Persistence of Vision

by Liesel K. Hill

When she didn’t move, Karl motioned her over to him. “Come on, sit down.”

  She obeyed and took the cheese and crackers he offered her. She wasn’t really hungry, but she could eat something. Karl didn’t have an ounce of fat on him, but she supposed someone so large needed more food than most.

  “So,” she ventured when they’d been chewing in unison for some time. “What’s your story, Karl? Who are you?”

  He leaned back against the cavern wall. He’d torn into the food with gusto at first, but now that some was already in his stomach he seemed more content to savor it.

  “My upbringing was about as normal as they come—uh, for this century, anyway.” He grinned. “Marcus and I were fast friends when we met because our childhoods were so similar. We both came from individualist parents who were supremely decent and loving. We were both sheltered from the realities of the world we live in when we were little. The biggest differences are that I was an only child, and I knew my mother, where Marcus didn’t.”

  “Did you ever know his brother?”

  “David? No. He was already gone before Marcus came to Interchron. His father was sick and wanted to leave Marcus among good people. They were both so scarred by life already.”

  “If no one ever met him, how did Doc know that David had abilities like mine?”

  That gave Karl pause. “I don’t know the whole story. I remember Doc saying he’d met Marcus before Marcus and his father showed up here, but Marcus didn’t remember the meeting.”

  “How would that have happened?”

  “It doesn’t happen much anymore, but there was a time when Doc would roam around, looking for people who could fulfill the prophecy. This was years ago when there were a lot of individuals still roaming around. There aren’t very many anymore. Doc may have met Marcus’s father—I think his name was Danic—when Marcus and David were young.”

  “But wouldn’t he have realized then that Marcus could fulfill the prophecy?”

  Karl opened his mouth then snapped it shut again, considering. Finally he shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t know the whole story. I’m sure Doc would tell you if you asked. I’d say it’s one of two things: either Marcus’s brain chemistry as a child wasn’t developed enough to be recognizable, or Doc did recognize it but had to wait to act on that recognition.”

  “Why would he have to do that?”

  “Maybe Marcus’s father wouldn’t hear of going with Doc at that point. I mean, despite needing people to fulfill the prophecy, we aren’t in the habit of just taking children from their parents. Marcus and David might have been children at the time.”

  Maggie nodded, turning it over in her head. She wondered how David died. She was about to ask, but Karl was studying her and spoke before she could.

  “You could always ask Marcus about it. I’m sure he’d tell you.”

  Maggie studied the clipboard she’d been writing on all day. She was curious about Marcus’s past but felt strange asking him about it. It felt like prying, and she didn’t know him well enough to justify that. But even worse, he did know her, and asking him to tell her something she probably knew before felt ridiculous and awkward. She knew her feelings were irrational given the circumstances, but knowing that didn’t change them.

  Karl was watching her, so she decided to change the subject. “How did your family come to be here?”

  “My father happened across Doc while hunting one day. I was just a child at the time, and my father was very untrusting of other people. He was determined that we would live apart and he would keep the family safe by himself. Then a group of Arachnimen ambushed us. We got away, but my mother was hurt, and I was nearly assimilated.”

  Maggie’s mouth cranked open as he spoke. He spoke of horrific experiences as though discussing the inventory she held.

  “Karl, I’m sorry. That must have been awful.”

  He shrugged. “It was a long time ago. But it changed my father’s mind. He realized that alone he didn’t have the strength to protect us. It took us a year to track this place down, but we did. I’ve lived here ever since.”

  “So your parents are still here?”

  He smiled, and it was a bit sad but more affectionate. “They’ve both passed on.”

  Maggie’s cheeks heated; she wished she hadn’t asked. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. My parents lived long, full lives. They helped bring people here, helped keep them safe, and taught me to be strong. They both died peacefully, asleep in their beds surrounded by friends and family. Not many people in our world can boast that, Maggie. It’s one of the things I’m proudest of—that they died free and at peace.”

  Maggie smiled. “That’s a beautiful sentiment, Karl.”

  He stared at the opposite wall without seeing it for several minutes, lost in memories. “Well.” He straightened up. “Enough of the sissy stuff. Time to talk about you.”

  “I thought you knew all about me.”

  “I know everything up until we took you back. Now I’m missing a year of your life. Fill me in!”

  Maggie smiled. He was prying, but it didn’t feel that way. “We were good friends before, weren’t we, Karl?”

  He flashed his teeth again. “Yup. Still are. Good friends tell good friends their deepest secrets.”

  Maggie laughed aloud. She didn’t know about that.

  She started with explaining what she remembered when she woke up in Vegas and what she’d done with herself afterward. She talked about her business, her relationship with her brother and parents, and how she was the only one still looking for answers a year later.

  “I think it’s great you started your own business, Maggie. What about men? Exploit many male suitors?”

  Maggie’s face warmed. “No.”

  Karl looked confused. “Female ones?”

  “Karl!”

  He tucked his chin into his chest and laughed at his own joke. “Seriously, Maggs.” He wiped tears from the corner of his eye. “You told me last time that you dated a lot but hadn’t found the right guy. Why didn’t you date after Vegas?”

  Maggie sighed, unsure what to say.

  “Come on,” Karl pressed. “I know this would be an awkward question for Marcus to ask you, but you and I told each other everything before.”

  “How do I know you aren’t just saying that?”

  He grinned then shrugged. “You don’t.”

  Maggie hesitated again.

  “Hey, I just told you my most personal memories.” He donned a mock-melancholy look. “Do you know how upsetting it is to speak about my parents?”

  “You just said you were proud.”

  He opened his mouth then snapped it shut, his grin returning. “Yeah, okay. But it was still hard to get over!”

  “I think you’re managing reasonably well,” Maggie said, but she felt like she’d known him for years. Suddenly she believed him when he said they’d told each other everything.

  “I…”

  He leaned forward as she began, like an eager child watching cartoons.

  “I don’t know why I didn’t, exactly. I dated somewhat, but it never developed into anything more than first dates. I…” She sighed, frustrated. This was something she’d hardly explained to herself.

  “Did anyone show any interest for more?” he prodded.

  “Yes,” she admitted, “but I couldn’t bring myself to pursue it.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “After Vegas, it was like some part of me was missing. It all makes sense now that I know I have lost memories. At the time, I couldn’t imagine why I felt like I did. It just seemed to me that there was something I’d forgotten, something that was beyond my grasp. But I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. All I did was think about it. I felt like the only way to get rid of that feeling was to find answers to what happened to me in Vegas.

  “Well, I never found those, and now I realize why. I suppose I couldn’t bring myself to share someone’s life until I figured my own out.” She shrugged agai
n.

  Karl smiled down at her. “I’m sorry it was so hard for you,” he said quietly.

  “Thanks.” She smiled back. “What about you? Why aren’t you married yet?”

  Karl grinned. “I like being a bachelor.”

  “I’m not sure what’s more disturbing—that in this world you’d want to be alone, or that the word bachelor still exists.”

  Karl’s booming laugh echoed off the walls. He shook his head. “In truth, Maggie, I’ve never had the opportunity. Most women who come to Interchron come with family. Many of them are so exploited on the outside that they come to us broken. Then there’s the fact that I’m not exactly a little guy. Most women who come in from the outside are afraid of me. But don’t worry. The only reason I’m not married yet is because the best woman on earth is still searching for me.” Karl grinned again, and then he went back to serious contemplation of the food he was shoveling into his mouth.

  Maggie smiled as she watched him. In the few minutes they’d been talking, she already felt like Karl was a much larger, darker-skinned version of Jonah, like she’d known forever and could trust him implicitly.

  “What about Marcus?” he asked suddenly.

  She looked up at Karl warily. “What about him?”

  “He says you remember him. Tell me about that.”

  Maggie told him what she saw in Vegas before the time loss: Marcus standing in a void then taking her arm and looking into her eyes. She told him what she remembered of waking up in the hotel room and what the police told her, which made Karl harrumph in amusement.

  He leaned back thoughtfully. When she finished, he was silent.

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s weird.”

  Maggie rolled her eyes. “How insightful of you.”

  Karl grinned. “I’m not sure how to explain it. I never saw Marcus grab your arm and stare aggressively down into your eyes like that. I would have been creeped out if he had. But maybe you guys did things like that in private?”

  Maggie laughed out loud, and Karl’s smile widened.

  “I hope not.” Maggie chuckled. “‘Cause that doesn’t sound like a very functional relationship.”

  Karl turned serious. “It was, though, Maggs. I know this is awkward for you because you can’t remember him, but the three of us were best friends. Take it from me, you two were very happy together.”

  Maggie’s smile faded. “What did you see? How did he react when I lost my memories and had to be sent back?”

  Karl heaved a deep breath. “Marcus doesn’t show much emotion, Maggie. But even so, he was devastated. He didn’t think he’d ever see you again, and he didn’t even get to say good-bye. It was horrible. You were the love of his life.”

  Maggie sighed, suddenly finding her hands fascinating. “How could I have seen him, Karl, when my memory was gone? How is it even possible?”

  He was quiet for several minutes before answering. “You said you saw him but didn’t remember him, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know what persistence of vision is?”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s the term science uses when you see something that is no longer there.”

  “Isn’t that a hallucination?”

  Karl chuckled. “No. When you hallucinate, you see something that was never there. In a persistence of vision, you keep seeing something that was there, even after it’s gone. You look at the sun and then shut your eyes, and you’ll still see a purple sun flaring behind your eyelids.”

  “Like an afterimage.”

  “Exactly. The afterimage is what you see. Persistence of vision is the term for the phenomenon of seeing it, even after it’s gone. Maybe that’s what happened in Vegas.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Your memories were gone. The fact that you had no idea who Marcus was attests to that. But you still saw him, even after you stopped remembering him.”

  Maggie frowned. “But persistence of vision is a physical phenomenon, Karl. It has to do with images imprinted on your eyes. This had to do with my memories.”

  “Anything to do with the body is tied to the brain, Maggie.” Karl shook his head. “And though it’s less scientific, I believe that anything tied to the brain is also tied to the soul. Some part of you remembered him, Maggie. It just wasn’t your mind.”

  Maggie sighed. “I don’t know how to act. I don’t know what to do or say around him.”

  “Just talk to him. Get to know him like you would one of your first-and-only-date suitors or like you and I are doing.”

  “It’s different, though. You and I never made out that I don’t remember.” She frowned at him and narrowed her eyes. “Did we?”

  Karl grinned. He leaned forward conspiratorially and motioned for her to do the same. Maggie gaped at him for a moment, taken aback. Then she closed her mouth and leaned in to hear his secret.

  When Karl spoke, his eyebrow went up and his head swayed cockily. “Not telling.”

  Maggie threw her clipboard at him. He shifted his weight to duck and fell off his crate—head, shoulders, and torso disappearing behind it.

  Before she could ask if he was okay, she heard a deep, muffled voice. “Nice shot.”

  ***

  Trap smiled. He was becoming used to smiling again. He remembered why the individuals did it so often: it felt good. Nat’s children were having fits of giggles by the fire. Supper was finished, and the sun was sinking in the west. Nat was telling the children a bedtime story, making funny voices and noises. The children were rolling in the dirt and holding their stomachs.

  “Nat, you’re riling them up when they should be settling down.” Kamra, Nat’s wife, was a kind woman with a gentle way about her. Even when she was cross she sounded sweet.

  Despite that, Trap could sense an underlying ferocity. She would become a lioness to defend her children, sweet disposition or no.

  “All right. Everyone settle down,” Nat said, though his smile spanned his face. He only smiled like that in the evening when he had time to play with his kids.

  The two children—Lenna, eight, and Snap, six—continued to giggle and roll.

  “Come on, now.” Nat turned more serious. “Do you two want to hear the story or just go to bed?”

  “No, Dad, no!” The children mended their ways and turned rapturous gazes on their father.

  The story Nat wove was a familiar one. It was about two brothers, one named Jacob, the other Esau. As soon as Nat began the tale, Trap knew he didn’t want to hear it. Memories stirred for him from deep within the story. He thought his own father might have told it to him once, and that was an avenue he wasn’t willing to venture down yet, even in his own mind.

  He straightened his legs and walked away from the campsite and up a rise twenty feet away—far enough that he could still hear the murmur of Nat’s voice but was unable to understand what he was saying.

  The sunset had blasted the firmament above with a collage of colors. They were seeping away now, trailing after the sun, their master, as he ducked below the horizon.

  It amazed him how much a few individuals could drive the loneliness away. Nat was good to Trap but guarded, like he expected Trap to do something sinister at any moment. Kamra was kind and treated him much the way she treated her two children. But it was the children Trap felt the most kinship for.

  Though it had taken a long time to remember how to speak and his voice muscles had tickled and ached from non-use for the first few days, once he began, he couldn’t stop. The words came back to him in droves. He could say almost anything he could think of now, though it sometimes took time to remember how to form the words. Nat and his family were patient and encouraging.

  Despite the return of his language and some of his memories, there were parts of his past he still shied away from—things he was afraid to explore. Those memories were synonymous with pain.

  Even if he w
ere willing to delve into them, he had no wish to inflict his own pains on this family, especially on such happy children. They had no idea what the real world held, and he envied them that. Perhaps innocence such as theirs was a delusion, but he would not be the one to shatter it.

  The crunch of footsteps announced Kamra’s arrival. He knew it was her because Nat’s footsteps were much heavier than hers, but the children’s were less steady. She came up beside him, but he didn’t turn to look at her. The soft hum of Nat’s voice told him the story wasn’t over yet.

  “What are you thinking about, Trap?”

  “The…sun…s-sets.”

  “Yes. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  He shrugged—something Snap did often. It had taken Trap a while to figure out its meaning. “We…like…sun…rising…more.”

  “Are they so different, as to like one more than the other?”

  He nodded but wanted to say more. “It’s…first thing…I…s-saw.”

  He wondered what she’d make of that. He hadn’t told her or Nat about the Union, though from the way Nat sometimes looked at him, Trap wondered if he suspected. Kamra was never suspicious. Even now, she looked at him, weighing, calculating, but not judging.

  She nodded. “Then I understand why you like it more.”

  “Kamra?”

  She jumped. Nat had come up behind them without either of them noticing.

  “I thought we agreed not to pester Trap with questions.”

  “You agreed,” she said, raising her chin. “And you decided that I had as well, but I didn’t.”

  “Leave the poor man alone and go say goodnight to the children. They’re asking for you. Now, woman.”

  Kamra gave Trap a tight, practiced smile before turning to go. She glared at Nat as she passed him, reaching up to swat him on the top of the head as she went. Nat turned a glare on her, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was headed toward the two dark bundles beside the campfire, head high and shoulders back.

  When he saw she wasn’t watching, his scowl faded to an affectionate smile and he chuckled. He turned and found Trap watching him, and his smile quickly dissipated. He cleared his throat.

  “Sorry about that. She’s wanted to interrogate you for days. I keep telling her to leave you be. She can’t help her curiosity, I guess.”