by Daniel Price
“Let them sleep,” said Azral. “They had a trying day. I would like to meet your staff, however. Please summon them.”
By 2 A.M., the physicists and Salgados had assembled in the lobby, sleepy and perplexed. To all subordinates, even Czerny, Azral Pelletier was merely an obscure Canadian philanthropist who’d given Quint carte blanche to run the operation. Azral did little to counter that notion. He shook everyone’s hands, congratulated them on their fine work, then wished them a merry evening.
Esis smirked at Quint’s befuddlement. “If you saw the strings like we do, you’d know the need for this charade. My wealth labors now to prevent future difficulties.”
Once the staff left to return to their homes and beds, Azral summoned a new portal in the wall. He turned around at the rippling surface and looked to Quint.
“Keep Maranan isolated. Until he recovers from his alcohol addiction, he’ll be a negative presence among the others.”
“And be extra nice to David,” Esis added, with a teasing smirk. “He’s my favorite.”
“I’ll do that. I promise. But . . .”
The pair eyed Quint quizzically, waiting for him to finish his thought.
“I’ve followed your instructions for five years now, Azral. I’ve done everything you asked. I’m just wondering when I finally get the chance to learn about you. I mean . . . where do you come from? When do you come from? What’s your ultimate purpose with these people?”
The Pelletiers smiled with enough wry amusement to make Quint regret his outburst.
“How soon you turn from seeking forgiveness to favor,” Azral mocked.
“I’m a scientist. Do you expect me to be incurious?”
“We expect you to be patient, Sterling. This is just the beginning of our relationship. For now, your focus should be on the Silvers. Keep them comfortable. Keep them content.”
“Our task will be simpler if they remain here willingly,” Esis added.
Quint’s thoughts turned to Zack, who’d been so stubborn and clever about securing an independent future. “And if they choose to leave?”
Azral’s deep blue gaze turned chillingly severe. “Then this won’t be the beginning at all.”
The couple disappeared into the shimmering circle. It shrank away to nothingness.
As he waited for his thumping heart to settle, Quint cursed himself for his whimpering subservience. For all he knew, Azral was a mediocrity in his native era—a fraud, a mental patient. And yet here was the great Sterling Quint, begging for knowledge like a dog begged for scraps.
Still, indignity was a small price to pay for this scientific windfall, a chance to forever rise above his simpering peers. For the greater prize, Quint resolved to do his job. Most important, he’d do it without any more mistakes. On the short list of things he didn’t want to learn from Azral was how he handled the people who disappointed him.
—
Hannah pulled away from Theo and studied him. When she first met him, he looked like a shipwreck victim. Now his face was clean-shaven and his hair was trimmed to a more civilized shag.
“I had no idea you were awake,” she said. “I must have asked about you a hundred times. All they told me was that you were hanging in there.”
Theo processed her with awkward, busy eyes. She recognized the look.
“You forgot my name, didn’t you? It’s all right. I’m Hannah.”
Czerny stepped in. “I’m afraid it’s worse than that. Due to his unfortunate mishap, he doesn’t remember his first day here.”
She looked to Theo again. “You don’t remember me at all? That talk we had in the van?”
As he raised his palms in shrugging remorse, his sleeves rolled back, revealing the Asian script tattoo on his left wrist and the shiny silver bracelet on his right. It had been nearly two weeks since Zack removed her own bangle. She never thought she’d have to look at one again.
“Okay, well, I can fill you in later. I’m just glad you’re all right.”
Theo thanked her, even though the state of all-rightness seemed about as distant as Alpha Centauri. He’d spent the last month tucked away in his one-man rehab unit on the second floor, with his own catered meals, his own lumivision, his own sweaty struggles. On the upside, he was truly sober for the first time in years. That made him only slightly prepared to be integrated with the other survivors. He was only slightly ready to hear what Quint had to say.
The esteemed physicist motioned Theo to the empty chair. “If you would.”
Theo sat down at the end of the row, drumming a nervous beat on his leg. The cartoonist offered him a smile and a handshake. “Zack Trillinger.”
“Theo Maranan. Hi. Did we, uh, also meet before?”
“Nope. This is our first time.”
“Okay,” he said, suppressing the hot urge to laugh. Zack already seemed as familiar as a best friend. He had no idea why.
Quint nodded to Czerny, who dimmed the lights and switched on the lumiplex. He cleared his throat, then the presentation began.
—
The first image to appear on the screen was a satellite photo of the world. Though Czerny ran the projector-like device from the other side of the room, Quint was able to move in front of it without casting a shadow or wearing the swirling colors of Earth on his skin.
“To start, I’d like to thank you all for your patience. You’ve gotten a lot of nonanswers to a lot of pressing questions. I know how frustrating that can be. Believe me, it was never our goal to keep you in the dark. We just want to portion out the information in a way that doesn’t overwhelm you. Given all the strife with your physical anomalies, you can understand why we’d hold off on discussing the many quirks and differences of this new world.”
Theo scanned his fellow refugees, wondering if he’d failed to notice goat horns or cat eyes. When David caught his gaze, he turned his attention back to Quint.
“But now we feel enough progress has been made to attempt a basic orientation. This is only the first of what I hope to be many sessions. For today, we’ll start small. Constantin.”
Czerny pressed a button on the lumiplex. The wide shot of Earth changed to an illustration of an ancient Egyptian pyramid. As Quint spoke, familiar images advanced in quick order. The crucifixion of Christ. The Mona Lisa. The American Civil War. The montage ended with a grainy photo of a walrus-like man in a dark business suit.
“From our many interviews with you, we feel confident that the history of your world and ours are identical up to the early twentieth century. The man on-screen, William Howard Taft, is the last president our two Americas have in common.”
Mia and Zack scribbled into their respective books. Zack’s notation was a quick doodle of Taft, with “1912?” written underneath.
Quint continued. “So, what changed? What was the first thing to happen on one Earth but not the other? Under current limitations, it’d be impossible to pinpoint the exact moment in which our timelines diverged.”
The screen changed to a black slide with a single line of text. October 5, 1912.
“However, we’ve identified the first major event to occur on just one Earth. That was simply a matter of asking. We learned that the date on-screen holds no significance to any of you. And yet it’s a day that everyone on this world knows by heart. It even has its own holiday.”
Now the screen gave way to a movie clip, a pulled-back view of a grand old city at the brink of dawn.
“This scene is from a 1978 historical drama called The Halo of Gotham. In addition to being one of the most acclaimed films of all time, it provides an extremely faithful reenactment of the event I’m about to discuss. There’s no footage of the actual—”
“What city is that?” Hannah interjected.
“New York,” said Zack.
“This is New York,” Quint replied with mild annoyance. “Hence the �
�Gotham.’ Anyway, on the fifth of October, 1912, at 5:52 in the morning, the entire—”
The Silvers gasped as a dome of white light erupted in the center of the city. It grew in all directions, devouring everything in its path. By the time Czerny paused the video, the dome had overtaken the scene, splitting the clouds and stretching deep across the landscape.
“We call it the Cataclysm,” Quint said. “A massive discharge of energy centered in northern Brooklyn, in the area once known as Winthrop Park. In five seconds, the burst expanded 4.7 miles in every direction, destroying 24 percent of Queens, 22 percent of Brooklyn, and 68 percent of Manhattan. Everything below the upper reaches of Central Park.”
Hannah and Theo covered their mouths. Amanda watched the screen in wincing anguish.
“How many people?”
“A little over two million,” Quint replied.
Mia clenched her jaw in tight suppression. She was a hairsbreadth away from bawling at the unbearable fragility of existence, but she didn’t want to cry. Not here. Not in front of Sterling Quint, a man who had a very cruel definition of “starting small.”
“To call this a transformational event would be an understatement,” he continued. “For America and the entire world, everything changed in an instant. Countless books have been written about the rippling effects of the Cataclysm—on culture, on politics, the economy. Those are all topics for another time. For now, I want to discuss how the event forever changed science.”
The projection advanced to sepia-toned photos of the altered New York landscape. A quarter skyline of Manhattan. A ten-story building, maimed at the base by a giant curved bite. A bird’s-eye view of Central Park, with a diagonal arc of wreckage separating the surviving greenery from acres upon acres of flat gray ash.
“As you can imagine, the mystery of the Cataclysm became a top priority for scientists worldwide. The explosion clearly wasn’t man-made, as the damage went far beyond the limits of any human weapon. It left no heat signature, no radioactive fallout. A person standing just five feet outside the blast radius could have gone on to live for decades. In fact, the last known survivor from that famous halo—an infant at the time—only recently passed away.”
The next image was an old photo of three pale men in lab coats, posing in front of an elaborate machine. David motioned to the one in the center.
“That’s Niels Bohr. He was my father’s idol.”
Quint smiled. “Mine as well. Though the cause of the Cataclysm has yet to be discovered, the energy itself was successfully reproduced by Bohr and his fellow Danish scientists in 1933. They called it the femtekraft, or ‘fifth force.’ Over the next two decades, it went on to adopt many other monikers. White force, whitewave, nivius, cretatis. In 1955, when its true nature was at long last discovered, it took on its final name. Temporis.”
The screen went blank. The overhead lights came on. The Silvers all winced in adjustment.
“Today we know enough about temporic energy to fill a library,” Quint declared. “And yet it’ll take a dozen more generations to get a true grasp of its nature. Simply put, the Danes had it right. Temporis is yet another governing force of the universe, the quantum building blocks of what we perceive as time. Though the cost was great, the Cataclysm triggered a scientific revolution like none other. We’ve acquired the means to bend time like a prism bends light. More than bend it, we can stretch it, harden it, even reverse it. Through temporis, we’ve accessed the watchworks of existence itself.”
Quint could see from his guests’ fidgety stances that he was flustering them. He swallowed the rest of his spiel and took the shortcut back to their concerns.
“For the last few weeks, you’ve wondered if you’re unique in your abilities. The answer is both yes and no. With the exception of one of you, all the amazing things you can do have been done countless times before by others, myself included. The difference between you and us, what truly makes you special, is your innate ability to wield temporis.”
He gestured at the showcase of gadgets behind him. “The rest of us need machines.”
Quint moved to the left side of the room and opened the door of a boxy white appliance that looked like a quarter-scale clothes dryer. He retrieved a banana from inside and tossed it at Zack.
“Before I demonstrate the first device, would you do me a favor and age that?”
“Uh, okay.”
Though the act of reversing had become as simple as third-grade math, Zack had a trickier time sending objects the other way. He grimaced with effort. Soon the banana turned spotted, then brown, then pungently rotten. Quint directed him to put it back in the machine.
As Zack returned to his seat, Theo drank him in with saucer eyes. “Jesus Christ.”
“I know. Trippy, isn’t it?”
Quint closed the door, then pressed a few buttons on the contraption’s keypad. The box quietly whirred.
“This machine is known as a rejuvenator or, informally, a juve. The technology was invented in 1975 but didn’t reach the consumer market until 1980. At first there were certain issues with tooping, which we can talk about another day.”
The juve let out a high ding. Quint popped the door, then brandished a perfect yellow banana to his audience.
“As you see, the device matches Zack’s talents by creating a localized field that reverses the flow of time. It can restore anything that fits inside it, though it does irreparable damage to electronic circuits and batteries. Its primary function is exactly what was demonstrated: the restoration of food. Today you’ll rarely find a kitchen without one.”
Zack wasn’t sure how to react. From the moment he gained control of his weirdness, he’d felt like a borderline superhero. Now he realized he was only as skilled as a common household appliance. He was as impressive as the hero who could turn bread into toast.
“Can it also advance an object’s timeline?” David asked.
“Yes. That feature’s used for accelerated defrosting and marinating.”
Amanda thought about the coffin-size device she’d noticed in the ambulance on her traumatic first day. “What about people? Couldn’t that same technology be used to heal?”
“Good question. There is indeed a device that works on the same principles. It’s called a reviver. They’re expensive and highly regulated. You need a special medical license to operate them.”
Zack snapped out of his dolor. “Wait a minute. If you guys have the technology to undo all the bad things that happen to people, wouldn’t that eliminate the nagging problem of, you know, death?”
Amanda nodded. “That’s what I was wondering.”
“Unfortunately, no,” Quint replied. “As human beings are far more complex than your average food product, there are risks in using temporis to revert people to a prior state—neurological issues, vascular problems, infertility. The further you bend the clock, the greater the chance of adverse effects. As a result, revivers are mostly limited to life-or-death situations, and usually for traumas that are less than twelve hours old. It’s certainly not a tool for fighting something like cancer.”
Mia raised her hand until Quint acknowledged her. “What about the recently deceased? I mean if someone died six hours ago and you reverse them seven hours . . .”
“Revivers can indeed restore the spark of life to a dead body, but not a dead brain. The temporis turns a corpse into a living vegetable, and even that typically lasts a couple of hours until death comes again. The technology gets more sophisticated each year, so who knows how long these limits will remain? I can say that revivers are much safer on animals. Veterinarians use them to extend the life of household pets.”
Hannah gaped with revelation. “Oh, that’s what it was.”
Upon receiving a roomful of glassy stares, she described the first person she met on this world, a pony-haired teenage activist who sat outside a supermarket, urging a stop to pet
extensions. Hannah finally knew what the term meant, but she couldn’t understand the controversy.
“There are people out there who see all forms of time manipulation as unnatural,” Quint explained. “Even unholy. And then there are other, more rational individuals who simply believe that animals, like people, have a right to die with dignity. When you consider that the oldest dog in America is currently forty-one years old, it’s hard to dismiss their argument.”
David whistled in wonder. “Forty-one. That’s amazing.”
“It’s awful,” said Mia. “You’d think that poor dog would want to die at this point.”
Quint shook his head. “Keep in mind that reversal is total. When you undo a year of life, you undo a year of memories. From the dog’s perspective, he’s merely reliving the same year over and over. He’s frozen at a mental age of ten.”
“Huh. Just like Zack.”
Half the room erupted in chuckles. Zack wagged a wry finger at Hannah. “Well played. Well timed. I hate you, but kudos.”
Theo clenched his fists until they throbbed. He was two bombshells away from structural collapse, and yet the others seemed to be handling it just fine. Why aren’t they freaking out? Why am I the only one ready to scream?
Unamused by Zack and Hannah’s silliness, Quint motioned Charlie Merchant to the stage. The slender young physicist looked slightly ridiculous in his blue rubber suit. Insulated wires connected his thick gloves to a small electronic console on his back. The Silvers watched in quiet bemusement as he wrapped a dangling hood over his head and snapped a clear bresin guard-mask over his face.
Hannah winced with concern. “He’s not about to get younger, is he?”
“No,” Quint replied. “You in particular will appreciate what he’s about to do.”
Charlie pressed a button on his glove. The device on his back whirred to life. A mesh of glowing blue lines appeared on his suit. Before the Silvers could process the odd display, he dashed back and forth across the stage—fifty feet each way, five times in each direction.
He did this all in a blurry six seconds.