The Rift Frequency

by Amy S. Foster

  I move around him. He scuttles forward and makes space for me to be behind him. I put my fingers in his hair. At first I don’t move. I just stay still so he can get used to this feeling. He doesn’t tense or flinch, and I exhale softly. Slowly, I begin to dig my fingers into his head. I make tiny circles and apply just the right amount of pressure. His hair is soft and thick. I can see the bits of russet in it, reflecting the faint light bouncing off the rocks.

  I move my hands down. I don’t tell him I’m going to do this. Sometimes, anticipating touch can cause a kind of anxiety. I settle my hands on his shoulders and begin to massage them. I feel how tense he is. Not because I’m touching him, thankfully, but because, well, our lives are tense. I dig into his shoulders and press my thumbs between each scapula. I hear a small groan escape from his mouth. The sound unnerves me for a second; it’s so primal and intimate.

  My heart starts to race a little faster and I know he must hear it. I stop. But Levi softly takes my right hand and pulls it forward, holding it up against his cheek. What’s happening here? I’m the one who’s supposed to be controlling this situation.

  This is for Ezra. This is for Ezra. This is for Ezra.

  My heart picks up again as Levi takes my fingers and traces them along his face, over his eyelids, his cheekbone, and over his lips. I want to pull back, but I also want to lean in. It’s too much, whatever is hanging in the room between us now, is heavier than it should be.

  Then in one swift move, Levi reaches behind and lifts me up and over into his lap.

  “Levi,” I whisper, afraid to move against him, to move away, or at all. I know I should stand. I should tell him that this isn’t a hookup, that it simply can’t be that way, but I can’t get my limbs to cooperate with my common sense. My body wants to stay exactly where it is.

  “Shhhhh,” he says, and he gently closes my eyelids with soft fingers. I feel his face coming closer to mine. Oh. My. God. He is going to try to kiss me. This cannot happen. I mean it could, I suppose, in a less sexy environment with me firmly in control, as part of the deprogramming. But this doesn’t feel like deprogramming. This feels very, very real.

  Instead of kissing me, though, Levi just rests his forehead against mine. We stay like that, breathing in time, shutting everything else out. How is this both totally right and completely wrong? And once more I think:

  What’s happening?

  And then I hear something. The faintest, tiniest whistling noise. My eyes fly open and I look at Levi, who doesn’t seem to hear it at all. At first I don’t move so that I can hear the sound better. I focus. It’s a whirling whistle. It reminds me of . . .

  A Rift.

  What? I put my forehead back on Levi’s and the humming gets louder. Jesus Christ. The noise, as far as I can tell, is coming from us.

  I jump up off of him. “I’m sorry,” he says, but he doesn’t sound all that sorry.

  “No, it’s not that. It’s . . . don’t you hear that sound? Like a humming or whistling?”

  “Uhhh,” Levi says, clearly confused. “Did something happen back there, when they were doing the medical stuff? Is it . . . the robots?” he asks.

  I shake my head in frustration. I lower the zipper on my uniform a little—it feels like it’s strangling me. “No. And don’t call them that. And stop talking about the ‘medical stuff,’ I don’t ever want to talk about that.”

  “Okay, okay.” Levi throws his hands up and then leans over to rest on his side, propped up on his forearm. “You’re probably just tired, with the interplanetary treaty you organized and the umm . . . you know, procedures or whatever. It’s probably just the wind or something.” Well, there is that slit of an opening to this cave. The sound may have come from that. “Look, let’s eat something that isn’t a gel cube and get a couple hours of sleep. No more than that, I promise, and then we can go.”

  “Okay,” I say, filling my lungs with air, trying to clear my head.

  “But that was good, right? We were doing good. I really think we made a, you know . . . a connection there before you freaked out.”

  “A connection?” I ask tentatively.

  “Yeah. I felt it. You must have, too.” Levi gets up and starts rummaging through his pack, presumably for food.

  “I don’t know if I’d use the word ‘connection,’” I say, trying to laugh it off, though I’m afraid I know exactly what he’s talking about.

  Levi stops what he’s doing. “Really? What word would you prefer me to use, then?” he asks.

  “I don’t know,” I practically whine, internally berating myself for the tone, “one that doesn’t feel so loaded.”

  “Fine, Ryn.” Levi starts slamming things from his pack onto the ground. “Whatever you say.”

  Great. Now I feel guilty. I wonder just how many layers of guilt I can slather on today. We make our dinners separately in silence. Levi puts his headphones on and then I decide to do the same. These new earbuds, supplied by the SenMachs, just appeared with the rest of the stuff they handed over and are wireless. Knowing them, I’m sure they’ve linked our new computers to whatever music we brought with us. I tell my cuff to shuffle my playlists and sure enough, the Weeknd’s sultry bass line begins to thrum in my ear. It’s probably the last type of friggin’ music I should be listening to, given that I’m in a romantically lit cave alone with Levi, but I let the song play out because I like it, and because honestly, this tension is weirdly exciting and the song is adding to it. I keep listening while I eat, locking my eyes firmly on the paintings covering the cave’s walls, far away from Levi. The first few songs are ones I know I put on there. Then an instrumental song comes on that I’ve never heard before. It has a haunting melody and even an instrument or two that I can’t say for sure what they are. This must be SenMach music.

  When we finish eating, we clean up and I climb into my sleeping bag. I tell my cuff to only play music by the SenMachs. A song begins, piano, some kind of string instrument. It’s soothing. My eyes flutter closed, and before I fall asleep, I realize that Levi can’t talk me out of what I know to be true. I heard something.

  Something real.

  Chapter 12

  Our next jump lands us fifty yards away from railroad tracks. Right away I take a reading of the air. Just because there are signs of civilization doesn’t mean the civilization is intact. In short order, we get a definitive answer as a train appears in the distance, moving impossibly fast. Levi and I step well away from the area, and in a matter of seconds, the train passes by. All we can see is a blur of stainless steel as the train speeds away, practically throwing us off balance even from a distance.

  “Jesus. That was fast,” I note, more to myself than Levi.

  “Yeah. Let’s get away from these tracks and head into that wooded area,” Levi suggests while nodding his head in the direction we should go. “We can bring out the computers and get a read on where we are.”

  “Roger that,” I tell him, and we start to run. We dart into a denser part of the terrain, moving quickly and quietly just in case we’ve been seen. When we get to an area with decent enough coverage and no view of the tracks, Levi stops and sits down, supporting his back against a tree. I kneel next to him on the densely packed earth.

  Levi brings his pack around his shoulder and pulls out the sleek SenMach laptop. “Show us where we are.” Instantly, the monitor pulls up a map of the Earth spinning.

  “By the looks of that train, there’s obviously technology here. The SenMach computer must be tapping into a satellite system,” I say, even though Levi is probably not listening. When the image of the Earth stops spinning, we both lean in as the image zooms.

  A flashing red dot lands in California, at least where California is on our version of Earth. “We’re close to L.A., about fifty miles east. But if this was our Earth, we’d be in a neighborhood. I’ve been to L.A. It’s huge, with dozens of suburbs,” Levi observes.

  “Let’s send out the drones and see what’s up, then,” I tell him. At this point,
he doesn’t need to answer. We both just dip into our packs, and activate the silver disk drones and send them off.

  “Show me the densest areas of population,” Levi says to the computer, and we watch as purple dots begin to form on a map of North America. The population density looks much the same, although there are many more people living in this Canada than in our Canada. Actually, the population looks much more evenly distributed throughout the continent and, according to the purple dots, there at least a hundred million or so fewer people.

  Pictures from the drones start to come in. Instead of the sleek art deco architecture you expect from L.A. or the super-posh pretension of high-end Beverly Hills restaurants and shops, we see something else entirely. Every single building is neoclassical. Row upon row of white marble and brick buildings with porticoes and giant pillars. Some have domed roofs, some are trussed and tiled. There are cars, but there aren’t any models I recognize. They aren’t uniform, though, and just like on our Earth, some look nicer than others.

  The streets are all much wider and there are people walking, which I’ve heard is rare for L.A. “Just show us pictures of people now,” I say to the computer. Immediately, photos pop up on the screen. I scrunch my eyes to make sure what I’m seeing is right.

  “Is that guy wearing . . . a toga?” Levi asks me in shock. As if the worst thing in the world a guy could do is wear a dress. But he’s not wrong.

  “A version of one,” I say. “Sort of. Look at them all, though. It’s a perfect mash-up of modern and ancient. The women are all wearing tops with empire waists, but the bottoms are shorts and they even have leggings. And look at the jewelry, the earrings especially: no hoops or studs, just dangly ones. Stop,” I tell the computer, and the images immediately stop appearing on the screen. “Go back to the building where you took the seventeenth picture you sent.” We wait for a few seconds and at first all we see are columns and then a giant toe. “Zoom out, but not too fast,” I command. The drone does as I ask and I watch until I’m sure my suspicions are confirmed. The camera pans out to a skirt and then a face, a head covered by a helmet. The statue must be massive, at least fifty feet high. “It’s a shrine. To Diana.”

  “So—” Levi begins, but I’m too excited. I interrupt him.

  “Apparently this is an Earth where the Roman Empire never fell! This is amazing! I mean, I get that there are different versions of Earth, obviously, but to actually see it, to witness it—it’s living history, you know?”

  “Well.” Levi finally sits down and rests an elbow against his knee. “The Romans weren’t exactly known for being warm and fuzzy,” he mentions cautiously.

  “Meh,” I say, waving my arm. “We speak Latin and Italian. We’ll be good. Besides, this isn’t a military base or robot town. This is a real city. We can blend.”

  “I’d really rather not go charging into the Roman Empire if it’s okay with you. Why don’t you see if you can reach Ezra via an e-mail first.” It’s actually a good idea. Ezra and I had planned for a separation contingency. We set it up when he was still in the Village, before he even hid out at my house. Originally it was intended for use on my Earth, but I have to assume he’d use the same protocol on others. We would set up an e-mail account using the most popular free-access mail servers with a complex address made up of letters and numbers that no one would have used already. From there, we would just send e-mails to ourselves via that address.

  There’s one problem, though.

  “You really think they have Google here? Or Hotmail?” I ask him sarcastically.

  “You should try at least.”

  So I ask the computer to look for those sites, which surprisingly don’t exist. There is an Internet here, but it’s complicated. Each website seems to be for an individual family rather than a business.

  “Look, there might be a free mail site, but we’re going to have to ask someone. Let’s just walk into town and find out. It’s not like anyone will know who we are.”

  “Fine,” Levi consents reluctantly as he stands, “but we stick to the outlying areas. There’s no need to go into the city proper. We find a coffee place or a bar where someone will answer our questions and then we leave right away. And no highborn nobility bullshit, either. Like you said, we want to blend in.”

  “I wasn’t about to put on a ball gown. The rich-lady stuff is only when I’m in private. Or with you, which I guess is the same thing now.” Levi doesn’t respond. He just packs up our stuff and starts moving in the direction we saw the train headed. I put my computer away, too, and start to run.

  “Come on, tough guy,” I say as I pass him. “Let’s book it.” I know that Levi is stronger than I am, but I’m not so sure he’s faster. I race over the uneven ground and I hear him just a fraction behind me. I’m not running full-out—there’s no reason yet to find out which one of us is quicker. I don’t need him to be even more pissy with me. Still, each time he comes close to passing me, I run a little farther ahead.

  After twelve minutes, we’ve covered ten miles. I stop when I see a wide boulevard. There is a range of mountains in front of us, but there are also smaller hills, which are dotted with villas and what might be apartment buildings. Directly across from us, however, is a cluster of buildings that look like shops and a restaurant or two. The buildings ring a courtyard, and in the middle of it there’s an ornate marble fountain on the green grass.

  I quickly scan the immediate area to make sure no one is watching, but I avoid plain view anyhow behind a large sycamore. “Use the surveillance photos from the drones and dress me like a woman from here—an average woman. Totally average,” I tell my cuff, with a smug smile directed at Levi. I hear him do the same. I watch as the sensuit warps and slides over me. I am now wearing a long turquoise cotton dress, with an empire waist and tall gladiator-style sandals. I reach up and feel my head. My hair is now up in a fairly elaborate style with a couple of fat ringlets hanging down one side. All in all I look like I could be on my way to Sasquatch or Coachella. It’s not a super-drastic change.

  “Pants, thank God,” Levi says when his sensuit is complete. He’s wearing what look more like breeches than pants, really, and boots that come just under his knees with thick leather cords binding them on. His top is a plain knit navy sweater. It’s a shame; I’d really been hoping to see him in a toga—or, more accurately, take a picture of him in a toga—but he lucked out.

  “Hey look,” I say, holding up my wrist, which is ringed in a purple design that looks like rows of alternating diamonds and dots, “I’ve got a tattoo and so do you. I guess that’s what they do here.” Levi looks at his wrist and grimaces. “Oh my God,” I say as I tap my chest and shoulders. “Our packs! The sensuit doesn’t hide our packs,”

  “Well, I’m not leaving them here,” Levi says quickly. “No way.”

  “It’s going to look weird and make people notice us,” I protest while looking down at my dress.

  “People don’t travel here? Or go camping?” I grimace and Levi relents. “Look, I’ll take your pack, too—then it won’t look so strange. Guys carry heavy shit all the time.” When I don’t look completely convinced, Levi makes another suggestion. “Just walk ahead and try to look normal, and by ‘normal,’ I mean, you know . . . pretty—not nerdy and all excited. If you can do that, no one will even notice me.”

  “Was that a compliment? Wow . . . ,” I say, nodding my head and swishing the sides of my outfit. “You must really like this dress.”

  “Whatever, just give me your pack.” I do as Levi asks, and we walk briskly across the wide street. There are people here, but no one is looking at us. So far, so good. There are several boutiques, but Levi steers me to what looks like a bar, or more accurately, a tavern. There’s a swinging carved wooden sign that says Plectere & Ocimum. Translated, it means “braid and basil,” which strikes me as an oddly hipsterish name to be seeing in the Roman Empire, but hey, what do I know?

  Inside, the tavern is fairly large, doing good business with a heavy lunc
htime crowd. There is exposed brick and wood beams, overall what you would expect in ancient Rome, but there are also flat-screen TVs above the bar. There are silk curtains sheltering more than a dozen individual booths, and the chairs and bar stools are upholstered in a rich studded velvet.

  “People are staring at you,” Levi hisses in my ear.

  “Maybe they’re staring at you,” I whisper back. “You know there’s no such thing as being gay with the Romans? Everybody sleeps with everybody,” I tell him with a cheeky smile, which only earns me a worried look.

  I walk up to the bar. The barkeep is a burly bald man with a light blue toga covered by an apron. He takes one look at us, particularly at our wrists, and slides down to the other end of the bar, where he leans in close to a customer and starts to talk.

  Levi and I maneuver our way closer to the copper bar counter. I can feel the eyes of the patrons staring at me, taking me in. I make a tight fist without thinking and then quickly release it. Something is off. I look at Levi and I can see that he senses it, too. I wonder if the tattoos have marked us as minors, as children. Since I see no other patrons close to my age, I’m beginning to think that there is actually a drinking age here in the New World Roman Empire, which, to me, would be ridiculous.

  I try to get the bartender’s attention, but he barely looks at me before continuing his conversation, ignoring my subtle hand signal. Maybe if I ask the guy seated in the bar stool next to me? I turn my head and he quickly whips his entire body around and says something in his neighbor’s ear. Is this a members-only club?

  I start to back away, and as I do, the bartender walks slowly toward us. “Where are you going?” he asks in Latin. Okay, something is definitely off here.

  “Out. Nowhere,” I tell him. The other patrons at the bar have all stopped talking. They are a mixed bunch, some in togas, others in more modern apparel like Levi’s. There are a couple of women, too. They are older, in their fifties maybe. Their dresses are certainly not as nice as mine. The colors are duller and the fabric wrinkled and their hair is thrown up haphazardly without much actual styling. I watch their eyes land on my skin, then quickly dart away to focus on something else. The men, however, have no such demure compunctions. They stare at us with outright contempt.