I’ve got a similar issue in the Cutting Room universe. If Blake has access to a time period with a robust internet, to avoid messing with the timeline he’s going to spend 98% of his investigation in front of a laptop, tablet, or his ocular implants. His case, in other words, would closely resemble his author’s life. That’s not an entertaining prospect. Not unless you’re into the high-stakes drama of zooming closer and closer on Google Maps until it won’t zoom any more.
Drama is about making your characters’ lives hell, though, so the behind-the-scenes story of the Cutting Room series is about me minimizing Blake’s internet access—or taking it away altogether.
I’m starting to wonder if it’s a time travel series at all. Sounds more like a horror story.
The Dark Age
by Jason Gurley
THEN
I caught her.
The doctor gave me a textured blue wrap. Frannie looked alarmed and said, “No, no, skin—skin-to-skin, I want skin-to-skin,” and the doctor assured her that this was only for me, so that I wouldn’t drop her. I lost track of what I was supposed to feel, and I bent over the bed, only dimly aware of Frannie’s feet near my head, her toes splayed wide as she fought. I heard her scream like I’d never heard her do anything before. It was primal, and I felt like a hunter on the savannah, standing over my kill, like a warrior, head thrown back and the taste of blood in my mouth.
And then she came to me, like a child on a water slide into my arms, slippery and dark and blue, and I caught her, and her tiny face looked like the wrinkles of my knee, almost featureless in her surprise, and she bawled rapidly. She pierced my heart and my ears with her cries, and a nurse clamped and clipped the cord, and I carried her to Frannie and laid our daughter on her breast.
She wailed and clung to her mother, her tiny fingers opening and closing against Frannie’s skin, and Frannie breathed heavily and said, “Elle.”
I didn’t want to look away from either of them—Frannie dripping with sweat, her hair in damp rings on her face, and Elle, pushing against her mother’s skin like a fresh piglet—but the movement at the door caught my eye, and I did, I looked up, and for the rest of my life I wished that I hadn’t.
Frannie saw, and looked, too.
The man in the doorway smiled regretfully, and waggled his fingers at me, and nodded.
I met Frannie’s dark eyes, and watched the tears well up, and I felt my heart pull out of my chest and stay behind in that beautiful room, the most wonderful place that had ever been made. I kissed Frannie, but she kissed me back, harder, and then I nuzzled Elle’s tiny soft ear with my nose, and kissed her head everywhere, and her small hands. I would have stayed in that room forever if I could have.
But I followed the man out of the room, my ears ringing with sadness, an enormous hole in my head and my heart, and that was that. We both knew that it had to happen, but we’d pretended it wasn’t going to. And then it did.
I followed his dark suit through the hospital corridor. I couldn’t feel my hands. My feet moved on their own.
He said something, but I don’t know what it was.
We stepped out of the building and into the light, and the cold wind turned my tears to ice.
* * *
NOW
Elle taps the camera, and I watch her fingertip, large enough to crush worlds, grow dark and obscure my view. I laugh, and she giggles, and this makes her laugh harder, and then she begins to hiccup wildly. She rocks back on her bottom and puts her hands on the floor behind her, and reclines and stares at me, hiccuping and laughing, and I laugh with her.
“You’re silly,” I say to her. “Silly, silly Elle.”
She babbles at me, and in the stream of muddled sounds I hear something that sounds like a-da, and I say, “Frannie!”
Frannie turns the camera on herself, and her smile is big and bright and threatens to push her eyes off of her face. “We’ve been working on it all week,” she says. “She can’t quite make the d sound work, so all we’ve got is ada-ada, except, you know, it’s more like atha, atha.”
I turn away from the camera and wipe at my eyes.
“Daddy’s crying,” Frannie says. I look back to see her turn the camera to Elle, who thinks this is hilarious. She pats her round tummy and laughs harder, and then the hiccups take over in a big way, and a moment later Elle burps up breakfast.
“Oh, uh-oh! Uh-oh!” Frannie singsongs, and she says to me, “We’ll be right back, Daddy!” and puts the camera down.
I watch Frannie’s feet, then she scoops up Elle and whisks her out of frame.
I sigh and push off of the wall and turn in a slow flip, waiting.
Sarah comes in through the research wing hatch and sees the camera and says, “Oh, shit—I mean—oh, goddammit, I—fuck! Shit.”
I laugh at her and tell her it’s fine. “Elle spit up,” I say. “Commercial break.”
Her face relaxes. “Whew. Okay. I don’t want to corrupt your little girl or anything.”
“Did I forget to flip the sign?”
Sarah turns around and leans out of sight. “Well—nope, no, you did,” she says, leaning back in and holding up the little handwritten recording sign. “I wasn’t even looking, I guess.”
“What did you need?”
She looks around, scatterbrained, gathering her thoughts. Then Frannie comes back into the room with Elle, singing a bit, and she sees Sarah on the display and says, “Sarah! Hi!”
Sarah looks up at the screen and smiles sheepishly. “Hi, Francine,” she says.
“Everything okay?” Frannie asks me.
“Everything’s fine,” I say.
“I was—I shouldn’t be in here,” Sarah says, making a slow turn toward the hatch. “I’m sorry. Nice to see you, Francine.”
“Bye, Sarah,” Frannie says. She lifts Elle’s small hand and flaps it at the camera. “Say ‘Bye, Sarah!’”
Elle yawns.
“Bye, sweetie,” Sarah says, then shakes her head at herself and looks at me. “Really, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I should’ve checked first.”
“Not a big deal,” I say, and then Sarah floats back into the research module and presses the hatch shut behind her.
“It’s not like we were having phone sex,” Frannie says, chuckling. “Make sure she knows it’s fine.”
I look at the readout beside the screen. “Time’s up anyway,” I say.
Frannie’s frown is adorable. “Oh, I’m sorry, dear,” she says. “We wasted so much time cleaning Elle up—I’m so sorry.”
I smile, but I know it’s a sad smile, and I know Frannie can tell. “Kiss her for me,” I say.
Frannie kisses Elle, a big playful smooch that sets Elle’s giggles off again.
“Love,” I say.
“Love,” Frannie answers, and then she squeezes Elle and coos, “Love! Love!”
The screen goes dark, and I sigh, and look around the module. It’s cramped and small, but it’s private, at least until Sarah bumbles in again. I point my hands at the floor and push off with my feet, just enough to reach the lights, and I snap them off. The module goes pitch-black, and then my eyes adjust to the faint light from the porthole. And then I cry, the way I always do. The tears stick to my face like film, and when I’ve cried enough to feel better, I sop them up with my sleeve, and turn on the lights, and get back to work.
* * *
This is the way it has to be.
I was already in the program when Frannie and I met. She sometimes asked me that awful, difficult question: Would I have signed up for this if we’d already been married? And I tell her no, of course I wouldn’t, but I would have. I still would have. Some things are important, and then some things resonate through history like a bell, and this is one of those resonant things, being here, aboard the Arecibo, crawling through the night.
Then Frannie got pregnant, despite our best efforts and multiple contraceptives, and my answer to that question softened.
When I caught Elle that morning in the h
ospital room, I knew that it had changed. Frannie saw it on my face, I think, though we’ve never talked about it since then. But she knew that my heart had changed, and by noticing that, she learned that my earlier answers had been kind lies.
We are a crew of seven, with the simplest of orders.
See what’s out there.
So that’s what we’re doing.
We’ve all left something behind.
It isn’t easy for any of us.
We are martyrs.
I think of Elle’s bright eyes and her shock of blond hair, and I wonder what it would feel like to hold her, that hair tickling my face as she falls asleep on my shoulder.
I would hold her for hours and hours and never grow tired.
It wouldn’t matter to me if my arms fell off.
Every day I grow heavier with regret.
Every day I hate my younger, star-crossed self a little more.
* * *
Sarah is the scientist. Introverted, awkward, a little odd.
Then there’s Mikael, our technician. We wanted to call him an engineer, but he prefers spaceship guy. As in, “Hey, spaceship guy, the wing just fell off.”
Stefan and Heidi are the pilots. Heidi has a secondary specialty—she’s the shrink.
I’m the communications guy.
Walter is the physician and nutritionist. Edith is the researcher.
They are all quite nice.
We have a pact among us—an unwritten one, one that the WSA probably figured would happen but didn’t write into our training manuals, or account for during our isolation boot camp in Antarctica—that anybody can sleep with anybody else, and nobody will be jealous, and that our families on Earth will never know. It was Walter’s suggestion. Heidi thought it was a marvelous idea, and would reduce tension. So far I think Mikael and Edith have been together, and Walter and Stefan, and the plan has held water. But I think soon someone will feel bad, and then things will be strange.
I told Frannie about the pact. It was our first video chat. She thought it made sense, and told me that she couldn’t begrudge me for taking part.
“Sarah seems nice,” Frannie had said.
“I don’t want to sleep with anyone else,” I told Frannie. “I miss you.”
“Be practical,” Frannie said. “We’re talking about the rest of your life here. You aren’t a monk. You shouldn’t be.”
Heidi approached me a few days later. I said no, and she wasn’t upset or embarrassed. I didn’t tell Frannie. I don’t know why I didn’t.
* * *
We have all left something behind, somehow. We talk about these things, about our families and lovers, as if it will somehow ease the pain of it all. Mikael had just met his birth parents for the first time. He thinks it would have been easier to have never met them, but Walter thought that it was better to know. “Now you won’t spend the rest of your life wondering about it,” he said to Mikael once.
Heidi has a husband and two children. They’re in college. Her husband writes novels. She thinks that he’ll be happier alone. She doesn’t talk about her children. Each of us keeps something for ourselves, and doesn’t talk about it.
I am just like a new father on Earth. Each time Frannie sends me a video of Elle doing something new, I show everyone. Stefan seems the most enthusiastic about her progress. Edith always watches and nods, and then goes back to what she was doing before. I don’t care. I sometimes wonder if I must share Elle with everybody so that everybody will recognize the enormity of my personal loss. I told Heidi that during one of our sessions, once.
Heidi said, “Is that what you think?”
Of all of them, Sarah is the closest to a friend for me. She seems to like Frannie, and that makes me like Sarah more. I like that she doesn’t talk much, that she prefers to be alone. I like that she considers me the next best thing to being alone.
Sarah seems nice.
Sometimes I think about it.
* * *
Elle gets bigger and bigger. Frannie and I celebrate Elle’s birthdays every month, to make up for the many I will miss. The WSA permits only two communications per week, and I look forward to them as much as I did to my own birthdays as a child.
I miss every first.
Frannie will wait for my call, then excitedly tell me that Elle has started walking, that she had her first solid food, that she said her first word. Elle demonstrates all of these things for me, but I feel like one of my shipmates—not a parent, but an audience. I cry every time. The emptiness between us feels incalculably large—larger every time we talk. I see Elle’s eyes change from blue to green, her chubby cheeks become slim, her hair fall to her shoulders. She wears the clothes of an adult—pretty sweaters and thick tights and patent shoes, and I feel a terrible fear seize me when I realize what is coming.
Frannie sees it in my face. She doesn’t know what to say. She only says, “We love you more than anything.” She means it, but I can feel the helplessness behind her words.
The inevitability of the Arecibo launch hung over our pregnancy like a pall, like a storm that grew darker and more ominous every day.
But it is nothing like the storm that approaches now.
* * *
“The WSA has mandated special counseling sessions for each of you,” Heidi says over breakfast a few days later. “Now, I’m inclined to agree—but I’d like you all to tell me if you prefer them to be one-on-ones, or if you would consider a group session.”
She studies everyone’s faces, and when nobody speaks, she adds, “I think a group session would be more productive.”
Everybody dreads the Long Sleep, as they’ve been calling it. Walter says it’s not exactly a Sleep. “It’s a dark age,” he says. “Literally, it’s the Dark Age.”
Heidi looks around the room and says, “Right. Okay. A group session.”
* * *
Sarah sits beside me. We’re all gathered at the dining table in the galley. There aren’t many chairs aboard the Arecibo that aren’t attached to consoles, so the galley was the default choice. One by one the crew floats in and buckles themselves into seats at the table. Heidi comes in and sits down and says, “Who are we missing?”
“Edith,” Mikael offers.
“Is she coming?” Heidi asks.
Mikael shakes his head. “She doesn’t want to talk about it.”
Heidi sighs, and thinks about this, then says, “All right. We’re on our own out here, folks. WSA can’t really do anything to you. Does anybody else want to skip this?”
Silence, and then Stefan unbuckles and leaves. Mikael shrugs apologetically, then follows.
We watch them go.
“So,” Walter says cheerily.
Heidi smiles at him and I wonder if they’ve slept together.
“The Long Sleep,” Heidi says.
“The Dark Age,” Walter contradicts.
“Whatever. How do you all feel? Who wants to talk about it first?”
I begin to cry immediately.
Sarah pats my knee beneath the table, then leaves her hand there, and I feel my skin flush hot.
Sarah seems nice.
“Maybe this should really be mandatory,” Walter suggests.
* * *
Frannie is exhausted. She’s alone on the screen, her eyes rimmed red. Her hair is disheveled, and she’s wearing her pajamas.
“Frannie?” I ask.
She tells me about her day—Elle has been throwing tantrums, but it’s because she has a fever, Frannie thinks, so she’s trying to remain as patient as she can, but it’s wearing her down. Elle hasn’t slept more than a half hour for two days. “Can you hear her?” Frannie asks.
“Yes,” I say. The sound of my daughter crying hundreds of thousands of miles away is wrenching. I want to go to her. I want to pick her up and hold her close and say, “It’s okay, Daddy’s here.” I want her to snuggle close and sniffle herself to sleep in my arms.
Frannie says, “It’s so hard,” and she cries.
; “Fran,” I say, leaning close to the camera. “Darling.”
“I’m so alone,” she says.
I strap myself into my bunk that night and think about my sins.
I have abandoned them.
I hate myself.
I unstrap and go to Heidi.
“What if I killed myself?” I ask her.
* * *
The Long Sleep, the Dark Age. One hundred forty-four years of hibernation sleep. Autopilot. Essential systems and life support only. Seven people, quietly stored in airtight sleeves, in a module with countless systems redundancies. Heart rates slowed and monitored. Data transmitted daily back to Earth, for a long slow journey to the WSA’s computers for analysis and modulation.
“Well, you shouldn’t do that,” Heidi says.
“Tell me why,” I demand. I’m crying. I’m the most unstable person on the Arecibo, I think.
“Because your wife and daughter would know,” Heidi says.
She doesn’t have to say another word.
But she does.
“If you want to kill yourself when we wake up,” Heidi says, “then at least you won’t hurt them.”
* * *
The possibilities are impossible to predict. The WSA and our native governments have put in place a series of treaties and contingencies, and written a strange new constitutional document that will take effect should any one of those bodies no longer exist when we wake up. A lot can happen in a century and a half. We might wake to find that the WSA has lost its funding. There might have been wars. Earth could have been destroyed by a meteor. Or it might have evolved into a technological utopia. The cure for death might have been discovered, in which case our families might survive to see us again.
But nobody knows for sure.
Frannie says, “What am I supposed to do?”
“What do you mean?”
Synchronic: 13 Tales of Time Travel Page 30