I considered this. Per SOPs for a rupture in an urban area, the cops had evacuated and cordoned off a two-block radius. The constable manning the barriers at the corner of Canada Avenue and Second Street snorted at our IDs.
Rent-a-cops, he muttered. Government should be handling this!
You mean, like, obtaining approval from nine different subcommittees before approaching a rupture? I smirked. Sounds like a winner!
We were halfway up the block before the cop hurled a response at our backs. His words melted into the murmuring throb of the aperture pulsing in the middle of the intersection.
You know what I always think of when I see one of those things? Mac paused, hands in his pockets, head tilted to examine the anomaly.
I cringed because I knew the answer.
It looks like a woman’s—
SHIT!
What?
I pointed: It’s that kid from last night!
WHERE? Mac whirled, searching.
The Native kid who got away! She just ducked around the edge of that building!
I’ll go! Mac moved double time in the direction I pointed. And the moment he turned the corner, I entered the rupture.
◄ ►
The destabilization’s hum swarmed me, flooding my ears, my anus and heart, causing every inch of me to swell and fall into harmony with and vibrate in time with the tonal song. Meanwhile, I watched my leg extend an impossible distance into the void. I remember feeling as if I’d suddenly been turned to clay, squeezed, stretched and elongated. I couldn’t breathe for an uncomfortably long moment, and there was this weird tingling in my scalp. The rushing in my ears rose like an ocean, only subsiding as my Play-Doh foot and ankle touched down to harden into a base against which my body could Doppler-shift back to its accustomed dimensions.
I blinked. I was in a big city, one with a familiar skyline, but was having one of those moments when you see something you recognize but can’t name it. The sort of thing that happens frequently when you smoke dope or grow middle-aged. Your eyes dim, too, but the dim light here wasn’t from bad eyesight. It was a slightly darker world.
Because it happened before the sun rose the day of the rupture…
I looked around. I was supposed to meet someone Janus promised I would recognize, but so far I was alone. This was the sort of street you’d expect to encounter a fair amount of traffic on at twilight – the rush-hour crowd heading home – but it was completely still. Until another rupture opened right in front of me.
I froze. If I turned my head and looked over my shoulder I could still see the one I’d stepped through pulsing its weird purplish orgasms of electrostatic light. Yet here was another one ripping its way into fiery existence in this previous moment in time. From…
An earlier time from mine? Or a later one?
I fought a wave of dizziness as the rupture stabilized into a shimmering corona. A shape appeared – a female moving, silhouetted in the flames. Then Jessie emerged, stepping down from the aperture into this When.
I blinked.
Hey, cuz. She grinned crookedly. Got a present for me?
I produced the small, black-wrapped, heavy package containing something obviously very important, and handed it over. Jessie slid it into her hoodie pocket with a smirk.
Be seeing you, cuz, she said, and stepped back into her rupture. A moment later it sealed up and disappeared. I stood staring for a full minute, wondering: how far into the future – or the past – did it lead? And what would have happened if I went in after her? When my brief visit in Jessie’s reality was up, would I be pulled through two ruptures back to my own time, or only as far back as this When? Had someone figured out how to time travel by stepping through one rupture after another?
A sucking sensation gripped the back of my head. Again I was yanked and stretched – this time, backward. I re-coalesced in my own time, lying flat on my back in a street crowded with flashing sirens and thronged by emergency response personnel. Mac knelt over me, shaking my shoulder.
Hey, are you okay? I knew you were gonna try and enter one! Listen, did the blast affect you? They’ve set off another one of those rupture bombs. Same kind that killed the president. Buddy, you gotta get up. We got work to do!
◄ ►
There were now too many ruptures for us to chase theft from every one. So XyTech handed me and Mac uniforms and told us to start guarding LTAs – long-term anomalies: ruptures that appeared and remained in place for hours or even days on end. It was boring work – rent-a-cop stuff. But we both had bills to pay.
When you were on shift you were expected to remainsober enough to answer call-outs to ruptures that appeared in your area. I’d get a call and saddle up with camp chairs and a cooler of food and drinks and meet Mac at a shopping mall or empty field or in the living room of someone’s evacuated home – wherever the rupture materialized. We’d remain on-station, making notes in the duty log on the anomaly’s behavior until relief arrived. Mostly, we just sat staring at them.
You might expect that with all these holes in time opening up that the past would start leaking into the present but it never did. Nor did we start leaking into the past. Instead, the LTAs just grew and linked up with one another. The throbbing sound deepened, and the purplish light brightened to an obscene corona around the largest apertures, now resembling suns in eclipse – great winking holes of negative light that swallowed vast sectors of our When – cars, streets, buildings – leaving behind not the past but… nothing.
The broken teeth of cement boulevards, the snapped wires of telephone wires and the skeletal steel girders of half-demolished buildings dangled out over the fog-ridden Abyss, straddling the event horizon at which everything just… stopped.
◄ ►
I killed Janus the next time I saw him. But by then it was too late – the damage was already done. And besides, Jessie just took over and began handing out orders. Because she paid better than Janus ever did, I did two more rupture runs, returning each time to a darker and slightly more smoke-streaked, night-ridden version of the world. Whatever they were doing in the past was having profound effects on the present.
I encountered Janus once. He had apparently entered a rupture during his lifetime that let out into the same past which I, coincidentally, happened to be visiting. Although dead in my When, Janus remained stubbornly alive in our common yesterday.
What are you doing? I demanded when I saw him lumber through the aperture.
Earning a living, he wheezed. Prime minister says the ruptures represent Canada’s next great economic opportunity and I’m gettin’ my piece of the action!
How? I demanded. But I already knew. Janus had developed the means to harness the ruptures’ massive energy for warfare, using me to transport the separate pieces of technology to his couriers for assembly at some predetermined point in the past. The next great opportunity for Canada, it seemed, involved blowing holes in reality large enough to swallow entire provinces. An environmental disaster to dwarf the Alberta tar sands – anything in service of the almighty dollar!
◄ ►
I never saw Janus again. After my last trip, I’d accrued enough savings to remain comfortable for the rest of my life. But guilt, and a weird desire to confess, tormented me.
The science fiction shows have time travel all wrong, I said. My voice, though hushed, carried easily through the deserted marble lobby of the Royal B.C. Museum where Mac and I sat watching a rupture mutter and twirl in the air by the elevators at 2 a.m.
Those shows don’t convey how confusing it is! Because they take place in linear time – start at point A, end at point B. But inside the ruptures it’s impossible to even think that way! The concepts of point A and point B become totally meaningless. It’s like…
I searched for an analogy. And gave up when the one that came to mind – being blindfolded and spun around, then having the blindfold torn off – fell short. Mac seemed to relate to my boggled silence.
You’re telling me! He fidd
led with his new smartphone. At age 67, he was just entering the mobile age. Yeah, buoyancy makes sure we don’t change the past. But just going there and coming back is mind-fuck enough.
Things – I mean, we’re just not… It’s something we’re not meant to see! It’s unnatural. And it’s like your brain recognizes that and—
Look. Mac held up a hand and smiled. It’s like going to war. Nobody understands what you experienced unless they were there, too. Seeing bodies blown apart? Seeing the insides of people? We were never meant to see that! The mind rebels.
I considered that my rupture trips were perhaps taking a toll on me. My bank account was fatter, true, but I was having trouble sleeping. And I’d lost weight because I could barely keep anything down. Not because I was sick – it was all mental. Now I knew why.
The whole experience of it! I collapsed in my camp chair. Jesus, Mac, it eats at you…
He nodded, fine-tuning the settings on his device – preoccupied, but still listening. Not like there are any support groups for this sort of thing yet, he muttered.
And then when you’ve stepped through and another rupture opens right in front of you, I said, and before I could stop myself, added: Or seeing someone you know who’s dead. That—
I stopped short. What had I—? Paranoia flooded in.
Before I even finished piecing it together I craned my neck and looked away to avoid Mac’s stare. Because I knew I had said too much. Mac knew I had stepped through more than just that one rupture, which meant I was probably on the take. Dirty. The trust between us, cultivated over years of working together, was now broken forever.
◄ ►
Vancouver and Salt Spring are gone. Such a fucking drag. I was gonna visit this summer…
David mutters this news in the same nasal monotone he uses to complain about his girlfriend, his hourly wage, his personal disappointments, his godforsaken lot in life. An entire province gobbled up by the void and David contextualizes it in terms of the personal inconvenience to him.
The rupture we guard, now twice the height of the train station, fluctuates ominously, spitting purple fire in the predawn gloom. I am mesmerized. How much of the world do you think has been swallowed? I whisper, gazing into its static depths.
It turns out that smartphones have an app for that. David calls up his and turns the screen to me. I see a narrow strip of the West Coast, including a chunk of Washington state and Vancouver Island, hovering between two bulbous intrusions of shadow. Encroaching fronts of—
Nothing.
Eventually we’ll get gulped down, too. David shrugs. In another – he checks the display – 22 hours and seven minutes.
Doesn’t that bother you?
Well, I— Hey, shut up, my girlfriend’s texting.
I sigh and make a note in the logbook. David texts his girlfriend while I tidy up details in a report that will never be read – each of us reacting to the apocalypse according to our individual generation’s signature dysfunction.
David stands and wanders off down a side street. A few moments later I hear the shrieking dub-step dong that is his ringtone and know he will be gone for the better part of an hour, chitty-chatting with his girl. I replace the logbook and stare into the restless vortex of our impending doom.
Inside the ruptures the concepts of point A and point B become totally meaningless…
Beginnings. Endings. Life. Death…
We were never meant to see that.
I wonder: if the ruptures lead into the past, and they swallow the whole world, why doesn’t everyone just go into the past? Or is there not enough room back there? Or—?
The mind rebels.
I ponder the yawning Abyss menacing the western edge of Duncan. Now another one is pushing toward us across the strait from the mainland. A small strip on the inner coast of Vancouver Island is all that remains. The question is: whether it’s better to join the yawning chasm or take one’s chances?
I count to 10. Make a decision. Then sprint through the opening.
◄ ►
I’ve been expecting you.
Mac pushes a fresh cigarette into the side of his mouth. It’s him all right, but a younger version – one from before we met. Mac, able to suspend aging and remain young forever by adroit navigation of sequenced ruptures.
We’re not supposed to meet for another 30 years. Mac’s lighter clinks. He takes a meditative drag. But I guess sometime after we do, you begin going in and out of ruptures, running errands for organized crime. The results are…
I know. The ruptures get worse. I wave a hand. And for some reason, they begin swallowing up everything. What I don’t get is why instead of going into the past, everything just vanishes.
Ever heard of string theory? Mac asks.
I shake my head.
It’s the idea that whenever reality comes to a fork in the road – choice A or B – the road splits and two different realities emerge, one where choice A was made and the other where choice B was made. Both realities coexist, travelling parallel but separate paths into the future. These strings are never supposed to meet. And never did. Until the military began experimenting with the Destabilizer.
The ruptures—?
Imagine reality as a series of threads aligned in a woven carpet. Mac holds up his hand, the fingers parallel to give a visual. Keep each straight and taut and the threads work together to create a durable weave. Our ruptures caused the threads to tangle and snarl, fraying the carpet. And the rupture bombs only made it worse. He waggled his fingers then clenched a fist. If that carpet represents the sum of all possible realities in the quantum multi-verse, then it’s become threadbare and is falling apart.
Jesus, I whisper.
Now there’s a traffic jam of different realities. Whenever one possible future collides with another, the result is destruction of both potential worlds. The Abyss is a garbage dump of extinguished reality strings.
I close my eyes.
What can we—?
Do? Nothing.
I actually laugh. After all our achievements in technology, culture and civilization?
Nothing. Mac flaps a hand. Erased as if they didn’t exist.
But that’s—
I pause, groping for words.
Insulting, I manage finally.
Mac laughs.
No, really! I am shaking with rage. Is this how we live now? After everything the human race has achieved! It just… ends? No bang, no whimper? Just a grand reminder of our monumental insignificance! The whole of… HISTORY! Juggernauting over a cliff? Into nothing? That’s insane! Like an author abandoning a story before finishing the final
RIVER ROAD
Amanda M. Taylor
My sister Jill tapped her handmade machete on the gunwale, a steady pattern of tat-tat-tat ratta-tat as she stared vacantly at the branches that passed. The waters of the Red River slapped the aluminium hull of our freight canoe as I scanned the trees through my binoculars in the predawn haze. Ice clung to the bare boughs of the elms and oaks, their trunks submerged in lapping, murky floodwaters.
“Stop it,” I whispered, and the machete skirted into the leather sheath on her thigh.
The abandoned suburb came into view as we crested the break in the old dyke, and I darted the binoculars again: the cab of a rusted truck barely broke the lapping muddy waters; broken windows, shattered inward; houses and garages half-obliterated and charred by memories of what tore them down; overgrown lilacs with heavy buds, waiting for the waters to recede. There was only silence, which let my mind rouse their smell – it was only a month away, blooming in that holiday time before the mosquitos came.
“See anything, Kimiko?” Sandip asked me from where he sat in the stern, paddle a rudder in the weak current. He was ashen bark, skin not yet warmed by summer’s kiss, but marked by acne. The neck of his crocheted sweater was rolled up high, turtleneck snug beneath his chin.
I shook my head and tucked a strand of my black hair back over my ear. It was too dark to
tell what might be waiting for us – it had been too dark all night, but luck was on our side. It was the safe time of year to scavenge. Well, the only time we could.
The canoe turned under his direction and I hunkered down on the seat in the bow. Each silent breath brought a lasting fog, taken sluggishly by a passing breeze that tinkled the ice in the boughs.
“It’s too cold,” Sandip whispered.
“It’s better this way,” I said, and offered a reassuring smile. “They don’t like the cold. They don’t like the water either, that’s why we’re here.”
“You’ll do fine,” Jill said, and gave his knee a squeeze. “I came last year and it was easy. Except for when I fell in, so don’t do that.”
“Right,” he said, eyes darting to the trees he guided us through for cover. “In and out, right?”
“In and out. This is the easy part. Want to come back with us next week too?”
“We’ll see,” he said, but half-smiled when Jill squeezed his leg again. “It’s a change of pace, that’s for sure.”
“That’s why I like it,” I said, and stood up again, binoculars forward as we closed in on the warehouse. The large building was half-submerged, like all the rest, blackened by mould, time, and aged violence. The side we approached had not been spared, with rusted, bent girders crumpled inward and a gaping hole of concrete blocks spilled into the waters, disappearing below the surface. There was a small knit scarf in a familiar pattern. “There, you see the marker?”
“Oh – yeah.” The canoe angled toward the hole in the building.
My binoculars swept again, double-taking back to movement in the water. “Hold!”
Sandip and Jill shrunk down as I stood up, bringing the binoculars into focus on the bloated corpse in the water.
A pent breath escaped. “Just a horse. Don’t worry – it’s just a horse.”
“What a waste,” Sandip said, as he nibbled at the dried skin on his bottom lip. “They’re hard to come by.”
The canoe scraped into the submerged cinderblock and I stamped into the side to keep myself from pitching into the freezing water. I braced on the gunwale, binoculars swinging from the strap around my neck. “Warn me next time!”
Fractured Page 22