by Elise Kova
“Don’t go second-guessing on me now.”
“I’m not,” Jo said firmly. But the conviction loosened some with a sigh. “I’m not,” she repeated, mostly for herself. “It’s that, the world is so big. People die every second. Every moment we breathe, someone suffers. There’s not enough time to fix them all.”
“Which is why you can’t worry about them all.” It sounded cold, detached. Almost like Snow.
“How long does it take until I can feel that way?” Jo looked out the window. The city had never felt more full than when she imagined all the needs within it that went unanswered.
“Hard to say. . .” Wayne shrugged. “I think for me it was the second World War. . . watching the inexcusable carnage.”
Jo pressed her eyes shut. Being a mostly helpless spectator to the horrors of war was an impossible thing to fathom. She wanted to think about anything else. “What year are you from?”
“I was born in 1910.”
“1910. . .” she repeated, trailing off in thought. He’d been in the Society for nearly a century and a half. “How do you do it?”
“How do I do it?” He seemed startled by the question.
“Live, without living? Watch the world get spliced apart and stitched together wish after wish?” It was ineloquent, perhaps poorly put. But judging from the shadow on his face, he heard the true depth of the question.
Wayne looked out the window for a long moment and Jo left him to his thoughts. She’d let him have all the space he could gather to form the answer; it was an impossibly hard question, but one she had to ask all the same. Eventually, he stood, wordlessly, and walked out onto their rooftop terrace. “This is an answer best given with a view to cut its grim nature.”
Jo followed behind, listening closely as he spoke.
“The cheap and easy answer is that you get used to it,” he started, finally. “Because, eventually, as with all things, time and habit win out. And the more time that passes, the less invested you become.”
She stared at the Eiffel Tower in all its orange-gold, illuminated glory. Jo would always worry for her mother and Yuusuke. But what about Lydia, the little girl who would’ve been Jo’s sister? She couldn’t find much more compassion for the child than any other. With enough time, enough generations, she could see losing all connection to the real world.
“You make do with the time you have, though. Maybe even realize good ways to spend it, if you’re willing to get an earful every now and then from Snow. And, well, Eslar. . . he really is an intolerable suck-up, but the rest of the crew isn’t so bad. There’re worse people to spend eternity with.”
“At least we’re not alone,” she agreed thoughtfully.
For a long moment, they simply shared each other’s companionable silence. Jo leaned against the railing of their terrace balcony. It was such a beautiful night, such a beautiful moment. If only she could make it stretch into infinity, escape the heavy knowledge that the two of them would be heading back, likely soon. They’d finished their mission, and it would certainly be time to face the consequences of it.
With a soft sigh, Jo turned away from the mesmerizing sight. Wayne’s thoughtful expression caught her attention, a distant and almost wary look in his eyes. Slowly, Jo shifted a little bit closer to him, angling herself to catch his blank stare.
“Wayne?”
Almost as if blinking himself out of a haze, Wayne turned his attention away from wherever his thoughts had wandered and back to her. She could almost see the veil lifting from his eyes.
“Hm?” He tilted his head at her, smile soft and questioning.
“What was your wish?”
Wayne stilled. Another distant look at something she couldn’t see. Another long silence. Long enough that Jo began to feel awkward, unsure if the man would even answer at all. Perhaps he couldn’t find the words. Perhaps he didn’t want to.
“You know, that’s not something you just ask people.”
“I’m not some random person,” she needlessly reminded him. “And you already know mine.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “You know, you’re right, so I suppose it can’t hurt to tell you. But don’t go asking any of the others, all right?”
Jo nodded, and waited.
“The Great Depression seemed like it was going to last forever. There was no end in sight. . .” His voice had dropped to a thick whisper. Not heavy and husky with lust as she’d heard earlier, but weighted with longing. “I was a stockbroker, you see. Best of the best. Called me Nickel Boy, because I took a nickel and turned it into an empire. Then, I lost it all. . .
“That economic downturn was a ravenous beast let loose on America. Everyone lost everything; no one could find two pennies to rub together. Then the dollar showed signs of further collapse. A war was brewing and all our allies pulled out of trade with us.”
“But, it did end.” She’d read it in the history books.
“I know. I made it end.” Wayne's eyes were so filled with sorrow that it was a jarring contrast to his proud grin. “Snow told me later that, in the world I came from, it was going to last another twenty years; America was never going to recover.”
“But. . .”
“The world you lived in was an offshoot of the world I wished for. Technically, Jo, we never lived in the same reality, you and I. We were separated from the moment I made my wish, and it only continued to split from there.”
She shouldn’t have been startled, but she was. She knew now that the world was merely the product of wishes that severed reality across time. But to really think about it was a bit surreal. She’d never lived in the same world as any member of the Society. With her wish, she’d lived in a different world than anyone else in existence.
“You wished to save your country, and I messed with all of reality just to save my friend’s life,” Jo whispered. “A friend. . . who no longer exists.”
“He doesn’t exist?” Wayne whistled. “Then who did we just stick our necks out for?”
Jo laughed softly, leaning back on the railing and letting her head drop between her shoulders. “I don’t know,” she confessed. “Me? I guess. . . my need for purpose? Because the Yuusuke we saved has never even met Josephina Espinosa.” Wayne was silent, and Jo found herself talking, frantic not to be left alone with her thoughts. “This was all for someone who I should have no attachment to. I spent time helping a random person, a stranger, using my time for that, when there are so many more important things. I guess it’s just how I am? Messed-up priorities? Because even my wish wasn’t noble—I didn’t even wish to change the world, or a country—and neither are my actions now.”
Her companion’s continued silence threatened to tear her apart. Just as Jo opened her mouth and took a breath, preparing to ramble again, Wayne cut her off. “It was noble, Jo, then and now. Because you did change the world. You changed his world. You gave him a world. It doesn’t matter if he knows it or not, because the fact remains.”
“I guess. . .” She swallowed the taste of salt and looked back out to the city, blinking into the night lights.
“I don’t think you have messed-up priorities at all.” His shoulder pressed gently against hers. “Sticking your neck out for your friend? Doing the right thing? It’ll be Snow or Eslar—whoever gives us the business for this—that has messed up priorities.”
“Thanks, Wayne.” Jo laughed softly. “Here’s to hoping he’s not reckless enough to throw it away again.”
“Well, I wished for an economically strong America, only to watch it be squandered in conflict after conflict, wasted in poor decision making, and ultimately dissolve into nothing as the country was carved up by the Commonwealth Powers of World War III.”
She heard the bitterness in his voice and was all too ready to change the subject, for both their sakes. “I’ve never heard you speak like this before, by the way.”
“Like what?” His entire voice and demeanor were different.
“Like. . . normal? You don’t hav
e the same accent. And I think it’s been a whole hour now since you called me doll.”
“Missing it, doll?”
She laughed. “No, not that. I just thought that you didn’t know how to speak any other way.”
“I can speak however I want. I’m not like the others—modernizing, keeping up with the times on the outside. I choose to speak as I do because it’s all I have left of those days.” It reminded Jo of what he said about eating. Sleeping was the same, no doubt. They all had little things that would keep them connected to the lost realities they’d come from.
“I wonder what I’ll keep doing, to remember my time,” Jo whispered, the sentiment stilling her. A long silence passed between them and when Jo returned her mind to the present, Wayne was staring off at some invisible point beyond the horizon.
“Nickel for your thoughts?” Jo asked, and Wayne laughed, tension easing from his shoulders just like that.
“Oh nothin’ really. Just wondering how the wish is going. It’s not common to be gone so long.”
“Well, I suppose we should get back.”
“About that time,” Wayne agreed, though he hardly seemed happy for the fact.
“Should I pack up my things?” Jo asked as they started in to the hotel room. She motioned to the monitor set-up still occupying the main room of the suite.
“No point. Can’t bring anything back from the real world.”
Jo looked at the desktop she’d made a reality, for however brief a time. It was glorious. And it’d be pieced apart, bagged for evidence (though the authorities would never find anything concrete), stolen by hotel staff, or sold away to pay for the room. Jo swallowed away the grief at the idea of letting it go. “I don’t need it, anyway. The recreation room worked fine.”
“That’s the spirit.” Wayne was already dressed and Jo followed suit. “Say, about this whole little—”
“If you’re talking about helping Yuusuke, I’m not compelled to tell anyone anything.” Jo pulled up her jeans. “If you’re talking about the sex. . . I’m still not going to divulge.” She stopped dressing for a moment, watching his reaction, pleased with what she saw.
“Good, because this team is everything to me. I would not want to mess things up for a bit of fun.”
“You didn’t mess things up,” Jo assured him. She leveled her eyes with his. They were going to be stuck together in confined quarters for eternity; the man was right, best to air everything out now. “It was just casual, you know. I don’t feel anything for you, other than friendship. It’d just been a really long time for me and—”
Wayne saved Jo from another awkward rambling session with a hand and a small smile. “Same for me too, doll.”
“Friends?” Jo asked, relieved that she could be certain she already knew the answer.
“Friends.”
“Good, now that that’s squared away. . .” She zipped up her hoodie. “I’m ready to go back.”
“Brace yourself.” Wayne’s hand hovered over the handle of what was the bathroom—until it morphed into the Society’s Door. “I’ve never been gone for this long without warning or wish duty. Don’t know how people will react.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
The moment Wayne opened the door, Jo knew she’d been very, very wrong in that assessment.
Chapter 21
Severity of Exchange
JO DIDN’T HAVE the notion of being able to sneak back into the Society. With only eight people total, any absence would no doubt be noticed. But she thought she could ease herself back, see people individually, perhaps even skim off a day or two from her nearly four-day-long adventure by letting her teammates’ minds play tricks by leaving them to wonder if someone else had merely seen her first.
No such luck.
If the door could be closed after being opened, Jo would’ve insisted to Wayne that he just do that instead. But he was already halfway through and Jo was being pulled alongside him.
They stepped into a full briefing room and all eyes were on them. Wayne cleared his throat, easing the Door closed behind him. Jo folded her arms over her chest defensively.
“Kind of you to finally join us.” Snow’s chilling voice cut through the tension first.
“Lens Louise,” Wayne muttered under his breath with a glance to Snow, before forcing some cheer into his voice. “What did we miss?”
She didn’t know what a “Lens Louise” was, but Wayne’s side-eye and tense tone was descriptive enough that she could infer it wasn’t the most polite thing to say about someone.
Snow tapped his fingers on the table, one of his eyes veiled by silver hair while the other stared them down with a steely gaze. Despite being seated, he managed to domineer over them like a judge on a parapet.
“Where were you?” Snow ignored Wayne’s question.
“Look. . .” Jo took a deep breath and braced herself. “It’s not his fault. I begged him to come with me and—”
“He still made the choice to do so of his own volition,” Snow interrupted.
“Listen, he was helping me,” she tried to explain.
“Helping you make changes in the world unrelated to the wish.” Snow’s hand curled into a fist, and for a brief second Jo thought he may slam it on the table. He didn’t, but only just.
“We kept the changes as minimal as possible,” Jo assured them all. No one would seem to meet her gaze. “I had to. I had to,” she repeated for emphasis. The dodgy glances, the side eyes, the unexpected sadness, the entirely expected disappointment. . . it wore her down quickly. “My wish was to save my friend. If I didn’t act, he was going to die.” So much for not really telling people what they were up to.
“Then you should have let it come to pass.”
Her eyes snapped back to Snow. “How can you say that?” she breathed, not knowing or caring if the statement was audible to anyone but herself. “You saw us that day in Texas. You saw him dead. If I hadn’t saved him, what did I even wish for to begin with?”
“You wished for a revised world. If the foolish decisions of your friend still get him killed, then perhaps he is meant to die.”
“Take that back!” Jo didn’t mean to shout, it just sort of happened. “You take that back!”
“Jo—” Wayne’s hands closed around her shoulders, holding her in place.
“Everyone but us will die. You must let them go and focus on your duty now.”
“My duty? How dare you. All I’ve wanted to do this entire time is have a duty, a purpose, and contribute,” she spat.
“Which you would’ve been able to do, had you been here.”
Jo stilled as Snow spoke, her chest heaving and shoulders pulling against Wayne’s hands. “What are you talking about?
“It was Pan’s idea, actually,” Eslar chimed in, likely the only person who could speak without being silenced by Snow. “I was experiencing difficulty lessening the Severity of Exchange on my own. I can cure the illness. But these doctors, they look to science, not magic. Something that cannot be explained is daunting, terrifying even. If the patient was cured magically, it would be written off as a miracle or anomaly, and the gap would not close enough for Snow to build a new reality and grant the wish.”
“I caught wind.” It was Pan’s turn to speak. “I remembered all your tapping away, such fantastic magic you had. I thought it could be of help, modify all that science data in someway, perhaps? A foundation for Eslar’s cure?” Pan’s words and tone were in dissonance. She spoke as if she didn’t know anything, but her overall aura said otherwise. “But I didn’t know where to find you, so I began asking around.”
Pan had outed her after all. Jo’s hands balled into a fist. She wouldn’t have actually punched the woman-child (as tempting as it may be), but she must’ve had a convincing enough expression for Wayne to think so, because he grabbed her wrist and whispered, “Don’t.”
“That was when we learned of what you did.” All eyes were back on Snow, including Jo’s.
“
Yes, okay, I made a small modification. I made it so that my friend wouldn’t fail and die. I’m not sorry.”
“Because you do not understand.”
There was a sharp intake of air from Wayne, who’d clearly put together something she couldn’t yet see. “The Severity of Exchange.”
Snow gave the other man a solemn nod. “You have widened the Severity of Exchange with your actions.”
“That’s not possible.” Jo shook her head. “I was careful, I didn’t even do all that much—”
“You saw that the most extensive cyber-currency bank collapsed, sending markets and businesses into free-fall.”
“No, Yuu shouldn’t have even—”
“This is not your world!” Snow’s voice rose a fraction. “People are different, time-lines are different, even what looks similar is not the same. Understand that, Josephina.” He used her full name, like she was some toddler who’d spoken out of turn.
“He did it then?” Somewhere between her implanting the virus, and coming back, Yuusuke must’ve hit the bank with his first probing attack. Had he really moved so quickly? She’d done her job a little too well—or Snow was right, and everything was just. . . different.
“But the wish is only one man,” she protested weakly. Even if she had a lot to feel guilty about, she still didn’t see how it related to the wish.
“One man who had most of his savings in credits.”
Her heartbeat was in her ears. “But. . . he has insurance. He’s in Canada, after all. They have to take care of him there. It’s part of the People’s Promise of the late 1990s.” Jo remembered reading about it once in a class that covered the health crisis happening in old America at the same time.
“He was paying extra for a research hospital. A hospital he can no longer afford out-of-pocket. He will be transferred within the week to standard care, where he will die, far from the nurse who made the wish.”
“You don’t know that,” she objected on instinct. It was unfathomable how large the ripples had become: she’d only meant to help Yuusuke take down the Black Bank.