Love Gone Viral

by Meg Napier

  She stared at him, confused.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Completely. My boss was putting out a notice on the university message boards and was planning on going to LinkedIn and Craig’s List as well. But what you’ve showed me these past—“ he looked at his phone—“can it possibly be only twelve hours? has convinced me. Would you be willing to do a formal interview?”

  Lizzie continued to look at him, her teeth gnawing on her bottom lip.

  “So you mean using my writing to help educate and fight this thing? Along the lines of ‘we’re all in this together’ for real, and not for profit?”

  “Exactly along those lines.”

  She tilted her head and smiled.

  “Why not?”

  Epilogue

  Six months later

  Lizzie stared around at the boxes she had packed in preparation for her second move of the year. The infectious disease consortium had offered her a senior editing position, and after approximately sixty seconds of silent pondering, she had accepted it. The next proposition had taken just a little longer for her to accept, but not much.

  “As long as you’re able to work from home, why not move in with me for a while?” Diane’s question had seemed innocent, but Lizzie was on to the conniving manipulator. “It will be great for us to catch up after all these years, and you’ll be a little closer to that wonderful son of yours. And this way, poor Evan can stop worrying about his doddering old mother. Evan told me your place is near the Metro, so it would probably be easy to rent.”

  She had smiled at Lizzie guilelessly, and once again, after just a moment’s thought, Lizzie had uncharacteristically replied, “Why not?”

  It had been remarkably easy to rent her townhouse. DC populations always shifted in anticipation of presidential elections, and despite the economic recession, her property was so conveniently located that it was snapped up immediately.

  And now, unexpectedly, improbably, and most miraculously, she and Evan were moving in together as husband and wife. Their wedding was tomorrow, and they were set to close on a house the following week.

  Evan and Daniel had been at ease with each other from their first introduction, and Lizzie had learned to pogo stick. Evan had frowned and finally thrown up his hands in exasperation, but Diane had clapped in delight. Lizzie had not wanted Mama Alicia to travel, but her mother-in-law had taken to Evan instantly over FaceTime, and she now called him her hijo americano.

  Daniel had just laughed when she asked if he minded her moving to Charlottesville.

  “Are you kidding? I’ve got my own place, my own car, and yet you’re still nearby if I’m hungry or out of laundry detergent. Do you think I’m nuts? Of course, I don’t mind. I like Evan. He’s a good man, Mom. I’m so glad you found each other.”

  Tears had welled up in Lizzie’s eyes. She was at once overwhelmed and overjoyed by the turns her life had taken. Not long after she had interviewed virtually for the position and sent the committee copies of her work, Diane had called and begged her to come out to her place in Vienna.

  “Yes, yes, I know we’re still supposed to be social distancing. But there’s some furniture I really need help moving, and I don’t want Evan to do it by himself.”

  Neither one of them had really believed her, and of course, when they arrived, Lizzie from Arlington and Evan from Charlottesville, Diane had told them she had changed her mind and that the furniture was fine where it was. But they had both stayed for the weekend, and one thing had led to another...

  For all her pretense, Diane had been startlingly direct on the Sunday morning of that first weekend. The three had sat at the table over Diane’s incredibly delicious sticky buns, and the older woman had turned to Lizzie, for once with no trace of a smile on her face.

  “I was with you at an important moment in your life, so I’m hoping you trust me.” She looked at Lizzie with a question in her eyes, and Lizzie had just nodded, unsure where the conversation was going.

  “Evan’s father was not a good man. He was great in bed, but he was a lying bastard who betrayed people with no thought to the pain he caused.”

  Lizzie and Evan had both stared at her, startled by her directness.

  “Evan is not his father. I know full well he’s spent his life doing everything he could to distance himself from that man, but it was never necessary. He is honorable and good. And trees don’t drop out of the sky for no reason.”

  Evan bit his lip, shaking his head. “I’m pretty sure I stopped depending on you to vouch for my character somewhere around kindergarten, Mom. And I’m also pretty sure the tree fell from the ground and not the sky.”

  She gave him a scalding look, and Lizzie lost her battle and burst out laughing.

  “Are you sure you didn’t knock it down yourself, Diane?”

  “Not possible, young lady. As I’ve told you both a hundred times, I was very tired that night.”

  And so Evan had walked Lizzie to her car, and before they went their separate ways, he had leaned down and put his forehead against hers.

  “She’s not going to stop.”

  “Do you want her to?”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “Me neither.”

  He had kissed her then, and neither one had given a thought to social distancing.

  The End

  Bending Love

  Randi Goldleif

  Chapter 1

  Bear Den Hollow

  Watauga, TN

  12 February 2025

  Wednesday 3:00 am

  Electricity filled the air. The cave-turned-makeshift-laboratory glowed in a blue light. Rosalind E. F. Ellis wasn’t concerned about the neighbors. People who lived in the hollow didn’t want outside interference – an attitude she appreciated.

  The two-story house she called home was nestled between trees on top of a mountain. It had a wrap-around wooden porch crumbling from disuse. The porch wasn’t why she’d bought the house. It’d been the network of tunnels and caves under the house.

  The caves had been the secret behind the previous owner’s success. The land and house had been passed down from generation to generation and would have stayed within the Jackson family had the coronavirus not wiped them all out.

  The Jacksons had been moonshiners during Prohibition, simple drug dealers in the 1980s, and the last Jackson was a meth dealer. He’d turned one of the caverns into a meth lab, complete with blast walls and shields. Electricity separate from the house ran through it.

  The caves provided her the privacy needed to finish the work she’d left behind in CERN. It now was considered illegal work, thanks to the “Maintaining the Natural History of the World Agreement.”

  New laws and task forces were created once CERN discovered how to successfully bend the spacetime continuum in 2022. The multinational agreement was the first of such laws and was signed with barely a blip on the radar.

  Within the agreement, each country stated they’d use whatever means necessary to prevent time travel. CERN wasn’t allowed to post their results publicly and had to scrap the project. The agreement went against everything scientific progress stood for.

  The U.S. government signed the agreement, but didn’t take it seriously, until someone attempted time travel in 2023. The man had blown up himself and his neighborhood by accident. His manifesto was found online, claiming he was time travelling to prevent the President and Vice President from contracting and dying from COVID-19 in 2020.

  The Maintaining the Natural History Reservation Bureau was created shortly after the accident. The NHRB monitored the air, electricity, and any influxes they considered unique or odd. Most people thought it was a joke, as they were only trying to survive, not create mini time machines in their basements.

  Rosalind was not most people.

  She and Alden Miller, her best friend and confidante, were on the cusp of bending the space-time continuum.

  She played with the wedding band on her finger. It had to work this time
.

  “What’s wrong?” Alden asked.

  She turned around. Alden was an imposing man, even without the hazmat suit. Although Rosalind had to look up when he stood next to her, she was one of the few not impressed by his size. What had always impressed her most was his excitement about discovering the new and wonderful.

  Standing just under seven feet, he was well-muscled, and if it wasn’t for the grey hair and sagging skin under his pale blue eyes, he’d look ten years younger than his fifty-five.

  The years hadn’t aged either of them very well. There were dark rings under her brown eyes. Her black hair, once long and thick, was now shorter and as speckled as the picket fence around the house. At twenty-eight, she looked like a crazy cat lady.

  “Ready for results,” she said.

  He nodded, his hair scraping against the suit. “Me, too. If only we had…” he looked away and sighed.

  She understood all too well. If only they had their labs and resources from Geneva—the famous Large Hadron Collider or LHC, the antiproton decelerator, AEGIS, or even the anti-matter factory.

  However, she was proud of her own invention: amini particle accelerator nicknamed Little Moirae. She and Alden had worked on her for two and a half years. The machine was pieced together from parts skimmed from dumps, abandoned buildings, and their jobs.

  It looked like a Transformer had crapped in the middle of the cavern.

  Ultimately, Rosalind wanted to send a very specific item through time. Something she’d once thought of as trash—an unassuming envelope with ticket stubs from 2020. She’d found it in her wife’s drawer. For a long time, it held no purpose other than reminding her of her late wife. Then last year, an idea smacked her in the head. She wrote a note on the envelope, leaving the ticket stubs inside.

  The note on the envelope was the key to changing everything.

  Until Little Moirae worked properly, the envelope stayed in a small black safe underneath the counter holding the monitors. Thumb drives and important documents stayed there, too.

  As the machine whirled down, the computer system analyzed the results.

  Holding her breath, she watched as Alden pushed the button to the door. He slipped inside the middle room. The first doors closed shut. She imagined the door hissing as air was compressed out.

  He turned around, shooting a “thumbs up.”

  Plastering a smile on her face, she managed to return it.

  Gripping the edge of the table, she alternated between watching the screen and Alden. It was as if she were watching both move in slow motion. Her teeth ground together until her jaw ached.

  POP!

  Little Moirae’s left side jutted out.

  Alden jumped away from the machine.

  She moved without thinking. Grabbing the fire extinguisher, she shoved it through the door. Her heart raced and she fought back tears. Another fire. The third one in two weeks.

  The fire finally extinguished, Alden opened Little Moirae’s door. Thick white smoke rushed out. The computer readouts told her nothing. Alden held the tongs up.

  The metal spiral was the only thing left of the notebook. Sending a notebook had been Alden’s idea after she revealed she was ready to try something bigger than a particle and paperclip.

  Their only success had been with hydrogen particles. Even those had lasted only a few seconds before Little Moirae caught fire.

  “Darnit!” She slammed a fist on the table, bruising her hand.

  Alden swooshed from the little room, tongs in one hand, fire extinguisher in the other. He calmly placed them in the discard bin before removing the suit. His voice was quiet as he gazed at her like a father. “Your wife wasn’t the only one who lost her battle to the Coronavirus. We’ll fix it later.”

  Her small body flinched. It was always later. “We need it now.”

  His large hand reached for her, then he thought better of it. “I don’t have the parts.”

  He left her standing there, wondering what had happened to the shards of her life.

  Her memories pushed her to the edge of sanity: The memories of the last time she had ever seen her wife, Ashley, healthy before COVID-19.

  The secret Ashley had kept from her.

  The way she had left Ashley standing in the hotel room holding the envelope of ticket stubs.

  Perhaps guilt left an exaggerated negative version of everything. Or, perhaps it had been worse than she remembered.

  One way or another, she would make it right. She twisted her wedding band around her finger, remembering when she’d first met the love of her life.

  Chapter 2

  Fort Sill Museum

  Oklahoma City, OK

  3 June 2017

  Saturday 10:00 am

  The day was too hot for Rosalind’s tastes. Her long, black hair was in a tight ponytail. It hadn’t been her idea to come here. It was summer, she was a month out of grad school with a master’s in physics, and it was her birthday.

  It should’ve been a day of celebrating. Her friends (she used the term loosely) had invited her out for her first drink. She would have preferred to spend her birthday in the library.

  Instead of the library or with friends, she was stuck with her family. Her parents, James and Helene Ellis, and her uncle Ken Laughlin and his two children, Kenny and Jonathan. Ken insisted his family be entertained.

  Helene obliged, insisting Rosalind join them on the family outing. When Rosalind tried refusing, Helene claimed no one loved her or wanted to see her happy. And now here she was, at the Fort Sill Museum watching her cousins run around a statue screaming at the top of their lungs. Uncle Ken laughed and egged them on.

  She wanted to slink away and pretend they weren’t related. Unfortunately, they all looked alike. They were short, had black hair, muddy brown eyes, and seemed in dire need of sunshine or stakes through the heart. Her dad was the exception. He had light hair shaved close to his scalp and freckles covering his face and arms.

  She hung back, her mind wandering to the books she wanted to study, the papers she wanted to write, and the equations yet to be discovered.

  As her mind drifted far from the army museum, a voice sweeter than anything she’d ever heard trickled around her. She focused on it, tuning out her thoughts and screaming children.

  Her heart fluttered.

  A figure outlined by the sun stood in front of a statue. A goddess. She was tall, shapely, and the sun hit her auburn hair making it look like waves of fire. Her smooth, tanned skin practically glowed within the outline.

  Their eyes met.

  Butterflies danced and tickled Rosalind’s insides.

  “Rosalind! Stop dragging your feet,” Helene ordered.

  Sighing, she turned away. “I’m coming.” Her feet caught on air and she fell.

  “What are we going to do with you? Really, Rosalind, you’re old enough to look where you’re going,” Helene said.

  Rosalind’s face turned beet red. “Sorry,” she mumbled. She felt the woman watching her. She didn’t dare turn around again.

  Helene clucked her tongue. “As long as you’re not injured. Let’s go, Rosalind.”

  The hairs on the back of her neck rose. The woman’s eyes seemed to follow her. She burned with embarrassment.

  Kenny and Jonathan screamed, “We want toys! We’re so bored! When do we get to see something blown up?”

  “Why don’t you take the munchkins to the gift shop, Rosy?” Uncle Ken said.

  “It’s Rosalind,” she said. She hated being called Rosy.

  “Eh, Rosy’s much cuter, though, don’t you think?” He put a hairy arm around her shoulder.

  Jonathan giggled, “Rosy Posy!”

  Kenny joined in, “Rosy Posy picks her nosy! And eats her boogers with lots of sugar!”

  They burst out laughing and kept repeating it.

  Rosalind’s face turned red. “Shut up!” she said. She glanced around, terrified the goddess was within ear shot.

  “Rosalind!” Helene’s ey
es were wide. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into her,” she shook her head “It’s a wonderful idea! It will give us a chance to—”

  “Now, honey, it’s her birthday,” James stepped in. “She shouldn’t have to babysit today.”

  “It’s your birthday? No, kidding, Rosy! How old are you now? Fifteen?” Uncle Ken elbowed her.

  “Twenty-one,” she mumbled.

  “Wow! Maybe I’ll take you out for a drink later tonight,” he laughed.

  The thought of drinking with her uncle terrified her more than babysitting his brats.

  “There you are!” The sweet voice of the goddess drifted to Rosalind’s ears.

  Rosalind turned around and gasped. The goddess! She stifled a groan. If the beautiful woman heard her cousins’ song, she would die!

  “Excuse me. Who are you?” Helene stepped in between Rosalind and the woman. The woman was at least four inches taller than Helene.

  The woman didn’t back down. “I’m Ashley Williams.” She gracefully held her hand out. “Rosalind and I are supposed to meet here today.”

  Ashley Williams. The goddess had a name and was more beautiful than Rosalind realized. Her green eyes shone with an inner light encompassing everything around her. Most surprising of all, Ashley knew her name!

  Helene didn’t take Ashley’s hand. “Today is family day.”

  She cringed. Her mother was using her “Wait until we get home” tone. The boys were still chanting their “Rosy Posy” song, albeit, a little quieter. Her eyes stung with humiliation and anger.

  “I think it’s a great idea,” James said. His smile was wide. “It’s very nice to meet you, Ashley. I’m James and this is Helene.”

  “But—”

  He shushed her. “There’s no reason for Rosalind to hang out with us on her birthday. She should be with friends.”

  The butterflies did a victory dance in her stomach. Her mother wasn’t prone to fits in public.

  “Have fun and meet us at the exit at four,” he said.