by Mike Chen
From: Miranda Stewart ([email protected])
To: Kin Stewart ([email protected])
Subject: RE: Brace Yourself
Penny, that’s funny. First you have that stupid lucky penny in the garage. Now you meet someone named Penny. It’s like destiny or fate or something, huh?
Kin sat, reading and rereading the message for a blur of time until he flicked the comm on his wrist. “Dial Penny,” he said, his foot tapping as he waited. No answer, and a glance at the clock showed that dessert was probably served ninety minutes ago.
* * *
The wind whipped against the windshield as Kin sped home, and rain flew at him parallel to the ground below. Across the bay, lightning flashed around the Golden Gate, distant sparks blending in with the stream of skycar taillights. Kin glanced at the time when he parked, and his coat trailed behind him as he ran, his shoes slipping on the growing pavement puddles. Water kicked up when he stopped by the old-fashioned flower stand next to the building entrance.
The apartment was quiet when he arrived except for the hum of the dish sanitizer. No holo shows projected, no music played, even the auto lights were on low from lack of motion detection.
Poking his head in the bedroom door, though, he saw Penny lying still but wide-awake under layers of blankets. Moonlight reflected off her open eyes, and the sound of rain pattered against the broad window. “Hey,” Kin said, holding up the flowers. “I’m really sorry. I lost track of time. Work stuff. I’d explain more but, you know, it’s classified.”
He’d given this explanation about a half dozen times, different combinations of words and phrases but the same message. After each excuse, Penny’s polite smile inched toward quiet indignation—though all in silence, the Fernandez trait of swallowing emotions while on full display.
This time, however, Penny spoke.
“You really think flowers from the stand outside will make up for this?”
Stunned, Kin set the flowers on the dresser.
“Tonight was supposed to be about us,” she said, her tone flat. “Not just a dinner party, but the fact that you wanted to do it. I know work happens, I get that, but you didn’t even care enough to call. Take five minutes—one minute—to call.” Kin thought about the late nights at work. Missing dinner. Skipping out on the party. How could he explain the tug-of-war of his two lives? “Ever since the accident, you just... I’m not your priority. You’re choosing something else.”
He’d promised before. But those were empty, onetime offers to fix onetime mistakes. He needed her to know that something fundamental had shifted, that his own internal axis had finally tilted to this. To life with her and whatever it may bring. “Penny—”
She turned over under the sheets, only a swatch of her brown hair visible. “I’m going to sleep, Kin.”
A handful of sentences. That was much more than he usually got when Penny was upset. This time he’d crossed a line, and each word from Penny carried a thousand in frustration.
He turned away, taking the usual way out with her, and if he continued, she’d most likely reset by the morning, all things back to normal, at least on the surface.
But that wasn’t fair to Penny. And it wasn’t what he would want to model for Miranda. This time would be different. He would be better.
“I’m really, really sorry,” he started. The right phrases and sentences failed to materialize; he hadn’t thought this through or planned it out, and instead words merely flailed. “I haven’t been fair to you, and it’s not your fault, it’s just this...thing...that’s been getting in the way. And I’ve let it take over too much, it’s like being pulled in different directions, and...”
Kin leaned into the doorway, his usual visualizations and options failing him. “I’m just really sorry. It won’t happen again. I want—I need—to make it up to you. Please. Let me make it up to you. Don’t just brush it aside again, don’t just let me off the hook. Let’s make this time count.”
Seconds, perhaps even minutes passed, the only sounds the outside hum of skycars and Akasha’s nails clicking on the kitchen tiles. Penny sat up, though in the dark, her expression remained unclear. She pushed down the covers, walked over to him and without looking him in the face, threw her arms around him.
Kin exhaled, pulling her in. He held her so tight that the rain on his cheeks made her hair damp.
“I’m sorry things happened this way,” he said. “And I’m sorry I can’t even get a proper apology out.”
“Kin,” she said, her voice strained and muffled, “you don’t have to get the words right. I just want them to be there. To mean something.”
Penny sank into him, and though he held her close, her words struck him in a way that left him feeling disembodied.
I just want them to be there.
All this time he’d spent searching for facts and logic about their relationship, replaying and reliving events to somehow make sense of it all. Their relationship was never about making sense. They had nothing in common (not until Kin secretly learned to cook), their personalities were total opposites, and even Markus tried to talk them out of it in the beginning. But they persisted, finding each other and staying with each other through time and space because of a gut feeling that told them it was where they should be.
Even his post-stranding analytical brain that searched for understanding, that was its own form of gut-feeling attachment, the same way a lucky penny was more than just a coin.
He couldn’t tell her about Miranda or Heather, but he could finally be honest about almost everything else. That meant being honest with himself, too. He knew Heather would want him to be happy. More importantly, she’d want him to simply try. He almost heard her telling him to stop overthinking so much and just accept things the way they were.
He gave the tiniest of nods, an affirmation to himself but also, in a way, a farewell to Heather and the life that could have been.
Finally.
“I’ve felt like a different person since the accident,” he said, face still buried in her hair. “Like it stole years away from me. And I’ve spent this time thinking about that. Stuck on it. Trying to figure that out, how it relates to you and me. But I realized tonight that it doesn’t matter. I’m changed, but we can change, too. We’re not the same people we were at the engagement party.” What was it Miranda told him? “‘We’re all different people all through our lives, but that’s okay, as long as you remember all the people you used to be.’”
Penny pulled back and met his gaze. “That’s beautiful. When did you become a sage?”
“I can’t take credit for it,” he said, the smirk on his mouth betraying the tears welling up in his eyes. “Someone once told it to me.”
“Well, that person was pretty wise.”
“Yeah,” he said, his lips meeting hers. “She was.” His head tilted down, and they kissed again, gentle at first before gradually becoming a full-body release, hurt and passion finally spilling over. The door shut behind them and they melted into each other, making their way to the bed. Kin kissed her neck, bringing her into all of his senses, and though they were only a few hours removed from a catastrophic wound on their relationship, suddenly he’d never felt more connected to her.
CHAPTER 15
Tonight would truly be a fresh start with Penny.
Judging by the giant grin on her face, things began well—and he hadn’t even presented a ring yet.
“I cannot believe you got tickets for the grand opening! Look at it,” Penny said, bouncing up and down in excitement. “My arteries hurt just seeing the holos!”
Fisherman’s Wharf didn’t quite have the hustle and bustle of its twenty-one-A counterpart. No street performers or tourist shops; those had moved about a mile down the Embarcadero, leaving the whole pier filled with museums. Kin gazed down the street, wondering if some parent down there was currently panicking l
ike he had the first time he’d lost a young Miranda in the crowd. Penny grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the holographic sign floating above the Museum of the Modern Era entrance, its large animated letters announcing “Eating in the Time of Fast Food!” over rotating bigger-than-life hamburgers and fried chicken. It was one of the more difficult tickets to get in town, and certainly more than a sous chef and government employee should pay for a night out.
But there was no price on tonight. Tonight was about Penny.
Kin resisted offering any honest opinions regarding fast food as they strolled forward. “Markus is going to be so jealous.” Penny’s fingers crunched across his hand before yanking him forward. Of course Penny didn’t know that Markus got to try the real thing; sometimes Kin wondered if the only reason he worked for the TCB was to sample dishes from another era.
Smaller holograms projected on either side of the sliding doors, showcasing other elements of the MOME, a museum dedicated to the post-digital world from the mid-twentieth century and beyond. Something about the virtual image tickled a dormant memory in Kin, a sense of déjà vu triggered by a three-dimensional holographic recreation of a fast-food commercial. The image flashed in his mind, and a quick sting jabbed his left temple. He winced, holding the side of his head for a short second. It came and went, though not fast enough for Penny to miss it. “You all right?”
“Yeah. Sure.” He felt his inner jacket pocket for the hundredth time since they’d left the cab, making sure the ring box was safe and sound. Since the night of the dinner party, everything seemed new about Penny. Her laugh, her quirks, even the way she moved; if a halo could have hovered over her, it might have. Merely catching her smile caused his heart to race with possibilities, not of the life they thought they might have before the so-called radiation accident, but those plans coupled with the wisdom and experience he’d gained in era twenty-one-A. The combination of the two created infinite ideas and dreams within him, a neverending list of where their life might lead together. It seemed like they had all the time in the world.
Funny how easily it all came about once he’d simply stopped trying to understand it. And he even had a new ring ready to present just to prove it.
He couldn’t wait.
“Just thinking about how unhealthy all this replicated food is going to be.” He forced out a grin despite echoes of the pain in his head.
“At uni we had a history course about this time period. Especially the early part of it. The grease! I mean, it sounds so bad.” She fired off words at a clip even faster than her usual rate, her British accent nearly losing its crisp edge from the pace. “My old classic foods professor said that our replicators don’t do it justice. He said it could take weeks to saturate ingredients so the rubs taste close to the real thing. Can you believe they used to freeze these things?” Penny continued rattling off all sorts of random facts about fast food as they veered off to the left at the fork in the path, bypassing the standard museum fare of popular culture, politics, and sports for the heavy aroma of grease and french fries. Off to the side, people shuffled in and out of a gift shop; farther out floated a big sign for an exhibit called Discover Your History, something about looking at the social media archives of ancestors.
The replicator module lifted to display two pieces of fried chicken, drawing Penny in, sniffing and staring at and around it. The aroma hit Kin, its mix of herbs and spices stronger and more accurate than anything from the past hour. Synapses fired off, and the smell no longer came from an exhibit at the MOME. The museum, the guests, even Penny disappeared in a flash; instead, he stood in a fried chicken chain somewhere in the middle of Nevada, Heather at his side. She rubbed her small five-month baby bump as Kin watched a cockroach crawl along the counter, an unaware teenager awaiting their order.
He blinked, and another memory flashed: foot traffic zooming by at Heather’s law school building. Marrying Heather was a foregone conclusion at that point; their friends called it “the inevitable party,” and Kin’s challenge stemmed from trying to catch her off guard with a proposal. When he finally did it—by waiting in her professor’s office—the quantity of her tears surprised both of them, so much so that she’d joked about it during their vows. He blinked again, snapping back into the moment. Rolling waves took over his equilibrium, turning his legs into wobbly spindles. Penny turned away from sniffing the steaming replicated chicken and grabbed him by the shoulder. “Kin? Are you okay?”
A drilling pain bored deep into his temple, taking away any ability to speak. His palms pressed against his skull, as if applying further pressure would make everything go away.
And then it did.
Kin stood up straight. He blinked away the haze, and the museum came back into focus. Yet something seemed to keep the people barely out of view, and he spun and angled to see who stood by or across from or behind him, cheekbones and noses and mouths lacking detail, like someone turned the focus dial on his sight. And sound, all sound became a muffled rumble.
Did the food dilate his pupils? Or tickle his allergies? He’d have to check in with Heather. “Heather, do you have any allergy meds in your purse?”
The world remained silent. Where did Heather go? Her height and red hair usually made her easy to find in a crowd, except he couldn’t see any details. Something brushed his elbow, and he turned to find Miranda ignoring him while she dashed up to the MOME replicator serving station.
“Miranda? Don’t spoil your dinner,” he said as she took a bite of the drumstick. “The fricassee is simmering.”
Miranda looked at him, her expression unchanged—did she even hear him? No, she turned and walked past him without even a nod. “It’s almost done,” he called out. “I only have to make the liaison.” He spun to follow her, like he did years ago at Fisherman’s Wharf, and like then, she seemed to dissolve in the crowd. A heavy weight pulled on his eyelids, and though he fought through it, stepping forward became an impossible task. His vision tunneled, the periphery transformed into an endless wash of muted colors.
Something fired off in his ear, but it wasn’t the stinging pain that jackhammered into his temple. It roared, an indecipherable vocal mix of urgency and volume. He blinked again, and the world snapped into real time. A crowd stood around him, words buzzing from people wondering what had happened to the man on the floor.
“Kin!” A woman’s voice broke through the din. “Kin!” she repeated, and he realized that the warmth on the back of his head was the woman’s hand trying to prop him up.
Penny. It was Penny. Her eyes glistened with tears, anxiety pulling her expression wide. “Penny,” he said.
“There you are. You blacked out for a second—”
He raised his finger to shush her as medical personnel pushed through the background crowd. “Miranda. I lost her. Dinner’s almost ready.”
“What?” Penny leaned in, squinting. “Dinner?”
“Chop two to three tablespoons of tarragon. Mix with softened butter and two tablespoons of fresh lemon juice, then stir gently to combine.”
“Excuse me.” A woman burst through and tossed her backpack on the ground, a large red cross on her shoulder patch. “This is EMT four-six, we’re at the situation here. Sir—” she turned to him “—sir, how are you feeling?”
“Miranda,” he said, “I lost her in the crowd.” His palms pressed up against the cold tile, his muscles burning as they tried to hold him up. “We need to find her. Dinner’s almost ready.”
“Sir. Sir, you need to settle down.” The woman turned to Penny. “Who’s Miranda?”
Penny remained kneeling beside him, a tiny tremble in her lip. “I... I’m not sure.”
* * *
Kin opened his eyes to the harsh lighting and endless beeping of monitors, and knew immediately that he was back in a hospital. “Where’s my fast food?” he asked, his voice coming with a weakness that surprised him, and the simple act of grinning
resulted in a shocking amount of muscle soreness. Penny rose from her chair, and the redness in her eyes gave away that she’d been crying. “Hey, don’t worry. I’m fine. What happened?”
She knelt beside him, fingers gripped on his shoulder. “You blacked out. At the MOME.” She bit down on her bottom lip with a sideways turn of her face that avoided eye contact. “What do you remember?”
Kin tried to fill his lungs with air, and although he wanted to give her hand a reassuring squeeze, even that felt like too much for him. “We passed the European section. Curries. I remember curries. And then the replicator was making the sample of fried chicken. And then here.”
“That sounds about right. You collapsed, started babbling nonsense.”
Nonsense? Kin hoped he didn’t start lecturing anyone on trans fats in fast food. “Well, I’m clearheaded now.” He pulled the holo chart off the wall and angled the floating image closer to examine the diagnosis. “Head trauma,” he read.
“The doctor said he’d never seen anything like it. I told him about your radiation accident.” Penny leaned over to view the holo with him before she focused on the floor. “Kin?”
“Yeah?”
“Who’s Miranda?”
During a time jump, right before the world flashed to white, fractions of a second felt like an endless pause. The world dialed down from normal to slow motion to a standstill, and a rush of cold would hit, followed by the electrical tingle that ran up and down his spine.
Penny’s question created the same experience, only a dozen times over.
She kept looking at the hospital room’s tile, hopefully enough that she didn’t notice the stunned reaction on Kin’s face. He was an agent; he was trained to think under pressure.
Delay tactics raced through his mind while shoving aside a heavy fact: he’d mentioned Miranda to Penny. Whoever Penny thought Miranda might be—an affair, a friend, a long-lost relative—that didn’t matter. What mattered was taking back control of the situation.
