Rabbits

by Terry Miles

  If I were to imagine the Platonic ideal of a waiting area, this is pretty much exactly what I’d come up with—except for one thing. Hanging on the wall behind the receptionist was a huge framed photograph of a willow tree on the shore of a deep blue lake. The photograph was somewhat disconcerting at first glance, because it had been hung upside down.

  “Somebody should be right with you,” the receptionist said.

  “Thanks.” I nodded.

  “Would you like water or coffee?”

  “No, thank you, but…”

  “Yes?”

  “Is that photograph of the tree…”

  “Supposed to be hung upside down?” The receptionist finished my question. “Yes. It’s what the artist intended.” He smiled.

  “You must get that question a lot.”

  “Only every single day.”

  At that moment, Emily Connors rushed into the room and yanked me out of my chair.

  “What the fuck, K?”

  She pushed me out of the foyer back through the double doors and into the long hallway.

  “You have to leave,” she said.

  “Did you kill Crow?”

  “No, I haven’t seen him yet, and you can’t talk like that here.”

  Emily was wearing the exact same clothing she’d been wearing the last time I saw her, when she’d disappeared from the elevator in her friend’s lakeshore mansion.

  “How long has it been since I saw you?” I asked.

  “An hour or two, why?”

  “That’s not true. It’s been days,” I said.

  “Not all dimensions operate in the same temporal space, and crossing over can further distort time as well.”

  “How does that work?” I asked.

  “How the fuck did you find this place?” she asked, ignoring my question.

  “That’s a long story.”

  Emily shook her head. “Okay. You’re going to have to come with me.”

  “Where?”

  She grabbed me, yanked me toward the elevator, and pressed the call button.

  The elevator opened immediately and she pulled me inside.

  “Hang on to this.” She removed something from the back of her skirt and handed it to me. It was a small silver handgun. I didn’t know anything about guns, but it looked like a model that James Bond would carry.

  “A gun? What the fuck, Emily?”

  “Please shut up.” She leaned down, opened a hidden panel on the floor of the elevator, and pressed a button. Then she stood up, grabbed her gun, and slipped it behind her back into the waistband of her jeans like some kind of action movie heroine.

  The elevator started moving down.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Jesus Christ, K. You really need to learn to shut up.”

  The elevator doors opened and we stepped out into an empty room, about fifty feet square. It was cool inside—well below room temperature. The walls were a glossy blackish-green. In the far-left-hand corner was a spiral staircase leading up.

  The building started shaking, but it was strange. I understood that it had to be the building doing the shaking, but it felt like it was the entire world.

  Emily and I leaned against the wall and waited for the tremors to pass.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  “The Radiants are starting to fall apart,” Emily said as she grabbed my hand and pulled me up the spiral staircase. She held the gun in front of her like the lead detective in some kind of network television thriller.

  At the top of the stairs was a door.

  Emily tried it carefully. It was open.

  She put her finger to her lips and we stepped through into the pitch-darkness.

  “What is this place?” I asked as Emily fumbled around for a light.

  “These are my living quarters, K.” Both of us jumped at the sound of Crow’s voice.

  And suddenly the room was illuminated.

  Crow’s living quarters were similar to the penthouse he’d shown me earlier—the same massive windows on one side of the room, almost identical floor-to-ceiling antique bookshelves on the other. And once again, the place was furnished with impressive pieces of art from baroque to midcentury.

  Crow had entered from a nearby door along the same wall about twenty feet from us. He was flanked by two extremely large armed men. They looked like private military Blackwater types.

  “Shit,” Emily said.

  Crow smiled at Emily. “You never stop impressing.”

  “You have to stop,” she said. “The mechanism is failing.”

  “The mechanism, as you call it, is fine. It’s simply going to be reset.”

  At that moment, there was another violent shaking episode. “Things are a little unstable, admittedly,” Crow said, “but it’s nothing to be alarmed about. Humankind isn’t capable of permanently harming the universe.”

  “That’s what they said about the environment, and now look at the polar bears,” Emily said.

  “You’ve always had a great sense of humor,” Crow said, nodding to the security guards who took a couple of steps closer. “I don’t expect you to understand all the intricacies of the work I’ve been doing here, Emily.”

  “Your wife and daughter are gone, Crow. They’re not coming back.”

  Crow’s face twisted up at the mention of his family.

  “Please,” Emily said. “They wouldn’t want you to do this.”

  “You don’t get to have an opinion,” he spat.

  “The Radiants are unstable; they’re decaying rapidly. You have to stop.”

  “Hawk Worricker created his game under the auspices of stabilizing the Radiants, and by doing so, he effectively neutered the mechanism that exists beneath the world—the mysterious elemental force that Meechum’s Radiants manipulate. Who is Hawk Worricker or Kellan Meechum to decide what’s best for us? Who are they to play God?”

  “You criticizing people with god complexes is fucking hilarious, Crow,” Emily said.

  “You’ll see things differently when the game has been reset.”

  “Nothing’s going to be reset, you idiot,” Emily said. “We’re all going to be wiped out of existence!”

  As if on cue, the tremors started again and we were thrown against the wall.

  “You’re a fucking psychopath,” Emily said as she pulled out her gun and pointed it at Crow.

  Shaking again. It was getting stronger.

  Emily steadied herself and aimed her weapon.

  “I’m going to end what—”

  But before Emily could finish her sentence, she was shot in the shoulder. The gun flew from her hand and clattered across the floor.

  The sound of that gunshot reverberating through the room, combined with the violent shaking, felt like the end of all things.

  “Fuck, Carl. You shot me!” Emily yelled, her hand bloody from touching the wound on her shoulder.

  “You’ll be fine,” the shorter security guard said as he picked up Emily’s gun. “I barely skimmed you. Just apply pressure.”

  The earthquake-style shaking had started to turn into something else—a deep vibration, a blurring of the world. The floor beneath my feet felt alive suddenly, sending a body-numbing shiver through my limbs into my stomach and chest.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  “This stream is working to reset itself,” Crow said. “It won’t be long now.”

  “Bullshit,” Emily said. “The stream is dying.”

  “I’m going to miss you both—and I promise you, I take absolutely no pleasure in this,” Crow said, then nodded to his guards.

  They slowly lifted their weapons.

  “What happened to ‘apply pressure,’ Carl?”

  Carl shrugged an apology as
he and his partner took aim.

  I closed my eyes and then…

  Two loud shots rang out.

  I covered my ears instinctively at the sound, and opened my eyes just in time to see the two guards crumble to the ground in a mess of blood and crooked limbs. They fell to reveal two women, each of them holding a huge handgun.

  The twins.

  “It’s been a long time,” Swan said as she stepped into the room from somewhere behind us.

  All the color drained from Crow’s face.

  “No,” he said as he took a step backward. “You can’t be here.”

  “And yet here I am,” Swan said, and nodded to the twins.

  They stepped over the two dead guards and positioned themselves on either side of Crow.

  Swan walked slowly across the room to join them. She didn’t look at Emily or me as she passed between us. She was completely focused on Crow.

  When she’d made it over to where he was standing, she looked him up and down as if he were an insect she’d just pulled out of a drain. Then she grabbed his face and looked into his eyes.

  “I’ve been looking for you for a long time,” she said.

  Crow just stared, wide-eyed.

  “You fucked up the Radiants, and now your world dies, you stupid little thing.”

  Clearly I was wrong about Swan. She hadn’t been working for Crow.

  “Once the mechanism is reset,” Crow said, “this dimensional stream will revert to its previous healthy state and we’ll be able to start over. I’ve tracked everything down to the minute. It’s—”

  “Sshhh,” Swan said as she shook her head, and I felt like I saw genuine sadness as she continued to stare into Crow’s eyes. “It doesn’t work like that. What happened to your daughter is irreversible.”

  “No. It’s unforgivable, but not irreversible,” he said. “What I’m doing is going to work.”

  “What kind of a father experiments on his own child?”

  “No no no!” Crow screamed. “The mechanism is resetting now. We’re going back to how things were.”

  Swan shook her head. “No. By manipulating things the way you have, you’ve destroyed the integrity of this dimensional stream. Every single soul connected to these events is going to disappear. Forever, just like your daughter. The Radiants are agitated. This world is dying.”

  “Lies!” Crow spat, and he turned and lunged at Swan, his face twisted, eyes full of rage. But Swan was blindingly fast, and before Crow was able to reach her, she’d pulled out a gun and shot him in the face.

  The twins didn’t even blink. They just stepped back in perfect unison as Crow’s body folded to the ground at their feet with a muted thud.

  Swan turned to face us.

  “Hello, Swan,” Emily said.

  “Emily,” Swan said. “It’s been a while.”

  “You two know each other?” I asked.

  Swan looked at me and then turned to Emily. “This must be hard for you.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said.

  The room started shaking violently again.

  “When is it going to stop?” I asked.

  Swan turned to look at me, a pained expression on her face. “A universe doesn’t die like a person.” She looked down at Crow’s body, lying twisted on the ground. “It’s not light fading from a cage of blood and bone. It’s billions of years of starfire and wonder.”

  I shifted my weight, and the shaking just about knocked me over. Emily grabbed my shoulder and stopped me from falling.

  “I’d say you’ve got about an hour before the end,” Swan said.

  “The end of what?” I asked.

  “Of everything,” Swan said as she shook her head. “I tried to warn you.”

  “There has to be something we can do,” I said.

  Swan sighed. “The Radiants have fallen too far out of alignment.”

  “So there’s nothing?”

  “Maybe if you could win the game,” Swan said, “but at this point it’s corrupt, and no longer functioning properly.”

  “So, what’s going to happen now?” I asked.

  “When this dimension dies, every soul currently connected to the stream will be lost—all of their memories, lives, and families gone forever. And after that, each connected stream will fall into this one, then the others, like dominos. And then…the end of everything.”

  “Could you do it?” I asked Swan. “Could you win the game somehow? Realign the Radiants?”

  Swan shook her head. “I’m sorry, but without Worricker’s game in working order, I have no idea how to manipulate the Radiants to reset the mechanism. This world dies today. If you close your eyes, I can make it fast.”

  “What happens if we don’t close our eyes?” I asked.

  “This,” she said.

  And then the world went black.

  43

  YOU CAN’T HOT-WIRE A FUCKING PRIUS

  I woke up in darkness.

  “Emily?” I called out as I stumbled to my feet. “Hello?”

  “K?” Emily said.

  I rushed over, following the sound of her voice, and smashed my knee into something solid. My eyes had adjusted a little bit and I could see what I’d banged into.

  I knew where I was.

  I hurried over to the front door, fumbled for the lights, and finally switched them on. We were standing in the familiar cool fluorescent glow of the Magician’s arcade.

  “Where the fuck are we?” Emily said.

  “Arcade,” I said.

  “What arcade?”

  “We’re still in Seattle, close to my place.” I looked out the windows. It was dark outside. For some reason, I’d always imagined the world would end in the daytime. “What time is it?” I asked.

  “Nine,” Emily said as she sat down on the floor and leaned back against the machine I’d banged my knee on. It was an old Atari game called Night Driver.

  “Are you okay? How’s your shoulder?” I sat down beside her.

  “It’s fine,” she said as she moved a few inches away.

  “You’ve been shot,” I said.

  “I know, thank you.”

  “By a gun.”

  Emily leaned back, shook her head, and exhaled.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Besides the world ending in an hour?”

  “Yeah, besides that.”

  Emily stared straight ahead and bit her lip. I could tell that she was trying to stop herself from crying.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  She turned and pulled me closer, reaching her arms around my waist and hugging me hard. Tears started streaming down her cheeks.

  I hugged her back. I could feel her body shaking as she struggled to hold back more tears. She was clearly in pain.

  Then, Emily Connors pulled back, grabbed my face and kissed me. I could taste the salt from her tears as her lips met mine. As her lips and tongue moved across my mouth, I felt a surge of emotion move through my body.

  Part of me never wanted it to end.

  I’d fallen in love with Chloe, but I had no idea what had happened to her, and Emily Connors felt like part of a completely separate life.

  Did Chloe even exist here?

  I imagined how I’d feel if the tables were turned and Chloe was kissing somebody from her past, and I gently pulled away from Emily.

  “I’m sorry. I’m in love with somebody else,” I said.

  And then I stood up and explained what had happened earlier, how I’d lost Chloe in a coffee shop filled with Harolds.

  Emily looked as if she’d been struck.

  I watched a wave of deep sadness move across her face as she absorbed what I’d just told her. I wanted to hug her again immediately.

  But I didn’t.
>
  “Well, that’s just fucking great, K,” Emily said as she brushed the tears away from her cheeks.

  “What’s the matter?” I said.

  “What’s the matter?” Emily repeated, and shook her head. “What’s the matter is you and I are fucking married, and I’ve spent the last four years looking for you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Emily took a few seconds to compose herself before she began to speak.

  “One day,” she said, “about four years ago, you went out to try to save the world. I’ve spent the intervening years trying to pin down which dimensional stream you’d slipped into, and when, against astronomical odds, I somehow managed to find that stream—and against further astronomical odds track you down—it turns out you don’t remember anything about the amazing life we built together.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “I haven’t seen you since we were kids.”

  “But I’ve seen you,” Emily said. “Up until four years ago, I saw you every single morning when I woke up and every night when I went to bed.”

  “That’s impossible,” I said—but I could tell by the way she spoke and the way she looked at me that everything she was saying was true.

  “But this can’t be real. I mean, I’d remember the two of us getting married.”

  “You would fucking think so, wouldn’t you?” Emily laughed a little as she wiped the tears from her face.

  I nodded, still trying to come to terms with what Emily had just revealed.

  “I lose you to dimensional drift, and your girlfriend disappears from the world via a Starbucks bathroom. We’re quite a pair.”

  The violent shaking and vibrating started up again. Emily and I held on to each other and waited for it to stop.

  “You used that term that the last time I saw you. Dimensional drift. Is that why I can’t remember?”

  Emily nodded.

  “What is it exactly?”

  “Every time someone skips dimensional streams, there’s a high probability that they’ll experience some amount of drift. It’s like deep-sea divers getting the bends when they surface.”