Twilight in the Land of Nowhen

by Nury Vittachi

  She insisted that she was going to lose me to Nowhen very soon if I didn’t submit to treatment; she was willing to risk breaking a few rules to get my cooperation.

  Stitchers are dispatched to help whenever anyone or anything becomes more than 500 milliseconds displaced from time. Ms Blit said I had probably been merely 300 or 400 milliseconds displaced at birth. My worsening condition had gone unnoticed until I was close to my to current reading of three and a half seconds.

  ‘We need to stop your deterioration. The theory is that somewhere between three point three and four point one seconds, the sufferer enters a condition known as Partial Detachment,’ she said. ‘This is when the sufferer is so divorced from present time that he or she becomes transparent. From then on, the speed of deterioration increases dramatically, with patients becoming hundreds of milliseconds more detached every few minutes. If displacement intensifies to five point two seconds, the sufferer is thought to enter a condition called Twilight. Your bouts of transparency are early warning signs. I think you’re teetering on the edge of Twilight.’

  She took a deep breath, and reached over to hold my hand.

  ‘Yes, please do,’ I said.

  ‘I need to tell you about Twilight.’

  I looked at a flock of swallows flying over the trees.

  ‘When the sufferer enters Twilight, he or she literally becomes invisible in the temporal world. Twilight, like everything connected with displacement, is irreversible. Within two hours, perhaps less, all traces of the sufferer disappear entirely. He or she will fall into the state we call Nowhen. And that’s when all traces that he or she has ever existed will disappear.’

  I still found this hard to understand. ‘Sort of like dying?’ I asked.

  She watched the flock of swallows swooping over the church tower before replying.

  ‘It’s not like dying,’ she said. ‘It’s worse. People who die stop existing in temporal reality for the rest of time. You won’t just stop being. You will never have lived.’

  Now I was spooked.

  Care and Maintenance of the Fabric of Time, first edition

  6.4: Alleviation of displacement:memorisation

  Further experimental techniques to alleviate displacement focus on employing the prefrontal lobes and the parahippocampal cortex, the areas of the brain that deal with short-term and long-term data storage.

  A well-known psychological shortcut used to improve interaction among social phobics is the memorisation of the names of the people in the patient’s social group. The sufferer learns the names and titles of everyone he is likely to meet and reinforces the knowledge by establishing multiple memories of it. This makes conversation starting easier, and is a simple but useful tool to create and cement supportive relationships.

  21

  Ms Blit told me that people who can memorise the names of those around them build ‘positive social networks’ at three or four times the speed of people who can’t.

  Did I mention earlier that I am brilliantly clever? Stuff like learning lists of names is a piece of cake.

  I have an awesome memory. I can memorise numbers, dates, places, anything. This part of the program was going to be a cinch.

  Ms Blit drove me to school and I sneaked into the classroom during break and borrowed the register. I photocopied it, and returned the original to Mrs Stoep’s desk. I sat in the toilet and memorised the names of every kid in my class. Easy. It took me less than five minutes to learn the lot, all thirty-two names. I’m such a genius I even learned their middle names.

  When the bell rang I raced out of the toilets. Two boys from my class were walking down the corridor.

  ‘Hi, Malcolm Duley Wheeler. Hi, Geoff Soto Mbele,’ I said, perhaps a little earlier than I should have.

  They glanced at me. ‘Yo, Poopoo,’ they grunted, in a not-unfriendly way.

  Maybe it was going to work!

  I raced down the corridor, naming everyone I recognised. ‘Hi, Deedee Seung Yee Chung. Hi, Edward Richard Lin. Hi, Melanie Claire Devereux Peet.’

  When class began, Mrs Stoep was arranging the books on her desk.

  ‘If I were a teacher I wouldn’t need a register,’ I told Poison Cloud. ‘I already know everyone’s names in this class, John McCauley McCloud.’

  Poison Cloud blinked at me in surprise. It was the first time I had voluntarily said anything to him. It was also the first time this term anyone had called him by his real name.

  Mrs Stoep had overheard me. ‘Oh you do, do you, Master Poopoo?’ she said, looking up.

  The way she called everyone except me by their first name riled me. My fists clenched. ‘I am,’ I said. ‘You may.’ ‘Are you saying you already know the names of all your classmates?’ She said it loudly so that everyone heard. ‘May I test you?’

  Suddenly, I got that tense feeling that I used to think was shyness but I now knew was displacement. My brain froze. My neck muscles tightened.

  This was bad. Now I could see two Mrs Stoeps going around pointing at individuals in the class. I was confused. I told myself to react to the second image, but the first image seemed more real and I kept responding to that. I saw her pointing at a boy.

  ‘That’s Edward Lin,’ I said.

  ‘Who shall we go for first, Master Poopoo?’ said Mrs Stoep. ‘Who is this young man?’ She pointed to Edward Lin.

  ‘Vanessa Matlock,’ I said to the Mrs Stoep I could see pointing at Vanessa Matlock.

  The class laughed.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ sneered Mrs Stoep. I tried desperately to focus on the right Mrs Stoep; as usual, I had lost track of what was real.

  Now I saw her pointing to the boy who sat next to Melanie Peet.

  ‘Brett Wilholm.’

  The class laughed again. For them, she had just got round to pointing at Vanessa Matlock.

  ‘And who’s that?’

  ‘Martina Scernis.’

  Everyone laughed. She was pointing to Brett.

  ‘And that?’

  ‘Josh Chin.’

  Everyone roared. For them, she was pointing at Martina. Pushing back my chair, I walked quietly out of the room.

  ‘Who’s that?’ I heard Mrs Stoep call out behind me.

  I knew that now she really was pointing at Josh Chin.

  ‘So you should be,’ I said to Ms Blit.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ she said.

  ‘It was awful. I got the names right, but since I was one step ahead of everyone, no one realised. This plan is a disaster. I am not going to continue. I want surgery. I want my amygdala removed. I mean, doctors can take out people’s hearts, and replace their livers and all that. I want an amygdala transplant.’

  Ms Blit paused before replying. ‘Can we just try—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘—one more exercise, at least?’

  ‘No. This is supposed to make my life less stressful. It’s making it worse and worse. I am going to end up in— that place. You said it was important that we didn’t make it worse.’

  She paused to get our conversation back in line. ‘You’re right. It is important that we don’t make it worse.’ ‘Since this treatment is doing me harm, I vote we abandon it and go for Plan B or something instead, okay?’ She let out a long, sad sigh. ‘Okay,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Good,’ I snapped. ‘By the way, what is Plan B?’

  She smiled. I could see that it was only a small twitch from her zygomaticus muscles. Her lower oculi and her labii were not working at all. It was not even a brave smile, just the ghost of one.

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Well, to be honest, you have neatly identified a problem there. There is no Plan B.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I didn’t know what else to say, so I asked her to tell me more about Nowhen. Surprisingly, she did. Maybe she thought she’d scare me into trying harder at Plan A.

  What I didn’t tell her was that Nowhen was sounding more and more appealing by the minute. A place where you completely disappeared sounded like a place I
wanted to be. This world was just too painful.

  22

  Dad never found out that Ms Blit and I had borrowed his car. He didn’t come home that night either. I ate some beans out of a tin for dinner.

  I had secretly decided that I wasn’t going to fight my worsening displacement any more. I would just quietly disappear from this world.

  Life would be easier for everyone. Dad would be happier; he could concentrate on the X31 and his girlfriend. Mrs Stoep would have one less troublesome kid in her class. Eliza Marshmallow would be robbed of having me to humiliate in the Void of the Year competition—but I didn’t mind that in the least.

  Ms Blit could fix all the other time-related problems in the universe or take time off with the other members of the Maintenance Crew, or the celestial seamstresses, or whatever they called themselves. She had told me that she had quite a social life and was planning to get married in a few months. She planned to have six children, she said, all the same age, but born separately. (Stitchers can do that.)

  If I was going to die, I decided I might as well do it in a spectacular way.

  My plan was to kill off my last five Everworld characters that night, then get into Dad’s car and drive it into the stratosphere. Since I had never actually driven it before (except in a computer game), I figured that would be stressful enough to push me over the edge.

  The amygdala in my head would go wild and I would vanish into Nowhen. And if that didn’t happen, the likelihood that I would eventually crash was one hundred per cent, because I had no idea how to land the thing. Even in the computer simulation I had crashed every time I had tried to land it. That would definitely be stressful. And then—pow!—I would disappear from everyone’s lives. Gone from sight. And from mind. And from history. As if I had never existed.

  Brilliant!

  Two hours later, I had completed step one of the plan. I had killed off my last five avatars in Everworld.

  I had switched off the computer and picked up the X31 keys when the phone rang. I hated phone calls (for obvious reasons), so I did what I normally do: ignored it.

  After a few rings, the machine switched to answer-phone and a woman’s voice began speaking. ‘This is a message for Mr or Ms Poopoo—sorry, is that how you pronounce it? This is the Records Office here. You didn’t leave a number when you requested the records and photographs concerning Ms Ding Yuan. So I looked your contact details up on the system. I’m just calling to let you know that we’re running a little behind, but the material should be delivered to the address you specified by the end of the week. You can pay on receipt of the material using any credit card. Goodbye.’ I stared at the phone. Ding Yuan? That was my mother’s name. Records Office? What did that mean? What records?

  Dad must have ordered some stuff from government files about Mum. Why? And what would be in the files? Would there be photographs of her? Or pictures of her and me together? What did she look like? Did she really look like me? How did she die? Would there be clues in there to explain why I turned out like this?

  I sat down. My mother. Records of Mum. To be delivered here. By the end of Friday.

  I put the car keys back on the hook and got out her mirror and stared at my face again. I was still determined to go to oblivion, but I was going to delay it for a day— just long enough to see, just once, what my mother had looked like.

  23

  My father came home at eight o’clock the next morning.

  ‘That’s okay, Dad,’ I said.

  ‘Hello, Simon,’ said Dad, looking sheepish and a bit guilty. ‘Sorry I didn’t make it home last night. Or the night before. Melly and I have had a couple of pretty heavy nights.’

  ‘You promised you would.’

  ‘And I can’t come to school with you today. Next week, maybe.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I need to take the relativity induction manual back to Melly. She’s going to sneak it back to her office this morning.’

  ‘Bye, Dad.’

  ‘I’m just going to deliver it to her. See you later. Bye, son.’

  He felt awful, I could tell. His head was kind of low between his shoulders and he spoke in a high, nervous voice.

  I wanted to find out about my mother, and about that phone message from last night, but I didn’t want to say anything that would show that I knew more than he thought I knew. I decided to bring up the subject of my mother without mentioning the call.

  ‘Dad. I want to find out more about Mum. Are there any records about her or anything?’

  My father turned and looked at me. ‘I’ve told you, Simon. I think it’s better we don’t talk about her. I got rid of all the pictures and stuff for your sake, and mine. Maybe one day, when you’re older, we can talk about her. But not now. Damn. Where is that blasted manual?’ He went into his study and started throwing things off flat surfaces onto the floor. Then he raised his voice. ‘Simon, have you seen that book of Melly’s? I’m sure I had it around here somewhere.’

  I knew that he had left it in the computer room. I picked up the manual to give it to him.

  ‘Here you are, Dad . . .’

  Some pages flipped open and I noticed a diagram—a cartoon of some sort. It was a sketch of a man looking into a mirror. But there was no face looking back at him. The mirror was empty.

  I was amazed. This cartoon seemed be about me. Or were there other people who looked in mirrors and sometimes failed to see their own faces reflected back at them? The text under the picture read: ‘Basic Relativity and the Principles of the Matter-Energy C Induction Engine.’

  I dropped to the floor and started reading hungrily. I didn’t understand much of what I read. It was something about the applications of a discovery made by a man named Albert Einstein, a name I recognised as belonging to a famous dead scientist.

  Before I had finished the first paragraph, Dad entered the room and asked for the manual.

  ‘Dad, I just need to read this first. Remember how my hands sometimes go transparent, and I told you that my face went transparent once?’

  ‘Give me the book, kid.’

  ‘Dad, there’s a picture here about this guy Albert Einstein looking in a mirror and not being able to see his face. That happened to me a few days ago. You know how my fingers used to go transparent. Dad, I’m finally learning something about what’s been happening to me. I met this woman at school who—’

  ‘I’ve got to go. Melly’s waiting for me.’

  ‘Dad, please let me just read this. Give it back to her next week. Or tomorrow. This could be really important. I need to find out—’

  He snatched the book out of my hand.

  ‘As usual, you only think about yourself. Let me remind you that Melly borrowed this book from her company at great personal risk. There is no way I am going to get her into trouble for helping me. I promised to deliver this to her at 8.30 this morning, and that’s what I am going to do.’

  After he left, I sat and stared at the wall for a while. I wasn’t going to school. I just wanted to think about things. Things like: What did my mother look like? And how exactly did she die? Why was Albert Einstein’s face not reflected in his mirror? Did he have what I had?

  If there was really no cure for my Displacement, then I still wanted to disappear into Nowhen. But I wasn’t ready to give up yet, and I was beginning to suspect that my questions were all leading me somewhere. But I had no idea where.

  I went to the bookshelf to see if I could find anything about Albert Einstein, but there were only car books. I looked him up on the internet, but I only found lots of boring articles about physics. I couldn’t find anything that said his face didn’t appear in mirrors.

  The phone rang. I ignored it.

  There was a beep and the message function came on. ‘Simon, it’s me,’ said Ms Blit’s voice.

  ‘I don’t want to go to school ever again,’ I said out loud, even though she couldn’t hear me.

  ‘Why aren’t you in school?’ she asked.

  I
leaped to my feet.

  ‘By the way, I’m at your front door,’ she added.

  I was already racing to let her in.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I replied as I opened the door.

  ‘Hello, Simon. Are you okay?’ Ms Blit asked, snapping shut her mobile phone.

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’ I sat down on the couch and motioned for Ms Blit to sit next to me. Then I took a deep breath and began.

  ‘I’ve come to a decision. If there really is no cure for my condition, and I’m going to end up in Nowhen anyway, then I’m not going to fight it. I’m just going to let myself disappear. It will be easier for everyone. Even you.’

  Ms Blit counted to three then said, ‘That’s a big decision. And it doesn’t have to end like that. We are going to stop you getting worse. We really are.’ Her voice was really quiet.

  ‘That’s not enough,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to just stop getting worse. I want a cure. That’s the only thing that will change my mind.’

  Ms Blit had opened her mouth to speak but I knew what she was going to say, so I ploughed on.

  ‘Don’t bother telling me that there is no cure. I know that already. But there are two things I want to do before I let myself go into Nowhen. The first is to see a photo of my mum. The second is to find out more about Albert Einstein. In my dad’s book about car engines there was a picture of Einstein. He was holding a mirror in front of him but there was no face reflected in it. Just like me. I wish I could talk to Albert Einstein.’

  Ms Blit got up without saying a word and walked straight out the front door.

  24

  I sprinted after her. She strode to the garage and threw open the door. Then she opened the boot of Dad’s car (hovercars have two engines; one at the front and one at the back) and started fiddling with something inside.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I shrieked. ‘Dad’s going to kill you!’

  She counted to three before replying.