by Rich Horton
With great effort, she turned toward the window.
“Go away now.”
She shouldn’t have, but Ruth stood at the door that night when abba went in to check on Mara. She watched him kneel by the bed and take her hand. Mara barely moved in response, still staring out the window, but her fingers tensed around his, clutching him. Ruth remembered the way abba’s hand had felt when she was sleepless and in pain, a solid anchor in a fading world.
She thought of what abba had said to her when she was still Mara, and made silent promises to the other girl. I will keep you and hold you. I will protect you. I will always have your hand in mine.
In the morning, when Ruth came back upstairs, she peeked through the open door to see abba still there beside Mara, lying down instead of kneeling, his head pillowed on the side of her mattress.
She walked back down the hallway and to the head of the stairs. Drumming on her knees, she called for Abel. He lumbered toward her, the thump of his tail reassuringly familiar. She ruffled his fur and led him into the parlor where she slipped on his leash.
Wind chill took the outside temperature substantially below freezing, but she hesitated before putting on her coat. She ran her hand across the “skin” of her arm. It was robotic skin, not human skin. She’d looked at some of the schematics that abba had left around downstairs and started to wonder about how different she really was from a human. He’d programmed her to feel vulnerable to cold, but was she really?
She put the coat back on its hook and led Abel out the door. Immediately, she started shivering, but she ignored the bite. She wanted to know what she could do.
She trudged across the yard to the big, bony oak. She snapped off a branch, made Abel sit while she unhooked his leash, and threw the branch as far as she could. Abel’s dash left dents in the snow. He came back to her, breath a warm relief on her hand, the branch slippery with slobber.
She threw it again and wondered what she could achieve if abba hadn’t programmed her body to think it was Mara’s. He’d given her all of Mara’s limits. She could run as fast as Mara, but not faster. Calculate as accurately as Mara, but no moreso.
Someday, she and abba would have to talk about that.
She tossed the stick again, and Abel ran, and again, and again, until he was too tired to continue. He watched the branch fly away as he leaned against Mara’s leg for support.
She gave his head a deep scratch. He shivered and he bit at the air near her hand. She realized her cold fingers were hurting him. For her, the cold had ceased to be painful, though she was still shivering now and then.
“Sorry, boy, sorry,” she said. She reattached his leash, and watched how, despite the temperature, her fingers moved without any stiffness at all.
She headed back to the house, Abel making pleased whuffing noises to indicate that he approved of their direction. She stopped on the porch to stamp the snow off of her feet. Abel shook himself, likewise, and Ruth quickly dusted off what he’d missed.
She opened the door and Abel bounded in first, Ruth laughing and trying to keep her footing as he yanked on the leash. He was old and much weaker than he had been, but an excited burst of doggy energy could still make her rock. She stumbled in after him, the house dim after her cold hour outside.
Abba was in the parlor, standing by the window from which he’d have been able to see them play. He must have heard them come in, but he didn’t look toward her until she tentatively called his name.
He turned and looked her over, surveying her bare arms and hands, but he gave no reaction. She could see from his face that it was over.
He wanted to bury her alone. She didn’t argue.
He would plant Mara in the yard, perhaps under the bony tree, but more likely somewhere else in the lonely acreage, unmarked. She didn’t know how he planned to dig in the frozen ground, but he was a man of many contraptions. Mara would always be out there, lost in the snow.
When he came back, he clutched her hand as he had clutched Mara’s. It was her turn to be what abba had been for Mara, the anchor that kept him away from the lip of the black hole, the one steady thing in a dissolving world.
They packed the house without discussing it. Ruth understood what was happening as soon as she saw abba filling the first box with books. Probably she’d known for some time, on the fringe of her consciousness, that they would have to do this. As they wrapped dishes in tissue paper, and sorted through old papers, they shared silent grief at leaving the yellow house that abba had built with Meryem, and that both Mara and Ruth had lived in all their lives.
Abba had enough money that he didn’t need to sell the property. The house would remain owned and abandoned in the coming years.
It was terrible to go, but it also felt like a necessary marker, a border bisecting her life. It was one more way in which she was becoming Ruth.
They stayed in town for one last Shabbat. The process of packing the house had altered their sense of time, making the hours seem foreshortened and stretched at turns.
Thursday passed without their noticing, leaving them to buy their groceries on Friday. Abba wanted to drive into town on his own, but Ruth didn’t want him to be alone yet.
Reluctantly, she agreed to stay in the truck when they got there. Though abba had begun to tell people that she was recovering, it would be best if no one got a chance to look at her up close. They might realize something was wrong. It would be easier wherever they moved next; strangers wouldn’t always be comparing her to a ghost.
Abba was barely out of the truck before Gerry caught sight of them through the window and came barreling out of the door. Abba tried to get in his way. Rapidly, he stumbled out the excuse that he and Ruth had agreed on, that it was good for her to get out of the house, but she was still too tired to see anyone.
“A minute won’t hurt,” said Gerry. He pushed past abba. With a huge grin, he knocked on Ruth’s window.
Hesitantly, she rolled it down. Gerry crossed his arms on the sill, leaning his head into the vehicle. “Look at you!” he exclaimed. “Your daddy said you were getting better, but just look at you!”
Ruth couldn’t help but grin. Abel’s tail began to thump as he pushed himself into the front seat to get a better look at his favorite snack provider.
“I have to say, after you didn’t come the last few weeks . . . ” Gerry wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “I’m just glad to see you, Mara, I really am.”
At the sound of the name, Ruth looked with involuntary shock at abba, who gave a sad little smile that Gerry couldn’t see. He took a step forward. “Please, Gerry. She needs to rest.”
Gerry looked back at him, opened his mouth to argue, and then looked back at Ruth and nodded. “Okay then. But next week, I expect some free cashier work!” He leaned in to kiss her cheek. He smelled of beef and rosemary. “You get yourself back here, Mara. And you keep kicking that cancer in the rear end.”
With a glance back at the truck to check that Mara was okay, abba followed Gerry into the store. Twenty minutes later, he returned with two bags of groceries, which he put in the bed of the truck. As he started the engine, he said, “Gerry is a good man. I will miss him.” He paused. “But it is better to have you, Mara.”
Ruth looked at him with icy surprise, breath caught in her throat.
Her name was her own again. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
The sky was bronzing when they arrived home.
On the stove, cholent simmered, filling the house with its scent. Abba went to check on it before the sun set, and Ruth followed him into the kitchen, preparing to pull out the dishes and the silverware and the table cloth.
He waved her away. “Next time. This week, let me.”
Ruth went into ima’s studio. She’d hadn’t gone inside since the disaster it attic space, and her gaze lingered on the attic box, still lying dead on the floor.
“I’d like to access a DVD of ima’s performances,” she told the AI. “Coppélia, please.”
The audience’s rumblings began and she instructed the AI to fast-forward until Coppélia was onstage. She held her eyes closed and tipped her head down until it was the moment to snap into life, to let her body flow, fluid and graceful, mimicking the dancer on the screen.
She’d thought it would be cathartic to dance the part of the doll, and in a way it was, but once the moment was over, she surprised herself by selecting another disc instead of continuing. She tried to think of a comedy that she wanted to dance, and surprised herself further by realizing that she wanted to dance a tragedy instead. Mara had needed the comedies, but Ruth needed to feel the ache of grace and sorrow; she needed to feel the pull of the black hole even as she defied its gravity and danced, en pointe, on its edge.
When the light turned violet, abba came to the door, and she followed him into the kitchen. He lit the candles, and she waited for him to begin the prayers, but instead he stood aside.
It took her a moment to understand what he wanted.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Please, Marale,” he answered.
Slowly, she moved into the space where he should have been standing. The candles burned on the table beneath her. She waved her hands through the heat and thickness of the smoke, and then lifted them to cover her eyes.
She said, “Barukh atah Adonai, Elohaynu, melekh ha-olam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav, v’tzivanu, l’had’lik neir shel Shabbat.”
She breathed deeply, inhaling the scents of honey and figs and smoke.
“Amein.”
She opened her eyes again. Behind her, she heard abba’s breathing, and somewhere in the dark of the house, Abel’s snoring as he napped in preparation for after-dinner begging. The candles filled her vision as if she’d never seen them before. Bright white and gold flames trembled, shining against the black of the outside sky, so fragile they could be extinguished by a breath.
Pernicious Romance
Robert Reed
There are no suspects.
We know the vehicle was serviced by the school motor pool, but there were numerous locations and intervals where clever hands could have added a malicious device. Subsequent investigations have exonerated university employees as well as the student programmer responsible for the custom software piloting the giant football helmet. Investigations continue, but authorities no longer issue reports, claiming undiminished interest even as the work thins to fewer agencies and skeletal crews.
Even in retrospect, nothing about the football game appears out of the ordinary. Fiercely contested and low scoring, the battle matched every expectation up until halftime. Then the marching band played three numbers—a solid performance, perhaps even inspired. Once the band relinquished the field, the stadium lights were set low, and that was when the giant football helmet, lit up with the school colors, sprinted across the darkened turf, deploying an LED hose in its wake. The tradition was three years old. The competitive game and mild October weather insured that the stands were nearly full. With a flowing, artistic script, the home team’s name was being written with the hose. Onlookers assumed a simple malfunction when the helmet stopped on the fifty-yard line. Perhaps seven seconds passed. Unfortunately there is no video recording of the event. A significant EMP event came with the attack, destroying the data from security cameras as well as amateur videos. The entire campus and half of the city were plunged into a prolonged blackout. But using the scorched rubber turf as a marker, it appears that the device, whatever its nature, was set near the back of the helmet, and its detonation consumed both the helmet and golf cart, leaving behind dust but almost no shrapnel.
As a rule, the first victims to “recover” were located in the most distant portions of the stadium. People high above the south end zone were two hundred and twenty yards from the device, give or take. Most would have been watching the darkened field and the progress of their school’s helmet. Many would have been yelling out letters. Witnesses willing to discuss the event claim one of two scenarios: A bolt of light fell from the cloudless, moonless sky. “Lightning” is the most common word. “A laser beam” is also popular. But there are other accounts, equally certain, describing a flame or beam leaping up from the ground, presumably when the cart and helmet were vaporized.
Regardless of perpetrators, the attack was immediately blamed on terrorists.
That opinion hardened too quickly and too deeply, we believe.
These were enormous energies on display. There is no question about that. Which leaves us to wonder how any terrorist group could have mastered what appears to be a new technology—a set of tools that nobody else understands.
Cold as it sounds, we should feel thankful. In the end, only fifty-eight people were killed directly by the blast, while another thirty-nine succumbed to falls and head wounds. If casualties were the goal, these high-tech murderers could have ignited their weapon late in the first half, while the helmet was parked on the crowded sidelines. Unless of course the device was a demonstration event or a spectacular dud. Numerous public voices have made those bold claims, ignoring the absence of evidence. What is known is that nearly seventy thousand people were inside the stadium. Every survivor lost consciousness, some remaining that way until this day. And as a direct result, our country hasn’t seen a major sporting event for sixteen months, and it is the same across most of the world. Nobody wants to risk a repeat of that terrible Saturday night.
Except for a large portion of the victims, that is.
Case Study:
Today MK is a thirty-one-year-old woman, single and employed. As an undergraduate, she played in the school band, and that’s why the halftime show was her primary focus. But her little brother waited too long to purchase tickets, and that’s why they had the worst possible seats, and that’s why they were standing high up in the southern end of stadium, two hundred and twenty-three yards from the blast site.
MK remembers the band’s three songs and then the helmet writing PANTHERS across the unlit field. The vehicle stopped while it was crossing the T, which wasn’t right, and she immediately turned to her brother. She recalls laughing, telling him that this sort of shit wouldn’t have happened when Dr. Kalin was in charge of the band.
MK had played the snare drums, as did her brother after her.
Her brother turned toward her, presumably to respond.
Both saw a brilliant flash of golden light.
Yes, she was sure. The light was definitely gold.
Panther Stadium is a bowl of concrete and steel with oak boards for seats and numerous steel railings. The stadium is quite steep near the top. Several people close to MK fractured their skulls when they collapsed. But in general, surprisingly few of the victims were injured. Evidence shows that the lowest rows felt the effects first, and like a wave dispersing across water, the people above collapsed in a very orderly fashion, falling on the bodies before them.
Intentional or not, that was another factor in the paucity of deaths.
People outside the stadium, including a small portion of the campus police and ambulance attendants, suffered moments of vertigo but never lost consciousness. After perhaps thirty seconds of confusion, those few hundred people entered to discover thousands of motionless, apparently helpless bodies. Yet these victims weren’t unconscious, not in any normal sense. Every living person was breathing quickly and deeply, as if doing considerable labor. Some of those early responders reported a smell like perfume. But not everyone. The scope of the disaster and the total blackout led to panic, even among those with emergency training. But one campus police officer, armed with a working flashlight, climbed to the top row of the southern end of the stadium, and that’s why she was first to come across a victim who was regaining consciousness.
MK has that distinction.
The officer kneeled over the young woman. MK remembers her rescuer. In fact, she has talked at length about the pain and terror in that stranger’s face.
“Are you okay?” the of
ficer asked.
“Yeah,” MK said.
In fact, she felt perfectly fine.
The officer held up a hand.
“Three fingers,” MK answered, before the question was asked.
Then she sat up on her own power, lightheaded but not disabled. There were thousands of bodies below, not one of them moving. Yet she heard a peculiar sound, diffuse and gray and not quiet, and after a moment she realized how hard everybody was breathing.
“Something’s happened,” she said calmly.
“A bomb went off,” the officer said. “You were knocked unconscious.”
“No,” MK said.
“Yes,” the officer told her. She was still holding up the three fingers, and the hand was trembling. “Every last one you . . . knocked out.”
MK said, “No.”
“You were,” the officer insisted.
“For how long?” MK asked.
The officer tried to make that calculation. But her cellphone was dead, and fear had distorted her sense of time.
“It’s been a week,” MK guessed.
“A week? Since you fell over?”
“Yes.”
“No. It’s been fifteen minutes, tops.”
MK’s brother, BK, was unconscious like the others, and then his breathing slowed. With a sigh, he opened his eyes. His forehead was scraped, but otherwise, he was unharmed and remarkably alert, sitting up beside his sister.
MK touched his wound.
“I didn’t see you,” she said.
BK agreed. “I didn’t see you either.”
The officer watched the conversation.
“This cop says fifteen minutes passed.”
“That can’t be,” he began.
“It’s been seven days. Almost to the minute, right?”
“No,” said BK. Then he closed his eyes, presumably making his own count.
“What happened to the two of you?” the officer asked.
Neither answered.
The officer started to repeat her question.
“Nine days,” BK interrupted. “That’s how long it was for me.”