Squaring the Circle

by B K Brain

  Hard to say how many laps she made around the outer spiral before her aching body was sucked into the center, the eye of the storm. She hit the ground in a shocking, spine-jangling thud. On her knees she coughed, gasped, coughed again. Each heave was a kick to the ribcage, an eye-watering brick of pain. She winced. Tried to breathe. Exposed, sandblasted skin burned like the ninth circle of Hell.

  Eddie rubbed grit from her eyes, looked up to see a circular area, maybe six feet across, of much calmer air. She was inside and, as suspected, this was not a tornado. If it was she’d have blown off to Oz by now.

  Rachel had arms around her in an instant. She was here too, alive. Thank God. Eddie grabbed hold and squeezed. Where was the dog? Couldn’t see or hear him. Couldn’t hear anything but a deafening, rock grinding wind all around.

  Eddie peered upward, into the twisting tunnel above. The interior glowed like diamonds stirred into frothy milk. Dense, yet transparent.

  Deep inside the sparkling throat, she saw a man. Obscured at first, distant. Then clearer, closer. She saw him. David. Straining, holding back, afraid. He was seeing her too.

  This was a doorway, a passage that led to him. Not a photograph, not a temporary view through his eyes, but the real David in the real world.

  “It’s him,” she said. She pushed out of her sister’s grip and stood to get a better look. Rachel refused to let go. Hands clung tight, pulling, trying to stop Eddie. But no, this was important. She needed to see. Curious, she reached out to him, to touch him.

  Could she? Was it even possible? Would it help her understand?

  Without warning the glowing ceiling fell over her body, all the way to the waist. She was suddenly inside the threshold, with him. No, that’s not right. Not with him- together. Occupying the very same space. She could feel him moving within her, his fear, his pain, the beat of his racing heart. She saw the face of a woman, Cathleen. A big, thick man named Doug. A magic baseball. And someone named Jacobson, a doctor. He was…crazy? Like her?

  No, not like you…

  And then a man without a name, on a sidewalk. Eddie felt David’s shock, his confusion and terror as it happened. The man’s arms. His broken jaw. And then…

  Oh God.

  Eddie had just stumbled into a very bad place. She couldn’t be here. She screamed, lurched back, but it was too late for that.

  You wanted to see. So here it is. Look.

  Please, no. Let me out.

  The sidewalk, broken. The man. That poor man.

  And the doctor. Not so much insane as…inhuman? Not like her.

  Nothing like her.

  11

  A thick grip from behind, a hard tug at the ankles. David flew back and hit the wall. Hands slapped the floor with a surprise sting. His left knee struck unforgiving tile. An explosion of pain, all the way up to his guts.

  Unseen hands, pulling. His body, sliding. Back, away from the white spiral.

  He was out.

  “I saw her,” he said. “I felt her.” He burst into tears.

  Cathleen hovered above, so close his eyes wouldn’t focus properly. She was crying too. Thin fingers rested over his chest.

  The mysterious girl was still there. He could feel her. Her mother, her sister. Too many meds, too many vowels. She was sad, lonely. Scared. And another thing- the most important thing- she needed to find her purpose.

  Her name was Eddie. Not Edith Ann. Eddie.

  12

  The storm, the portal, whatever it was, was gone.

  Eddie went to her knees, pinched eyes shut, tried to shake off an eerie lightheadedness. Looked up to Sis. “I know where he is. I have to go.”

  Rachel grabbed her, held her. “What are you talking about? You’re not going anywhere.”

  “He’s just like me. It’s not his fault.”

  Eddie couldn’t stop shaking. The man, David, was still there, inside. She could feel him, in her head, tingling down her arms and legs. Swimming in pit of her stomach, pumping through every beat of her heart.

  Oh my God. He’s still here.

  She looked to Rachel, her eyes pleading. “If I don’t go, he’ll die. They’ll all die.”

  “How could you know something like that?”

  Eddie covered her face, sobbing. Sis took her in a hug that wanted to last forever. She’d always kept her safe, but not this time. This time Eddie would be on her own.

  “The other man is so strong, Rachel. Please. I don’t want to see him anymore.”

  “It’s going to be alright.”

  “No,” Eddie said. “It isn’t.”

  13

  Enough was enough. It was time to be done with the doctor’s wicked machine, once and for all.

  They couldn’t use the corridor behind, not with a wormhole still churning in the doorway. The opposite entrance to the control room was now only accessible by taking the long way around, by way of the north hall. David, holding Cathleen tight, led the others into the stairwell, down to the main laboratory floor.

  At the bottom of the stairs and around the corner, David stopped. In that moment his entire life squeezed down to a single, ominous point of no return. He could only stare as the consequence of every decision he’d made came into sharp, horrifying focus.

  Scattered over the floor, next to the little table. Four items.

  Two metal rulers.

  A tire iron.

  And a hockey stick.

  DIVISION THREE: WILL TO PÖWER

  Every specific body strives to become master over all space and to extend its force and to thrust back all that resists its extension.

  The Will to Power - Friedrich Nietzsche

  Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong.

  -Adolf Hitler

  CHAPTER EIGHT: CLÖSER

  1

  Dr. Samuel Jacobson was gone.

  No light. No sound. Nothing to touch or feel. A total sensory blackout.

  Pulled into the span between dreams, the black chasm below shadows, the place of no place, the time of no time.

  The five senses, connections to a life he’d once taken for granted, had abandoned him. But there was something. Yes, something.

  There was…awareness. Consciousness. A sense of self, of being. He knew he was gone – he was as positive as he’d ever been about anything - therefore he couldn’t be, not completely. He was nowhere to be sure, but at least he was.

  This cannot be the end of me.

  A surge of fireflies surrounded him, pinpoints of dim light, each popping in and out of existence, swimming, dancing. Circling like tiny birds.

  Sam couldn’t have known, but somehow he did. These were his particles, his Gravitons. His children, all five hundred of them.

  You see me, don’t you? Yes. And I see you.

  More than anything he wanted to reach out to them, but there was nothing to reach out with. He imagined an arm, a hand, a body.

  He was nothing. His imaginings were only lies. But when told to the Graviton, lies were meant to be broken. A hand appeared in the darkness. An arm.

  He felt himself smile. A simulation was no longer required. He was the simulation now. The liaison between man and reality. He would speak, the universe would listen.

  I’m not nothing, he thought. I’m everything. And I’m going back.

  And so he did. But not in the way he expected.

  Light grew before him like the rising of sluggish flames. It expanded outward in a widening tunnel of vision.

  He found himself looking out from somewhere behind, a dark place of in-between. He gazed into a dream.

  Sound. Muffled, distant.

  Color. Muted, as if through old film.

  This time wasn’t his. He didn’t belong.

  Sam was inside and seeing his own face on the outside. A halo of light encircled his outside body, a strange aura of bluish haze. Streaks of white swam in every direction through the glow, leaving behind tiny jet trails.

  What is that?

  Behind the outside fa
ce he saw a row of screens on the far wall. One such screen was the view of a corridor that led to the main entrance. A man carrying a crate walked with purpose down that hall, away from the camera. Again, the bizarre halo of light. The man had been his research partner for twenty years. His name was Leon. He was scared. He was leaving because he’d had enough.

  The horrified face on the outside, Sam’s horrified face, kept turning around and back again, from the computer to the monitor behind. The outside him said, “Please stop.”

  Days ago, that’s what this was. He was back and seeing himself through new eyes, detached eyes.

  And then he knew. He’d been the one that put the text on the monitor. The message had come from him all along.

  But he couldn’t remember what he’d said. A lot had happened in the past couple days. Surely it would come back to him. It had to, naturally, since it already happened.

  The outside version of him said, “Don’t make me do this, please.” So strange, the fear on that face. So alien.

  Oh yes. I remember now.

  DO IT.

  2

  Two police cars. Two fire trucks. An unruly mob of onlookers.

  Eddie watched the commotion, safely behind curtains and through a dusty, smeared kitchen window, newly-pitted and cracked from the storm. Somehow it still held tight in its frame, almost like a miracle, as impervious to tornados as the previous had been to office chairs.

  The yard hadn’t been so lucky.

  A wide stripe of lawn had been churned as if by a tiller, in a nearly perfect ten-foot circle. Hard for anyone to believe it had been created by Mother Nature. It looked more like an odd choice in landscaping. That’s a strange way to plant flowers. But hey, it’s your yard, lady. And that might’ve been what they thought, if the tree hadn’t been stripped clean to its trunk and a lawn chair hadn’t been found wrapped around a power line transformer. But the mess didn’t stop there, oh no it did not.

  The front railing had been dismantled, with only the corner posts still in their proper places. The wood deck was now missing half its planking. The porch roof? Gone with the summer breeze, mulch for someone’s garden across town. The neighbor’s privacy fence had taken flight as well, leaving behind a sad row of bare metal poles. Not to mention heaps of trash strewn everywhere, like a third world alleyway.

  Maurice was gone, a section of his leash still lay wrapped around the base of the naked tree. A twinge of guilt prodded at Eddie’s stomach. She should’ve treated him better, if only for her sister’s sake.

  She watched a policeman talk to Rachel, taking down notes on a clipboard as firemen explored the yard with troubled expressions. One man had been on all fours at the gas meter for some time now. Another looked over battered house siding and cracked windows. A tall guy, the Fire Chief most likely, stood talking into an ACTION NEWS camera. A reporter smiled, holding out a microphone emblazoned with a colorful logo, WPRK.

  A hazy image of two video cameras and a halogen spotlight came to mind, all three aimed at a mysterious baseball. It wasn’t a memory, not hers anyway. It was his. The old guy’s. David’s. There was something special about that ball. And scary too. It meant something big. Morgan Freeman could now suck it.

  What the hell does that mean?

  She saw another borrowed memory as well. A rural highway cutting through a dense forest. Dwindling cell service. A tall, out of place building with satellite dishes on the roof. And a plaque that read Stratton and Southerland Research Center.

  Pennsylvania was a long way from Indiana. Nevertheless, that’s where she’d be going. That’s where he was.

  He had all the answers.

  3

  “Oh no,” David said in shock. His location crew gathered close to see what he saw, careful to stay behind him.

  The original test items, Sam’s test items, lay strewn over the floor, taunting those who witnessed their return, teasing them with the terrible truth.

  The hockey stick, so much more than a slat of painted wood. Where did it go, Sam? It went here. And now. It hadn’t ceased to exist; it had only been moved. To a time when it couldn’t affect the baseball’s position in space. Sam had taken his leave in the exact same way.

  David could still feel the girl, see her hazy face. Eddie.

  “What’s the big deal?” Doug asked. “I don’t get it.”

  Cathleen’s voice shuddered. “How long?” she whispered before looking into David’s eyes. “How long do we have until that bastard comes back?”

  That was a Hell of a question. And, he thought, precisely the right one. How long indeed.

  “We got here about six o’clock last night. The stick disappeared about six-thirty. It’s-” He checked his watch. “-five o’clock now. That’s twenty-three hours, give or take.”

  Cathleen said, “Tomorrow afternoon. Two at the latest. If he takes the same amount of time to come back.”

  “Yeah.” David couldn’t take his eyes off the hockey stick. “That sounds right.”

  He’s coming. But so is she. How could he know that?

  “None of that matters,” Steve growled. “Because we’re leaving now.” He pulled out his cell phone, checked the screen. “I got no signal. Check yours, Doug.”

  Doug swiped his to life, then frowned. “Nothing.”

  The men looked to Susan. She shrugged. “I left mine in the car.”

  “Fuck this shit,” Steve said. He slapped Doug on the arm. “Come on.”

  Susan didn’t follow the men. She remained at Cathleen’s side, eyes gaping, her skinny frame trembling. “We’re in a lot of trouble, aren’t we?”

  David met her fear with grim, brutal honesty. “If we can’t find a way out of here, yes. We’re in a lot of trouble.”

  4

  Eddie paced from carpet to linoleum and back again, pausing every few steps to shake the anxiety out of her hands. There wasn’t time for this crap. They needed to go.

  Channel 6 interviewed Rachel for the evening broadcast, as well as Fox News and a reporter from the local newspaper.

  City workers cleared debris off the street, but made no offers to help clean up the yard. That job would be left to Rachel and Eddie.

  The power company used a bucket truck to remove the lawn chair. The transformer apparently hadn’t taken damage beyond a few scratches.

  All the while locals gathered to gawk and point and ask questions, gathering information for dinner table conversations and water cooler gossip. It was the damnedest thing, they’d say. That crazy girl, you remember her, right? Yeah. Well her house nearly blew away today. Hot damn, it was somethin’ to see. Let me tell you…

  Eddie wrinkled her nose, scowling at the lot of them. Vultures.

  It was almost four o’clock by the time Rachel sent the last of the crowd away and came back inside. “Looking at me,” Eddie said. “They’re all looking at me.”

  “Nobody was looking at you. It’s fine. They’re gone now.”

  “Too long, Rachel. We have to go.”

  Big Sis crossed her arms. “You’re not gonna start with that again, are you?”

  “I can still feel him.” Eddie held up a two-quart Ziploc bag stuffed with meds. “Here. I’m gonna pack a suitcase. You should probably gas up the car.”

  “Stop this, Ed. Right now. We’re not going anywhere.”

  “I’m going. With or without you.” She took off for her bedroom.

  Rachel cut her off at the pass. “Please. Sit down. Let’s talk about this.”

  “NO!”

  And then the worst thing Rachel could’ve said, she said. “Don’t make me call Dr. Thatcher.”

  Eddie looked up with an icy glare. “So that’s it? After everything you’ve seen, those are the words you want to say? Those are not the words, Rachel. And you know it.”

  A whisper. “Please don’t do this, Ed. Please.”

  “I thought you believed. You’re just a liar like everyone else. Like Mom.”

  “Listen to me.”

  “No.”
Eddie broke away, dodged her sister, rushed into the bedroom. “You can all go to Hell,” she said. She slammed the door.

  Told you so, a voice hissed from the corner. They all hate you.

  Yeah.

  5

  I won’t put Eddie in more danger. That’s never gonna happen.

  Rachel walked out to the demolished porch, careful not to step into any new gaps.

  The churned up yard was nothing short of bizarre, like the beginning of a crop circle, a design interrupted before the Martians had a chance to even get a feel for the aesthetics. Or maybe just a flower bed at Disneyworld.

  She remembered how much fun Disney had been all those years ago, once Mom got over being mad at Dad. Space Mountain was the greatest thing ever, even after Little Sis puked on her shoes.

  The Haunted Mansion was Eddie’s favorite. What a wuss.

  It took three days, two motels, and a tornado to get them there, but it was worth it. That was a good summer, like they all were before the voices.

  She can hate me all she wants.

  Across the yard. The sad tree. It didn’t even look like a tree anymore, not with every branch ripped off at the shoulder, leaving behind a skinny, splintery torso. A short length of brown leash encircled the base, torn and frayed.

  Maurice.

  She squinted down the street, one way then the other. There was no sign of him. He’d taken his leave as abruptly and completely as he’d arrived. Poor thing. He…

  Across the road, from behind a fat rose bush, a Labrador Retriever trotted into view wagging a long blonde tail. Holy shit.

  “Maurice! You’re alive!”

  Rachel leapt off the porch and went to her knees as the dog closed the gap. He jumped and landed with paws over her shoulders, knocking her flat to the ground. His tongue, sloppy and quick, as always. She couldn’t help laughing as he assaulted her with saliva. He didn’t seem any worse for wear.