Zig Zag

by Jose Carlos Somoza

  By the time dinner was ready, it was dark and the heat was less stifling. A breeze, almost strong enough to qualify as wind, blew in through the dining room's puny window. Victor could see clumps of darkness swaying in the night, out past the barbed-wire fence. He put a paper tablecloth down, set places for each of them, and placed a portable lamp in the center of the table like a chandelier. He even tried to serve with flourish, though it didn't really work. Dinner was hurried and silent. No one spoke at all, and Elisa, Jacqueline, and Blanes rushed back to the control room to work some more as soon as they finished eating.

  Victor cleared the table and turned on the transmitter in his jeans pocket. Of all the sounds coming through, he could pick out Elisa's breath. He thought of breath like a fingerprint, and there was hers, the unmistakable pant of her alto voice. He could also make out the scratches of her pencil on paper.

  The transmitters had been Blanes's idea, and Carter's stony face soured when he heard it, as if to say, "Professor, leave the practicalities to me," but in the end he'd agreed (not without objecting) to get two-way radios and give them to everyone.

  "They're not going to do any good, genius. Silberg was ripped to shreds right in front of the bodyguards on the plane, remember? And Stevenson got it on a micro barge smaller than this room, in front of five men who didn't see or hear a thing."

  "I know," Blanes admitted, "but I still think we should be in constant contact. It's just more reassuring, OK?"

  That's why Victor's ears buzzed and crackled with Jacqueline, Elisa, and Blanes's voices—and probably with his own noises, he thought, taking care to be quiet when he cleared the table (he'd have to wash the dishes later using tubs of seawater that Carter had brought up from the beach). Just then, Carter called him.

  "Take a flashlight, go down to the pantry, and see what's on the top shelves, in case there's anything we can use. You're taller than me, and we don't have a ladder."

  Victor asked him to repeat himself. Ever since they'd arrived on the island, Carter had showed zero interest in speaking Spanish, and although Victor's English was pretty decent, sometimes that man seemed to speak gobbledygook. Finally deciphering the message, he complied submissively, grabbing a flashlight and heading next door to the dark room. To the open trapdoor.

  The gaping black hole.

  He shined the light on the opening, saw the ladder leading down, and had a sudden realization. This is where he killed the older woman. What was her name? Cheryl Ross...

  He looked up. Carter was still in the kitchen dealing with something. He looked back at the trapdoor. What's wrong? Is making stew all you're good for? He took a deep breath and started down the ladder. Elisa's cough came through the transmitter in his pocket, distinguishable above the interference. Would she have heard Carter's order? Would she know what he was doing right then?

  When the pantry roof swallowed him up, he shone the flashlight around. He saw metal shelves crowded with items. The dirt floor showed no signs of what he'd expected (and feared), though he examined it carefully. It was cool down there, even a little chilly compared with the sticky heat of the kitchen.

  Victor saw a gray metallic door at the back, its frame all boarded up.

  He recalled Elisa telling him that everything had happened in that back room. Behind that door.

  He shuddered. After climbing down the final rungs of the ladder, he decided it was best just to concentrate on the task at hand.

  Starting with the shelf on the right, Victor stood up on his tiptoes and swept the flashlight beam across the top shelf. He saw two boxes of what looked like crackers and rusty metal cans of something that was obviously not food. It reminded him of a riddle he'd solved in which a Chinese man points to a rusty nail to say "lusty." Metal would be "metar." A hushed conversation came over the transmitter, muffled by static. Blanes and Elisa were talking about something related to UT (universal time) computations and energy periods. The vibrato on Elisa's voice made his groin tingle.

  "Christ, turn that shit off." Suddenly, Carter's boots were behind him, coming down the ladder. "It's bullshit, no matter what our resident genius says."

  This time Victor didn't obey. He didn't even reply. He just kept searching the top shelf until he found some more boxes.

  Suddenly, there was a hand on his crotch. A huge hand. He jumped a mile, but not before Carter's thick, stubby fingers had jammed themselves down into Victor's tight jeans pocket and turned off the transmitter.

  "Whoa! What are you doing?" he shrieked.

  "Relax, Father, you're not my type." Carter flashed a smile in the darkness. "I told you, those transmitters are worthless pieces of shit, and I don't like being eavesdropped on."

  Victor swallowed his anger and went back to his task.

  "Please don't call me 'Father.' I'm a physics professor."

  "Oh, I thought you studied theology or religion or something."

  "What makes you say that?"

  "I heard you say something to the Frenchy at the airport in Yemen last night. And I've seen you pray a couple of times, too."

  Victor was surprised at Carter's subtle powers of observation; this was a new side to the man. It was true he'd spoken to Jacqueline about his readings, and he had prayed several times during the trip (he'd never been so motivated in all his life!), but always discreetly, barely even mouthing the Our Father. He didn't think anyone had noticed.

  "I'm Catholic," he said. He reached out to lean on one of the boxes and peered over to see what was in it. More cans. He pulled one out. Beans.

  "All the same to me, scientist or priest." Carter had begun taking boxes down from the shelves on the left. "Both the scum of the earth, as far as I'm concerned: one invents weapons and the other blesses them."

  "And soldiers fire them," Victor replied pointedly, despite the fact that he really didn't want to start a fight. He checked the expiration date on the can of beans and saw that they were four years too late. Dropping it back in the box, he shone the light onto the next one. Cardboard packages. He stuck his hand in and tried to pull one out.

  "Tell me, then," Carter said, behind him. "What does God mean to you?"

  "God?"

  "Yeah. What does God mean, to you?"

  "Hope," he said, after thinking about it for a little while. "And to you?"

  "Depends on the day."

  The package was stuck. Victor rattled the box violently. A quick, black shadow darted out inches from his hand and scurried up the wall.

  "Oh my God! Dios mio!" Victor yelped in Spanish, jumping back instinctively.

  "Now that's definitely not God," Carter replied, adding, "No es Dios" in Spanish for dramatic effect as he shone his light on the ceiling. "That's a cockroach. Big, yes, but no need to exaggerate..."

  "Big? It's enormous!" Victor felt sick. He could feel the stew churning in his stomach.

  "That's a tropical roach, no artificial colors or preservatives. I've been in places where seeing one of those was enough to make your mouth water. Where seeing a roach crawl by was like scoping a deer."

  "I don't think I want to visit those places."

  The ex-soldier snorted.

  "Well, this is one of those places, Father. If you want, I'll take the boards off that door and show you."

  Victor turned to the door and then back to Carter. In the flashlight's glow, the door and Carter's steely eyes were the same color.

  "I can't say it's the worst thing I've ever seen, after Craig, Petrova, and Marini. But I can say that what I saw behind that door was the worst thing I'd ever seen up until that moment. And I've seen a lot of things, believe me." Carter's breath was visible, just barely, in the cold of the pantry. The flashlight made his eyes flicker. It was as though he was on fire inside. "Good soldiers, like Stevenson and Bergetti, people who think on their feet, who've been through a lot, they went nuts after seeing what was down here. And Harrison, Eagle's man who's after us right now, even he lost his marbles. He's seen more victims than anyone else, and he's completely dera
nged. He has panic attacks, crises, shit like that. And Harrison is not exactly a sensitive guy."

  Victor's Adam's apple bobbed in a useless attempt to swallow. Carter's voice trailed off a little, as though he were no longer addressing Victor but speaking to the darkness surrounding him.

  "I'm going to tell you something. Thousands of miles from here, my wife and daughter live in a house in Cape Town. They're black. I have a gorgeous, gorgeous black daughter. She's ten years old and has beautiful curly hair and the biggest eyes you've ever seen. Her smile is so sweet I could stare at her all day; I'm besotted. My wife's name is Kamaria. Means 'like the moon' in Swahili. She's tall and stunning and dark as ebony, with a perfect, firm body. I'm so in love with her sometimes I think I'll lose my mind. And for two years, not a night has gone by that I don't dream of locking her up in this pantry and tearing her to pieces. Doing exactly what he did to Cheryl Ross. I can't help it. He appears, orders me to do it, and I obey. I rip my own daughter's eyeballs out and eat them."

  He fell silent, breathing deeply. Then he turned back to Victor, calm and indifferent.

  "I'm scared, Father. Like a little boy who's afraid of the dark. Ever since all this started, I scream if a friend startles me. I'm scared shitless if I have to spend the night alone. I've never been so scared in my whole life. And I know that if your God exists, then this thing is the opposite of God. The Antihope. The Antigod. The Antichrist. Isn't that what you call it?"

  "Yes."

  Carter stared at him.

  "Don't worry, though. He's after us, not you. If your friends don't find a way out of this soon, he'll kill us all, but he won't kill you. You'll just lose your mind." Suddenly, he was scornful. "So stop being such a sissy about the fucking cockroaches and get back to opening boxes."

  Then he turned on his heel and left.

  HE woke up with a start. He was at home. He and Ric Valente were cutting up girls' pants. Everything else (the island, the murders) had been a bad dream, thank goodness. The unconscious works in mysterious ways, he thought.

  "Look at this," Ric was saying. He'd invented a machine that shredded pants at top speed.

  But that wasn't right. He was on the floor, his bare back pressed against a cold metal wall. He recognized the station's narrow galley kitchen. Daylight streamed in through the window. But that wasn't what woke him up.

  "Victor?" The two-way radio on the shelf was talking to him. "Are you there, Victor? Could you get Carter and come to the screening room?"

  "Did you find something?" he asked, struggling to stand up.

  "Just come as fast as you can," Blanes replied.

  If the tone of his voice was anything to go by, he was terrified.

  29

  "THE image on the left is from a video; the one on the right is of a time string from the recent past, about twenty minutes ago. We opened it using the video. Look at the shadow behind it..."

  Blanes went up to the screen and scrolled his index finger down the image on the right, to demonstrate. The photos were very similar. They showed a brown laboratory rat with whiskers around its snout and little pink claws. But the one on the right had a slightly sepia tone and a dark halo, as if it had been superimposed several times.

  There were other differences, too.

  "The eyes on the second one...," Elisa murmured.

  "We'll get to that," Blanes cut her off. "Now, look at this." He walked across the room again and projected another image. "This is a copy of the Unbroken Glass. Notice anything?"

  Everyone leaned forward. Even Carter, who stood in the doorway, came in for a closer look.

  "There's a shadow around the glass ... like the rat...," Jacqueline ventured.

  "Exactly. We thought it was just a blurry image, but it's actually the split."

  "What's that?" asked Elisa.

  "Marini explains it all in his files. He discovered it and never let me know..." Blanes was obviously nervous, almost in a state of anguish. Elisa had never seen him like this before. As he spoke, he flicked between images on the screen, rapidly clicking through them with the mouse. "It seems that when we obtained the Unbroken Glass, something strange happened. He saw the same glass twenty minutes, three hours, and nineteen hours after the experiment. It just kept reappearing before him: on a bus, in bed, out on the street... Only he could see it. When he tried to pick it up, it would disappear. He thought he was hallucinating, so he didn't say anything about it. But he started experimenting on his own and quickly learned that the images obtained from recent time strings had that effect on objects. Then he tried living creatures: rats, at first. He'd film them and open time strings from the recent past. From then on, the same rat would appear every certain time, just like with the glass: at home, in the car, wherever he was ... and only to him. The rats didn't do anything, they just appeared. But the lights in the surrounding sixteen inches or so would go out. Marini was sure that the rat was using that energy to appear. He called the appearances splits. He deduced they were the direct consequence of joining the past with the present."

  The rats on the screen switched to cats and dogs.

  "He started practicing on bigger animals and noticed other properties. Although there might be several animals in an image, only one would split, and not always the same one. He thought it was random. He could predict which one it would be by the shadows around the open time string image, which seemed to be how it began. He also discovered that if the animal died, there was no split. So you could never have a dead animal and also have the same animal be alive, even if they were from different time strings. Once armed with that information, he recruited Craig. They did some more tests and concluded that the splits were real, but that they only appeared in the space-time of whoever had done the testing."

  "How is that possible?" Victor asked. "I mean, how can any object or living being be in two different places simultaneously?"

  "Well, keep in mind that each time string is unique, and so is everything they contain within them, including objects and living beings. Reinhard had an interesting way of explaining it. He said that every fraction of a second, we are someone new. The idea that we're always the same is an illusion created by the brain to keep us from losing our minds. Maybe schizophrenics just pick up on the different beings that we all are throughout time. But when you isolate a time siring from the recent past, the unique objects and beings inside it are also isolated from the passing of time and ... they keep living for the corresponding period."

  Carter snorted loudly and changed position, leaning one hand against the doorframe.

  "If you don't understand, just ask, Carter," Blanes said.

  "I'd have to start by asking if we even speak the same language," Carter sneered. "Nothing you've said has made any sense to me. It's all a bunch of mumbo jumbo."

  "Just a minute," Elisa interrupted. The colors on the screen were reflected onto her bare legs as she sat straddling her chair. "Go back a second, put that last image back up ... No, not that one, one more, the enlargement of the rat's wound... That one."

  The sepia photo took up the whole screen, showing a deep gash on the rodent's nose and another cut on its haunches. But they were clean cuts, with no blood.

  "Does that remind you of anything, Jacqueline? That mutilation?" Elisa could tell that the paleontologist had already caught on.

  "The Jerusalem Woman..."

  "And the dinosaur feet. Nadja pointed it out to me..."

  "Notice, too, that you can't see several of the dogs' or cats' pupils," Blanes pointed out. "You were going to say that before, weren't you, Elisa?"

  White eyes. Elisa caught her breath.

  "What does that mean?" Victor asked.

  "Marini and Craig figured it out. It actually occurs on parts other than the face and extremities, too. Wait." He flicked back to the Unbroken Glass and enlarged the image. "Look at the right side. There are tiny particles of glass missing ... even ... Look, can you see those minute holes in the center? They aren't bubbles; there are actually t
iny pieces missing. Our brains only tend to perceive what we could call the most anthropomorphic defects: on faces, fingers ... But all of the objects from the past, including the earth, the clouds, they are all mutilated... The explanation is mind blowing ... and very simple, really."

  "Planck time," Elisa murmured; it had suddenly hit her.

  "Exactly. We thought of these images as photographs, or recordings. We knew that they weren't, but unconsciously we made ourselves believe it. But these are open time strings. Each string corresponds to a Planck time, the shortest possible interval of reality, so brief that light can hardly travel through it. Matter is made of atoms: nuclei of protons and neutrons with electrons spinning around them, but in such a short space of time that the electrons haven't had time to fill the object completely, no matter how solid it is. There are gaps, holes. Our faces, our bodies, a table, even a mountain would all look incomplete, mutilated. But we only realized it when we saw the Jerusalem Woman."

  "Are you saying that during that time we have no face?" Carter asked.

  "We might or might not, but most likely we don't have all of it. Imagine a frying pan with a few drops of oil in it. If you tilt if around enough, eventually the oil will cover the whole bottom of the pan, but that takes time. In a Planck time, it's more likely that there are still places the electrons haven't been able to reach: our eyes, part of our face or head, an extremity, viscera. On such a tiny scale of time and space, we're constantly changing, and not just in appearance. You can't even send a thought from one neuron to another during one Planck time. It's just too fleeting. So, again, what I'm saying is that we are actually other beings in each time string. A whole different person. There are as many different beings in us as there are time strings that have transpired since we were born."

  "I can't get my head around that," Jacqueline murmured.

  "Professor, you know what?" Carter scratched his head, smiling. "I was one of those kids at school who always wanted results. I never bothered with the fluff, the process, I just wanted the answer. Your documentary is fascinating and everything, but what I want to know is, who's been taking us out one by one for the past ten years? Who makes us all have nightmares every damn night, and how can we butcher him?"