Alphabet Soup for the Tormented Soul

by Tobias Wade

  If you're able to gather your wits and swim against the current of your fabricated memories, then congratulations! You are stronger-willed than most, but this is no time to celebrate. The sudden appearance of Grovewood & Co. deems your timeline vulnerable - more vulnerable than it has ever been before. It's up to you, the only person wise to the charade, to fix things, if only temporarily.

  It's imperative that you relay this phrase, verbatim, to the shopkeeper; "Might you be so kind as to direct me to your written wares? I'm in the market for a parable or two." This is your ticket to the good stuff. The shopkeeper will bring you to a room housing nothing but a bookcase (filled with books published by "The Moirai Initiative", another entity we are working to locate), behind which is a set of stairs that lead to the building's second floor.

  Once upstairs, you will find many objects - a mirror that can trap souls, a picture frame that can show you still images of the afterlife, and even a crystal ball that gives anyone who touches it the power of clairvoyance. None of them are worth your attention, save for one. In the back left corner of the room, hanging next to some jewelry, you'll find a golden pocket watch. This is arguably the most powerful item in the shop, though most of its powers remained dormant until the anomaly took place (an object's power can change when used in conjunction with another object). This is the object you need to get to.

  (Remember what I said about sentience. Some of the objects will cause trouble if they sense danger. Walk around the room a few times, act casual - when you finally do grab the pocket watch, show no signs of excitement or nervousness)

  On the front of the pocket watch is a large ampersand. On either side of it are "GW" and "CO." respectively, denoting the shop's branding. Clicking the button atop the watch will open its face and reveal to you a single dial and a circle of letters, A to Z. These letters are key to your world's survival.

  The pocket watch works like a combination lock. Spinning the button will move the dial to letters of your choosing. It's very important that you enter the following sequence:

  Right: O Left: V Right: A Left: I Right: L Left: I

  Though the pocket watch isn't the device that caused the temporal disturbance (that one is still MIA), it does have similar properties. Entering this code will reactivate the anomaly and jump-start transport. Grovewood & Co. will jump to the next timeline and you will more than likely have no memory of the events that transpired.

  That's it? Really?

  Yes, that's it. Moving the building to its next destination is the greatest thing you can do. It allows us more time to perfect our endgame plan (currently in development). The multiverse is at its safest in between jumps. The longer the building sits in a timeline, the greater the chance there is of someone messing with the pocket watch or another object in the shop, and creating a chain of events that inevitably leads to the destruction of all that we know.

  Having said that, keep this in mind:

  IF YOUR FINGER SLIPS, OR YOU FAIL TO RECALL THE COMBINATION PROPERLY, YOU ARE ENDANGERING EVERYTHING. ONE WRONG LETTER, ONE WRONG TURN OF THE WATCH'S DIAL, AND ALL LAYERS OF PHYSICAL REALITY AND CONSCIOUSNESS MIGHT INTERSECT, CREATING A CATACLYSM THAT MAY VERY WELL END ALL OF EXISTENCE.

  Sending you in is a danger in and of itself, but doing nothing is far worse. Until the problem can be resolved, this message is one of many small hopes that we have. With any luck, we will find a better solution. Until then, the safety of the multiverse is in your hands.

  Don't fuck it up.

  Z is for Zodiac

  Alex Baran

  I stared down at the amorphous gray blob in the file in front of me in disbelief.

  “Is it-”

  “Malignant?” The doctor finished for me. I nodded, reaching for my wife’s hand for some semblance of comfort.

  “It’s too early to tell. With your permission, I’d like to keep Hannah overnight. Run some tests, just to be on the safe side.”

  My mind went blank as I eagerly signed paper after paper. My little girl, my world, my everything…

  …How could she possibly have cancer?

  My mother used to say only three things could change a man: god, love, and death. Many other events and beliefs may come close to altering one’s life for the better or worse, but for the most part the soul remains unmoved. I may yet be young, but this much I know for sure.

  I never thought I’d ever love anyone more than my wife Marissa, but the second my baby girl Hannah looked into my eyes for the first time I was smitten. I spent every waking moment - and many unawake - with my daughter, watching her grow and experience everything with the utmost joy.

  Marissa, on the other hand, hardly took a month off work before going back to the research hospital. Her friends told me they thought she’d gone mad, but then again her friends had never been terribly loyal. By the time the diagnosis came around, they’d all left.

  I supposed we should have been prepared for it, all things considered. Not many kids are reading at a fourth grade level at only 26 months.

  “Your daughter is gifted, certainly,” the doctor spoke to me and my wife. The two of them had gone over the charts privately that morning, knowing I’d be of negligible input with my liberal arts degree. Nonetheless, they did their best to explain it to me.

  To be perfectly honest, it felt more like when my parents used to sit me down before a lecture. “We just don’t want you to follow in your brother’s footsteps” was their excuse for academic torture. The polite explanation, a justification for the bad news you could smell coming a mile away.

  “Skip it, I’m sure Marissa can fill in the details for me later, Dr…?”

  “Please, call me Eli.”

  The doctor only continued after receiving her confirmatory nod. He looked at me with those soft, cornflower blue eyes that gave off the scent of a smile without the corresponding mouth. At times, I wondered if he might be the reason Marissa wound up staying late to “finish up some research projects.”

  “I was worried. Hannah’s growing so quickly, I didn’t want it to be like…”

  I held up a hand. She didn’t have to explain. Both her parents, god rest their souls, passed from strokes out of nowhere. To think our baby girl could vanish from our lives so quickly, I would have done the same thing.

  Not quite a half hour later I had left, my wife staying behind to help monitor Hannah’s tests.

  The following months passed torturously slowly, my daughter having to stay at the hospital and away from me for lengths of time I hadn’t planned for until she reached 18. I visited as often as I could, though with the experimental nature of her treatment many areas were off-limits to her dad, a mere civilian.

  Eventually, I proved enough of an annoyance that they moved some sessions to a less restricted wing. While I couldn’t be by her side when my wife and Eli worked the big, complicated machines and poked her with all kinds of needles, I was finally allowed to sit in on her psychological evaluations.

  It was there I finally met her mentor, Olivia.

  “Daddy!” Hannah squealed, running into my arms as I lifted her up, spinning her around twice before putting her back down.

  “Hey there pumpkin-head! How are you feeling?”

  “Okay!” She giggled with my favorite smile of hers before looking back to her mentor. “Can we play blocks now?”

  The woman nodded with a smile. “You’ve got quite the special girl, you know,” she mentioned, walking towards me.

  “I’m… well aware.”

  The three of us began taking turns playing a heavily modified version of Jenga, Hannah explaining new rules nearly every time one of us touched a new block. And though her mind had developed so rapidly, she still had some fine motor functions that needed work. Ones that quickly toppled the tower we’d been building.

  “Oh no!” I joked, laughing at the mess she’d made.

  “You moved it!” She accused Olivia.

  “Hannah, be nice. It’s okay,
we can build it back-”

  “No! She MOVED IT!”

  The scream felt almost tangible somehow. As I gathered my thoughts, Olivia had retrieved some orderlies who escorted me out of the room, taking Hannah back to the wing I couldn’t visit. Looking through the bit of glass in the door, I swore the blocks had moved again.

  “I’m really sorry you had to see that,” Eli put a hand on my shoulder out of nowhere. “Some of the medication have some unfortunate side effects. Outbursts, and the like.”

  “…Yeah. How’s she doing, otherwise? Feels like forever since everything started.”

  He stared me down, a blank expression. The man hardly seemed to have any wrinkles at all.

  I caught myself before he could speak. “...I mean, not that I’m not really grateful for all the work you and the hospital have been doing for her...for us. And all pro-bono…”

  Eli laughed without smiling. “Not to worry. I have faith that this will all be over sooner than you think.”

  I coughed and opened my eyes after hearing the door close downstairs. Marissa had finally gotten home from the hospital, another long night. I looked to see the clock read 12:26, slumped out of bed, and put on my slippers.

  Rubbing my eyes, I thought back. Hannah had been undergoing her treatments for over two years now, and every time I asked how things were progressing Eli dodged the question one way or another. My wife had grown distant in that time - normally a late night would mean 8 or 9. Hell, we’d even changed churches to waste less time away from the hospital.

  I grabbed the leftover coffee from the fridge, poured two mugs full, and put them in the microwave. Soon enough Marissa entered our kitchen sporting her usual blue and white uniform.

  “These long nights are getting a little crazy, Mar. You sure you can’t-”

  “I’m doing important work, I’ve told you this I don’t know how many times.”

  “I know, I know.” The microwave dinged and I brought the mugs to the table. “And Hannah?”

  “She’s number one. Always has been.”

  I could sense something beyond fatigue in her words. Frustration? No, but perhaps a smidgen of regret. We had the same conversation every week, and being the coward I am I avoided an argument as best I could. I knew she was working hard, but I couldn’t get the idea of Eli all over her out of my head.

  “I’m sorry, Mar. It’s gone on long enough, you need to tell me a little more than ‘it’s going well’.”

  She shot me a dirty look that made me make my next mistake. A mumbled, but audible, “I’m sure Eli’s doing well, too.”

  “Excuse me?”

  I stepped up. Already crossed the line, so why not? “You heard me. I hardly see you anymore! Our daughter’s been in your labs for months on end and you tell me nothing? I can’t even remember the last time all three of us were in the same room together. Much less the last time you and I-”

  “Fucked?”

  “Well. Yeah.”

  She swallowed a deep gulp from the mug and tossed the rest at me. I raced to take off my undershirt, the liquid burning my chest as she raged at me.

  “You want to know why we haven’t fucked, Jeremy? Because I’ve been working my ass off day in and day out trying to get our daughter ready. You think I’ve been fucking Eli all that time, is that it?” She laughed as though the accusation couldn’t be further from the truth. “The man’s practically a psychopath he’s so emotionless. Not to mention he’d hardly be able to get it up with all the dr-”

  She stopped, pulling back on her spitted words. Her face had turned red and she breathed heavily, wet marks forming at the corners of her eyes. Though my body and mind ached I couldn’t help but feel bad for pushing her this far.

  Of course she wasn’t cheating on me.

  Of course she was doing everything for our daughter.

  Marissa stormed out of the room, leaving me the couch without another word. I hardly slept another wink that night, my thoughts focused on many things that all came back to one slip of the tongue.

  Whether it was intentional or not, what did she mean when she said she was getting our daughter “ready”?

  Ready for what?

  Over the next few weeks, every time I visited the hospital I stayed longer than necessary. I got there early, I left late. I brought a book with me each time, but while it may have seemed as though I was making progress through the latest self-help instruction manual to get my life back on track, I made careful notes about every single person I saw.

  Which doctors passed through the hallways and at what time. When the orderlies took lunch. What they ate for lunch. The color pen Eli kept in his jacket pocket. What Olivia wore to our sessions.

  I became a wealth of knowledge about everything that went on, at least everywhere I had access to.

  My chance came on a Thursday, when one of the guards had called out sick. I’d been getting the other one coffees regularly as an excuse to chat him up, and by the time his replacement showed up he bolted to the bathroom so fast he didn’t even notice his badge go missing.

  Marissa was sound asleep by the time I snuck out.

  For such a well-guarded research hospital, getting through security was a breeze - it’s amazing what matching clothes and a badge will do. I easily passed through all the regular checkpoints that normally closed after visiting hours; hell, half the lights were out in the place.

  Come to think of it, the whole area seemed surprisingly empty for a hospital.

  I made my way to the restricted wing, scanning doorways for any signs of interest. I didn’t know where Hannah slept, but I could at least try to find Eli’s office.

  The door wasn’t even locked.

  I flipped on a lamp by his desk and began carefully looking through any files I could get my hands on. I’m no expert so I skipped trying to crack his computer, and nearly every cabinet either wouldn’t open or didn’t have any documents in them.

  Only two drawers opened: one labeled “1913,” and another labeled “1991-” with a few blanks, presumably to be filled in when it got full.

  The files in the first drawer were essentially useless. Everything with any sort of content had been redacted to the point of being completely black. Why he kept these files I couldn’t guess.

  The other drawer contained a couple dozen folders, 26 in all. I couldn’t make sense of any of the labels, and quickly rifled through them to see if I could find Hannah’s charts somewhere.

  What I found disturbed and confused me far beyond my knowledge of, well… anything, really.

  Some files contained details of murders, drug trafficking, and things that I can’t even begin to describe. Events about creatures that didn’t exist. Devices and abilities that defied physics.

  By the time I saw any photos, I nearly vomited. From then on I scanned the first page of each folder as briefly as possible.

  Eventually, one page listed Hannah as the subject. A folder with the word “ZODIAC” in bold font.

  I began scrambling to read through it all when I heard someone at the door clear their throat.

  Eli.

  “I expected you might find your way here sooner or later. Far later, in this case.”

  “What are you doing with my daughter? What are you really doing with her?”

  “Well, you’re more than welcome to read the files. Or…”

  “…or what?”

  He smirked, the folds of his face creasing the skin as though he’d never developed laugh lines. Eli moved his head away from the door, and I followed like the sucker I’d become.

  I struggled to keep pace with him. The man seemed determined, like the kind of person who’s so obsessed with their work they don’t sleep, ever. After a few turns he began talking.

  “As you may have guessed by now, this isn’t exactly a hospital, though we do indeed perform delicate research. I’ll spare you the details since they won’t make much sense to you and I really don’t have th
e patience.”

  He nodded to a guard who moved out of the way of large elevator doors, mentioning for them to have Olivia meet us in the observatory.

  “Long story short, 26 years ago our scientists discovered an anomaly. We’ve been running tests ever since - the ones in that cabinet you very illegally sorted through - and, well. Humanity has been tremendously impacted by the results thus far.”

  We entered the elevator and began to descend. “You’ve arrived at quite the fortunate time, of course. Many of our subjects have developed abilities - gifts, really - and while some are far less stable than others, I personally believe your darling little Hannah has been selected for a very important purpose.”

  The descent took a full 26 minutes. Though it felt like Eli finally revealed some truths to me, making sense of it all would be an entirely different matter altogether.

  What kind of gifts was he talking about?

  And what the hell had Marissa actually been working on all this time?

  “That day with the blocks,” Eli explained. “Hannah first noticed Olivia’s presence of mind. And, as you might not recall, she formed her own.”

  I thought back to how the blocks had moved after we’d left the room. Or had they moved when she screamed?

  “Telepathy, telekinesis, emotional massaging, presence of mind, supernatural - call it whatever you like. You will at the very least be pleased to know that tonight will be Hannah’s final test.”

  The elevator doors opened, revealing a smallish deck overlooking a large, circular room. Olivia joined us as we walked towards the window to witness the events to come.

  Just over two dozen guards stood around the edges of the chamber, all wearing the same blue shirts and white pants I’d grown tired of seeing. A minister dressed in all black kneeled at the center, a handful of others mixed between. By his side stood my little girl.

  The people in the middle all faced a sort of altar as they chanted under their breaths. I couldn’t make out what they said, and by the time I felt Olivia’s hand on my shoulder I realized I’d been slamming my fist against the glass.