The Flicker Men

by Ted Kosmatka

  I realized then that he was speaking to me.

  He caressed the smooth surface, and it played the image of Joy throwing me against the wall.

  “Once it is created, the sphere remembers. It is a perfect re-creation of everything. Past, present, future. An instrument of immense power.” He turned to look at me. “It remembers. And what it’s detected can’t be changed, just as your detector results can’t be changed. This is why the world cannot correct. It is collapsed in place. Pinned to existence by the fact that these results could someday be read. Would you like to see what happens next?” He smiled. “No? You’ll need no crystal ball for that, now, will you?”

  He removed his hand from the sphere, and it went dark again.

  He rose and walked over to where I lay.

  “Did they tell you the cascade was burning?” he asked. “Did they tell you eternity was an escape? Well, there’s another possibility, Eric. Another inevitable outgrowth of time dilation. The cascade isn’t just an escape. It’s also a mine.”

  He stood over me.

  “A mine into time itself. A mine into the future. A mine for ideas. This world is a blur of speed, while those above barely move. It’s not your fault. But that doesn’t matter. You were going to create the math that was going to make the next great leap possible. You were going to unlock new technologies that others would use to open the next level of the cascade. But that doesn’t matter either.”

  I tried again to get to my feet, and again, my legs wobbled. I sat.

  Brighton bent close, his voice a whisper. “All that matters now, Eric, is that soon you’ll know more than me. You’ll know if there is a hell.” He pointed the gun at my head.

  There was movement behind him; I saw Mercy struggle to her knees. Brighton saw her, too, his face showing irritation.

  Instead of shooting me, he turned and shot her. Her shoulder snapped back, and she spun onto her stomach, sliding across the floor. Brighton crossed the room toward her.

  He stood over her and cocked the weapon, chambering another round. “This time, you’ll stay down,” he said.

  She was still alive, crawling a red smear across the filthy cement. Instead of backing away, she moved closer. Close to Brighton, as if eager for the bullet. As he raised the gun, she did not flinch away; instead she pivoted her body and lashed out with her leg—connecting with the sphere. It rolled across the floor toward me while all eyes followed.

  I dove for it—a last chance. Its smooth surface was hot against my skin. Then I rose to my knees and with the last of my strength lifted the sphere high over my head.

  This time, they had no time to react. No time to do anything but stare in horror. Brighton’s mouth opening in a frantic scream, “No!”

  He lunged forward, but too late.

  I flung the sphere down on the cement as hard as I could.

  Time seemed to slow as it smashed onto the floor—a light that wasn’t light but its opposite—an unfurling blackness. Every scene from every age, a Mozart concerto in a burst of static—Brighton’s eyes squeezing shut as the sphere detonated, blasting shards through our bodies along the cresting shock wave—shredding flesh, the bones of my skull sliding past each other, singing out a soundless tone while the space around me shifted, felt but not seen—like the dark feeling from my childhood—standing too close to a train whistle, as the blackness surged from the middle of the sphere. My old companion, there all along.

  The silence was complete.

  50

  I woke in a white room.

  I was on my back, my head spinning.

  When I could, I looked around. The bed was fouled. White sheets. White pillows.

  The blank white walls were familiar somehow. Like a whiteboard I’d stared at too long. I was in a hospital.

  Or I was dead.

  I checked my body, running a hand along my torso, but there were no bandages. I wiggled my toes beneath the cover, and the sheet moved.

  I slowly slid my legs out and placed my feet on the floor. I stood for a long time, feeling the chill rise up through the soles of my feet. I was off balance.

  The place smelled of sickness and disinfectant. If this is death, then Brighton was right—I was in hell. Only hell would have hospitals in the afterlife.

  I’m not sure how long I stood there before a nurse walked past the open doorway.

  “Nurse!” I called out.

  She stopped and looked at me. Dark hair pulled back into a ponytail—an open, expectant face, clipboard in hand. She waited.

  I wasn’t sure what to ask at first.

  She wore blue hospital scrubs and the look of someone who needed to be somewhere. She was hoping for a question she could answer quickly. I could see it in her face.

  “How long have I been here?” I asked.

  That changed her expression. Impatience shifted to concern, and she crossed into my room. “How long?” She repeated my question back to me.

  “Yes.”

  “Almost a week,” she said. “You don’t remember?”

  “But what about my injuries?”

  “We took the bandage off your hand yesterday.”

  “No,” I said. I looked down at my hand, and I saw the pink skin. The old burn from several lifetimes ago. “My other injuries.”

  Her eyes showed confusion. “What other injuries?”

  * * *

  I sat in a doctor’s office.

  He was across the desk from me, my file open in front of him. His face was young. Too young to be a psychiatrist, I would have thought, but his hair was already graying at the front, so maybe he was older than he looked. He stared at me with practiced concern. I imagined it was an expression he’d tried out in the mirror, hoping to get it just right.

  “So I understand you’re having some memory issues again.”

  “Yes.”

  “You had a bad reaction to some medication we’ve been giving you. We’re glad you’ve finally come around. You seem to be responding well to the new meds.”

  “How did I get here?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “No.”

  “Memory problems are common with the medications you’ve been taking, but you seem particularly susceptible. I see in your file that you’ve had a similar reaction in the past?”

  “When?”

  “The file says that you reacted badly to medication in Indianapolis.”

  “No, I … I need to…” Nothing came. No end to that sentence. Need to what? Instead I asked the question again. “How did I get here?”

  “You were referred to us for a seventy-two-hour hold after being picked up by police wandering the streets. You were incoherent.”

  “Police.” I tried to wrap my head around it. That’s not what had happened.

  “The event has been hard on a lot of people,” he said. “Some have had more trouble coping than others. Considering your history, it’s not surprising that you’ve had more trouble than most.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You’re only here until you’re stabilized,” the doctor said. “We’ve discussed this before, don’t you remember?”

  “No.”

  He frowned slightly and wrote something in my file.

  “The retrograde amnesia is a problem with you. I think we need to take you off those meds altogether. How is your mood?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “What about your tremors?”

  I held my hand out to check. My fingers shook.

  “Not too bad,” he said.

  I stared at my own hand. If he considered that not too bad, then I wondered how bad it had gotten.

  “Are you seeing movement out of the corner of your eye?”

  “No.”

  “What about circular thoughts? Anxiety?”

  “No.”

  “Delusional thinking?”

  He’d been building up to that one, I could tell. I glanced around the room. His office was nice, I decided. Here there were books and
a nice wooden desk. He’d taken the effort. Appearances mattered. There was a window with a nice view of a lawn. Outside, there were trees and blue skies. The sun was shining.

  “Just…”

  “Just what?” he asked.

  And I was on the edge of telling him. Spilling the whole thing. Instead, I kept quiet. I kept quiet because outside the window the sun was shining, and I wanted to feel it on my face one more time.

  “Nightmares,” I said. “Just occasional nightmares.”

  “About what?”

  “There was a woman. Her name was Mercy. She was missing parts of her hand.”

  “Her hand?” That seemed to interest him. He picked up his pen again but did not write. “We’ve talked about your family,” he said. “Do you remember?”

  “I remember,” I said. Though I wanted to forget.

  “That was years ago now. You need to forgive yourself. Tell me more about the dream.”

  “I can’t remember,” I said, feeling dazed.

  I didn’t like the way the doctor was looking at me. I stood. I no longer wanted to talk. I no longer wanted to think about it.

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “What?” The doctor’s eyebrows knitted together. He seemed genuinely confused by the question. “Why would you be under arrest?”

  “So I can leave?”

  The look of concern deepened. He wrote another note in my file. “Soon,” he said. “Once you’re stabilized.”

  I leaned forward and rubbed my temples. I thought of my mother seeing doctors like this. So sure of her delusions.

  “I need to get out,” I said. “I can’t stay here.”

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea just yet. Especially considering the events of the last two weeks.”

  “What events?”

  He stared at me, his gaze evaluating. “You’ve watched it on the news every night for the last five days.”

  “Watched what?” I thought hard, trying to remember something, anything, from my time in the hospital. Nothing came.

  The gaze seemed to harden. “It’s been on every channel.”

  “What happened? What was on the news?”

  His brow furrowed again. “We’re definitely going to change your medication. I’ve never seen retrograde amnesia quite this bad. This is an abnormal reaction.”

  I heard Brighton’s voice in my head. You broke the world.

  “What happened?” I asked. The doctor ignored me while he continued to write in his notebook, I slammed my hand down on the desk. “What happened?”

  51

  I drove up to the motel and parked the car in the front. The traffic had been a bit lighter than I remembered. That was the only difference. It felt as if a year had passed, but it had only been weeks. I walked inside.

  The clerk eyed me over the top of her glasses. A middle-aged woman, with bluish hair and too much makeup.

  “I had a room in this place a few weeks back, and I left some stuff behind.”

  “Name and room number?”

  I recognized the desk clerk, but she didn’t recognize me. She’d probably seen ten thousand faces come and go through these doors. “Eric Argus. Room 220.”

  “We’ve got a lost and found,” she said. “What did you lose?”

  “Folders. Two manila folders. They were locked in the safety box in the closet. Also a small duffel bag.”

  She disappeared for a few minutes. When she came back, she had the folders and bag.

  “These them?”

  “Yeah.”

  She slid a printed sheet across the counter. “Sign here. You got ID?”

  I opened my wallet and showed her my license. She copied down the number.

  I signed the printed sheet, and she handed over the folders. They were nearly weightless. She set the duffel on the counter with a thump.

  “I’m surprised they’re still here,” I said.

  “You’re lucky. Anything we find, we keep for thirty days.”

  “What happens then?”

  She shrugged. “Employee perk. First come, first serve.”

  Behind me, the automatic doors swooshed open as a family came in. A mother, father, boy, and girl. I imagined they were vacationers, here for the ocean.

  “Is there anything else you need?” The desk clerk asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I want to rent another room.”

  * * *

  I shifted the transmission into park.

  The wind was blowing in from the ocean, streaming ghostly lines of sand across the lot.

  I opened the paper bag in the seat beside me and popped the seal. I spun the cap off the bottle and smelled the burn.

  Good bourbon. Ninety proof.

  Music played from my car radio, a soft melody, a woman’s voice. I imagined my life different. I imagined that I could stop here. Not take the first drink.

  My hands trembled.

  It had been three months.

  I looked at the folders on the seat beside me, my father’s gun resting on top.

  Would I drink again?

  The folders knew.

  The first sip brought tears to my eyes. Then I upended the bottle and drank deep. I tried to have a vision. I thought of Satvik.

  Do they know they’re different? I had asked him.

  One of them, he’d said. One of them knew.

  When the bottle was half-empty, I looked down at the gun.

  I imagined what a .357 round could do to a skull—lay it open wide and deep. Reveal that place where self resides—expose it to the air where it would evaporate like liquid nitrogen, sizzling, steaming, gone. A gun could be many things, including a vehicle to return you to the implicate.

  I reached for the first folder.

  My hands were steady as I opened it and pulled out the paper. My shakes had faded with the first deep drink—nerves lubricated at last. I was never more myself than after the first drink. By the end of the bottle, I’d be someone else.

  I unfolded the paper. I looked at the detector results—and, in so doing, finally collapsed the probability wave of the experiment I’d run all those months ago. As I’d now always been meant to do.

  When I opened the second folder, the image was there. I stared at what was on the paper, two shaded bands—a now familiar pattern of dark and light.

  Though of course, the results had been there all along.

  * * *

  I grabbed the gun and the bottle and stepped out into the wind.

  The smell of the ocean assailed me as I trekked down toward the smooth sand. There were no signs of people here—all wiped away by wind and rain. The sky was dark and brooding.

  I walked a crooked path down to the waterline, avoiding some of the biggest rocks. It was midtide, and the waves were low and regular, pushing skirts of gray froth up the beach. The sand was nearly flat here, so the waves lost energy over huge distances. Above me, a white-winged tern pinwheeled in the sky.

  There were different names for what had happened. Different acronyms were applied. SUDS, or SUNDS, or other similar variations of an alphabet soup meant to rein it in, make it seem more comprehensible. As if to give it a name was to understand it. In reality, the terms applied were just descriptive. Mass psychogenic illness was another label used. Other people applied a more religious term.

  What was known for sure was that people died. All over the world, over the course of the same day. They did not wake. By the millions. Others collapsed in the streets. Others—the youngest and healthiest—drowned themselves. Bus drivers and nurses and teachers and accountants. Bankers in Italy and farmers in India. By the tens of thousands, around the world, they walked into oceans, or lakes, or rivers, and they did not rise.

  All across the planet a small but statistically significant percentage of the population took their final breath. Statisticians still argued over the statistical bump—the number of extra deaths that occurred that day.

  One other statistical bump existed, I knew, but hadn’t yet been
noticed. Not yet. None were scientists.

  If it’s random, why none of us? I’d asked Satvik.

  If they’re part of the indeterminate system, why become scientists?

  And there was another thing I knew.

  The researchers who tried to replicate Satvik’s work would fail to do so. They wouldn’t find the ones who couldn’t collapse the wave. The ones who walked among us but weren’t us. They would not find what Satvik had found. That evidence was gone. Just another experiment that failed to replicate.

  I approached the waterline and followed a wave for a dozen yards as it retreated, draining back into sea, and then I planted my feet and crouched low against the wind, watching the ocean.

  Mercy was dead. Though it had taken weeks to find the proof. Web sites dedicated to putting names to the faces of those who died. People without IDs. Jane Does. Another victim of SUDS. The police had found her body, washed up on shore.

  I thought of what Vickers had told me. They see nothing because there is nothing inside them from which a vantage can be obtained. Mercy had been one of the fated all along. Fated to what? To fight against Brighton? In some ways, she hadn’t existed at all. Not really.

  The next wave surged toward me, washing over my feet, shooting past me and up the beach, leaving me standing in a foot of water. The water here had always been cold.

  I took a drink from my bottle and pulled the gun from my sweater pocket. The gun was heavy and black. It said RUGER along the side in small, raised letters. I’d been carrying it, in one form or other, since that day it was used, in the same parking spot where my car was now parked.

  I thought of my father and the ocean. The wave with your name.

  I imagined sailing out past sight of land. There, blue water, where it was all one thing.

  The wind picked up; I swayed on my feet. I waited for the next wave, and when it came, I strode out deeper, up to my knees. I looked down at the gun, heavy in my hand.

  A view to the implicate.

  I threw the gun as far as it would go.

  Epilogue

  I cross into my office and glance out the window. A new warehouse is being built in the same spot as the old, but an executive decision was made not to call it W building. That name has been retired, like an old pro jersey. So the new building will be labeled X on the site maps, and the administration hopes it will be luckier.