Split Infinity

by Thalia Kalkipsakis

  My pulse rises and I concentrate on my breathing as tears blur the edge of my vision.

  I try to angle my path towards a side street up ahead as I’m pulled along by the crowd. A few steps later I decide that this is getting me nowhere fast. If I stay in here, the crowd will dictate which direction I move, not me.

  Behind us is the sound of breaking glass and a kind of whoosh as one of the buildings goes up in flames. Again, the crowd surges and this time I use it to manoeuvre towards the edge. The side street is busy as well but we’re not crammed as tight.

  I scan the chaos around me. Buildings can burn. Bricks can collapse. Nowhere is guaranteed to stay clear. To one side I hear another whoosh. The shattering of glass is followed by shrieks and cries.

  My heart hammers, my lungs screaming. Why did I waste so much time? I should have been searching for a safe place to jump: a place that would likely be safe for return. Now even my time is running out.

  I make my way to the raised median strip in the centre of the road. A wall might fall, or someone might be standing here when I return, but this is the best I can manage.

  I wipe my damp palms against my thighs, already scared about what I’ll find on the other side. I close my eyes and leave the chaos behind.

  Three days later I return into clear space, sucking in stale air. Beneath me is only dirt, baked black and smouldering warm. No sign of the clothes I was wearing. A lump of twisted metal and plastic lies to one side.

  Gradually my senses return. The graze on my ribs from the helejet jump is weeping and raw, my throat still dry and lips cracked. It hurts when I swallow. One of my toes is stubbed and bleeding, although I have no idea how or when it happened.

  When I lift my head though, I’m shocked numb by the scene around me. With this single skip, somehow I’ve been transported to hell’s graveyard.

  The whole world, gone in a blink.

  Everything around me has been transformed, levelled to piles of black rubble and twisted metal. Plumes of smoke rise from four or five mounds around me, mixing with the stale ash I can taste in the air. I shut my mouth.

  Dumbly, I turn to find more of the same. Buildings that once stood four or five storeys high have been demolished to single-storey mounds and I find myself playing a macabre game, trying to work out what each twisted lump used to be. Streetlights there? Melted bricks among metal beams?

  The sky is pale blue through the ash and smoke and automatically my face lifts in search of colour, clear air. Life.

  Because there’s no-one here. No sign of the people who were trying to make their way out. No hint at fallen bodies, no bones. Nothing. The devastation of the firestorm is complete.

  Or maybe they made it out in time.

  I shut my eyes. It’s only now that I realise what still waits in front of me, in some ways the worst. I was lucky to time skip and escape the danger, but now I have to face reality.

  It’s the thought of Mum waiting for me that gives me the strength to step forwards. Another step. The only way home is through hell.

  Our room is glowing blue from the standby light when I tap on the window. A few seconds pass before Mum’s face appears over the back of the armchair, a palm rubbing her eyes.

  Before I realise what’s coming, I break into sobs at the sight of her here, safe.

  Mum slides the window open, guiding me gently inside. Her arms reach around me, holding me tight. My face is pushed against her shoulder as tears fall like whispers.

  I’m not sure how long she holds me like this. It’s as if I’ve been holding my breath ever since I heard Alistair’s words so long ago. Your mother died … I don’t have to push it down anymore, don’t have to lock it away.

  So much is released, a wave of relief rising above the fear, hope. Love.

  But there’s sorrow in the comfort. My tears aren’t only for us.

  It was late in the day when I began to reach the edges of the burnt area. So much of the city had been destroyed that I’d begun to feel like I was the only one left. Near the edges of the fire, a lot had still been burned – but some things had survived. I was able to recognise the shapes of burnt-out cars, walls still standing tall, shrunken black forms of bodies melted together where they tried to shelter.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, blocking them out, focusing on Mum. She’s here, she’s alive. It’s like a chant in my head that I can’t silence.

  Mum shifts her arm, brushing the graze on my ribs and making me wince.

  ‘You’re hurt?’

  ‘I’m okay,’ I say, because how can I complain? I’m alive too. Mum continues examining my bruised knees and bloodied feet as I reach for a blanket that was on the back of the armchair and wrap it around my shoulders. ‘Mum, I’m fine.’

  She gets the message and looks at my face again, cupping my head in her hands. ‘Oh, Scout. I’ve been so worried.’

  She’s about to say more but I don’t want to talk about any of it. ‘You made it out,’ I say.

  ‘Yes. Thanks to your warning. I was busy with a report … not checking messages. I never would have stopped if you hadn’t called –’

  She trails off and I try to smile but instead I’m flooded by a fresh wave of heartache.

  ‘Here.’ Mum guides me to an armchair, hovering before she drags a side table close and sits beside me. ‘There’s something …’ Her head lowers.

  My shoulders stiffen and I lean closer, trying to see her expression.

  ‘Your friends are safe, but …’ Mum lifts her head and lets out a breath. ‘Alistair died in the fire, Scout. I’m so sorry.’

  I pull back, pushing against the idea in my mind. ‘But he would have been sent the first alert. He had time to get out.’ She must have it wrong. Alistair survives the fire. He’s going to grow old. He makes it to 2089.

  But that’s a different timeline, not this one.

  ‘We had confirmation yesterday, but I already knew.’ Her voice catches. ‘When he didn’t come home.’

  Mum reaches for my hand as images flicker in my thoughts. Alistair’s hand gripping mine, papery and cool. I didn’t want you to find out on your own …

  My eyes trace the faint blue veins on the back of Mum’s hand as she keeps talking. ‘He sent me a warning so he must have received the alert. I just didn’t see his message.’ Her tone is faint, as if she can hardly breathe. ‘There was an accident not far from his office building, complete gridlock. There were just too many people trying to get away.’

  Too many people. Too late to get them out without causing mass panic. My throat constricts, biting down on my bottom lip. In another world Alistair made it out, but in this one something was changed. A second alert, sending hundreds onto the streets, blocking his escape.

  An alert sent by me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I STAY IN BED for days. My whole body aches, but that’s not why.

  After I raced out of Alistair’s hospital room in the other timestream, everything moved so fast that I didn’t really process losing Mum in the fire. Mostly I just pushed it down, so I never had to live under the cloud of having left her, not being there to help her. But I know now how it would it have been, each moment worse than the last, each breath weighed down with the truth that I’m still here when a person I love is not. It’s almost like I have two worlds of grief to face now, two losses. Except, this one is worse; Alistair died because of me.

  This time, there’s no-one else to blame.

  Sometimes I think about time skipping so deep that I disappear, wiping reality away. Trying to make it back, maybe, to undo what I’ve done. But even now, I’m not sure I’d take the chance if I had it. I’m not sure I could handle the responsibility. How many more ways can I lose someone I love?

  How many other mistakes would I make?

  It’s not just me who is struggling; the whole city is in shock. Some people made it out, only lost their homes and everything they owned. Others weren’t so lucky. The official deceased count doesn’t take long to be released
; everyone’s chipped, so it’s easy to count. It’s warped and sick, but I can’t stop staring at the figures as they go up, lying in bed and flicking update every ten minutes. Each increase slices me inside: 834 … 915 … 1023 …

  Around 1200, it slows. It’s fewer than the thousands who died last time. It’s something, but how do you measure a single life against so many when it’s someone you love?

  How can I celebrate the fact that Mum’s alive, now that I know the cost?

  Not many people go to work, and food deliveries hit delays. Hospitals struggle to cope. There’s a second wave of deaths as some people miss out on the treatment they need and again I obsess over each increase to the death toll.

  Still lower than last time. Still way too many.

  The rumours are confirmed that the water treatment plant was destroyed and soon after we receive the official announcement that rations will be halved. As a result of the ag farms being burnt, there simply isn’t enough water and food anymore.

  The city goes into a different kind of shock after that. It only takes a day on half rations before protest marches begin, calling for an end to the ration system with chants and phrases: EQUAL RATIONS! ACCESS FOR ALL!

  I watch the reports as if through a glass wall. It’s not really equal rations they’re fighting for. They’re not campaigning for illegals to have access to rations. They only care about fairness and equality now that they’re the ones missing out.

  It’s only when I’m checking the ration level of the stolen chip that I remember Alistair’s words from the other timestream: A bank account. Transfer the credits before I die, or the state will seize control.

  The idea of facing his bank account now makes my chest ache, but the idea of letting the government use Alistair’s life savings is worse. It’s enough at least to make me swallow, take a breath and begin a search.

  It’s not like I’ll use the credits for myself; maybe I can set up a foundation in his name that supports kids on low rations, or something like that.

  It’s easy to find the account, but near impossible to hack in and see what’s going on. The security levels are massive; I doubt even Alistair would be able to hack his way in. Except, he seemed sure I could work out how to transfer the credits …

  Maybe I can guess the password.

  My heart stills as the account details display on the screen after I type in my first guess: Agent X. It’s like a message from when he was still alive. Seeing that name on the screen somehow makes me feel as if he’s here beside me, right now. If he was, he’d say something to make everything okay again, with a lesson between the lines.

  The sting of losing him pricks at me again, fresh as ever. It’s my fault he’s not here.

  I’m surprised that Alistair’s account balance is less than 5000 credits. Even I have more than that on the woman’s chip; clocking up steadily the whole time I was locked away.

  I scroll through the transactions over the last few months, like watching a story backwards in time. Six months ago, Alistair’s balance was way impressive: nearly 200,000 credits. But from the day of my citizen application hearing, large chunks began to disappear. Most of them went to a law firm called Chen, Chambal and Mubarak, but in the final two months he started buying top wine and spending crazy amounts at expensive restaurants.

  Strange.

  It feels wrong to hack into his life like this, especially after all that’s happened, but I can’t stop. Line by line I read through his messages over the last couple of months. In most of them he’s setting up meetings with top-level government officials, or arranging to have expensive bottles of wine sent to them. It doesn’t take long to work out what was going on, but when I realise what he was doing I have to shut down the comscreen, stepping away until I’m leaning back against the wall. I slide down to the floor and rest my forehead on my knees. Anger burns at what they did to us, even as the tears prickle once more.

  Alistair spent his life savings trying to get me out of the lab.

  Mason comes round a couple of days after I make it home. From the relaxed way he is around Mum I can tell that he was keeping in touch with her, watching out for her when I couldn’t.

  Mum heads out for a walk, leaving us to talk.

  As soon as the door slips shut, Mason pulls me into a hug. ‘I’m sorry, Scout. I thought you’d be safe.’ His voice reaches me as a muffled echo through his body. ‘We’ve been trying to get you out the whole time.’

  But they were playing by the government’s rules. That’s no way to win the game.

  ‘For what it’s worth, you were right,’ he says, as his tone drops. ‘They didn’t even tell us that jumping was illegal, you know. It’s only thanks to Kessa that we were told. They don’t have proof that any of us can skip, but now that they don’t have you anymore we’ve all been tagged as illegal sympathisers. We think they’re only days away from arresting one of us.’

  It’s so familiar. The future isn’t fixed, but some things don’t change.

  I pull away. Swallow the dryness. It’s months since I saw Mason and I can see a change about him, but it’s different from the way he’d changed when I saw him in 2089. This time his face seems to have been carved from stone.

  We settle on the rug, our backs against the bed, while Mason fills me in on the fight to have me released, a battle that led to them being dropped a ration level. Mason’s dad lost his job, although the official reason was funding cuts. But even so, the skippers kept training in secret, their jumps hidden from the grid with the help of the linking code. He even set up the code to add a link automatically for Mum, and Kessa’s family, in case any of them had learnt to jump.

  As Mason finishes, we don’t talk for a while, but soon he turns to me, questions clear in his eyes. What was it like in there? What did they do to you?

  ‘There’s this drug,’ I begin. ‘Called Zygoral. It’s meant to block our ability to skip. But this one was green, not blue and … it didn’t do what it did last time.’

  His shoulders sink as a sigh escapes. ‘Makes sense. They had years longer to develop the blue one in the other timestream, but no-one to test it on. It would have been a different team, with different technology. So many things have changed.’

  ‘They were both designed to stop us skipping,’ I add. ‘But something must have been different about the blue one.’ Some extra ingredient, a change in conditions. Whatever it was, we have no way of knowing. Here, it doesn’t exist. My fall into a new reality has been a one-way trip.

  ‘It’s okay.’ His eyebrows pinch. ‘After this taste of knowing what’s coming … I’m not sure what I want any more.’ He glances at me. ‘We warned the captain of the Metro Fire Brigade, did you know that? Even showed him a skip as proof that he should take us seriously. We kept it hidden from the grid but there didn’t seem much we could lose anymore. You were still locked up. Stopping the fire seemed like the one thing we could fix …’

  I try to match the dates in my head, wondering whether the fire captain reported the warning back to government. In order for us to know the firestorm was coming, one of us had to have travelled backwards, which the professor and his team hadn’t been told. Was that the reason Professor W changed his focus when he was studying my brain scans? Was that why they decided to get me out of the lab, rather than just leave me there to burn?

  ‘On the night of the lightning strikes,’ Mason keeps going, ‘the MFB threw everything they had at stopping the fires, water bombers, fire hovercraft. Every officer they had. And we thought they’d stopped it. Only two grassfires were left and they were so far out of the area you described. I thought we’d done it –’ He shakes his head. ‘It wasn’t until I got your message that I realised …’

  I rest a hand on his leg, just above the knee. ‘It’s so not your fault, Mason.’

  He doesn’t say anything, just places a hand on top of mine. ‘We’re planning a ten-year skip,’ Mason says. ‘By then, rations should be restored. Maybe a change of government.’

&nb
sp; ‘Or maybe not.’ I think about the world I saw in 2089. ‘Everything might be even worse by then. They could be even more determined than ever to catch us.’

  ‘Yeah, we’ve been talking about that.’ There doesn’t seem any question that they’re going to jump. ‘We’ll set up a fake departure point before we block our chips from the grid, the way you already described. So they’ll be watching for our return in a decoy location, and they won’t have any idea when we’re due back. But while we’re gone, we’ve decided to go public. The more people who know how to skip, the harder it will be for them to catch us all, let alone lock us all away. I was tossing up whether to release the deets about how to time skip onto the dark web, but Amon had a better idea.’

  Mason grabs his compad, swipes a few times and holds the screen up for me. ‘If citizens can access the dark web, then the government can as well. They’ll work out how to take down anything we add. So we’re putting it up in plain sight instead. No encryption, nothing to hide.’

  My eyes track cross the words onto the screen: It already lies dormant within you; the ability to move within time …

  ‘It’s a book, started in sparkpad. All of us adding to it. A story, that’s all it looks like, except it just happens to outline the meditation techniques for time skipping, a brief overview of the theory, tips for training your interval timer. The Feds won’t even think to check. At least, that’s the plan.’

  ‘Clever. But how will anyone work out it’s real?’

  ‘There’ll be deets in there that are familiar, names of real places. Maybe someone will remember living through the blackout. We only need one or two to start wondering. Maybe they’ll give it a go, just in case …’

  ‘Can you add info about the linking script?’ I ask. ‘Warn them to hide their gaps from the grid if they do work out how to jump?’