by Daniel Price
With Amanda, his first impulse was to offer some wordplay bouquet about how she looked pretty intense and intensely pretty, but then bashfully nixed the idea. The moment he spotted her golden cross necklace, his comedy writers jumped to plan B.
“Where’s your messiah now?” he’d brayed, in a passable Edward G. Robinson impression.
Before either of them knew what was happening, her right hand sprung like a cobra and struck him. Amanda didn’t need to see the gaping horror on Mia’s face to know that she’d overreacted. Worse, she realized she might have infected Zack with whatever disease she now carried.
David rose from his chair and raised his palms in nervous diplomacy. “Okay, look, we’re all in a state of disarray right now . . .”
“South California,” Zack uttered.
“What?”
Zack resumed his stance in the doorway, hugging his sketchbook with vacant anguish. “We’re in the state of South California. It split in 1940 when the population got too big for Senate representation. They cut the line right below San Jose. I learned this downtown, in a bookstore called Scribbles.”
When Erin Salgado had traced the final signal to Zack, he’d been standing in the reference section, eliciting curious stares from his fellow browsers. It was odd enough to see a grown man gawk in stupor at the pages of a children’s atlas, but this man wore a gaping tear on his left shoulder and a woman’s handbag on his right. Both the bag and the tear were the personal effects of one Hannah Given.
“Zack!”
The shout came from the hallway. Zack turned around just in time to feel wet hair, soft flesh, and terry cloth pressed against him.
He awkwardly returned Hannah’s hug. “Hey, there you are. Speedy McLeave-a-Guy. You know, I’m used to women running away from me, but not at ninety miles an hour.”
She pulled away from him. “What are you talking about?”
Amanda blinked at them in bafflement. “Wait. How do you two know each other?”
“This is the guy I was telling you about. We met at the marina.” Hannah turned back to Zack. “What do you mean ninety miles an hour?”
“You don’t remember what happened?”
“I remember everything going all blue and super-slow.”
“No, you went all red and super-fast. You buzzed around the bench like a hornet on crack, talking so quickly I couldn’t understand you. You ripped my sleeve, then ran away. And I don’t mean Benny Hill speed. I mean you were a freaking blur.” He eyed her sling. “What happened? Did you break your arm?”
“No.” Hannah shook her head, dumbfounded. “That can’t be right. That’s not possible.”
“Yeah, that was the consensus at the marina.”
David matched Hannah’s befuddled look. “Forgive me, Zack, but even after everything that’s happened today, I have a hard time accepting what you’re saying.”
Zack shut the parlor door, then addressed the others in a furtive half whisper.
“I don’t want to upset anyone more than I already have, but I think there’s more than one kind of weirdness going on here. Beyond the flying cars and new state lines, I think something might be . . . different with us. Hannah’s not the only one doing strange stuff. Look.”
He opened his drawing pad, flipping through a series of crisp white pages. “Last night, I only had three blank sheets left in this thing. Now I have eight. My last five drawings disappeared like I never did them. And then there’s this one . . .”
He turned to a rough sketch of a nerdy couple, the two lead characters of his comic strip.
“This used to be finished. Now it’s not. I lost about a half hour of pencil work. That’s the kind of glitch that happens on computers, not paper.”
“What makes you think you caused it?” David asked.
“Because I watched it happen,” Zack said, with a delirious chuckle. “The drawing changed right in front of my eyes.”
Hannah shook her head in turmoil. Amanda nervously tugged her sleeve over her hand. “Look, I don’t think this is the best time to—”
“I’m hearing voices,” David blurted. “I’m sorry, Amanda. I didn’t mean to cut you off. I just had to get that out. Since this morning, I’ve been sporadically hearing people that I can’t see. People talking to each other, laughing, whatever. I only hope it’s related to this phenomenon you’re discussing, because otherwise I’ve lost my mind.”
“You’re not crazy,” Hannah assured him. “At least not more than the rest of us.”
Zack studied Mia’s dark and busy expression. “Got your own weirdness to share?”
She looked up at him. “Me?”
“Yeah. You’re a quiet one, but I noticed you got even quieter when we started talking about this. Is it something you can tell us?”
For a man who’d just been slapped, Zack was awfully perceptive. Mia had been thinking about her own incident—the glowing tube with the candles and the note, a special delivery that somehow managed to find her eight feet underground. She didn’t know how to bring it up without sounding insane.
“Not really.”
Zack eyed her skeptically. “You sure?”
“Leave her alone,” Amanda growled. “She’s been through enough.”
“We’ve all been through enough. But we’re all old enough and smart enough to speak for ourselves.”
Mia nodded at Amanda. “It’s all right.”
“It’s not all right. We’re still traumatized. Still grieving over the people we lost. The last thing we need right now is to fill our heads with supernatural nonsense.”
Zack peered down at Amanda’s crucifix and swallowed his next slap-worthy zinger. “Look, I’m just trying to make sense of this.”
“And I’m telling you it’s too soon to try.”
“Too soon for you.”
“Too soon for all of us!”
Zack chuckled darkly. “Really? How interesting that you already know me better than I know myself. Is this a new psychic power or just an old trick you learned at Judgment Camp?”
As Amanda stood up, Hannah took a reflexive step back. Over the course of her life, she’d seen every dark facet of her older sister. Shoutmanda, Nagmanda, Reprimanda. Hannah knew, as both a summoner and a witness, that few things were less desirable than a visit from Madmanda.
“You unbelievable piece of shit. Are you such a sociopath that you need to mock people just hours after they’ve lost everything? Is that how you were raised?”
Now it was Zack’s turn to step back. His wide eyes froze on Amanda’s hand. “Uh . . .”
“I don’t judge! I don’t preach! I don’t condemn the people who don’t share my faith!”
Hannah leaned forward, blanching at the bewildering new change in her sister. “Amanda . . .”
“What I do condemn are people who disrespect my beliefs, especially when I’ve done nothing to provoke you but wear a tiny little symbol!”
“Amanda!”
She spun toward Hannah. “What?”
“Your hand!”
The widow peered down at her fingers and got a fresh new look at her weirdness.
The blight had returned in full force, coating her right arm in a sleek and shiny whiteness. Though the substance looked like plastic, it fit her as snugly as nylon.
David and Mia jumped up from their chairs. Hannah covered her gaping mouth.
“What the hell is that?!”
Bug-eyed, gasping, Amanda dropped to the recliner. The glistening sheath felt cool on her skin, like milk fresh out of the fridge. She could feel every bump and fold of the armrest as if she were still bare-handed.
“I don’t know. I don’t—”
The sisters both screamed as Amanda’s long white glove erupted in rocky protrusions. Her silver bracelet creaked in strain, then snapped into pieces.
By
the time the jagged fragments fell to the floor, Amanda’s arm looked like it was covered in rock candy. The crags rose and fell in erratic rhythms, an ever-shifting terrain.
David looked to the door. “Uh, maybe I should get one of the—”
“No!” Zack and Amanda yelled in synch. “Just watch the hall,” Zack said. “If someone comes by, keep them out.”
Amanda flinched at Mia’s approach. “No, stay back! I don’t want to hurt you.”
Zack inched toward her, fingers extended. “Look, you just need to calm down.”
“Calm down?”
Mia nodded tensely. “He’s right. This whole thing started when he got you angry.” She moved behind Amanda’s chair and stroked her shoulders. “You’re going to be okay. Just breathe, Amanda. Breathe.”
Hannah cringed with guilt as she watched Mia soothe her sister. I should be doing that. Why didn’t I think to do that?
David peeked through a crack in the door. “Someone’s coming.”
A four-inch spike erupted from the back of Amanda’s hand. Her other arm erupted in a rash of tiny white dots. Zack jumped back.
“Jesus. All right. It’s definitely stress related. If you just relax—”
“How do you expect me to relax right now?!”
“It’s Dr. Czerny,” David announced. “And an extremely well-dressed midget.”
Amanda squinted her eyes shut. Oh God. Please. Please . . .
“Hannah, maybe you should run distraction,” Zack said.
“What should I say?”
“Anything. I don’t know. You’re the actress. Improvise.”
Amanda forced her mind into calming memories—the nature hikes she took with her father, her honeymoon cabin on the French Riviera, all the young patients who cried happy tears when they learned they were in remission.
Soon the milky crags and dots began to melt away. Mia squeezed her shoulder. “It’s working. You’re doing it.”
Amanda opened her eyes and peered down, just as the last of the whiteness retracted into her skin.
“They’re almost here . . .” David cautioned.
“It’s all right,” said Mia. “It’s gone.”
Zack wasn’t relieved. He scooped up the remnants of Amanda’s bracelet, then threw a quick glance around the room.
“Look, I don’t know who these people are, but I don’t trust them. Until we learn more, we need to keep this to ourselves. We’ll talk about the big weirdness. We won’t talk about the other stuff. Agreed?”
Hannah, David, and Mia accepted his premise with shaky nods. Amanda had the least trouble with Zack’s proposal. On this matter, she couldn’t have agreed with him more.
Two hazy shapes appeared in the smoky glass. David opened the door to Czerny and a diminutive companion. They studied their five skittish guests with leery caution.
“Is everything all right in here?” Czerny asked. “We heard noises.”
Zack hurried across the room to greet him. “The strangest thing just happened, actually. Amanda bumped her arm against the pool table and her bracelet broke apart.”
Czerny furrowed his brow at the warped silver fragments in Zack’s hand. “Huh. That is strange.” He looked to Amanda. “Are you all right?”
“She’ll be fine. I’m Zack, by the way. You Sterling Quint?”
“That would be me,” said the other man, in a stately baritone.
The guests all took a moment to study him. He was indeed a little person, as David implied, but he carried himself with the regal airs of a maharaja. He wore a lavish three-piece suit with a red silk ascot, and his feathered gray coif was flawless to a hair. Zack figured his jeweled rings alone could fund a man’s food, clothing, and shelter habit for nearly a year.
“So you’re the answer man.”
Quint nodded. “As it stands.”
“Good,” Zack replied, with an anxious breath. “Because as it stands, we have questions.”
—
The conference room was a perfect oval of hardwood and gray marble. In lieu of overhead lightbulbs, the entire ceiling glowed with milky iridescence. Mia noticed a pair of multitiered switches on the wall—one to control the ceiling’s brightness, the other to change its color.
Quint sat at the head of a long oak table, shining a sunny smile at each guest as Czerny introduced them. For five people who’d made such a remarkable journey, none of them seemed particularly remarkable themselves. Why them, Azral? Of all the souls to sweep across existence, why these?
“Thank you for being patient with us,” Czerny began. “I know we haven’t revealed a lot—”
Hannah waved a shaky palm. “Wait. Hold it. Sorry.”
Mia’s eyes narrowed to frigid slits. She didn’t want to dislike anyone, especially on a day like today, but from the moment Hannah stumbled into the lobby with her tight clothes and ditzy airs, she struck a sour chord. She was every living Barbie doll who’d broken her brothers’ hearts, every gum-chewing mallrat who’d mocked Mia mercilessly.
“Before we get to the big stuff, I just want to know how Theo’s doing.”
Czerny had to wait for Quint’s nod of approval before answering Hannah’s question.
“Fortunately, he’s okay. Still unconscious, but stable. We expect he’ll pull through just fine.”
Amanda sat rigidly in her seat, her hands hidden deep inside her sleeves. “What happened?”
“I regret to say it’s our fault,” Czerny admitted. “Our security men gave him apacistene, a dermal sedative more commonly known as a baby spot.”
Hannah averted her gaze from the giant neon TOLD YOU SO that sat in place of her sister.
“It’s not a harmful drug by itself,” Czerny explained, “but it can be particularly strong on first-time users. The problem in this case is that Mr. Maranan had a high amount of alcohol in his bloodstream. The combination caused a toxic reaction and . . . well, you saw the results.”
“When can we see him?” Hannah asked.
“Not for a while,” Quint replied. “Once he’s sufficiently detoxified, he’ll be sure to join you.”
Zack glanced around uneasily. “I’m late to the party. I take it Theo’s another one of us.”
Hannah nodded. “Yeah. I met him right after you.”
“Wow. You do move fast.”
No one appreciated the joke, least of all the sisters. As he cooked in the heat of their smoldering glares, his inner Libby shook her head at him. You never learn.
David wound his finger impatiently. “I’m glad Theo’s okay, but can we please get to the main topic at hand?”
Once again, Czerny deferred to his superior. Quint took an expansive breath.
“I know Dr. Czerny has told some of you about our organization, but for those who came in late, let me explain again. The Pelletier Group is a privately funded collective of physicists, all specialized in the study of temporal phenomena. We’re not beholden to any college or corporation. Our only mission is to follow the science, no matter where it takes us. It was through keen observation and a little dumb luck that science took us right to you.
“There’s a unique subatomic entity called a wavion that’s been fascinating physicists for decades. It moves differently, spins differently, clusters differently than any particle known to man. Though we still have much to learn about it, we know for a fact that wavions, when positively charged, move backward in time.”
David opened his mouth to speak. Quint cut him off with a curt finger.
“Thanks to their atypical nature, wavion clusters are easy to detect with the right technology. In fact, one of our first discoveries, four years back, was a fist-size concentration in a San Diego parking lot. Soon we discovered a handful of others, all scattered within a ten-mile radius. They were all the same size, all expanding at the same slow rate. After thirty months, the cluste
rs had each grown into the same specific form.”
“An egg,” David mused.
Quint grinned at him. “Yes. Each eighty-one inches tall and fifty-five inches wide, all invisible to the human eye but very perceptible to our scanners. The images became even more interesting, one year ago, when we began to notice a distinct hollowness inside each formation. To our amazement, every gap took the frozen shape of a human being. Although we’re seeing you today for the first time, we’ve been familiar with your silhouettes for nearly a year.”
The room fell into addled silence. David shook his head. “That’s insane. You’re saying you’ve been observing us for months when it all just happened a few hours ago.”
“Like I said, charged wavions move backward in—”
“He gets the concept,” Zack said. “We all do. We’re just having a hard time stapling it to reality.”
David nodded at Zack. “Exactly. Yes. Just the notion of anything traveling back in time. I mean the logistics, the paradoxes . . .”
The physicists exchanged a brief glance, filled with quizzical interest and—in Czerny’s case—deep astonishment. They’re surprised, Mia noted. Surprised at our surprise.
Quint stroked his chin in careful contemplation. “If there’s one thing we’ve learned in the past five decades, it’s that time is more . . . flexible than we ever imagined. That’s the gentlest explanation I can offer at the moment. You seem like a smart young man, Mr. Dormer, and I’ll be happy to discuss it more in the days to come. But for now, in the interests of keeping things manageable—”
Zack cut him off with a bleak chuckle. “Oh, I think that ship has sailed and sunk, Doctor. But here’s something you can answer. You say you spent four years watching us from a distance, waiting for our eggs to hatch. I wasn’t anywhere near mine when your security goons got me.”
“Me neither,” Amanda added. “I was at least two miles away. How did you find us?”
“You’re still teeming in wavions,” Czerny replied. “They’re emanating from the silver bracelets you share. It’s nothing to fear. The particles are harmless. But they did make you easy to track.”