Seasons Between Us

by Alan Dean Foster

  “Not me,” Suresh said from his work desk. “I bought mee rebus. Not the kueh.”

  Wei Ling almost dropped her half-eaten blue kueh. Her face had turned pale.

  People were burning joss paper. Passersby took care not to step on half-burned paper money as they said it would offend spirits.

  Seventh Month was a fretful time. Don’t go out at night, don’t swim, and don’t make fun of the spirits. Unlike Qing Ming Festival where we swept the tombs of our ancestors and loved ones, Seventh Month seemed darker with vicious spirits eager to take advantage of the food and wreak havoc in people’s lives. The vicious spirits were hateful because they’d been ill-treated or wronged before they passed, or they committed serious crimes. The stories I heard from my own grandparents and parents were of spirits fighting over the offerings, the bigger and stronger ghosts bullying the weaker ones.

  Yet, as I watched, the spirits weren’t really offended. Just bemused at the antics of the living and their loved ones who took the utmost care to lay the best offering table with plates of food and drink for them. As a gesture, the centre laid out its own table. We burned joss paper. Non-denominational and interfaith as we were, we respected the various cultures and faiths.

  “I hope that will appease them,” Wei Ling said. She was still a little spooked by the kueh incident. She actually threw the entire box away out of sheer fright. Suresh cheekily told her off for wasting food.

  “If you have only shown them love and care, and have never borne them ill will,” I said mildly, “why should you be afraid? Madam Kong came to you in your dreams because you sat with her and held her hands.” I patted Wei Ling’s shoulder to reassure her. “Don’t worry too much.”

  “We showed them care and concern,” Beng said as we walked back into the centre, glad for the air conditioning. The elderly were playing rummy. “We listened to their stories. We tried our best lah. Don’t worry!”

  I saw Madam Kong again. Like when I last saw her, she was holding onto a box of blue kueh.

  I read up on hauntings a few days ago. Was it a residual haunting, where Madam Kong’s emotions lingered so much that they were imprinted in the environment? Was it a memory loop she was stuck in and unable to break free? One website suggested aggressive ways to get rid of persistent hauntings: purification and cleansing rituals by clergy, magical shields, and even moving away. But, Madam Kong wasn’t a vicious or malicious spirit, hell-bent on destroying people’s lives. The same website also suggested communicating or talking to the spirit since, like us, they wanted the living to listen to their stories.

  “Take this,” Madam Kong said. She was wearing the same t-shirt and blue shorts as she had been the last time I saw her alive. However, the outline of her figure seemed to blur, as if someone had smudged the edges with an eraser. “You might be hungry.”

  It was a quiet early evening. Nobody was around. The rush hour hadn’t hit yet. In the distance, there was a getai where singers performed for the spirits. Getai was popular during this period. Garishly dressed singers belted out Hokkien and Cantonese favourites.

  I reached over and took the box. It felt real. Solid. Warm. “Thank you.” I finally found my courage and voice.

  Madam Kong turned as if to go. She smiled warmly, her eyes twinkling. “No, I have to thank you, Susan. You visited me before I died.”

  Tears instantly brimmed in my eyes and spilled, hot and salty. Her words crushed and lifted me at the same time.

  “Madam Kong . . .” was all I could say.

  “Just remember me.” Madam Kong smiled her beautiful smile and faded from view. A soft sigh lingered in the air. I was still holding onto the box of kueh.

  I wasn’t wearing my NewSight™ contact lenses.

  That night, I kept the contact lenses in their little container and left them on my dressing table. I also ate the kueh.

  “You, learning how to make kueh?” Beng asked me the next day. He saw me thumbing through a recipe book on Peranakan cooking over the lunch hour. I was reading up on a recipe for lemper udang, a savoury glutinous rice dessert with blue butterfly pea dye added for colour. Made with obvious loving care, the rice wrapped the prawn filling in a neat cylindrical shape within a banana leaf.

  “Why not?” I said. “Good to pick up a new skill.”

  “You are not wearing your contacts.” Beng blinked. “Got tired of them?”

  I smiled. “I don’t need them to see.”

  Outside the office window, the fairies flew about the sparkling mobiles of broken glass. A wild butterfly pea plant had curled up the white fence surrounding the centre. Blue flowers had already emerged.

  Author’s Notes to My Younger Self: I will tell my younger self that the one important life’s lesson is to be empathetic. Be kind, be compassionate, nothing’s black and white.

  Second Thoughts

  Eric Choi

  “The whole story’s out,” said Derek Tsai, handing her the tablet.

  Elaine Carrington took the device. “Police Shoot Suspect in U. of T. Murder,” proclaimed TheGlobeAndMail.com. “Armed Standoff at U. of T. Tied to Military Funded Research,” was TheStar.com’s lead story.

  “How much trouble am I in?” she asked.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Elaine sighed heavily, sinking back into the hospital bed, and then . . .

  . . . No. Not before Elaine . . .

  . . . Took a sip of truly disgusting, stone cold coffee.

  It was a beautiful Friday afternoon in the middle of July, and Elaine Carrington was alone in her seventh floor office in the Burton Tower of the University of Toronto’s McLennan Physical Laboratories. All the other graduate students in the Atmospheric Physics research group had left to get an early start on the weekend.

  She stared blankly at her laptop, unable to concentrate on her mathematical models of atmospheric radiative transfer functions. Her mind was instead distracted by thoughts of her idiot boyfriend, a fourth-year Engineering Science student named Derek Tsai. They had just returned the previous week from a disastrous trip to Germany. She wouldn’t have believed that a Chinese-Canadian could outdrink the Germans, but Derek somehow managed it. She was beginning to think he had a real problem.

  Elaine drained the last of the coffee and powered down her laptop. She briefly considered going to her jujitsu dojo but then decided against it. Might as well go straight home and get a fresh start on Monday.

  “Excuse me.”

  She whirled.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Maria Alighieri, the summer student. The young woman was dressed in bright orange shorts and a dark green University of Toronto T-shirt. Her long, curly light brown hair was tied in a ponytail. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “What do you want?” Elaine asked.

  Maria opened her notebook to a page of handwritten equations. “I was wondering if you could check my derivations. I’d ask Jim, but he’s away,” she said, referring to their supervisor, Professor James Stafford.

  Elaine shook her head. “Electricity and magnetism really aren’t my field. Why don’t you ask Bill or Ross?” she suggested, referring to Bill O’Leary and Ross McVitie, the doctoral students in Stafford’s group.

  Maria suddenly frowned, her eyes downcast. “I guess so. Thanks anyway.”

  Elaine waited for Maria to leave before closing and locking the office door. She made her way to the elevator and pressed the down button. As she waited, she scanned the adjacent bulletin board and saw an announcement:

  RESEARCH VOLUNTEERS NEEDED

  The Particle Physics and Relativity group is looking for volunteers to participate in a study. The experiment is non-medical in nature; participants will not be required to ingest, inhale, or be injected with any substances. You will be paid a stipend upon completion of the study. If you are interested, please cont
act Dr. Michiru Takayoshi or his research associate Corey Stadtmauer.

  At the bottom of the flyer were the phone number of Professor Takayoshi and the email address of Corey Stadtmauer. Elaine had no interaction with the Particle Physics group, and she knew nothing about Takayoshi or his work. Maybe I should check this out. It’ll give me a chance to see what Takayoshi and his students are up to.

  The following week, Elaine arrived at the door of the designated room a few minutes before the eleven o’clock start time. A group of about twenty people was already waiting in the corridor. She recognized many of them from around the Physics building, but there were also a few strangers who had probably come in off the street.

  “Hey, Elaine!”

  She turned. “Oh, hi, Bill.”

  Bill O’Leary approached Elaine with his characteristic duck-like walk from the elevator. He was in his early thirties, of medium height with a long angular face, wearing a red baseball cap from which a few strands of thin, orange-brown hair poked out. He gestured at the door with Takayoshi’s sign on it. “You here for this?”

  “Uh, huh. You too?”

  “Yeah, well, you know me. I like to live,” Bill moved his arms like a surfer, “vicariously. How about you?”

  Elaine wanted to tell Bill she didn’t think the word meant what he thought it did, but decided not to. “Just curious, I guess. I’ve never volunteered for anything like this before, and I’m interested in what Takayoshi’s group is up to.”

  Bill sneered. “Listen, that guy Takayoshi . . . he’s very dishonest and weak. Man, do I have dirt on him!”

  “You have dirt,” Elaine narrowed her eyes, “on Takayoshi?”

  “Yup, sure do.” Bill crossed his arms. “But it’s gonna cost you!”

  “Cost me?”

  “Oh, come now. I’m not giving out this stuff for free! Don’t you know the Law of Conservation of Information? You give me information, I give you dirt.”

  “I don’t have any . . . ‘information’.”

  “Of course, you do. Everybody does. Some skeleton in your closet? One way or another, I’ll find out.” Bill rubbed his chin. “Say, how are things going with your boyfriend?”

  “Uh, fine. Just fine.” She changed the subject. “So, how’s your wife doing?”

  “Excellent, actually. Excellent. Mel just got interviewed for a postdoc at TRIUMF,” he said, referring to the Tri-University Meson Facility, a large cyclotron located at the University of British Columbia.

  “Congratulations. Do you think she’ll get it?”

  “Why wouldn’t she? She’s the very best person for the job, a very stable genius. She knows it, I know it, everybody knows it. I even told her to tell them that.”

  The door opened, and Professor Takayoshi emerged. He thanked them all for coming, and instructed them to find a desk upon entering the room. There, they would each find an envelope which they were not to open until told to do so.

  Elaine spotted a seat by the door, but Bill bolted toward it and sat there himself. She scanned the room for another spot, but with many people still standing it was hard to see.

  “Playing musical chairs, are we?” A short, thin man with a prominent chin approached her. His pale, oval face was crowned with slick brown hair. “I’m Corey Stadtmauer. I’m one of Dr. Takayoshi’s Ph.D students.”

  She recognized him immediately. “You were the TA in my second year quantum course!”

  Corey smiled. “Yeah, I think I remember you. You’re—”

  “Elaine Carrington.”

  “Elaine. Yeah, well, thanks for coming for this.” He pointed. “There’s a seat over there.”

  “Thanks.”

  As Elaine meandered her way to the empty spot, Professor Takayoshi addressed the volunteers. “At exactly quarter past, I will ask each of you to open the envelope on your desk. I want you to read the instructions and follow them exactly. It is vitally important that you follow the instructions to the letter. It is also crucial that this room be silent. I want you to treat this like an exam.” He smiled. “Don’t worry, you can’t fail. There’s going to be a massive bell curve in this ‘course’.”

  Elaine and a few others chuckled.

  Professor Takayoshi looked at his watch. “Please open your envelope . . . now.”

  Elaine did so. Inside, she found a single sheet of paper and a USB stick.

  Consider a radioactive decay counter that has been used to generate a sequence of positive and negative random numbers. The numbers produced, which you will not see, are stored on the enclosed USB stick. Your task is to imagine the case in which all the numbers produced are positive. For the next five minutes, you are to focus your concentration and visualize, in your mind’s eye, the decay counter having produced only positive numbers.

  Elaine read the instructions three times, but the sentences just sounded stranger with each iteration. She finally gave up trying to understand and simply squeezed her eyes shut and pictured in her mind only positive numbers stored on the USB stick.

  “The experiment is concluded.”

  Elaine almost jumped. She hadn’t realized her concentration had been so total.

  “Thanks for coming out this afternoon,” Professor Takayoshi continued. “Please give me your mailing address so I can send you the cheque. Talk to Corey if you would prefer electronic payment. Again, thanks for participating.”

  As she was leaving, Elaine saw Bill in the hall. “What the hell was that all about?”

  Bill shrugged. “It was stupid, that’s what it was. I can’t stand it. No sympathy for stupidity, that’s what I say.”

  “But we’re gonna get paid.”

  “Yeah. Stupid, eh? See ya.”

  She was almost at the door when another voice called out.

  “Hey, Elaine!” Corey Stadtmauer strode up to her. “Thanks again for participating in the experiment.”

  “No problem,” she replied.

  “Did I get your email, so I can send your payment?”

  “Actually,” Elaine said, “I wrote my mailing address on Professor Takayoshi’s form so he can send me a cheque. Old school, right?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Corey seemed disappointed, but then his expression changed. “Hey, um . . . I, ah—I lost my partial differential equations textbook. Hillen and Leonard. Do you have a copy I could borrow?”

  Elaine was caught off guard. In fact, she did have a copy of Hillen and Leonard. But after a moment of thought, she shook her head. “No, sorry. But it was nice to meet you, Corey. See you around.”

  It was now almost noon. She left the McLennan Laboratories and went to her usual summertime lunch spot, a metal park bench on the grass behind the Astronomy and Astrophysics building. As she peeled an orange, she spotted a tall, skinny man emerge from the nearby Lash Miller Chemical Labs.

  “Hey, Yegor!”

  “Hallo, Elaine.”

  Yegor Wiśniewski was a third year chemistry major working at Lash Miller for the summer. As always, he was wearing a camouflage-patterned cap and—despite the fact it was July—a Belgian army jacket. He had purchased both from a military surplus store on Yonge Street where, he claimed, he was such a frequent customer the owner gave him discounts.

  “How’s it going, Yegor?”

  “Deed you see da news?”

  “No.”

  “A bomb vent off on a bus en Jeerusalem yesterday.”

  “That’s terrible!”

  Yegor shrugged. “It vas a beeg bomb, you know. Beeg bomb. Wery nice.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet you know all about big bombs, huh?”

  “I do.”

  “Why, you know how to make one?”

  “Yes.”

  Elaine almost choked on her orange. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  �
�Of course.”

  “Mind if I ask where you learned?”

  Yegor took a bite of his apple. “Da Terrorist’s Handbook. I got it off de Dark Web.”

  Elaine was sorry she asked. “So, anyway, this bombing in Jerusalem. You don’t think . . . I mean, you don’t think . . .”

  “Tink vat? Dey are freedom fighters.”

  “Were there soldiers on the bus?”

  Yegor paused. “No . . . I tink dey vere yooniversity stoodents.”

  “What?” Elaine was shocked. “You mean innocent people were slaughtered, and you don’t think that’s terrible?”

  “Dey vere not innocent.” He solemnly raised an index finger. “Until de Palestinians are free, no von dere is innocent.”

  Elaine suddenly lost her appetite.

  “You haaf to go?” Yegor asked when she stood.

  “Uh, yeah. I, uh . . . I’ve got a group meeting.” She glanced at her phone. “Oh, damn. I’m late already. Gotta go. See ya!”

  It was only half-past noon when she returned to the seventh floor offices of the Atmospheric Physics research group, where she shared cubicle offices with Bill, Ross, and Maria. As she approached the door, she could hear Bill O’Leary’s loud, cocksure voice.

  “—see that, Ross. I mean, we’ve already bought a house in Vancouver, so it’s not as if—oh, torpedo one loaded, sir!”

  Elaine entered the office—and gasped as a small white object darted across her path. The spitball ricocheted off the printer and fell to the floor.

  “You missed!” Bill barked. “How could you miss?”

  “Sorry,” sneered Ross McVitie as he put another wad in the straw.

  Elaine’s eyes tracked to their intended target, the summer intern Maria Alighieri. She was at a computer trying to do a circuit analysis in SPICE but was obviously having difficulty. Elaine could see a few spitballs imbedded in her hair.