The Rift: Hard Science Fiction

by Brandon Q Morris

  “Derek, you...”

  “Alexa, stop.”

  The voice went quiet. He was in agony when he stood up. He rubbed his puffy eyes. The other side of the bed was empty. The bed was still made with white, reasonably clean sheets. Derek changed them regularly, on the off chance he might bring a girl home with him, at least that’s what he told himself. Briefly he thought he saw the impression of a body on the sheets. He rubbed his eyes again. That was totally impossible. Nobody had slept next to him since... how long had it been, 12 years? And the only girl he’d brought here, the waitress from the bar—Billie, that was her name—didn’t count. She’d given him a blow job, sitting on the edge of the bed, for $20, and had then left. When was that? Two years ago?

  Derek staggered into the bathroom. He got in the shower and turned on the cold water. He squealed like a pig. He absolutely couldn’t stand the icy-feeling spray hitting his skin, but he knew that he could rely on a cold shower to counter his hangover. After that he would be spending the day planting primroses or some other kind of flower. Isaac would tell him what he’d have to do.

  He dried off. He already felt much better.

  He walked naked into the kitchen and put a piece of bread in the toaster. Only then did he notice the spot of mold on the slice of bread. He fished it out of the toaster, careful to avoid an electrical shock, and threw it in the trash. He examined the next slice carefully. It seemed mold-free, so he declared it good enough and popped it into the toaster. Then he made some coffee.

  His gaze fell on the dirty dishes. Shit, he meant to do those last night! The dishwasher hadn’t been working for months, and he didn’t have the money to have it repaired. His gardener’s job didn’t even pay minimum wage. Derek took a mug from the stack of dishes and washed it. That would have to do. He filled it with coffee. The brew was hot and tasted awful, but at least the pain from his scalded tongue and the bitter taste finished waking him up. Then he gulped down the dry toast.

  Derek thought, What about the dishes from last night? He rubbed his temples. Such a crazy thought. Where did that come from? Yesterday—last night—I was with Doug at the bar. The barkeeper took care of the only dishes we used, the beer bottles.

  How did I make it home? Derek hoped that he’d somehow driven himself. Because if he hadn’t his truck wouldn’t be outside. He threw on some clothes and his jean jacket, slipped on his worn tennis shoes, and stepped outside. The wooden boards creaked. He should really do something about that. Hadn’t someone told him that before?

  Thank God, the truck was outside. He must have actually driven himself home in his inebriated state. Lucky that the roads out here are so damn straight. His truck being here meant he could get to his job in Ottawa on time. He drove the truck slowly over the long access road toward Colorado Road. The coarse gravel crunched under the tires. Derek rolled the window down. It smelled good outside, like it always did in the morning. The dry grassy meadows and the scorched crops in the fields somehow didn’t lessen the good smell.

  Derek looked around. He was happy that he’d sold the farmland six years ago. The new owner had gone bust last year. The man had hoped he’d be able to sell crops to the Chinese. But the recent summers had been much too hot and dry. Derek turned left onto Colorado Road without even looking to the right. Nobody ever came down these roads, and even if they did, it wouldn’t matter.

  Isaac was waiting for him. With his hands on his hips, the giant African-American was standing at the edge of the flower bed in front of the medical center in Ottawa. It was fun watching him push the delicate plants into the soil. He always appeared to be showering each plant with so much tenderness. Derek thought he would have liked to be his boss’s son. As far as he knew, Isaac didn’t have any kids.

  “It’s about time,” Isaac said. His deep voice fit his massive body perfectly. “I thought I was going to have to come and get you myself,” he added.

  “Of course not,” Derek said, “you can always count on me.”

  “You’re not a bad guy, kid, but you’re about as reliable as the U.S. Postal Service.”

  “What are we doing today?” Derek asked in lieu of a reply.

  “The rift, as you can see.” Isaac pointed to the flower beds, which had been trampled by hundreds of people.

  “Are we supposed to sew it back together?” Derek asked.

  “Wise guy. We’re planting new, beautiful flowers so that the sick can enjoy them.”

  “Of course, Dad,” Derek said.

  Isaac laughed and slapped him affectionately on the back with his outstretched hand. He liked being called that.

  Doug came half an hour later. He had to listen to a loud lecture from Isaac before he could join Derek. Then they divided the work. One of them dug the holes, the other planted the flowers. Derek didn’t even know what they were putting in the ground, but it didn’t matter to him, the main thing was that they would be pretty. And that was guaranteed by Isaac, who, unlike the two of them, had formerly been a farmer and was a real, trained gardener.

  “People really trampled all over these plants here,” Doug said.

  Derek saw that he had dark rings under his eyes. He pointed at his own eyes. “You have to take a cold shower in the morning. It’ll help,” he said.

  “I’m not crazy. You must be trying to pull my leg again,” Doug replied.

  “No, for real, that’s what I always do. You should try it too.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “What have you heard about the rift?” Derek asked.

  Doug stood up. “What now?”

  “Uh. The... about the rift...” Derek stammered.

  “Haven’t heard anything. Not since the people trampled all over these flowers here.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing at all, nada, niente, zip. Scientists haven’t said anything except that the thing isn’t dangerous.”

  “I thought...” Derek paused and considered what he had thought. He searched his mind. But Doug was right, there was nothing. Then a memory bubbled up. He was standing next to someone at a window and watching as an airplane disappeared into the rift. A doctor, more precisely, a Turkish doctor. The window must have been in the building in front of him, somewhere on the first or second floor.

  But that was crazy. He’d never been inside that building. Derek had kept away from all doctors ever since he left the Air Force to become a farmer. How romantic of him, to want to plant and grow new life instead of taking it away. His naive motivation hadn’t lasted long, but the Air Force wouldn’t take him back. They had no use for him anymore. Once a farmer, always a farmer, just like his father and grandfather. Well, now a gardener. Actually, it isn’t a bad job, he thought.

  A name, or maybe a word, suddenly came to him. Atasoy. A-T-A-S-O-Y. Some kind of soybean flavoring that he’d seen in the supermarket? Was there even such a thing as soybean flavoring? The explanation didn’t seem right to him.

  Derek suddenly asked, “You ever hear of something called Atasoy?”

  “Ata-what?”

  “Soy. Atasoy.”

  “No, sorry, dude, never heard of it. Sounds like some Arab cleaning agent. Why do you ask?”

  “The name just popped into my head,” Derek said.

  “That’s weird.”

  He considered whether he should tell Doug about the reverse déjà vu feeling and decided he would.

  Doug listened quietly. “Interesting,” he finally said, “but also pretty strange. You sure you’ve got all your marbles up there?” Doug pointed to his head. “Not trying to be mean,” he said seriously. “But you shouldn’t kid around about that. Could be head cancer.”

  “You idiot,” Derek said. “No such thing as head cancer.”

  Doug burst out laughing. The guy was real easy to talk to. But this word... Atasoy. He was sure he’d heard it somewhere before. Words like that didn’t just form in your mind like snot in your nose. Derek took out a tissue from his pants pocket and blew his nose.

  It was a wonde
rful May day. The sun was warm. It wasn’t burning hot yet, as it would be in the middle of June. At the end of the day, Derek was worn out. When Isaac released them to go home, Doug asked if he wanted to hang out and have a few beers.

  Derek declined. He really should get home, he said. It felt like someone was waiting for him there.

  “Mary,” he suddenly said out loud.

  “What’d you say, Derek?” Doug had been walking a few steps ahead, but now turned around.

  “Me? Nothing,” he replied.

  “You said something about ‘Mary.’”

  “I don’t know anyone named Mary.”

  “You been seeing someone and not tell me?”

  “No, Doug, you’d be the first one I’d tell if I was seeing someone, promise.”

  He looked at his buddy, who looked as if he didn’t believe him. He didn’t really believe himself at the moment. He really had said, ‘Mary,’ without knowing why.

  “See you tomorrow,” he said to Doug.

  He remained standing there until Doug was out of sight. Then he turned around and walked up to the hospital’s main entrance. He felt like it was luring him in, for some reason, and he didn’t know why. But he had time, nothing was forcing him to go home. He didn’t have any pressing matters, apart from this strange feeling. The building had a large sliding double door that was open around the clock for emergencies. If anyone got close enough to it, the door opened automatically. So Derek kept a respectful distance. From inside, a tall white man in a suit came walking toward him. The doors slid open. The man nodded to him and Derek nodded back. The man turned toward the parking lot and the door slid shut again. Then he noticed the name of one of the doctors on a sign.

  Akif Atasoy, MD.

  Derek felt a shiver go through him. Then his fight-or-flight response kicked in and he ran as if a pack of wolves was chasing him. In mid-stride he pulled out the keys from his pocket, opened the driver’s door with the remote control, jumped into the seat, and drove off. Only after he’d left Ottawa did his heart start slowing down.

  So he hadn’t made up the word. But that doesn’t prove anything, he tried to reassure himself. Just a stupid coincidence. I must have seen that entrance at some other time in my life and that name stuck in my mind for some reason.

  That’s not true, he contradicted himself. I’ve never been in that hospital. The last time I saw a doctor I was in the Air Force, and me and John had gotten in a fight. Or John had totally beaten me up, more like it.

  But none of that mattered, so why was he getting so upset about this? They were only words and images. It wasn’t head cancer. He made himself laugh meekly at Doug’s stupid joke.

  Wood preservative.

  More damn words in his head. He had talked to the man about something to do with a wood preservative. Had they discussed which brand lasted the longest or stunk the least after applying it? That made no sense. Why would he talk to a doctor about something like that? Had he gotten some on his clothes, perhaps, when he was coating some wood?

  Derek looked at his jacket. He always wore this same jacket, in the summer and winter, no matter what he had planned. It was his favorite jacket, comfortable and insulated against the weather, both against heat and cold, as everyone knew. Its sleeves weren’t anything that other people might call clean, but he couldn’t find any spots of preservative or varnish anywhere. He smelled it. He couldn’t detect any trace of wood preservative odor.

  This topic must have come up with the man—the doctor—in some other way. Derek wriggled in the driver’s seat, swaying back and forth. He would have liked to turn around and go talk to this Atasoy person. But surely the man had long since left work to go home. He could drive back in the morning. Derek had to admit that he was afraid of the encounter. That was why he hadn’t turned around. And that was why he ignored the chance to simply look up Atasoy’s home telephone number. Surely such an exotic name would be listed only once in the Ottawa, Kansas phone records.

  The truck’s right blinker flashed and then it turned from Colorado Road onto the access road to his house. The house looked abandoned. That shouldn’t surprise him, he’d been the only inhabitant since he bought the place, but today, for some reason, it bothered him. The entrance looked like a wide-open mouth waiting to devour him. He stopped the truck some distance away and got out. Then he reached into his pants and scratched his balls. His body wanted him to remember something. That’s it, the garage! That’s where I was storing the rest of the wood preservative.

  He shut the driver’s door with the remote control and ran over to the sheet-metal hut that had never really earned the name ‘garage.’ For as long as he’d lived there, no vehicle had ever been under its roof. Besides, the truck was a little too tall for its entrance. Since there was never anything valuable inside the garage, its door was never locked. Derek approached the garage carefully, as if there might be a wounded bear in there that was really pissed off.

  But there hadn’t been any bears in Kansas for a long time. He pulled open the door with a forceful jerk. Daylight streamed into the dark space. At first all he could see was his own shadow. His eyes adjusted to the contrast. On the left there was a workbench. It was empty and dusty. On the right there were a few plastic containers, about the same size as buckets. One of them read ‘used oil,’ apparently written in marker. He probably should have disposed of that a long time ago. According to its label, a second one held distilled water.

  Derek stepped closer and opened its lid. It gave off a nauseating odor. It definitely wasn’t water, but it also wasn’t wood preservative. The third container was unlabeled. Derek looked for a pen in the garage. Unlabeled containers were not a common sight in his garage. He must have been drunk when he put it there. He lifted it up. The container must be about half full. Then he opened the screw-on top and took a whiff of the vapors.

  Wood preservative.

  He saw himself standing on a folding ladder in the hallway of his house. On the top step was a small bucket and he was dipping a flat brush in it again and again as he coated the ceiling. The coating was clear. Wood coated with it suddenly became darker and looked almost like new.

  Wood preservative.

  After coating the ceiling, he must have poured the leftovers into this container. Then he’d brought it in here at some point. Derek didn’t remember exactly. But there was one thing he could still remember very well. It was the sound of a female voice. He heard it while he was still standing on the ladder and liberally coating the ceiling with wood preservative.

  “Derek, come here,” the voice said.

  Nothing more. His heart started beating faster.

  May 26, 2085, Madrid

  “Ms. Pedreira?”

  A stewardess bent toward her. Maribel quickly closed her notebook. She had just heard the announcement that all large electronic devices must be switched off for landing.

  “Sorry,” she said, smiling guiltily at the stewardess. It had to be annoying to have to individually remind the passengers to follow the announcements.

  The stewardess smiled. “I’m not worried about that,” she said. “I’m supposed to give you a message.”

  “Oh, about what?”

  “Someone requested that you remain seated after we land. Someone will come to pick you up.”

  “Oh, that’s all? Do you know who this ‘someone’ is?” Maribel asked.

  “‘Someone from the government’ is what I was told. I didn’t get the message directly; it came to me from the cockpit.”

  “Okay, thank you,” Maribel said.

  The stewardess walked along the narrow aisle toward the back. Maribel looked to the left. Chen was sitting next to her. He was holding Luisa’s hand. Their daughter had been glued to the window the entire flight. Shortly after take-off, she’d decided that she wanted to become a pilot.

  “Did you hear that, Chen?”

  Her husband opened his eyes. “What?” He looked exhausted.

  “Someone’s going to pick us u
p from the airplane.”

  “What about our connecting flight?” Chen asked.

  “Seems to me they already know where we need to go.”

  Chen sighed. Maribel could understand his exhaustion to some degree. But he had known that this wasn’t a family vacation. She rubbed his knee.

  “Look, Luisa’s having fun,” she said.

  Their daughter had apparently heard her name and turned toward them. “Who was that, Mommy?”

  “The woman I was talking to? That was a stewardess.”

  “Ah, she brought us our food,” Luisa said.

  Maribel nodded.

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Someone’s going to pick us up, sweetie.”

  Everyone scurried around trying to get off the plane as quickly as possible. Maribel noticed that it felt good to stay out of the chaos. When all the seats were empty, a man wearing a dark suit came up to them.

  “Ms. Pedreira? Please follow me.”

  He helped them with their luggage and then went out of the plane. They stepped outside. The air was hot and the sun was burning. Maribel had to squint to see anything. She held up a hand to shield her eyes. There was a black limousine at the foot of the gangway. The bus with the other passengers must have already driven away. A stewardess wished them well on their continued travels.

  Maribel followed the man in the suit.

  A second man, very similarly dressed, opened a door for her. “Would you please get in, Ms. Pedreira?”

  “And my family?”

  “Don’t worry, a second car will be here for them in a moment. You’ll meet them again at the gate of your connecting flight. Everything’s under control. We’re from the government.”

  Maribel remained standing. What was going on here? Should she demand to ride together with Luisa and Chen? She looked to her husband for help, but he had just bent down next to Luisa and it looked like he was telling her about the huge jet engines. The two would be able to manage by themselves. No one was going to kidnap them here on the tarmac.