The Lost Time Accidents

by John Wray

  Ozymandias remains at home as long as he can stand to, dutifully reading the cards every evening for his brothers, though his disenchantment waxes by the day. The allure of the deck for them, he discovers, has nothing to do with the future at all, and still less with the world of the present: at some unknown point the Game has been perverted, turned inward, become less an exploration of things to come than a means of embalming the past. It has become, very literally, an excuse: a way of retreating from life, of taking shelter—in Ozymandias’s own words—“in some eldritch, sepia-tinted other-when.”

  Orson wrote these opening chapters in a fever, drunk on the sheer impertinence of his argument, and his mania is clear both in the speed of the narrative and in the bubbling molasses of his prose. The climactic scene of book I, in which Ozymandias finally has it out with his brothers, reads less like a confrontation than like some kind of meshuggana manifesto:

  “You mean to abandon us, then?” Gawain demanded, his tawny eyes flashing like vitreous coals.

  “I mean to raise livestock,” said Ozymandias. “Goats at first, and then sheep.”

  “It amounts to the same,” snarled his brother.

  Ralph took in a breath to speak, but the expression on Gawain’s visage—and on Ozymandias’s own—made the skin of his nape start to prickle. “What would we become without the Game, Ozymandias?” he simpered. “The Game is our birthright. Without it—why, without it, we’d stop being Humes!”

  “Without it,” Gawain said darkly, “the future might as well not come at all.”

  “You’ve been bamboozled!!” Ozymandias ejaculated, holding the Excuse aloft. “And the tragedy of it, brothers, is that you’ve bamboozled yourselves. If you’d ever truly regarded this card—regarded it, I mean to say, and SEEN it—you’d have noted that the image is that of a Möbius coil, with no beginning and no end.”

  “A Möbius which?”

  “Time itself is no different,” Ozymandias proclaimed. “It ends where it begins. Why have we been able to stare into the future all these years, over all these proud, farsighted generations, but never become masters of our fate?” The orbs of his amethyst eyes, Welsh to the very core, revolved from Ralph to Gawain, then back again. “The answer is hideously simple. We’ve created a closed system, repetitive and stagnant, like the circuit represented on this card. We’ve turned the future into the past, dear brothers, simply by attempting to arrest it. There’s no escape from the Game—no solution, no respite, no hope—but to STOP PLAYING.”

  After a lively debate, then a second grand speech, then a scuffle involving (I blush to report) a boomerang and a didgeridoo, Ozymandias vows never to consult the cards again, not ever, and strikes out into the night to seek his fortune. The book now metamorphoses into a survivalist bildungsroman, with the Aborigines alternately scaring the hell out of Ozymandias and treating him for dysentery. The temptations are great, as he works his way west, to make use of the cards; but he holds firm. He crosses the country, buys a farm, loses it, then somehow finds himself in Sydney, a destitute failure, languishing in a dingy furnished room. Throughout all these trials the deck has remained in his satchel, untouched and pristine. One evening, however, he takes it out of its tooled leather slipcase—a parting gift from his mother—and lays the cards out in a crescent on the floor.

  Here the narrative morphs again, veering from bildungsroman toward something murkier, and it isn’t hard to figure out the reason. My father had arrived—after nearly three hundred pages—at the present instant of his own duration. Until then, his novel had been a work of history, however camouflaged; henceforth, it would be a prophecy.

  The scene with the cards is cut short without warning, displaced by a sequence of drab, blurry flashbacks that serve no discernible purpose. I can feel Orson floundering at this point, Mrs. Haven, and stalling for time. We get Ozymandias as a toddler, dressed as Saint Augustine for a local pageant; we get Ozymandias’s first love affair, with Helen, an Aboriginal girl (the opposite of Ewa Ruszczyk in every detail); we get Ozymandias attacked by a dingo. When we finally return—somewhat the worse for wear—to that furnished room in Sydney, Ozymandias is still staring at the cards, which are lying facedown on the corkwood floor. He stays put for two-thirds of a page, sweating and running his tongue along his teeth, like a suicide struggling to work up his nerve. Then he takes the nearest card and flips it over.

  * * *

  Countless critics have tried, in the three decades since, to account for the popularity The Excuse enjoyed in Aquarian-era America, in spite of its blundering plotline, its junior high symbolism, and a style that makes Arthur C. Clarke look like Arthur Miller. None have come anywhere close to succeeding, but all agree that the novel’s last section, which is entirely taken up by Ozymandias’s psychedelic vision of the future, must somehow be to blame. Such a degree of critical consensus (as any connoisseur of book reviews will tell you) is the rarest and most delicate of flowers; but in Orson’s case the critics had their reasons. For one thing, the “Revelations” section—as it’s come to be known—has a radically different tone than the rest of the book, as if the author were taking dictation; and for another thing, Mrs. Haven, a number of its predictions have come true.

  In spite of their almost incidental presence in his novels—usually as hastily sketched backdrops to scenes of cybernetic debauchery—my father’s prognostications of the not-too-distant future emerged, even during his lifetime, as the engine-in-chief of his fame. The time-travel allegation—the time travel insinuation, better said—had been leveled against my family before, to explain the Timekeeper’s disappearing act at Äschenwald; but the case against Orson Card Tolliver, especially since the invention of Global Positioning Systems and Viagra and the European Union (all of which he predicted), proved harder to sweep under the rug. The evidence, after all, is plain for anyone with a library card (or access to the World Wide Web—which Orson also saw coming) to judge for themselves. It changed my father from a figurative “cult novelist” into a literal one, an actor on the klieg-lit stage of history, no matter how furiously he lobbied to prevent it.

  The orgy scene in “How to Make Machines and Influence Your Wife,” for example, is tame by today’s standards (six-dimensional dildo notwithstanding), and its prose won’t win any Nebula Awards; the wireless earpiece, however, so casually deposited on a night table as the frolicking begins, is noteworthy in a story written in 1963. Personal infrared goggles were undreamed-of in 1959, but they’re standard issue on “Planet Perinorium 13,” and used to predictably lascivious ends. Orson had a rabid fantasy life, needless to say, and a commitment to reality negation possibly unsurpassed in human history, not to mention a lifetime subscription to Technology Today; but even I have a hard time explaining the appearance, 112 pages into Clocksuckers (1973), of a jihadist riding a Jet Ski.

  Every self-respecting religion needs its miracles, Mrs. Haven, and it was from “prophecies fulfilled” such as these that the UCS distilled its theology. If they hadn’t done their work so outrageously well, hadn’t transmuted Orson’s art into propaganda with such consummate skill, the rest of the world might have taken him more seriously; and if the rest of the world had taken him more seriously, I might have an explanation for my father’s apparent clairvoyance, for the Iterants’ growing influence over him, maybe even for what’s happened to me since. By the time I tried to get the truth out of Orson, however, he was tucked away in the attic of a place called the Villa Ouspensky—the Vatican of the Church of Synchronology—surrounded by sycophants and nurses and bullnecked, hard-eyed men in khaki suits. He was far gone by then, ravaged by both cancer and time, and I had to choose my questions carefully. I didn’t kick up any fuss; there was no point in that. I had other dragons elsewhere to attack.

  But I’ve succumbed to achronology again, Mrs. Haven. Before we arrive at the United Church of Synchronology and my own (decidedly upstage) arrival, I need to tell you how my father met my mother, how The Excuse made Orson Card Tolliver into a house
hold name, and how I came to be born in Buffalo instead of Spanish Harlem. The contributing circumstances are as dubious as any others in this history, which is a pretty good argument, as arguments go, for their truth. Whatever else my family might be accused of, rightly or wrongly, no one’s ever questioned our improbability.

  * * *

  Orson had just begun the third and final section of his novel when he came down with infectious mononucleosis, which goes some way toward accounting for book III’s fever-dream grotesquerie. He arrived at his guardhouse at the Hudson/Gold Power Generating Station punctually at 23:00 EST on December 5, eager to continue his writing; when the day watchman clocked in at 07:00, however, he found my father curled up on the floor. Orson was sent home at once in a car-service limo (which expense was duly deducted from his paycheck) and his next of kin—identified on his ID sheet as “GENTIAN AND ENGINE TOLLIVER”—were notified by means of a reverse-charge telegram.

  Less than forty-eight hours later, in a turn of events that would have flabbergasted Orson if he’d been conscious, two salt-and-pepper-haired spinsters, neatly got up in the fashions of the forties, stood shoulder to shoulder in the Main Concourse of Grand Central Station, admiring the constellations on the ceiling.

  “They haven’t got Cassiopeia quite right, I don’t think,” said Enzian (in German, in case anyone was listening).

  “Hush, Enzie.”

  “It’s supposed to be shaped like a W, as in ‘Waldemar.’ That looks more like an M.” Enzian pursed her lips, looking very much like Orson for a moment. “Not that anyone can tell, under all of that soot.”

  “It’s beautiful, Enzie. Besides, a W can be an M, if you’re looking at it upside down. It all depends upon your point of view.”

  Enzian appraised her sister coldly. “You sound more like the Patent Clerk with every passing week.”

  “It’s the Patent Clerk’s world, dear, in case you haven’t noticed. We’ve been living in it for more than forty years.”

  “Not me,” said Enzian fiercely, as though she were reciting an oath. “I’ve never lived in it. Not for a day.”

  Something like worry passed over Gentian’s face as she regarded her sister; but it was gone again at once. “We’ll be here a week, Enzie. Two weeks at the most. I know you’re in the middle of interesting work—”

  “More than interesting. Decisive.”

  “—but your research will keep. Our Peanut, on the other hand, might not.”

  Enzian rolled her eyes, then gave a grudging nod.

  “And don’t forget what I told you about the apartment. Four floors up from the street, rooms arranged in a ring, the unit below currently vacant.” She was quiet a moment. “It could be perfect, Enzie. Much better for us than Pine Ridge Road.”

  Enzian looked at her sharply. “The downstairs apartment is vacant? Who told you that?”

  Gentian only smiled.

  “He’d never agree to it,” Enzian said, chewing her lip. “Not Orson.”

  Her sister said nothing.

  “You have a scheme of some kind.” She squinted at Gentian. “I can see it in your face. You have a scheme.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find Manhattan stimulating,” Gentian said, taking up her valise. “They say people here never sleep at all.”

  * * *

  Orson’s fever lasted a week and a day—a muted, shadowed interval, of which his sisters wasted not one instant. By the time he’d recovered enough to grasp what was happening, Enzie and Genny had altered his apartment beyond recognition: the waterstained walls of the entryway had been papered in a fleur-de-lis pattern that seemed kitschy even by the twins’ standards, and the windows overlooking the park had been draped in bulky tangerine damask, giving the west-facing rooms the ambience of an out-of-date bordello. My father had assumed that he knew all there was to know about his sisters, but the speed with which they managed to fill that cavernous space with armchairs and gouaches and Ottoman carpets—some bought in antique shops, some shipped by rail from Buffalo, some scavenged from neighborhood dumpsters—hinted at talents he’d never suspected. He emerged from his delirium to find them cozily ensconced in a city he’d taken years to feel at home in.

  More astonishing still, at least to Orson himself, was his lack of dismay at this turn of events. He was a prisoner now, more at Enzian’s mercy than he’d been since his earliest childhood. This ought to have been my father’s darkest nightmare—he’d dreamed it many times, in fact, with only a handful of differing details—but something inexpressible had changed. The Excuse no doubt contributed, long-due settling of accounts that it was; it’s even possible that Orson found Enzian’s nearness—and the return to the dynamic of his first years of writing—in some subliminal way inspiring. Whatever the reason, my father wrote as fluidly and surely during his convalescence as at any time since coming to New York. As he neared the end of his first draft, he became more convinced than ever that the book would bring him prominence, wealth, and the attention of beautiful women. As C*F*P would have it, Mrs. Haven, he was right on all three counts—though in drastically different ways than he imagined.

  A number of facts had come clear to my father by the time his rough draft was completed. Firstly, that the manuscript was in dire need of revision; secondly, that his position at the station had long since been filled; and lastly, that his sisters, now that they’d finally come down for a visit, hadn’t the slightest intention of leaving. This last revelation came effortlessly, even innocently, over breakfast in the damask-shrouded parlor. (Orson had never called that room the “parlor”; it wouldn’t have occurred to him to call it anything. Genny, on the other hand, had christened every room in the apartment. It wouldn’t have surprised him if she had names for the closets.)

  “It’s such a treat to breakfast here, in the south parlor,” Genny said as she dispensed the oolong. “The morning light through the windows is just so”— she paused for a moment—“so encouraging. Don’t you agree, Peanut?”

  “Those are west-facing windows, as you know very well,” said Enzian, pointing across the table with her scone. “The sun comes straight in every afternoon.”

  “Of course—how goosey of me! It must be the drapes. They lend such a sense of promise to the place.”

  Orson took a sip of tea—then another, longer sip—and cleared his throat. “Now that I’m better—”

  “You’re not really better, Peanut. Not completely.”

  “How long will the two of you be staying?’

  “Oh! We may stay quite a while,” Genny said merrily. “Isn’t that so, Enzie?”

  Enzian, whose mouth was full of fried egg, gave her trademark noncommittal nod.

  Orson set his teacup down. “I see.”

  “Why do you ask, Peanut? Do you mind very much?”

  “Of course not, Genny. I don’t mind.” He shut his mouth and stared down dumbly at his plate. It had just occurred to him that this was true.

  “Lovely! It’s settled, then.”

  He buttered his toast in a state of bafflement. “Would you mind if I asked why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why do you want to stay?”

  “Because we love you, Peanut,” Genny said. She hesitated. “And also because we quite enjoy it here.”

  “There’s more to it than that,” he said, looking past her at Enzian. “I can smell it.”

  “Well, now. I suppose you could say—”

  “I’m not asking you, Genny. I’m asking her.”

  Enzian, who’d finished her egg, wiped her lips with a napkin made from the same bright damask as the drapes. “Genny’s right—we approve of this apartment. We’ve decided to relocate to this address.”

  This was too much for my father, even in his newfound state of grace. “What the hell are you talking about, Enzie? I live in this apartment, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “And in case you’ve forgotten, Orson, your rent is paid out of the Tolliver & Family Charitable Remainder Trust, established by Papa
just before he passed away. Technically speaking, therefore, it’s the family’s apartment, not yours.”

  By rights this answer should have sent my father through the (freshly plastered, chocolate-colored) ceiling; but he was not the man he’d been two weeks before. In place of the cyclone of self-righteous fury that both he and his sisters expected, he suddenly felt his distance from them unbearably keenly. It was a melancholy sensation, even a painful one, but there was no violence in it. These women raised me, he found himself thinking. They raised me, and I still don’t understand them.

  “What is it about this apartment,” he asked Enzian, “that makes you want to use it for your work?”

  She studied him a moment, as surprised as he was by his mild reply. “It possesses certain properties,” she answered. “Gewisse Eigenschaften.”

  “And you’re not going to tell me what those Eigenschaften are. Am I right about that?”

  Genny sat quickly forward. “From what I understand—if you’ll permit me, Enzie—the way in which the rooms are arranged—their configuration, that is, and their shape—”

  “It doesn’t matter. You’re welcome to the place. I’ll be out by the first of the month.”

  Orson allowed himself to imagine, in the quiet that followed, that he’d pulled the rug out from under his sisters at last: that they found him—at least momentarily—as erratic and inscrutable as he’d always found them. But his satisfaction proved to be short-lived.

  “That’s good of you, Peanut,” said Enzian, nodding at Genny. “We’d never have asked you to move out, of course. But it might be for the best.”

  He sat back in his chair, feeling winded and weak. “Why?” he got out. “Why would it be for the best?”

  “For your safety.”

  “My safety,” said Orson. “Of course.”