The Split Second

by John Hulme

  John Hulme and Michael Wexler

  illustrations by Gideon Kendall

  NEW YORK BERLIN LONDON

  To John O. Morisano, who finally got his “O,” and to Liz Schonhorst, the best editor in The World (or The Seems)

  Contents

  0 · Masterpiece Theatre

  1 · The Golden Rule

  2 · Time to Make the Zeppole

  3 · The Time Bomb

  4 · Fallout

  5 · Lost in Time

  6 · Tom Jackal

  7 · Meanwhile

  8 · The Keeper of the Records

  9 · The Big Apple

  10 · For the Time Being

  11 · Tidal Wave

  12 · All Gave Some

  12.5 · Some Gave All

  14 · Frozen Moments

  Epilogue

  Appendix A

  Appendix B

  Appendix C

  Human Resources

  MEMORANDUM

  From: The Powers That Be

  To: All Seems Employees

  Re: The Tide

  EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY:

  Due to recent events and information regarding a specific and credible threat, it has become necessary to elevate security measures Seemswide.

  Employees are advised that valid Badges must be displayed at all times and all individuals, regardless of Clearance, are subject to random inspection. Personal effects should not be left unattended and any/all suspicious activities should be reported to departmental administrators.

  We regret any inconvenience this may cause, but only through our combined efforts can The World, as we know it, be protected.

  Yours truly,

  Eve Hightower

  Second in Command, The Seems

  This message is being sent from the Big Building and may contain CONFIDENTIAL or PRIVILEGED information. If you are not the intended recipient, do not print out, copy, or distribute this message or any attachments. Advise the sender immediately, then delete this message and attachments without retaining a copy.

  0

  Masterpiece Theatre

  Los Angeles, California

  “What am I, a speed bump?”

  Albie Kellar slammed his hand on the trunk of the fancy white car as it screeched to a halt only inches from his toes.

  “No!” screamed the driver. “You’re a stupid moron!”

  Crossing against the light probably wasn’t the best idea, especially at the back end of rush hour, but pedestrians had the right-of-way in this state, and Albie planned on exercising that right whenever he darn well pleased. “You’re the stupid moron!”

  The driver flashed him a hand signal that strangely resembled a bird, then turned onto Marengo and disappeared onto the 10.

  Albie shook his head. He honestly couldn’t remember if people had always been this bad or if they had gotten worse lately, but it seemed as if today they were particularly offensive. The smog didn’t help either. It hung low and thick and he could feel it collecting around his lungs with every breath.

  “Oh no.” Albie began to run down the sidewalk. “No. No. No, no, no, no, no . . .”

  A block and a half away, a packed bus was leaving the curb, and Albie raced after it, trying to get the driver’s attention— but the man behind the wheel seemed to purposely pull away.

  “Thanks a lot, pal! Really appreciate the kindness to your fellow man!”

  Over by the weather-beaten bus stop, a small Mexican woman watched as Albie kicked his briefcase against a wall. Anna secretly referred to him as el tirano (“the tyrant”) because every time she saw him, he seemed to be in such a bad mood. Not that her mood was so much better . . .

  Anna Morales had come to the City of Angels for a better life, but this better life was not without a cost. Though she could earn enough money here to support herself and send some back to her family, her days were spent mostly alone. Riding the bus only seemed to make it worse, for she could barely understand the language, and people seemed to look right through her. At least in Chapala, even a stranger was a friend.

  “ ’Scuse me. Anyone sittin’ here?”

  She looked up to see a tall, skinny black kid stepping beneath the overhang. He was dressed in hospital scrubs and looked no better off than she did, oversized headphones tuning him out from the rest of the world. Anna quickly moved over, but there wasn’t very far she could go, because el tirano had already grabbed the seat to her right.

  “When the hell is this thing gonna show up already?” Albie Kellar muttered, angrily checking his watch. “I don’t even know why I bother anymore.”

  As the sun began its daily descent, Anna tried to make herself even more invisible than usual. The kid in the scrubs just turned up his music and said to no one in particular, “Tell me ’bout it, yo.”

  Sunset Strip, Department of Public Works, The Seems

  Becker Drane had barely stepped off the monorail when an Assistant Scenic was already in his face.

  “Thank the Plan you’re here!” The young artist’s smock was covered in paint and sweat beaded off his brow. “It’s a total disaster!”

  Becker couldn’t help laughing. Every Mission seemed to start the same way, but now that he had nine of them under his belt, it didn’t faze him anymore.

  “Just stay calm and take me to my Briefer.”

  “He’s over by Easel #4, inspecting the replacement. Follow me!”

  As they jogged over to the strip, Becker could hear the click-clacking of his cleats against the hard concrete. He had been in the middle of a Little League game—Park Deli vs. Bagel Dish—and it was no easy task to slip from the on-deck circle, duck into the outhouse to deploy his Me-2™1, then sneak away from Donaldson Park as the other Becker cranked a double to right-center, tying the score with two outs in the bottom of the sixth.

  The Assistant Scenic led Becker down the street marked “Glorious Boulevard,” then turned onto the back lot that served as the deluxe design studio for all The World’s sunsets. Enormous canvases were lined up, row upon row, with no less than twelve artists per panorama, each supervised by a Master Scenic whose vision and keen sense of color would soon supply The World with a priceless and never before (or again) seen tapestry of light and Emotion.

  “Fixer Drane—over here!”

  Over by Easel #4 stood a short, stout man with a laminated “B” proudly affixed to his uniform. Becker had to admit he was slightly disappointed that he hadn’t been assigned his favorite dorky, Tool-obsessed, Coke-bottle-glasses-wearing Seemsian, but Briefers worked on a rotation basis too. There were over three hundred of them, each as capable and distinctive as the next, and though very few of them still wore the official dress blues (which had once been mandatory), “the Sarge” always wore his.

  “Talk to me, Sarge . . .”

  “It ain’t good.” The Sarge rubbed his grizzled chin. “This Set was under construction for three weeks—some sort of fancy one they sent down from upstairs. By all accounts it was a masterpiece, but then the guy just snapped—threw a can of primer all over it, tore the thing to shreds, then completely went over the Edge.”

  “Who was the painter?”

  “Master Scenic #32”—the Sarge looked down at the Mission Report on his Blinker™—“Figarro Mastrioni.”

  “The Maestro?”

  “That’s the one.” The Sarge knew what else his Fixer was wondering, because everyone in The Seems had received the same memo in the mailbox this morning. “Too early to tell if our ‘friends’ were involved.”

  “What about the replacement Sunset?” Becker looked up at the huge canvas that had been cobbled together as a backup for the original painting. “Anything we can use in there?”

  “The light and texture are fine, but the clouds are
rushed, and the Memory Triggers are all over the place . . .” The Sarge spoke under his breath, so as not to offend the anxious Scenics who toiled on ladders and scaffolds. “If you ask me, it’s a wash.”

  The beauty of the Sarge—#1 on the Briefing Roster—was that having him on board was like working with a second Fixer. His Tool recommendations were impeccable, and his Mission Log read like a history book at the Institute for Fixing & Repair. Becker didn’t have to look at the canvas twice to know it wasn’t gonna cut it.

  “How much time we got?”

  “Rotating Dusk begins in fifty minutes.”

  Fixer Drane did the calculations in his mind. Rotating Dusk meant that the same exact Sunset would be seen all across the globe, as opposed to the usual practice of giving each Sector its own individual painting. This was a rare event—much like an Eclipse or Meteor Shower—and intended for billions of viewers worldwide. But even a Scenic as talented as the legendary Maestro would be hard-pressed to craft a new Sunset in that amount of time.

  “Take me to the Edge.”

  The Edge of Sanity, The Seems

  Sunset Strip, a sub-department of the Department of Public Works, had been built overlooking the Stream of Consciousness, and for good reason. The Seemsian sun set in the north, casting a warm glow over the tranquil back lot, while a pleasant hike down the Path of Least Resistance led to the Stream itself. But perhaps its most eye-catching spot was the Edge of Sanity—a jagged outcropping high above the weaving canyon— which attracted many a Scenic looking for a never-before-imagined shade or hue. But it also drew a different sort of visitor.

  “How the heck did he get all the way down there?”

  Becker lay flat on his stomach and peeked over the Edge. Far below him, a lone figure was huddled on a narrow sill jutting from the face of the cliff.

  “No idea,” said his Briefer, kneeling beside him. “But that rock he’s sitting on isn’t gonna hold for long.”

  A queasy feeling was working its way into Becker’s stomach. He’d once had a Glimmer of Hope in mind for just such an occasion, but he’d been forced to blow it on his very first Mission, so now he had to suck it up.

  “Recommendation?”

  “Sticky Feet™.”

  “Agreed.” Becker pulled the rubber soles from his Toolkit, careful not to touch the bottoms with his hand lest he would have to go to the Department of Health and have them surgically removed. “But set me up a Safety Net™ just in case.” Many feet below, a tortured artist wearing a thin mustache sat with his arms around his knees. He rocked back and forth, muttering to himself, until his attention was drawn by a handful of silt that trickled down from above. Gazing up, he was amazed to see a lanky thirteen-year-old boy with shaggy hair standing at a ninety-degree angle and looking straight down the face of the cliff.

  “Stop right zere!” screamed the Maestro in his thick North-Seemsany accent. This picturesque region of The Seems was famed for cultivating persons of a certain artistic flair— painters, musicians, and especially masters of culinary delights like Twists of Fate or the Snooze—but the rolling hills also engendered a particularly fiery temperament. “You no come closer or I jump!”

  “I just want to talk,” said Becker, dangling over the Edge of Sanity.

  “Zere nothing to talk about! It is done. Over. Finis!”

  The painter punctuated the statement by slamming his fist to the ground, knocking pebbles and baseball-sized rocks out from beneath the ledge. Becker could see that the Sarge was right . . . it wouldn’t hold for long.

  “Is it okay if I join you?”

  The Maestro ignored him, gazing toward the water with despair. Becker took that as a yes, and found his way to a small crevice that the centuries had carved from the wall. It wasn’t much of a sitting place, so Becker kept his Feet firmly planted on the rock.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m not a big fan of high places.” The Fixer knew the key to talking him down was establishing a rapport. “It’s not that I’m afraid to fall, it’s just that there’s always this little voice in my head saying ‘jump, jump, jump’—and someday I’m afraid I’m gonna listen to it.”

  “It is probably just ze Mischievous Imp,” said the Maestro without looking up.

  “Nah. We caught that guy a couple years ago. He’s up in Seemsberia knitting pot holders and singing ‘Kumbaya.’ ”

  Down below, the slightest of chuckles was just audible above the wind.

  “Mind if I call you Figarro?”

  “You can do whatever you want.”

  At least he was talking now, so Becker figured this was the time to strike.

  “What happened out there today?”

  The Maestro shook his head angrily, but was too filled with disgust to even speak.

  “Look at zem over zere.” He pointed bitterly to the other side of the canyon, where a gated community and its lavish clubhouse was perched even higher than they. “Yuppie scum in fancy houses.”

  “This isn’t about Crestview.” Becker made a harsh transition to tough love because time was running out. “This is about a very important Sunset that you were supposed to paint tonight but decided to rip into a million pieces instead.”

  The Maestro flinched at the implication, and Becker knew that he was starting to get through.

  “I can’t help you, Figarro. Not unless you tell me what’s wrong.”

  The Maestro sat and stewed for a moment before finally speaking up.

  “My entire life I work to make Sunsets zat will remind people of ze beauty of Ze World, bring zem a precious little moment at the end of another hard day. But everything I do— it is for nothing!”

  Far down below, the waves in the Stream crashed against the rocks, and Becker again resisted the urge to see what would happen if he . . .

  “I brush Hope in ze clouds for people of ze Philippines, and next day, zey are hit by Typhoon. I hide beautiful Memory in shade of pink, but ze person it is meant for is too sick to even look up and see!”

  “The Plan works in mysterious ways,” said the Fixer.

  “But why must zere be so much suffering?” The Maestro seemed to be asking himself as much as Becker. “Why cannot Ze World be a better place?”

  This type of rhetoric sounded awfully familiar to Becker and it forced him to ask a very uncomfortable question.

  “This wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain . . . organization . . . would it?”

  “How dare you accuse me of being in Ze Tide! I pour my heart and soul on ze canvas each and every day!” Figarro slid another inch forward. If this didn’t turn around in a hurry, not only would there be no Sunset, but there would be no Figarro. “But what is ze point? Ze Maestro makes no difference at all . . .”

  And that’s when Becker knew what was really wrong in the Department of Public Works and how he was going to Fix it.

  “Au contraire, Figarro.” Becker carefully unclipped his Blinker from his belt. Dotting the view screen of the rubber-buttoned communication device were a host of folders— individual Case Files of those who would be affected by the Sunset (or lack thereof). “With one look at this Sunset, lives can be changed forever . . .”

  Down below, the man with the thin mustache slowly turned to listen.

  “. . . and it’s not just people struggling. I can’t even count how many are on beaches or on hikes through a mountain pass or lying in a meadow with their best friend and don’t know they’re about to enjoy one of the greatest moments of their lives.”

  “But one Sunset, my friend? What can one Sunset do against ze troubles of ze entire World?”

  “Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.” Becker flipped over to one case in which he was personally involved. “A good friend of mine’s future may depend on him getting a little dose of Confidence tonight. But even if he looks away at just the wrong moment or something awful happens tomorrow it doesn’t really matter. All that matters is that we try.”

  The Maestro looked Becker directly in the eye.


  “Do you really believe zis?”

  “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

  There was a long silence, and from the way Figarro peered down at the rocks below, Becker wasn’t sure whether he had won him over or lost him.

  “All right, Fixer-man. Maybe ze Plan is out of our control. But if only one person in zose Files of yours stops to look . . .” He rose and proudly faced Becker. “Then I shall give zat person the greatest Sunset Ze World has ever—”

  But before he could finish his sentence, the entire ledge the Maestro was standing on broke off and went plummeting down toward the Stream.

  “Figarro!”

  This time, Becker did listen to the voice in his head screaming “Jump!” Detaching from his Sticky Feet, he plummeted straight toward the Maestro, who was screaming in abject horror. It was a second or two before he caught up to the flailing painter, which only brought a small modicum of satisfaction, because it would only be a second or two more before they both smashed headlong into the rapidly approaching rocks below. But Becker knew something that Figarro didn’t. At least he hoped he did . . .

  “Sarge, please tell me you set up the—”

  Thwap.

  The Fixer and the Maestro found themselves encircled in a ball of nylon twine, which stretched uncomfortably close to the water before recoiling back up toward the top of the cliff. Thankfully, it was connected to the twin firing mechanisms that the Sarge had undoubtedly anchored to the Edge of Sanity, and whose retractable crank was now reeling the two survivors of a near-death experience back to the top.

  “How you doin’ down there, boss?” barked the Sarge over his Receiver.

  “Hangin’ in there.”

  The best part about a Safety Net was the safety. The whole net thing Becker could have done without, because at the moment it was imprinting a familiar waffle-shaped tattoo on their faces.

  But better to be a waffle than a pancake.