by Dima Zales
“Well, we’re not in Reader society,” Mira counters. “We’re outcasts, so anything goes.”
“Why is it such a big deal?” I ask, looking from brother to sister.
“In the Reader society proper, it’s like asking someone how much money he’s worth, or the size of his penis,” Eugene explains as Mira chuckles derisively. “The time she asked you about is the measure of our power. It determines Reading Depth, for example, which is how far you can see into your target’s memories. It also determines how long you can keep someone else in there. I’m surprised you even ask this, Darren. It seems self-evident how important this time is, since even without knowing about Reading Depth, there’s the simple matter of longer subjective life experience.”
“Of what?” I almost choke on my green tea. “What do you mean ‘longer subjective life experience’?”
“You have got to be kidding me,” Mira says, downing a shot of her hot sake. “Don’t you know anything? I feel educated all of a sudden, and this is coming from a high school dropout.”
I don’t even question the dropout comment. I’m still on the life experience thing.
“You don’t age while in the Mind Dimension,” Eugene says. “So the longer you can stay there, the more you can experience.”
“You don’t age?” I can’t believe I didn’t think of it myself. If you don’t eat or sleep, why am I surprised that you don’t age?
“No, there’s no aging that anyone’s ever noticed,” Eugene says. “And some of the Enlightened, the most powerful among us, can and do spend a long time in there.”
I just sit there trying to readjust my whole world, which is becoming a common occurrence today.
When the waiter comes back, I order my usual Japanese favorite on autopilot. Eugene and Mira order as well.
“It’s not that strange, if you think about it,” Mira says when the waiter is out of earshot. “Time stands still there, or seems to.”
“We don’t know that,” Eugene says. “It could also be that we’re not there in a real, physical sense. Only our minds, or more specifically, our consciousness.”
Mira rolls her eyes at him, but my mind is blown. “I was always bored when I spent too much time in there. I only used it when I was under some time crunch,” I tell them, realizing all the opportunities I missed so far. “If I had only known . . . Are you saying that with every book I read in the physical world, I was literally wasting my life away—since I could’ve done it in the Quiet and not aged by those hours?”
“Yes,” Mira says unkindly. “You were wasting your life away, as you are wasting ours right now.”
She uses sarcasm so much that I’ve already become accustomed to it. It barely registers now. I’m more caught up in thinking about all the times I wasted hours of my life and the many millions of things I could’ve done in the Quiet. If only I had known that it would add more time to my life—or rather, not take time away from it. All this time, I thought I was just taking shortcuts.
“Well, I’m so glad I met you guys,” I say finally. “Just knowing this one thing alone will literally change my life.”
“Oh, and Reading wouldn’t have?” Eugene winks.
I grin at him. “For that too, I’m forever in your debt and all that.”
“Why don’t you repay that debt a little by answering my question,” Mira says, looking at me.
“Will you tell me yours if I tell you mine?” I joke.
“See how quickly his gratitude dissipates and turns into the usual tit for tat?” Mira says snarkily to Eugene.
I’m so flabbergasted by all the revelations that it barely registers that Mira just made a joke about tits.
“It’s a deal,” Eugene says, answering for his sister.
We pause our conversation when our food arrives. Eugene is served a three-roll special, Mira has a sushi bento box, and I have my sashimi deluxe. I’m a big fan of sushi—to me, it’s like an edible work of art.
Returning to our discussion of how long I can stay in the Quiet, I say, “I can’t give you an exact amount of time.” Grabbing a piece of fatty salmon with my chopsticks, I explain, “As I said, I eventually get bored and phase out.”
“But what’s the longest you’ve ever been inside?” Eugene asks, adding a huge wad of wasabi into his tiny soy sauce bowl.
“A couple of days,” I say. “I never really kept track of time.”
Mira and Eugene exchange strange looks.
“You don’t fall out of the Mind Dimension for a couple of days?” Mira says.
“What do you mean ‘fall out’? I get bored and touch my skin to phase out. Is that what you mean?”
They exchange those looks again.
“No, Darren, she means fall out,” Eugene says, looking at me like I’m some exotic animal. “When we reach our limit to being in that mode, what you call the Quiet, we involuntarily re-enter our bodies. For me, that happens after about fifteen minutes, which is considered pretty standard.”
“I’m slightly above average for Readers, and practically a prodigy for a half-blood,” Mira says, echoing his stare. “And my max time is a half hour. So you must see how this sounds to us. You’re saying you can stay there for two entire days—or even longer, since you’ve never been pushed out.”
“Right,” I say, looking at them. “I never realized that was anything abnormal—well, more abnormal than going into the Quiet in the first place.”
Eugene looks fascinated. “That would mean your mother had to have been extremely powerful. Almost at the Enlightened level, if you’ve never been forced out thus far.”
“But if you get forced out, can’t you just go right back in?” I say, confused.
“Are you messing with us?” Mira’s eyes narrow.
“I think he really doesn’t know,” Eugene says. “Darren, once we get pushed out, we can’t go right back in. The recuperation time is proportional to how long we can stay there, though it’s not directly related. There’s a strong inverse correlation between short recovery times and longer times in the Mind Dimension. So the elites get the best of both worlds: a short recovery time and a long time inside. How it all works in the brain is actually my area of research.”
“Eugene, please, not the neuroscience again,” Mira says with exasperation before turning her attention to me. “Darren, if you truly don’t know about recuperation time, then your power must be off the charts. Only I didn’t think a half-blood could have that much power.” The look she gives me now is unsettling. I think I prefer disdain. This look is calculating, as though she’s sizing me up.
“You have to let me study you,” Eugene tells me. “So we can figure out some answers.”
“Sure, I guess. It’s the least I can do,” I say uncertainly.
“Great. How about tomorrow?” Eugene looks excited.
“Hmm. Maybe the day after?”
He smiles. “Let me guess, you’re going to spend a whole day going around Reading people’s minds, aren’t you?”
“Good guess,” I say, smiling back.
“Okay. Thursday then,” he says. He looks ecstatic at the prospect of putting more electrodes to my head.
“So, I can’t Read another Reader’s mind?” I ask as I eat a piece of pickled ginger. This is a question that’s been bothering me for a bit.
“No. But I bet you wish you could,” Mira answers, downing the last of her sushi.
“It’s only possible to do that to someone before they learn to Split for the first time, when they’re children,” Eugene explains. “Once people have experienced the Split, they simply get pulled into your Mind Dimension with you if you try to Read them.”
“And if you and I manage to Split at the same time?” I ask. “Would we see each other in there?”
“Now you’re getting into very specific and rare stuff,” Eugene says. “It’s almost impossible to time it that perfectly. Dad and I managed it only once. Even if you did, you’ll find that, no, you see the world still, as usual, but you don�
��t encounter each other. The only way to have a joint experience is to pull someone in. If either of you touches the other, the other will get pulled in. Once that happens, you’ll be using up the time of the person whose Mind Dimension you’re in.”
“Using up the time?” I ask, finishing the last bit of my sashimi. This was amazing fish, I realize belatedly.
“As you bring people with you, your time is shared with them. If I pull you in, together we would stay in my Mind Dimension for about seven or eight minutes—about half of my fifteen-minute total. Similarly, how deep you go into someone’s memories is half your total time.”
The Reading Depth thing gives me an idea. If what Eugene says is right, then I think I have a better gauge of my ‘power’ based on my Reading of Eugene and Mira’s neighbor, Brad. That sci-fi flick that he and Mira watched at the theater left the big screen at least six months ago—which means that I can spend at least a year in the Quiet.
As blown away as I am by this realization, something prevents me from sharing this information with my new friends. They looked awestruck at the mention of two days. What would they say to a year? And how do I reconcile this and being a half-blood? How powerful is Sara, to give birth to someone like me?
“What’s the maximum power a Reader can have?” I ask instead.
“That’s something even people who are part of the regular Reader society probably don’t know,” Mira says. “And even if they did, they wouldn’t share that information with us.”
“There are legends, though,” Eugene says. “Legends of the Enlightened, who were wise well beyond their years. It was as though they’d led whole extra lifetimes. Of course, some of these stories seem more like mythology than history.”
Myth or not, the stories sound fascinating. Before I get a chance to think about them, however, I’m interrupted by the waiter who brings our check. I insist on paying despite a few feeble complaints from Eugene. It’s part of my thank you to them, I say.
When we exit the restaurant, I tell them, “I wish we could talk for hours on end, but there’s something I have to do now.”
“You could pull us into the Mind Dimension and chat away; this way you wouldn’t be late for your appointment,” Mira says, giving me a sly look.
“Mira.” Eugene sounds chiding again.
She must be breaking another Reader social rule I’m not aware of. Using someone for time, perhaps? It doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t mind doing what she’s asking if I wasn’t dying of curiosity. “It’s not about being late,” I explain apologetically. “It’s about asking my mom some serious questions.”
“Oh, in that case, good luck,” Mira says, her voice sympathetic for the first time.
“Thanks. Do you guys know where I can rent a car around here?”
Going to Staten Island from Brooklyn, or from anywhere for that matter, is best to do by car. There’s a ferry from downtown, but no thanks. That requires taking a bus afterwards. And the ferry is unpleasant enough by itself.
Though Eugene and Mira don’t know about rentals, my trusty phone does. According to it, there’s a rental place a couple of blocks away. Since it’s on the way to their apartment, I get an armed escort to the place—Mira with her gun. I’m grateful for that, as I’m still not a fan of their neighborhood. On our short walk, we talk some more about Readers. Despite Mira’s complaints, Eugene starts telling me about his research.
It sounds like he’s trying to find neural correlates that accompany what Readers do. That discovery might lead to knowing how the process works. He thinks he knows approximately what goes on, all the way up to the Split. After that moment, things get complicated because technology is finicky in the Quiet, and the instruments remaining in the real world don’t register anything—proving that no time passes in the real world after we phase in.
I only half-listen. It all sounds fascinating, but in my mind, I’m already having a conversation with Sara.
When we reach the rental place, I enter both Eugene’s and Mira’s phone numbers into my phone, and they get mine. We say our goodbyes. Eugene shakes my hand enthusiastically. “It was great to meet you, Darren.”
“Likewise,” I say. “It was great meeting you both.”
Mira walks up to me, and gives me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. I stand there wondering if that means she likes me, or if it’s just a Russian thing. Whatever the reason for her actions, it was nice. I can still smell a hint of her perfume.
When they begin to head back, I turn to enter the car rental place. Before I do, I’m pulled into the Quiet again.
It’s Mira.
“Darren,” she says, “I want to thank you. I haven’t seen Eugene this happy, this animated, for a long time.”
“Don’t mention it. I like your brother,” I say, smiling. “I’m glad I had that effect on him.”
“I also wanted to say that, as he is my brother, I, above all, don’t want to see him hurt.”
“That makes sense.” I nod agreeably.
“Then we have an understanding,” she says evenly. “If this whole thing is a lie, I’ll be extremely upset.” Her eyes gleam darkly. “To put it in other words, if you hurt my brother in any way, I will kill you.”
She turns around and walks to her frozen body, which is standing a few feet away.
I don’t get a hug this time around.
Chapter 12
I’m driving the piece-of-shit car I picked up at the rental place. They didn’t have anything nice, but at least this thing has Bluetooth, so I’m listening to Enigma’s “T.N.T. for the Brain” from my phone on the car speakers. I raise the volume to the max.
In a confused stupor, trying to digest everything I’ve learned today, I follow my phone’s GPS directions. I know I need the Belt Parkway and the Verrazano Bridge after that, but once I get on Staten Island, I typically get lost—usually only a few blocks from where my moms live.
I called ahead to make sure they were home, but mentioned nothing of what I want to discuss. I plan to ambush them with my questions. They deserve it. I love them dearly, but I’ve never been angrier with them than I am now—not even during my rebellious mid-teen years. I’m especially mad at Sara.
Alternative lifestyle aside, Sara and Lucy are living, breathing stereotypes of two similar, yet different, kinds of moms.
Take Sara, for instance. She’s a Jewish mom to the core. Never mind that she’s the most secular person you’ll ever meet. Never mind that she married a non-Jew, which isn’t kosher. She still regularly hints—and sometimes outright says—that since I’ve finished my degree from a good school (of course), I should meet a nice girl (meaning a Jewish girl) and settle down. At twenty-one. Right. And she has all the usual guilt-trip skills down to a T. For example, if I don’t call for a couple of days, I get the whole ‘you don’t need to trouble yourself to call your own mother; it’s not like I’m in any way important,’ et cetera, et cetera. And then there’s the weird stuff, like if I’m out late and make the mistake of mentioning it to her, she’ll want me to text her when I get home. Yeah. Never mind that on other nights—when I don’t talk to her—I might not come home at all, and she’s fine with my lack of texting.
Lucy is no better. Well, in truth, Lucy is better now. She only expects a call from me once a week, not daily. But when I was growing up, she was worse than Sara. She must’ve read that book about being a Tiger Mom and tried to apply it literally, with probably the worst possible subject—me. In hindsight, I think I had ADHD when I was a kid. When it came to the violin lessons she tried to force me to take, I ‘accidentally’ broke a dozen of the stupid instruments to test her resolve. When I broke the last one (over another student’s head), I was expelled, and that did it for musical initiatives. Then there were the ballet lessons. I was kicked out for beating up a girl, which was not true. I knew from a very early age that you don’t hit girls. Another girl pushed the victim, but I, because of my reputation in the class, took the rap. Lucy also wanted me to learn her native Mandarin. I don�
�t care if I mastered a little bit from her when I was a baby, or that I can string together a few sentences even to this day; that was just not going to happen. If I’d studied Mandarin for her, I would’ve had to take Yiddish lessons for Sarah, too. Oy vey.
So, finishing school early and going to Harvard was partially an attempt to make my mothers happy, but even more so a means to get away from their overzealous parenting techniques and experience some freedom in Boston. Not to mention that finishing college allowed me to get a job and my own place as soon as possible. Ever since I gained some distance, my love for my family has deepened greatly.
As I pull into their driveway, I see three cars outside. I recognize the extra car as Uncle Kyle’s old Crown Victoria.
Great, he’s here. That’s the last thing I need.
“Hi Mom,” I say when Sara opens the door. I’ve never really seen much of myself in her, which makes me wonder that much more now about who my father might have been. We both have blue eyes, and I could’ve inherited her height, I guess. At five foot seven, she’s tall for a woman. She seems particularly tall when, like now, she’s standing next to my other mom. Lucy is barely above five feet tall, but don’t let her size deceive you. She’s tough. Plus, she has a gun—and knows how to use it.
“Hi sweetie,” Sara says, beaming at me.
“Hi Mom,” I say again, this time looking at Lucy.
“Hi Kitten,” Lucy says.
Hmm. Are they trying to embarrass me in front of Uncle Kyle?
“Hey Kyle,” I say with a lot less enthusiasm as I walk in.
He smiles at me, a rarity from him, and we shake hands.
I have mixed feelings when it comes to Kyle. Even though I mentally call him uncle, he’s not my blood relative. Sara was an only child. He’s a detective who works with Lucy. As former partners, I guess he and Lucy are close—a camaraderie I don’t pretend to understand, having never put my life in danger the way they have.