Squaring the Circle

by B K Brain

  Sam said, “Looks like I’m gonna need to separate you two.” He went to clap her on the shoulder, but his hand never made contact.

  One very important thing still held true: Nothing could touch him.

  Eddie went tumbling down the throat of a dark, improbable well.

  4

  Garret sat leaning against the wall, trying to stay awake. It was difficult, but his part in this couldn’t be over. The whole world was counting on him. Where were his damned agents? They couldn’t all be dead, could they?

  That, sadly, was something he needed to consider. He very well might be the only one left, badly wounded and without communication, fighting against unconsciousness. He adjusted his position, cringed, managed a weak smile.

  If this is the end of everything, he thought, at least it wasn’t the North Koreans.

  But it wasn’t the end, not yet.

  He heard footsteps clacking in the hall, distant at first, then closer. Heavy breathing, a cough. A woman in the doorway.

  Garret aimed the pistol. The woman was young, pretty. Thin, strong legs. He’d need to keep a solid bead on her. She could probably run like a gazelle.

  “Don’t move,” he growled.

  Her skinny frame jerked in surprise. Her hands went up. “Please. I need to get to my sister.”

  Garret leaned forward, winced at the pain. “Who are you?”

  “Rachel Sallenger.”

  “What’s your sister’s name?”

  “Eddie. Edith Ann, actually. Sallenger.”

  “Where is she currently?”

  The woman looked to the doorway. “She’s here, somewhere in this building. Please. I have to get to her.”

  Garret aimed higher, at the woman’s face. “Tell me everything you know about this facility and the people here or I will shoot you in the head. You have five seconds.”

  “Wait! Please!”

  “Four.”

  “I’ll tell you! I will!”

  “Three.”

  “My sister is connected to a man named David Sandoval. He’s the producer of a science show on TechNet. We were here looking for him.”

  Garret raised an eyebrow, lowered the gun. “Define connected.”

  5

  David froze.

  The girl. There one second, gone the next.

  Sam’s appearance, a self-righteous expression of satisfaction, snapped to surprise, dissolved into confusion as he took a step back.

  There was no fear in his eyes. Best David could tell, he was fascinated. Intrigued. By what? What was he looking at?

  You, Dave. He’s looking at you.

  David’s hands. His chest. His whole body.

  He’d gone luminescent, bright enough to shine through his clothing. The exposed skin of his hands and forearms radiated with brilliant white light. Just like in the woods, when he and Eddie experimented with trading pleasure and pain, only this wasn’t limited to a single area. Every inch of David, head to toe, blazed like a naked halogen.

  A surge of density, a strange tightening, had overcome every molecule, every nerve, the entire landscape of his being, inside and out. He was thicker, fuller somehow, of himself. Like Eddie said, he’d gone supernova, whatever that meant.

  Christ.

  Sam leapt forward, surely intent on sending him to join Eddie in the nothing. He slapped hands to David’s chest and shoved. Much to Sam’s surprise, David wasn’t going anywhere.

  Eddie was on the other side, which apparently meant David couldn’t be. Sam could touch him, and he could touch Sam. He did not waste the opportunity.

  David balled a fist, swung with everything he had, all he’d endured since he arrived at this awful place, all that he’d become.

  Sam tried to duck away, block with his arm, but he was too slow and too late.

  Thick knuckles connected with a cheekbone and Sam was thrown to unforgiving concrete, howling. Bleeding from the mouth and nose.

  David took a moment to consider his host, see him for what he truly was - a weak, pitiful man groping for power, digging at it like a starving animal. Desperate to convince himself, as well as others, of his dominance. His worth.

  All bullshit. And all over, a done deal.

  This had become nothing more than a common fistfight.

  That, by God, was something David could handle.

  6

  The nothing, like the center of a black hole minus the horrific pressure. There were voices here, so many voices. All around her, from every direction, saying her name. Who were they? Where had they come from? Were they lost, like her?

  Eddie, your name is Eddie.

  Why are you here?

  Help us.

  Eddie began to feel a strange sense of progress, of movement. To a where she could not say, to a when she couldn’t know. How long would it take? Yes, how long.

  A swarm of voices, like thunder. Everywhere.

  And then there was light. Small at first, almost too dim to see. A long way from here, but not impossible. Nothing is impossible.

  The pinpoint expanded into a headlight - the headlight to a blinding tunnel. A doorway. Eddie was pulled through. The thunder faded to silence.

  She found herself back where she began, a dark, massive room - three story ceiling above, concrete floor below. But it wasn’t the same, not how she’d left it. Seeing it now was like peering through a hazy film. She’d been separated from the world, it no longer belonged to her. Who were they?

  Her hands and arms, only a black silhouette. Eddie was like him now, the man made of nothing. What happened to me?

  Nothing can touch Sam, and so you have become.

  I’m not nothing. I’m-

  It was only temporary, had to be. Information cannot be lost, not like this. She may have been set aside, moved to a whole new place, but she most definitely was not nothing.

  She saw movement. There were people here. Well, not here. There, behind the haze. David, standing center floor. Cathleen, in the shadowed hallway.

  And Sam, but not like the others. His body stood facing David, yes, but it was transparent, ghostly. What Eddie saw was only an outer image of the man, like a hologram. Where was the rest of him?

  Eddie narrowed a gaze upward, to the control booth. Behind the observation glass tiny specks of light swam in chaotic circles, a mason jar teeming with fireflies.

  You’re with your precious Gravitons, aren’t you?

  She headed for the stairs.

  At the summit, a voice. You found your way out of the black quicker than I expected. Clever girl.

  If Eddie had the ability to grin, she would’ve done it. Haven’t you heard? Time is but a stubbornly persistent illusion. She walked to the doorway. The wormhole looked different from this side. She could see through it. Sam wasn’t in the booth.

  A laugh. I like you, Eddie. It’s a shame I have to kill you.

  She went to the corner, peeked down the connecting corridor, one way, then the other. Nothing.

  Where are you?

  No response. He had to be here somewhere.

  Then, an odd thought. A logical thought. Are you hiding from me, Sam?

  Down at the next intersection. To the left, a storage closet. To the right, the opposite stairwell. A dark blur.

  An electric explosion sent Eddie flying back and clutching her chest. Through the wall, across a battery of blinding lights and sounds. A scramble of voices. Distorted imagery she couldn’t make out, and some she could. Houses, mailboxes. Faces, words, moments. All of it backwards and inside out. All of it familiar.

  Rachel. School. Mom.

  My life in reverse.

  Thatcher’s office. Blue sky. Tall, enduring trees.

  Eddie slowed. Fell down and out, away from the shocking momentum and onto soft grass. The sun blazed. She glanced around in a panic.

  Where am I? Or perhaps more importantly, when?

  The corroded film persisted, the hazy layer between her and reality. Through it she saw a teenaged Rachel laughing with
three other girls. She saw herself, smiling and running up to join the group. She couldn’t have been older than ten.

  My God, that’s us.

  This was years before the voices, the doctors, medications that didn’t work and leering eyes. Before the world turned on her.

  Was it real? A memory? Or something else?

  Rachel, she said, maybe even out loud, but they couldn’t hear. Eddie was merely an observer. A lucid, invisible shadow.

  “No cheating,” Rachel said. “If you cheat we’re starting over.”

  Little Eddie spun around, away from the others. “I won’t.” She covered her eyes with both hands.

  “And you have to count all the way to a hundred this time,” a girl with short brown hair said. That was Tina Lambert. She used to play at their house all the time. She lived two blocks away, on Maple. Eddie hadn’t thought about her in years.

  The other two were twins, Mary and Molly Stewart. They were dressed exactly the same, all the way down to the yellow flip-flops. One of them said, “Can she even count that high?”

  “Can you?” Rachel quipped.

  “Shuttup.”

  Ten-year-old Eddie began counting, peeking through her fingers at the back of the house. “One. Two. Three…” Point one? The girls ran away, laughing.

  Eddie had no recollection of this.

  She remembered lots of afternoons playing hide and seek, but not this particular day. Until this very moment it had been lost to the muddling of time. So strange to see it now, watching from the outside in.

  Fucking bizarre.

  Why did Sam send her here? Was it on purpose or had he acted purely on impulse?

  He didn’t want me to find him. Shoving me back in time was a jerk reaction, totally spontaneous, had to be.

  Question was, what was he afraid of? Her? Please.

  Little Eddie, up to twenty-three, kept counting. Hands on her hips now, but at least her eyes were closed. Mostly. She risked a glance back.

  No cheating, Eddie told herself. Yeah, right. Damn, she used to be a cute kid. A dirty cheater, but cute. Given the choice she would’ve stayed here, in this moment, forever.

  The count was abandoned at fifty-six. Little Eddie spun around and yelled, “Ready or not, here I come!”

  She felt herself smile. The yard had lots of good places to hide, a rotted-out Chevy Dad was planning to restore, raspberry bushes, weeds three feet high at the west side of the garden, a row of dark trees along the back, the corn field beyond.

  And Dad’s tool shed. Nobody was allowed in there, but did her friends know that? The door was open a crack, the padlock on the ground. Someone was surely hiding inside. Eddie followed her younger self to the door.

  “I know somebody’s in here,” she said, hesitating.

  Don’t get caught. When it came to Dad’s tools, the penalty was murder. Or a two-week grounding. Same thing, really, to a ten-year-old.

  She peeked through the crack. Couldn’t see anything. Pushed the door wide. Rusty hinges sang a raspy, note-bending tune. Work bench. Dusty shelves. Cobwebs. A tall stack of boxes, riding lawnmower. Thick shadows.

  “I know you’re here.” Confident words, spoken without confidence.

  A squint below the bench. Nothing.

  A quick scan behind the boxes. Vacant.

  The dark side of the mower? Two identical twelve-year-olds with hands covering their mouths. “Ha! I gotcha!”

  “Aw,” one moaned. “No fair.”

  “You guys hid together. You’re stupid.”

  So strange that Eddie couldn’t remember this day. She supposed her mind discarded it like a thousand other lazy afternoons, to make room for more important things, things that mattered.

  Every moment matters, doesn’t it?

  It was a good day, a happy day. There were no unwelcome voices here. It was just her and Sis, some friends, and a game of hide and seek. She would’ve given anything to stay, if only to watch.

  Stupid twins, hiding together. They…

  Wait. Hold on a minute.

  Both of them, in the same place. Why? They may as well have been Siamese, they did everything together. They were inseparable, locked at the hip.

  Connected.

  Oh my God. I know why Sam was hiding.

  Eddie had to get back. Right now.

  7

  The effects of Jacobson’s machine had reached beyond those directly involved, if the woman’s story were true, that is. A psychic connection between two random people, both compelled to travel to the same laboratory in rural Pennsylvania, was concerning, to put the situation mildly.

  The producer, David Sandoval, had come for the story, no doubt, invited by researchers desperate to go public with their discovery. The girl, in turn, had come to find Sandoval. Because she saw him in a goddamn dream.

  Garret smirked.

  He’d seen some crazy shit over the years, but this one might end up taking the cake. And the ice cream. All the fuckin’ sprinkles too.

  “Face the wall,” he said. Trembling, the woman turned around. “And don’t move.”

  He cringed, got to his feet. Shook off the lightheadedness, growled at the pain.

  I can do this. Take it slow, that’s all.

  “We’re going for a little walk. If you run, you get a bullet. Not a warning shot. A bullet. Understand?”

  “Y-y-yes.”

  “Good. Now move.”

  He was a horrible shot with his left hand. Couldn’t hit the broadside of a Country Buffet. But she didn’t know that, so fuck it.

  His current condition caused the bad judgement on his part, obviously. That kind of wound would’ve compromised even the strongest of men. His mind, along with his vision, still felt… cluttered at best. At worst? A chaotic crowd of thoughts rushing the exit because someone had yelled fire.

  But he didn’t think she’d run, not with a pistol aimed. His foggy mind wouldn’t allow him to consider how close he stood behind her, or how desperate the woman might be to escape, get to her sister. No, those things were reserved for clear-headed men with thoughts that formed calm, orderly lines.

  In a blur she turned, elbowed him in the broken arm. The sensation was nothing short of a cataclysm, seizing not only his arm, but his entire body.

  He cried out, stumbled, squeezed off a shot. Couldn’t see anything, his damned eyes wouldn’t quit watering. He yelled, cursed, fought to stay on his feet.

  Two more blind bullets, useless.

  The bitch was gone.

  8

  A distant gunshot. Then two more. Where had they come from?

  And where had his pistol gone? Had he dropped it? Didn’t matter now. Bullets were useless against Sam, they couldn’t touch him. David could, though.

  He couldn’t let it distract him; couldn’t stop. He had Sam pinned to the floor, knees pressing down hard on the doctor’s forearms. Blood oozed from the corners of Sam’s mouth, his left nostril. His nose was surely broken. David drew back and hit him again. “That’s for Susan, you son of a bitch. And Steve. This one’s for me.” Another crunching blow to the jaw.

  And then a voice, in his head. Eddie. Telling him she’d worked it out, the way to beat Sam. What are you talking about? he asked her.

  She answered with a question of her own, one that explained everything.

  Holy shit.

  9

  Eddie backed away from the surreal vision of her young life, not that she wanted to. God, if only... Maybe she could come back here when this was all over. Maybe. But not now. The others needed her.

  I finally know what I have to do.

  In her current state, moving through time was simply a matter of will. Eddie only needed to focus on an event she remembered clearly, and think herself toward it.

  Strange imagery rushed past in a sprinting slideshow of color and sound. She saw flashes of children, parents, grade school, home. Alarm clocks, recess bells, sneakers running over pavement and loose gravel. Cool evenings, calm starlight, tall shadowy tree
s.

  She hit thirteen and everything began to stutter, thrash and contort like a bucking bronco. As it seemed to happen so often in life, the teenage years refused to follow even the most basic instruction.

  Eddie fell down and out, onto a shimmering blanket of snow. Across the yard, she and Rachel were making a snowman. She was fourteen now? Fifteen? Hard to say with the scarf around her chin and a fuzzy hat pulled down over her ears.

  Is that even me?

  Yes. She recognized the coat, a brown and tan monstrosity Mom forced upon her at the used clothing store. Butt ugly. She hated that thing. Then she heard them, the voices from before, distant but getting closer. Were they following her?

  Eddie watched Rachel pull a fat orange marker out of her pocket and jam it in the snowman’s empty face. It would serve as his nose, because Mom’s crisper drawer was all out of carrots. Eddie, a voice called out. So close. Almost there.

  That was it. The moment she knew.

  Unlike the game of hide and seek, she recognized the scene playing out before her now. Over the years that followed, this day, among all others, had become infamous. Hard to say how many times her mind had come back to this place, the place where it all began. No carrot, orange marker. What a simple, stupid thing.

  Eddie turned to look back. They’d found her.

  Eddie, a thing from the dark said. Then another. And another.

  Oh my God. It’s my fault. I led them here.

  It took a few seconds for Rachel to understand her little sister wasn’t playing, it wasn’t a joke. Eddie fell back in the snow, screaming and pressing hands to her ears.

  A whispering monster can do that to a person, make them consider the possibility that they’ve lost their mind. When the voice persists, it takes no time at all to know for sure.

  Leave her alone!

  Shadows in the shapes of people flew across the ivory lawn, something her previous self hadn’t seen. Their outer edges shifted and churned like snakes.