Seasons Between Us

by Alan Dean Foster

  He finished breathlessly, leaning on his table, not able to meet their gaze. The speech was the longest string of words Bran had mustered in recent memory. Alan nodded, hoping he didn’t look concerned, wanting to be there for Bran, to be supportive, but also feeling as if he was listening to the eccentric ramblings of a street corner preacher.

  “Your mother was a passionate person,” he said, inanely.

  Summer was less diplomatic. “Bran, you’re talking bollocks.”

  Bran swore, shook his head, and turned away from them. Visibly worked to control himself. Speaking with his back to them, which he sometimes found easier, he said, “Mum knew she was going away—maybe not for this long, but long enough—and she left me instructions, for the project we’d been working on. How to finish it. When to finish it.”

  “Right,” Summer said. “Your VHS machine.”

  By way of answer, Bran forcibly cleared everything else from the table—his physics and engineering books, his pencils and screwdrivers and soldering irons and spools of copper coil and tin solder and wire—all the tools and components he used. Bran and Olwen had gutted random bits of tech from around the cottage—old computers, radios, laptops, tablets—and salvaged further components from neighbouring farms, abandoned now that the previous residents had been converted.

  Bran shoved all that to the floor, giving the box centre stage. He ran his hands over it, as if checking it for tampering or damage. The box’s interface was simple: a chrome on-off switch, a black and white LCD display, currently blank, and a dial that could have been a volume knob. Beside it sat a simple remote control.

  Bran inhaled, steadying himself. “Mum had her theories about the conversions. The different ways The Paradigm gets to people. Or into people.”

  Alan clapped his hands, rubbed them vigorously, acting the part of foolish father. The role he once thought he’d never play, but which he seemed to play constantly. “I know the basics,” he said. “There may be some devotees who converted of their own free will—having been convinced by the broadcasts and media saturation and misinformation . . .”

  At this, Summer just scoffed, as if unable or unwilling to accept that there were people that pathetic, that spineless. But religious and political systems had used those tactics for thousands of years, long before the Paradigm had manifested itself. All the Paradigm had to do was draw on that knowledge, refine it, and re-deploy it in newer and better ways.

  “Hypnosis was probably part of it too,” Alan said, “Subtle and subliminal.”

  “Sure,” Summer said, “it dangled a watch in front of five billion faces.”

  “Summer,” Alan said.

  Summer guffawed. “You just used your stern-dad voice.”

  “Look,” Alan said, “it probably had methods we haven’t thought of. The point is, no matter how refined, non-invasive conversion techniques would only work for some people.”

  “And not Mum,” Summer said.

  “We might assume.”

  “She’s right, Dad,” Bran said. “Mum would’ve had to be forcibly converted.”

  Alan crossed his arms, uncrossed them again. He went to Bran’s little window and looked out. He didn’t want to say it, didn’t want to think it, but somebody had to. “So she’s been altered. Was somehow tricked or lured to a conversion centre. Is being controlled via RFID or microchip or nanoparticles or some similar combination of technologies we hadn’t quite developed yet, but the Paradigm has.”

  “Why hasn’t it done the same to us, then?” Summer said.

  “Same reason it doesn’t send a dozen emissaries, armed, to drag us to a conversion centre. It has its own code,” Alan said. “Vaguely Christian ideals: it wants true believers that submit to it of their own free will.”

  “Free will my ass,” Summer said.

  “It’s a grey area.”

  “Sure,” Bran said. “Grey matter.”

  They looked at him.

  “Like, brain matter.”

  “Bran just made a joke,” Summer said, not quite believing it.

  Bran stammered back at her, embarrassed and angry, but then Summer did something unexpected. She crossed to him and put her arms around his neck and whispered something, like his mother might have done. When Summer stepped back, Bran seemed calmer, more capable of explaining. He said, “If Mum is carrying implants—whatever kind—you’re not going to be able to talk her around, Dad.”

  “That depends,” Alan said, without saying on what. He felt out of his depth. He’d never had a head for technology, even before the Shift. It was why he’d wanted to live way out here, offline and off-grid. Olwen was the opposite: she had PhD in electrical engineering and knew as much about it as anybody—more than enough to foresee what was coming.

  “Whatever implants the Paradigm’s using,” Bran was saying, “it has to communicate with them wirelessly. And in all of human history we’ve only ever devised one way to do that: via radio waves. Whether its old-school wireless, FM radio, digital radio, wifi, GPS—it’s all various forms of radio waves. So unless the Paradigm has developed something totally new, it’s using some form of radio waves. Probably with our old infrastructure.”

  Bran’s eyes had a shine to them now. He went over to his chin-up bar and did five quick reps, as if needing to channel his nervous energy into something physical.

  Summer asked him, “I get that this is important, but how?”

  When he dropped, he landed light and breathless. He went back over to the box.

  “Mum figured if you could eliminate the signal, you could neutralize the Paradigm’s influence. Temporarily. She designed this and left me to build it.” Then, quietly and wondrously, he added, “By the summer solstice.”

  That startled Alan. That she’d predicted a specific date. As if she’d had a plan.

  “And you didn’t tell us?” Summer said.

  “I told you I was working on her project.”

  “But not why.”

  Bran mumbled and picked up the remote control, fiddling with it. “I didn’t know if I could do it without her. I thought I would fail her. But I haven’t. It’s ready. Just in time.”

  “And if she is carrying implants,” Alan said, “this will disrupt them?”

  “For as long as we can power it.” Bran smiled, both shy and proud. “She called it the Yadaraf Box.” When Alan and Summer just looked at him, he added hurriedly: “You know—like the reverse of a Faraday Cage—it does the same thing—blocks and obliterates radio waves—but is a lot more convenient.”

  Summer patted him affectionately. “If you say so, Branflake.”

  Bran muttered, rolled his eyes, flicked his head.

  “Whatever it is,” Alan said. “It increases our chances.”

  Two hours later, Alan sat at the patio table, alone. The table was set just as it would have been when he and Olwen had evenings together. If she’d been converted, he thought using memory triggers might help bring her back to herself. So he’d dressed in a familiar shirt, uncorked a bottle of their homemade dandelion wine, and brought out the short bodega tumblers they’d bought in Tarragona on their honeymoon. He’d poured the wine to let it breathe, and sat waiting, hoping. He remembered taking these measures on more typical nights, when the stakes weren’t so high, when he’d hoped they could just grab a little time together, once the kids were down, and they were both tired, or melancholy, or outright depressed. Maintaining a relationship after the end of the world was not easy. But they had tried. They had managed. They had found moments—even if some of those moments were partially an act, a performance.

  Now he felt on the cusp of his most important performance.

  He reached for the handheld radio in front of him on the table, made sure it was on. They’d experimented with hiding it but it needed to be in the open to pick up their voices. A
nd it was a good decoy: its presence obscured the thing they really wanted to hide—the Yadaraf Box, mounted beneath the table, just in front of his knees.

  He leaned to speak into the radio. “Check two-one,” he said. “Testing.”

  “I read you,” Bran said.

  A crackle of static, then: “You guys sound like kids playing army.”

  “Thanks, Summer.”

  Summer was monitoring from the lookout, watching Olwen’s approach. Bran was closer to hand, in the attic of the cottage, from where he could activate the Yadaraf Box with the remote. Both had a clear view of the patio.

  “How far is she?” Alan asked.

  “At the property line,” Summer said.

  “I guess I’ll leave this on now.”

  A pause. More static. Then, Bran asked, “What are you going to do?’

  “Talk to her. Try to figure out how much of her is left.”

  Bran said, “I’ll hold off using the box until we know, to save juice.”

  Bran figured if they used all the energy stored from their solar panels and turbine, they could charge the box for about ten minutes. They had to use it right.

  “If it sounds like she’s converting you,” Summer said, “I’m going to shoot.”

  “Summer.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  Bran said, “We need to know first, or you may be killing Mum.”

  “Quiet,” Summer said. “She’s at the gate.”

  It went silent for a few seconds, and Alan thought they’d both signed off, but Summer added in a whisper: “Don’t bottle it, Dad.”

  That peculiar British saying. Don’t bottle it. Don’t choke.

  “I won’t,” he said.

  The wind was blowing, as it always seemed to do in Wales. He closed his eyes, felt the sun on his face, the air at his shirt collar. Heard the rustle of the leaves in the beech trees lining the gravel track that served as their drive. Smelled the gorse and heather. Pictured the dream of his life, this life he had fallen into, in Wales—the strangeness of being here, with his children, his family, at the world’s end near the end of the world.

  And he exhaled and opened his eyes, and saw Olwen.

  Walking up the drive, smiling, grateful to be home. And it did feel like a dream. The moment he had imagined for days and weeks and months. Just this. The same: she looked exactly the same. Wearing a wide-brimmed hat like the one she’d given Summer, but a darker shade of beige. Blonde hair tucked behind her ears. Her face red, sweaty from the hike. It was her. It had to be her. He stood up, feeling mesmerized already, and feeling as well the real danger of it. A glimpse of how the Paradigm worked.

  If it could offer you this, how could anybody resist?

  But he had already decided: he would not resist. He would play along. He would embrace this homecoming, welcome the prodigal mother back. That seemed better than suspicion. So long as he did not lose himself in it and forget that it was a ploy.

  He went to her. He intended to walk at first but found himself running. She picked up her pace in return and they met at the edge of the patio, and it would have been like a sentimental reunion in some film except for the fact he stumbled a bit at the last minute, nearly knocked her over. Then, laughing, hugged her, held her fiercely, her hat falling back into the dirt, the outdoor smell of her making him giddy. And pulling back to kiss her, repeatedly, talking to her between kisses.

  “You came home. You came back. You’re here.”

  “I’ve missed you so much,” she said.

  And if it was somewhat unnatural, it didn’t matter. It was her voice, saying what he wanted to hear. He took her by the hand and led her to the table, laid out and waiting for her, for this.

  He said, “You must be exhausted.”

  “I am—but so happy, Alan. So happy.”

  As they sat, he didn’t release her hand—holding it across the table, while with the other he offered her the glass of wine he’d prepared. She took it and admired it. “Our wine! Which year is this?” A comment that seemed deliberate—designed to show her knowledge and understanding of the dandelion wine’s significance. Or was he being paranoid?

  “The best vintage—the year Bran was born.”

  They touched glasses, drank deeply, and Olwen sat back, letting go of his hand to fan herself. “Where is Bran? And Summer?”

  “They’re here, nearby, getting things ready for you.”

  She nodded, accepting that, even though it was completely unnatural, that the kids hadn’t rushed out with him to greet her and welcome her. She looked about, as if taking in the setting, not quite believing she was really back. Her eyes passing over the radio on the table between them. The fact she didn’t comment on that seemed suspicious in itself.

  “I have so much to tell you all,” she said.

  “Tell me,” he said, “tell me everything you can.”

  “I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long. I couldn’t get word to you guys. It was too risky. The Paradigm could have used it, made me a route in.”

  At the mention of it, Alan felt a prickling along his forearms—a sickening sense of hope and dread. He told himself whatever was coming, whatever she said, couldn’t be true. It would be a lie. A very cunning lie.

  “You went to scope out Llanidloes,” he said. “See what had happened.”

  She nodded. “It was stupid. I know that now.”

  “I tried to tell you.”

  “I remember.” She was smiling fondly as she said it. “But you know me: I can’t stand waiting. I couldn’t take being cooped up. We had to take initiative. At least find out what was going on. We’d been cut off for too long. You wanted to stay hidden indefinitely.”

  He let the dig slide. It was very much like Olwen. “What did you find?” he asked.

  She reached for her wine again, knocked it back. He topped up her glass. It was one of the more convincing aspects of her act—the thirsty exuberance. For some reason, it felt all too human, at odds with what he expected of a Paradigm disciple. He found himself drinking to match her, the sweet wine making him happy-headed in the heat.

  She shook her head. “So much. So much. I camped outside and watched the town from Pencincoed for days. At a distance, it’s a functional, regular town. Everyone is simply going about their business. Saturday is still market day. People shop, have lunch and coffee, chat in the street. The only visible difference is the worship. The amount they’re called to prayer and congregate. Three times a day.”

  Alan nodded, intrigued and caught up in the story. “We’d heard something about that before we switched off. The Paradigm feels humanity lost something, that sense of unity and community, when we abandoned religion and moved toward a secular society.”

  “All the churches and chapels are in use now, and united. I imagine mosques and synagogues are the same, and any places of worship. All hung with those white banners, worshipping the Paradigm.” She grinned, sardonically, convincingly, and put air quotes around what she said next: “Celebrating its glory and what it’s given to humanity.”

  “What about the conversion centres?” he asked. They’d heard a lot about them in the early days. And the treatment. The forced conversions.

  “They used the community centre for that, on Oak Street. But it wasn’t very busy. I guess because most people are converted. Maybe at the start the Paradigm needed to take more drastic and heavy-handed measures. The horror stories we heard about. But not so much now.”

  Alan grimaced. “Now it can afford to take its time like it’s doing with us.”

  “The funny thing is, Al,” she said, putting her hand over his again. “In watching the town I didn’t feel as hopeless as I thought I would. I mean, people aren’t walking around like robots or zombies. They’re the same as they always were. Bev is still running the baker
y. John Davis’s garage and MOT centre is still just as busy. Everything’s a little more subdued, that’s all. People live in a pleasant daze: no tension, no arguments, no fights. Just peace. I guess we can take it as an example of what’s now happening everywhere. I thought if this is the new world, it’s not as bad as all that.”

  “Is that why you stayed for so long?”

  He couldn’t help it. It came out too sly, too insinuating. Clearly an attempt to catch her off-guard: prove she’d been converted. But Olwen threw back her head and laughed.

  “God, no. I knew you’d think that. You and the kids. They’re listening, right?” She gestured casually at the radio with her wine glass, slopping a little in the process—a very convincing way of seeming tipsy. “Hello, my darlings.”

  After a moment, Bran said, “Hi Mum.”

  Nothing from Summer. Not yet.

  “You miss me?”

  A crackle of static. Alan wondered if Bran was choked up. “Every day,” he said.

  “I was just telling your father I knew you’d think I’d been converted. Why else would I have stayed away for so long, right? Get this. It turns out there are others like us—others who’ve held on. They’ve found ways to survive. Some came from the traveller and Roma communities, that were living largely off-grid like us when the Paradigm manifested.”

  Alan was studying her carefully. The sweat on her cheeks, the soft glow of alcohol and excitement, seemed so real, so genuine. But he could imagine Summer, listening and watching—and knew what she would say.

  “That’s amazing,” he said, too brightly. “How’d you find out?”

  “While I was camping up on Pencincoed, a group raided town. Made off with food and supplies. It’s not hard. It’s easy, in fact. The Paradigm has a policy of non-violence and non-intervention. So the raiders were allowed to take what they wanted, as far as I could tell. Though one or two remained behind—were somehow convinced, or converted, in the midst of the raid. I guess the ones more susceptible to the Paradigm’s methods.”

  “So it takes its tribute,” Alan said.