by Daniel Price
Zack curtly shrugged. “Okay, fine. But none of this explains how we got here.”
“Or where ‘here’ is,” Hannah added.
“Or what these things are,” said David, brandishing his bracelet.
Quint nodded at them with forced patience. “Yes. These are all pertinent questions. Mr. Trillinger, we don’t have an answer for you. Not yet. We can’t even offer a working theory until we speak with all of you in detail and get a better sense of the events leading up to your arrival. Mr. Dormer, we don’t have an answer for you either. Not yet. Now that we have the broken pieces of Ms. Given’s bracelet, we’re very eager to study them.”
Hannah didn’t learn until Czerny’s introductions that Amanda had dropped her married name. She’d thrown her sister a baffled look, only to get a vague and heavy expression in reply.
Now Quint turned to Hannah. “In answer to your question, I can only tell you what you already suspected. You’re on Earth, but a far different version than the one you knew.”
Hearing it out loud, delivered so bluntly, was enough to make several stomachs churn with stress.
“We’ve made tremendous advances in the field of temporal science,” Quint continued. “But for all our progress, our understanding of alternate timelines has never advanced beyond hypotheticals. I’ve devoted my career to these theories, but it’s not until today that I’ve been graced with proof. Actual living proof. Trust me when I say that your arrival is unprecedented. There’s nothing on record that’s even remotely similar to what we’re seeing now.”
Zack threw his hands up in frustration. Quint pursed his lips.
“You still seem to have a problem, Mr. Trillinger.”
“As a matter of fact, I do. Look, don’t get me wrong. You’re excited and I’m happy for you. But at the moment, you have five people—sorry, six—who couldn’t give a crap about the advancement of temporal science. We’re confused and scared as hell. If you don’t have answers to the big questions, then at least tell us what you plan to do with us. And before you say we’re not prisoners here, you can drop the whole Mister/Miss thing. It’s not helping my tummy ache.”
Quint leaned back in his chair and eyed the cartoonist for a long, cool moment. “As you correctly guessed, Zack, we’re not holding you here. You can leave anytime you want. But you seem like a clever man, so I probably don’t need to tell you that you’re not equipped to venture out on your own. You have no contacts, no valid identity, no legal currency, and little to no information about your new environment. You’re not just foreigners here. You’re aliens. It would be in your best interest to stay with us, at least in the short term.”
“As it stands, I agree with you, Sterling. But I’m thinking ahead. And I believe I speak for the others when I say we don’t want to spend the rest of our lives as specimens.”
“Understandable, but—”
“Good. Now surely a smart man such as yourself realizes that without options, we are prisoners here. So I suggest a deal, a Quint pro quo if it tickles you. We tell you everything we know about our world, you tell us everything you know about yours. We give you our time, our testimony, our spit samples, whatever. In exchange, you give us money. A thousand dollars a week for each of us. You can keep it all in a safe until we choose to leave. I don’t care. The important thing is that when we do leave, we won’t be as helpless as you so eloquently described.”
All eyes turned back to Quint. He studied Zack through a face of stone.
“That all sounds perfectly reasonable.”
“Good. See? We’re connecting now. But before we shake on it, I’m adding a rider. No invasive medical tests without our consent. You tell us what you’re doing before you do it, and if we don’t like it, you stop. That’s a deal breaker.”
Quint narrowed his eyes in umbrage. “You seem to have a sinister notion about our methods.”
“I don’t know crap about your methods. I’m just covering all bases. As you said, we’re aliens here. Should we happen to do alien things, like sprout a third eye or levitate, I just want to make sure there are limits to your scientific curiosity. If you were in our shoes, you’d want the same comfort.”
Amanda suddenly realized, with dizzying inertia, what a good thing it was to have Zack around.
“That’s easy to agree to,” said Quint, “as we’re not in the habit of vivisection. Anything else?”
“Actually, yes. Not a rider. A question.” Zack launched a cursory glance around the room, studying every corner of the ceiling. “Got any hidden cameras in the building?”
In the all-too-telling silence, Mia felt a hot rush of blood behind her face. Oh God . . .
“It’s not a big deal,” Zack said. “You’ve known for a year that those eggs would hatch people. I assume you prepared for us. You know, cameras, beds, a medical lab. Makes sense. I just want to know.”
David saw Czerny’s knuckles curl tightly around his pen. Quint remained stoic.
“Yes. We have cameras.”
The sisters cracked the same frosty scowl.
“I wish someone had told me that before I showered,” Hannah griped.
“I wish someone had told us in general,” Amanda said. “This isn’t the way to get our trust.”
Quint shook his head. “I apologize. It wasn’t our intent to deceive you. Ever since the six of you appeared, we’ve been scrambling to catch up. Rest assured you’re only being monitored for your own well-being. Furthermore, in the privacy of your rooms, you’re only being watched by someone of your own gender. This I swear.”
“And of course you swear not to release any footage of us without our consent,” Zack said.
“Yes,” Quint replied, with all the warmth of a glacier. “Of course.”
Sensing the end of his employer’s affability, Czerny stood up.
“Look, you’ve all been through an unprecedented trauma, and you’re all coping with remarkable bravery. It won’t seem like it now, but you’re very fortunate. Fortunate to be alive. Fortunate to be together. And fortunate to be here with us. No one knows more about parallel world theory than Dr. Quint. If anyone can solve this puzzle, he can. In the meantime, have patience and have faith. You’re going to be okay.”
The guests sat in anxious silence, their muddled thoughts bubbling with a thousand and one concerns. Despite all of Quint’s rosy promises, Zack knew there was no way on Earth—any Earth—these scientists would let such prize discoveries walk away. To truly leave, they’d have to run. It wasn’t a plan right now—it was an option. Zack needed one, as much as the fair and fiery redhead needed a benevolent God.
As his head throbbed and his inner self screamed with childlike hysterics, the cartoonist leaned back in his seat and forced a cheery grin.
“Well, that was a fine presentation, gentlemen. I’m sold. When’s lunch?”
—
They spent the afternoon in an aggregate daze, more like ghosts than guests. They gazed out windows without truly looking, flipped through books without really reading, and wandered the hallways with no clear purpose or direction.
As the sky turned to dusk, a pair of scientists arrived with bags of store-bought clothing—a generic assortment of T-shirts and sweatpants, plus the most basic cotton socks and undies. Soon the refugees stopped looking like day spa clients and now resembled an intramural volleyball team. Mia noticed, with silent distaste, that Hannah had seized the snuggest tank top in the collection. Yes. We get it. You’re blessed.
An hour later, their evening meal arrived by physicist. Whereas lunch had been a casual buffet set on the pool table, Czerny had opened up the dining room for supper. In its hotel days, it was known as Chancer’s, an upscale bar and bistro that hosted gospel brunches on Sundays. The scientists had briefly used it as a cafeteria before shyly settling back to desk dining.
The guests served themselves from steaming tins. Aman
da and Zack were the first to sit down, each with a grilled chicken breast and a scoop of pasta salad.
“They’re sure leaving us to ourselves a lot,” Amanda observed.
“They’re probably giving us a day or two to adjust. I figure come Monday . . .”
Zack trailed off as Amanda lowered her head and closed her eyes in prayer. Hannah wasn’t sure if the blessing was real or just a showy middle finger to Zack. She didn’t know how anyone could thank God after everything that happened today.
The actress sat down with a plate full of greens, the only thing her ailing stomach could handle. “Okay, here’s a stupid question. If we’re on an alternate Earth, does that mean there are alternate versions of us walking around somewhere?”
“No,” said David, from the serving table.
“Doubtful,” Zack added.
“Why not?”
Zack lazily motioned to David. The boy sighed and turned around to Hannah. “Okay, obviously our two worlds have a shared timeline. If they didn’t, people wouldn’t be speaking English here. They might not even be humans as we know them. So clearly our histories split at some point. From what Dr. Czerny told me, they still have Abraham Lincoln on their pennies. But from what Zack discovered, they separated California in 1940. That suggests the point of divergence occurred sometime between the American Civil War and the start of World War Two.”
Mia stood behind David, eyeing him with rapt fascination as he expounded.
“Now, even if it’s the latter end of that spectrum, the butterfly effect can change a lot in seven or eight decades. Our grandparents may have still existed as children, but the odds of them meeting and breeding as adults, then the odds of their own children meeting and breeding as adults . . . it’s just astronomically small. And that’s not even factoring the biology. The same sperm, the same gestational factors, the same hereditary toss-ups. At the most, you’d have a genetic relative walking around. But as you and Amanda prove, even genetic siblings can look quite different from each other. So, long answer short, no. Don’t expect to find a twin out there.”
In the resulting silence, David surveyed his stunned audience. He raised a cautious brow at Zack. “Was that, uh . . . was my answer somewhat in line with yours?”
The cartoonist chuckled grimly. “I was just going to say it’s cliché. Jesus. I’m glad you went first.”
“How the hell did you put that all together?” Hannah asked David.
“The only thing my dad loved as much as science was science fiction. We read a lot of books together. Guess I picked up a thing or two.”
Amanda bit her lip as she thought back to her own reading nights with her father. “I bet he was so proud of you.”
David rolled his shoulders in a dismal shrug. “I guess so. He wasn’t the type to say.”
As Mia sat down, Zack shined a contemplative gaze at Amanda and Hannah. “David has a point. You two don’t look a thing alike. You’re not half sisters or adopted, right?”
“Full sisters,” Hannah replied. “It’s a little more obvious without our dye jobs.”
“And you both got bracelets,” Zack pondered. “That can’t be coincidence.”
David nodded. “That’s what I said.”
Amanda kept silent as she sliced into her chicken. Zack could see she was agitated by the subject. He didn’t care. He was just a stiff breeze away from a fierce and unseemly breakdown. He needed this distraction.
“Yeah, that’s a hint right there. The question is why would, uh . . .”
His attention was seized by David, who sat down at the table with a teeming plate of green peas. The boy sprinkled heaping dashes of salt onto his pile, then looked up at his four confounded friends.
“Quite an interesting diet there,” Zack said.
“Just fussy,” David replied. “She did mention something about our potential.”
“Who?”
“The woman who gave me my bracelet. Esis.”
“Ee-sis?” asked Hannah.
“Yeah. Tall and lovely woman. She told us—me and my dad—that I was very important. She said that I was part of something larger now, and that I had the potential to help bring about a great and wonderful change to all humanity. That’s not verbatim, of course, but—”
“She’s insane.”
The others looked to Amanda. She aimed her dark gaze down at her plate.
“I’m sorry, David. If we’re talking about the same person, then I wouldn’t trust a single thing she said. She was completely out of her mind.”
From his frigid expression, David clearly didn’t enjoy her analysis. “I had a hunch you met her too. What did she say to you?”
“I don’t remember the specifics. I just know her behavior was completely erratic. One second she was complimenting me, the next she was grabbing my hair. She . . .”
Thinking about her sister, Amanda decided to censor the part where Esis launched across the alley with blurring speed. That part struck a little too close to home now.
“She was just crazy.”
David shrugged. “Well, the Esis I met seemed intelligent and kind. Not even remotely crazy. In either case, you and I would be dead without her intervention.”
“Am I supposed to be grateful? For all we know, they’re the ones behind all this.”
“Oh, come on. You have no evidence to support that.”
Zack raised his palms. “Okay, hold it. Wait. David, I agree we’re getting ahead of ourselves—”
“I don’t even know why we’re talking about this at all,” Amanda snapped. “Can’t we have one night to recover?”
“Hey, I was about to throw you a bone. As it stands, I’m deep on your side of the crazy issue. I didn’t meet this Esis, but I have nothing nice to say about the guy who gave me my bracelet.”
David raised an eyebrow at Zack. “Do tell.”
“There’s not much to tell. He wore a mask. All I could see were his eyes. But he looked like he was having the time of his life while people were burning to death all around us. That alone makes him someone I’d very much like to unmeet and hopefully never come across again.”
“That’s how I feel about Azral,” Hannah added. “The white-haired man. I mean I know he saved my life twice, but he still scares the living—”
“What do you mean twice?” Zack asked.
Hannah could see her sister tense up across the table. She figured any mention of their childhood incident would send Amanda to tears.
She lowered her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
Frustrated, Zack glanced over to Mia, the lone holdout in the conversation. She stabbed at her food with a dismal expression.
“She didn’t see anyone,” David replied on her behalf. “She was asleep when she got her bracelet.”
Zack scratched his neck in edgy thought. “So from the looks of it, we’re dealing with two, possibly three different people.”
Three, the sisters thought in synch.
David scooped another forkful of peas. “We don’t have enough information about them to form any theories.”
“I think we do,” Zack replied. “The fact that Amanda and Hannah are here right now is a big fat clue that these people chose us for genetic reasons. Why else would they give bracelets to two biological—”
With a choked sob, Mia pushed her chair back from the table and fled the room. Amanda rose from her seat, shooting a harsh green glare at Zack before trailing out the door.
The cartoonist sighed at Hannah. “Your sister’s not the most relaxed of women.”
“She just lost her husband.”
“I know. I just . . .” Zack frowned with self-rebuke, then flicked a somber hand. David listlessly poked a fork at his peas.
“We lost people too,” he told Hannah. “We’re just trying to figure out why they died. And why we didn’t.”
Hannah could finally see a hint of strain behind the boy’s handsome face. She figured she could live to be a hundred and still not understand the way men handled their emotions.
Amanda and Mia returned eight minutes later, their faces raw from crying. Mia brushed her bangs over her puffy eyes and stared down at her half-eaten dinner.
“I have four brothers,” she announced, with matter-of-fact aloofness. “I know for a fact that they’re my biological siblings and I’m all but sure they didn’t get bracelets.”
The room fell into bleak silence. Zack placed a hand on Mia’s wrist.
“I have an older brother back in New York. Josh. We’re about as different as two siblings can be, but we get along.” He gestured at Amanda and Hannah. “When I found out these two were sisters, my heart nearly jumped out of my chest because it made me think that maybe he got a bracelet too. Who knows? With all the crazy things that happened today, maybe we both have a brother out there.”
Mia raised her head to look at him. “I don’t know. I hope you’re right.”
By the time Czerny came back to check on them, the clock on the wall had reached 8 P.M. The food had grown cold and the conversation had settled back to mundane mutterings, increasingly hindered by gaping yawns.
Czerny suggested, with droll understatement, that perhaps it was time to call it a day.
—
In a sleepy drove, the group—which Zack took great pleasure in calling the Sterling Quintet—climbed the stairs to the third floor. Zack and David disappeared into their chosen suites without so much as a good-night. Never had a sentiment seemed so pointless.
Amanda urged Mia to share a room with her and Hannah, just for warmth and company. Though tempted, Mia politely declined. She expected to do a lot more crying between now and dawn. She didn’t want to muffle herself out of some misguided sense of courtesy.
After three restless hours, she regretted her decision. No matter what she did, she couldn’t get comfortable in her room. When the lights were off, the darkness pulled her straight back to her morning grave. She could feel the dirt in her hair again, the creepy-crawly bugs on her skin. When the lamp was on, she couldn’t stop thinking about the scientists who watched her every move.