CONTENTS
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Copyright
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Thank You
About the Author
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No Time Like the Present by Ellison Blackburn
Copyright © 2019. All rights reserved.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Printed in the United States of America
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eISBN: 978-1-948336-12-3
ISBN: 978-1-948336-13-0 (paperback)
PROLOGUE
Thursday, August 2, 2159
“DO WE KNOW what this is about?” I field, casting a glance at the closed double doors of Dad’s study. Our absent leader called this meeting, I presume; the virtual memo didn’t say. But I’d rather be elsewhere. I had only just started my search for Vale when Royce found me.
Reid shrugs. “Don’t know.”
Shaking her head, Kinnari says, “No.”
Quinn offers a head shake and an uncertain frown while the most informed person among us stands silent in front of the fireplace, his back to us, arms outstretched across the mantel.
“Why don’t we try this again?” Reid says. “Archer, what’s up? Why are we here?”
With the typical brusqueness of the eldest of the St. Clair sons, Archer replies, “I heard River the first time, Reid.”
When it’s clear he isn’t planning on elaborating, Reid nudges, “And? Is it possible you don’t know either?”
“And nothing. You’ll just have to wait.”
I scoot back into the corner of the burgundy damask sofa with a sigh; it’s inordinately deep with a high back. While not oversized for my oversized brothers, it shrinks me. I loathe this couch, the two crimson armchairs opposite it and the chair to the left, the gold and taupe striped chaise in the corner, the shellback slipper chairs on either side of the door, the three ornate marble-top side tables, and the drinks cabinet next to the fireplace. Along with the flowery wallpaper, the vaulted ceiling with its many cornices, the crystal chandelier, et cetera, it’s a flashy room in a gaudy house. No one else lives like this. But then few Victorian mansions exist these days, as do few nostalgics to inhabit them.
Mom and Dad (Willow and Marlowe St. Clair) bought this lavender pile of bricks over two decades ago. Among a few uncanny details—like the old bronze plaque next to the front door that reads “St. Clair House” and that the house itself is on St. Clair Street—it was the peculiar permanence of the place that had attracted them to it.
Mom told me with a wistful smile during our first girl-talk in the backyard: “Look past what you see with your eyes, River honey. Past the brick facade, wood beams, and plaster walls. See its resilient innards, its strong bones. Will you do that—will you let its sheer persistence amaze you like it has me? If you can, I’m positive that we’ll discover more to love about our home as time passes.”
Having just entered my impressionable teens, I was given to accepting my parents’ every word as true, never mind that I had to interpret most of what they said. This occasion was no different. I recall bobbing my head from my seat on the swing of the giant oak, promising to keep an open mind. “Once it’s remodeled and outfitted with tech it won’t be so bad,” I’d said.
She didn’t immediately respond. “This house might seem like just an inconvenient remnant of a bygone era, River. But there’s something of inexplicable and great value here just the way it is. I can feel it. Everything in our environment nowadays is designed for unobtrusive efficiency, and yet, it’s very obtrusive. We’re corralled by productivity as we’re turned into passive occupants of life. More and more I think our world is a construct for AI, not humans. So don’t let’s become robots voluntarily, okay?”
Again, I nodded as though her meaning was clear. Mom liked to describe ideas in terms of curves and color and depth when she wasn’t talking about those things at all. She had a complicated soul, part artist, part dreamer, part strategist. And although not my biological parents, she and Marlowe were as good as parents to me, just as my cousins accepted me as their true sister from day one. To these five people, regardless that I was born to criminal parents, Seeley Roth and Willow’s sister Skye Casey, I might as well have come into this world a St. Clair. I am, in all the ways that matter, Reid’s almost twin, born thirteen minutes after him.
So, after her speech on the house’s behalf, I saw anew that the behemoth archaic structure had “character.” It was to be our home whether I liked it or not. Only, Mom died the following year. And without her, despite its everlastingness, the house became cold and foreign as did the surrounding city. Thank Gaia for Reid.
I fix a vacant stare on the empty chair across from me and loll my head to the side, which elicits an immediate snicker from Kinnari. Her expression changes to an eye roll and a grimace when Reid leans back to reveal his modifications to my act: one elbow aloft, a finger poised thoughtfully on my chin and the other arm as though lifeless, that hand upturned in my lap.
I swivel my head and widen my eyes at Quinn. His stoic expression gives way to curiosity, evident by the minute quirk of a single eyebrow. “You know, the dolls in the curio cabinet?” I ventriloquize from the corner of my mouth.
He casts a penetrating glance at the door toward the drawing room and again frowns. “They are inanimate, River.” His comment is bland, not condescending.
“That they are.”
“I fail to see your point then.”
“Eeeek. Eeeek,” I intone, as I maneuver my squeaky limbs. “Mwah-ha-ha. But what if they were to come to life, hm?”
“Why would we vitalize them?” he asks, and while I ponder how to answer this ridiculous query—though my brilliant brother would never ask a silly question—his wheels turn in a very different direction. “Ah,” he utters, leaning forward, “for the childric.”
“Damn, Quinn,” I blurt, abandoning my ch
arade. “Gaia help us. No. I was … that was just boredom talking. No one needs gremlins made of bisque running around.”
“Their form of locomotion can hardly be called—”
“Semantics, Quinn,” Reid interjects.
“Besides, what for?” Kinn chimes in. “The childric wouldn’t know what to do with it. Everly wouldn’t. Even human children haven’t played with dolls for over a century. And since childric will never be parents themselves, it’s not like they need the training if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“And, I won’t have you giving my daughter nightmares.”
“Everly’s psych processor does not allow for such anomalies, Reid.”
“That’s good to know and still …”
While Reid, Kinnari, and Quinn continue to discuss the efficacy of creating infantile childric for the race of adolescent childric, I shift my newly enhanced emotional range recognition (ERR) lens on Archer, our resident enigma. His well runs deeper than he allows anyone to know. Being able to read him regardless of his wall would make me the star pupil of ERR school. And Dr. Mayhew would immediately issue my certificate of training completion, I’m sure.
But Archer doesn’t fidget, scratch an itch, or release a single audible breath the whole time I study him. I wonder, however, what it is he finds so fascinating about a landscape that’s been mounted above the fireplace for eons. Of a similar theme to the one across the hall, the painting isn’t all that inspiring of contemplation once you’ve seen it a second time and certainly not when you see it every day. “Archer. Come on now, what’s this about? We all have better things to do,” I say.
“Dad will be here to explain any minute, River,” he says in a tone that’s mild for him. And still he doesn’t turn around.
“Oh, that was helpful. Thanks for the debrief, Arrow.” I’m rather proud of Archer’s nickname, which is short for Mr. Arrow Up-my-ass. “At least we know to expect Dad ‘any minute’ now.”
I should probably curb my less than deferential remarks about the Division’s second-in-command and head of investigations, but I’m not a lemming. Plenty of people already dole out regular helpings of sunshine just for him. I do recognize his ability to stay so cool and unfailingly on-task, however; it’s that to which I object now and then. Like at present. For in response to my dig, Archer only tsks between the teeth at the side of his mouth—his one tell. It’s obvious his attention is somewhere else; he’s likely as impatient to get on with things as we are.
The grandfather clock in the foyer strikes the hour with a single low gong, and again from weariness I pronounce, “I haven’t seen Vale since Tuesday. Second day in a row he wasn’t at dinner.”
“Uh-oh. We’d better call in special ops,” Reid says. He lowers his voice an octave and pivots toward me. “Eh-hem,” he says, dipping his chin. “We understand it’s been, um, let’s see now, forty-nine hours and nineteen minutes since Vale Hennessy was last seen. Can you confirm our intel, ma’am?”
“Why, Special Agent St. Clair, you’re either extremely observant, your source is, or you’re making up shit.”
Quinn replies, “You are correct, River, observation has nothing to do with it. By Reid’s estimation, Vale was eleven minutes early for dinner Tuesday, which was not the case. I came down at precisely six-thirty, and he was not yet present.”
“It is strange that we haven’t actually seen him around the facility, though. How is everything between you two, River?”
“We’re fine, Kinn, though Vale might say different. He’s accused me of being a workaholic, whatever that means. Says Neglect, his frequent companion these days, is getting tiresome to be around.” Since Reid, Quinn, Archer, and our dad also work ungodly hours, I would mark this is a St. Clair trait if Colin, Allen, and Selene weren’t as dedicated to their work.
“And you, Quinn? When did you last see him outside of your lab?” Kinn asks.
“I have not, neither in the lab nor out of it. Not since Tuesday before his appointment with Dr. Mayhew.”
“What?” I ask, stunned.
“You, his boss, haven’t seen him,” Reid remarks in a thoughtful tone. His gives me a sidelong bewildered look, his usually unfurrowed forehead now creased. “And it didn’t occur to you that that was odd?”
“I assumed therapeutic reasons for his absence. Vale has been having difficulties. And—”
I cut Quinn off, wanting to get us past his mental accounting of the facts. “He has been, yes, but that’s nothing new.”
“Colin suspected a trace element of the tech was left behind after his extraction,” Quinn continues.
“Right. We know all this,” I say.
“It wasn’t possible to excise it at the time since its precise location was being cloaked by usual brain activity.”
“Mm-hm,” I utter at the same time Reid says, “which was well over a year ago, Quinn. Get on with it, bro.”
“As it has been dormant since he awoke, we thought it wouldn’t pose an ongoing problem.”
“You’re saying it will, as in it definitely will?” I probe. Behind Quinn, Archer stiffens and looks askance, affording me a partial view of his profile. His lips quirk at the corner, but he doesn’t make a sound. Instead, he bows his head and scratches at a chip in the marble mantelpiece. What is going on with him? I wonder. “Archer?” He abruptly stops fidgeting.
“Dr. Mayhew thinks he’s experiencing sensory interference,” Quinn says. “Without specifics, I can’t say for certain, but based on what I know, I agree. I’ve observed recent inconsistencies in his work. He becomes hyper-focused at times and absentminded at others, often with sudden disparity. Also, his diagnostics are showing elevated activity in the posterior cortex, the somatic sensory region near the visual association node. Recent scans indicate new activity in both cognitive and dormant states. As if his wakeful and sleeping cycles are attempting to merge. But—”
“I know,” I interject. “A month ago, at around two in the morning, he got out of bed and went off somewhere. The movement woke me up, but I went right back to sleep, thinking he’d just gotten up to go to the bathroom. Both times it was over an hour later that he returned. Both times, I asked him where he’d been, and he couldn’t remember or why he’d left in the first place. Then twice in the last couple of weeks, I’ve awoken to find him sitting in my living room, having what looked like a pretty intense conversation with an invisible person.”
“You tried to get his attention, you said,” Kinn prompts.
“I did. The first time, without realizing what was happening, I just called out his name. He didn’t answer, so I yelled, ‘Hey! What’s going on? Can’t you sleep?’ Then I walked over and got in his face. His eyes were open; he seemed present. I waved my hands in front of him, tapped his shoulder, spoke to him, and even sat across from him, basically on top of where his make-believe companion was sitting. But it was like I wasn’t there to him, or he wasn’t there, not mentally anyway.”
“River reported what she witnessed to Mayhew, and he said that Vale is just processing what’s happened to him. And because Vale’s therapy protocol requires him to suppress responses to stimuli, during downtimes when he’s not able to make a concerted effort, his subconscious is being overtaxed,” Reid says. “As a result, this anxiety is manifesting itself through sleepwalking.”
“That’s all true.”
“Temporarily. Colin said it was temporary,” I add.
“The hijacking caused an imbalance, as I said,” Quinn says. “We have had to install a tracking device to monitor his movements and mental function while incapacitated. We know he’s been conducting himself as though awake while sleeping. But how it will affect him in the long term is yet to be determined; for now, I’m convinced his brain is simply practicing homeostatic scenarios.”
I bob my head while I pluck at a squiggly filament of lint on the black wool of my pant leg.
“I’m sure Vale is fine, River. We’ve known from the beginning that his recovery would be slow.”
“Kinn’s right. Everyone who can help is aware of Vale’s condition. Not only will Clarion not let him down, we’ll be right there to see him through this. The smartest people on the planet are on his side. So you can relax, Riv.”
“Really, Reid. I’m so relaxed I’m practically becoming one with this sofa.”
“I see that,” he says, cranking his head back and grinning knowingly at me.
I shift in my seat, and a numb sort of tingle spreads over my backside and down one leg, concentrating into a thousand pinpricks across the top half of my left foot. “Ugh. This couch needs relocating to rehab or a dumpster. Help me forward, will you? Before my feet fall off?”
Absently Reid wedges a hand behind my back and shoves me forward. “It is going as expected, isn’t it, Quinn?” he asks. The slight hint of unease in his voice prompts me to rethink his advice to relax.
Clarion’s neuropsychologist Colin Mayhew tells me I took Mom’s death particularly hard. We were very close, closer than Reid and me. Consequently, I tend to be emotionally repressed. Or maybe because Reid is married, his relational confidence is greater than mine. I often discover on second thought that the only difference between how I feel about something and how my brother feels is my inability to express it quite like he does. And now, I sense the first ripples of a rampage ahead.
“Yes, although expectations vary from subject to subject. While from a neurophysiological perspective Vale will never be 100 percent well again, near-perfect healing could take three to five years. We can augment him later if necessary. Dr. Mayhew has slotted a broader timeline for the psychological aspects of his recovery.”
Just then Dad strides into the room from the foyer, taking those of us who’d assumed he was in his office by surprise. Then I notice that his manner is downcast. What has happened? His silver hair is as neat as ever, his clothes still elegant and unruffled, his posture surer than most other seventy-five-year-olds, but his face appears haggard and sallow like he hasn’t been outdoors in weeks. As he looks at each of us except Archer, Dad’s expression remains unreadable. And finally, Archer turns halfway around but continues to stand sentry over us like a juggernaut.
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