by Alan Averill
• • •
in british columbia, a boy named Peter MacDonald stares up at his father, who is in the process of purchasing a pair of movie tickets for their spontaneous day off, and finds himself afraid to take his hand. You’re dead, Daddy, Peter thinks. You got hit by a car and you died and Mommy married another man. You’re not supposed to be here.
• • •
in new york City, a young woman named Sara Lin watches her three sons run in excited circles on the playground. She is wearing a ragged blue dress with patched holes, and her shoes have a hand-me-down look. I was an artist, she thinks to herself. I designed characters for video games. These kids are not supposed to be here.
• • •
in hong kong, a man named Hsu claws furiously at the lid of a coffin. I’m not dead! he screams. The Machine was going to make me a king! It was going to make us all kings! Oh God, get me out! I’m not supposed to be here!
• • •
and on the roof of a large white building in the Australian Outback, a woman named Judith Halford stands perfectly still and watches a large purple hole pulse in the sky. As she stares, a pale creature with shaggy black feathers slowly emerges from it, shudders once, then flies away over the horizon.
I have to get the fail-safe, she thinks wildly. I have to leave this place and track down Tak and activate it somehow.
…Because that thing is not supposed to be here.
bird
chapter twelve
A young woman with curly black hair crouches under a window in a darkened room. She’s wearing a tan camouflage uniform and a dull, metal helmet, and has an assault rifle gripped firmly in one hand. The gun looks ludicrously out of place against her small frame; it doesn’t take an expert to see that she’s not very comfortable with it.
That’s Samira, thinks Tak. This is her memory.
Next to her is a young man, maybe twenty, smoking a cigarette. His helmet is lying on the ground, revealing a lumpy head shaved military-close. He is also wearing a uniform, but it’s not quite the same—the patches are different, the colors slightly more muted. The two of them speak in low tones, and while Tak can’t hear what they’re saying, he sees Samira smiling in a way he remembers well. She’s clearly into this guy, and Tak is surprised to find that this realization makes him jealous.
Other senses start to filter in now: the dull hum of a generator from somewhere outside, the mingled smells of stale water and human shit. He glances around and is surprised to see soldiers everywhere. A few are crouched against the walls like Samira, on edge and jumpy, while others lie down with rags stretched over their eyes, trying to steal a few minutes of sleep. One group in the corner huddles around the light of a dying flashlight and plays cards. A barrel-chested man with a Southern accent wanders slowly from soldier to soldier, sometimes putting a hand on a shoulder, occasionally saying a few words. At one point he reaches into his pocket and hands a man a cigarette.
That’s the leader. The sergeant or lieutenant or whatever the hell he is. They like him a lot. I bet they’re used to dying for him.
The memory shimmers for a second, wobbling in and out of existence. Tak thinks it’s going to go away entirely, but then the reality of the thing reasserts itself, and he’s back in the darkened room. Under the window, Samira laughs quietly, a beautiful sound in the night. It’s hot here, almost unbearably so, but she seems perfectly comfortable. The man next to her is telling a story with a grin on his face, occasionally moving his hands back and forth in the air like he’s pulling taffy. Tak sees how Samira is enjoying his tale and feels another pang of jealousy, this one stronger than before.
Hey, man, tough titty. You had your chance. You coulda stayed with her. But you went to Japan to be a TV star, then vanished off the grid. Got no one to blame but yourself.
The male soldier leans in close, and for a second Tak thinks he’s going to kiss her. But he just cups his hand around her ear and whispers something that causes Samira to collapse in a fit of giggles. She tries to get herself under control, but one laugh sneaks out as a braying bark, incredibly loud in the tension of the desert night. A few soldiers look over at the sound, then shake their heads and return to whatever they were doing. Tak can see that they don’t think very highly of Samira, and at first he assumes it’s a gender thing. But then he thinks about her long hair and her different uniform and realizes that it’s more complicated than that. These people are Marines, all part of the same unit. She’s not. She’s something else. It’s not that they don’t like her; they just haven’t learned to trust her.
The young man next to Samira leans against the window with his head poking over the bottom of the frame. She notices this and makes a small motion with her hand, but before she can say more than a couple of words, a loud bang rings out, and the top of the soldier’s head is torn off. It happens so fast, Tak assumes at first that the memory is skipping around. One moment Samira is young and beautiful and giggling at a bad joke, and the next she’s covered in a thick red syrup.
The other soldiers leap up and grab their weapons, moving toward the window as one. Noise and confusion ring out on all sides: men screaming at one another, the metallic click of magazines being slammed home into rifles, someone behind him yelling into a radio. The dead man slumps back against the wall with his mouth open, as if he can’t quite believe what just happened to him. Samira doesn’t move; she just crouches in place with a blank expression on her face until one of the Marines shoves her roughly to the side.
The leader presses his back against the wall and yells a command. At his voice, the soldiers, almost twenty in all, pop over the sill of the window and begin firing into the darkness. The sound is deafening in that small space, and combined with the rapid blast of muzzle flashes, Tak finds himself growing disoriented. His only thought is to locate Samira, but all he can see are brilliant pops of white and yellow light. He stumbles forward with the sounds of gunfire and screaming overwhelming his ears, but then the memory warbles once more and finally collapses in on itself.
• • •
a teenage boy is lying on a battered couch in a wood-paneled basement; leaning her head against his stomach is a girl of the same age. The boy has dark black hair and almond-shaped eyes, and sports a tiny soul patch at the bottom of his chin. The girl is chattering on about something, but there’s no sound to be heard. One of the boy’s hands dangles off the side of the couch, but the other is held in midair, as if trying to figure out where to go.
That’s me, thinks Samira suddenly. What the hell? That’s me and Tak. This is my house…. Am I time traveling?
She knows what her basement is supposed to look like, but it’s not quite complete. The television should be across from the couch, but instead there’s just a dull white blur. The desk where her father kept his PC should be in the corner, but all she sees is a kind of fuzzy light. The only things that are clear are the couch, its occupants, and a series of photographs hung on the wall behind them. Photographs of her mother.
This is a memory. But it’s not…It’s not mine. It’s Tak’s. I think that’s why things are missing. It’s because he’s not focused on them right now.
Sound begins to return to her ears, and Samira can suddenly hear herself talking. At first the words are stretched and distorted, running far slower than her lips are moving. But then there’s another little hitch, and time catches up with itself.
“…was high!” she hears herself say. “He was totally high, and he was just standing there, like, waving his arms around and staring at them. So of course, Hilary thought that was the funniest thing ever, and she starts laughing, and then I start laughing, and you know how when I laugh I just can’t stop? So we’re both sitting there laughing, then Kelly is like, ‘Dudes, this is not cool!’ But it was just, like, holy crap.”
Did I used to talk like that? Really? I had no idea.
“Ohmigosh, Tak, I totally wish you were there. Things just aren’t the same when you’re not around. Promise me you
’ll come next time, okay? Swear it on your dad’s immortal Irish soul or something.”
Tak makes a noise of assent at this, but nothing more. Samira can see that he’s nervous as hell, but can’t possibly imagine why. She doesn’t even remember this day—it was just one of a thousand different evenings spent in her basement with the two of them talking about nothing. He takes his free hand and slowly moves it to the space just above her mane of curly hair, then withdraws it again. The expression on his face is one of complete disgust at his own cowardice.
Oh my God. I think he’s trying to work up the nerve to touch me.
The Samira on the couch is totally unaware of the hormonal drama playing out behind her; she continues chattering away about her friend Hilary and the day they spent at the lake and whatever other nonsense pops into her mind. Occasionally, her head shifts against Tak’s stomach, and he tenses, once even producing a sharp intake of breath. But, of course, she notices none of this.
There’s a sudden noise nearby, a familiar creaking of old wooden stairs. Samira bolts upright and grabs the channel changer, while Tak pulls his hands back into his body as if they were on springs. The white blur where the television should be suddenly becomes an actual television as the power is turned on, and Tak focuses all of his concentration on it.
Dad. Oh God, Dad. It’s you.
Ahmed Moheb finishes his descent and peers into the room. There is a cup of hot tea in his hand and an unlit cigarette perched between his first and second finger. He glances from his daughter to her friend and back again, saying nothing for the longest time.
“Hey, Dad,” says Samira cheerfully. “How was work?”
Ahmed continues to stare at Tak, who responds by curling his lips inside his mouth and waving the tips of his fingers. “Hello, Takahiro,” says Ahmed finally. “I did not know you were here.”
“Hi, Mr. Moheb!” says Tak quickly. A small bead of sweat pops out from his forehead and shimmers in the television’s glow. “Uh, it’s…It’s good to see you. Again. How’s the ice-cream business?”
Ahmed makes a face like he smells something sour, a move that causes Tak to shrink even farther back into the couch. “My business is fine, thank you,” he says after another lengthy pause. “Are you planning to stay here long, Takahiro?”
“No! I mean, um, well, not, you know…I can leave whenever.”
“Dad!” yells Samira from the corner of the couch. “Don’t be a jerk. And call him Tak. No one calls him Tak-a-hi-ro.” She puts air quotes around this word and emphasizes every syllable, creating a hilarious imitation of her father’s precise English pronunciation.
“Mmm,” says Ahmed by way of response. “Yes, well. I think I will go upstairs and finish my tea.”
“Bye, Dad!”
“Good night, Samira…. Good-bye, Takahiro.”
“Good-bye, Mr. Moheb! It was great to…um…talk to you?”
Ahmed turns and ascends the stairs again, one slow step at a time. Tak and Samira sit in silence and listen to his footsteps as he crosses the kitchen floor and opens the sliding glass door to the deck. Once they hear him step outside, Tak exhales and slides off the couch, creating a little puddle of himself on the floor.
“You’re an idiot.” Samira giggles.
“Jesus, your dad scares the fuck out of me. I’m waiting for the day he brains me with a shovel and buries me in the backyard.”
“He likes you.”
“No, he doesn’t. He wants to kill me. He’s convinced I’m trying to get into your pants.”
“Yeah, well, aren’t you?” asks Samira with a sly smile.
She can see Tak working up the nerve to say something further, trying to decide between a witty response and just opening his heart and letting everything pour out, but then the memory warbles with renewed strength. The couch, the people, the pictures on the wall, everything dissolves into a blurry mash of images and sounds, piling one on top of the other until they become a thick white soup of nothing.
• • •
i can’t believe I said that to him.
Neither can I.
… Tak?
Hey, Sam.
Where are we?
We’re in the Machine.
What’s going on? Why can I see your memories?
It’s time travel. That’s just how it works. Usually, you only see your own memories, but since we used the Machine at the same time, everything is mashing together.
How long will this last?
Depends. New memories kinda come and go, so it could be any
• • •
samira lies in bed and sobs. She hasn’t slept for days. The fan in the air conditioner has a slight imperfection, and each time it spins, it scrapes against the side of the housing and makes a small, squeaking sound. But the imperfection is such that the squeak is never the same—sometimes it comes twice in a second, sometimes it waits for a minute or more. She can’t sleep with that noise. It isn’t regular enough. It isn’t consistent. It reminds her of terrible things, and so she lies in her bed and sobs until her throat is raw.
• • •
tak grabs a ledge in front of him and heaves himself onto the bank of the river. His body is shaking and blue from cold. Below him, a torrential stream of water flows away and toward the horizon. He lies on his back, shivering uncontrollably, then flips over and begins crawling toward a nearby grove of trees. Upon reaching them, he grabs a patch of thick green moss and turns to face the waterproof video camera he holds in his left hand. “Old M-Man’s B-B-Beard,” he says through chattering teeth. “B-best firestarter there is.”
• • •
a man in a New England Patriots T-shirt and dirty grey slacks runs toward the gate, shoving his way through a long line of young men waiting to apply for the new police force. “Allahu akbar!” screams the man. “Allahu akbar!” A soldier raises his rifle and fires off three rounds, striking the man in the middle of the forehead. As he falls, he releases a button that was held in his left hand. The world explodes. The man’s head goes spiraling off in the air as a massive orange cloud transforms the line of stunned applicants into a dirty red mist.
• • •
tak stares at a massive set of blueprints mounted on a wall and tries to wrap his mind around what he’s seeing. To his right, a woman with long red hair absentmindedly clicks a ballpoint pen. “What is this thing again?” he asks.
“It’s a dark-matter accelerator,” replies the woman. “With enough power, we can use it to create a stable Einstein-Rosen bridge.”
“Am I supposed to know what any of that means?” asks Tak as he walks up to the blueprints and crinkles his forehead. “Because I don’t.”
“You don’t need to understand how it works. You just need to use it.”
• • •
tak holds samira’s face in his hands and kisses her. Her eyes fly open in surprise, but as the kiss continues, they slowly close. She grabs a tuft of his spiky hair and digs her fingers into it. Her other hand flutters slightly in the air, then finds one of his and entangles itself with it. When they part, she finds her whole body is shaking.
“My dad’s gonna kill you,” she manages to say.
“Banzai,” says Tak.
• • •
samira opens her eyes. She is lying on her back on a patch of tall brown grass. Above her, the twisted branches of dead trees interlock in random patterns, preventing all but the smallest rays of sunlight from filtering through. She blinks once. Twice. A third time. Her stomach is a knot, and her head is spinning. Turning to the side, she sees a familiar face staring at her.
“Did we make it?” she asks quietly. “Are we out of the Machine?”
“Yeah,” says Tak. “We made it.”
“Banzai.”
chapter thirteen
Samira’s good cheer at surviving her first time-travel experience lasts right up until the moment she becomes violently ill. She’s been sick before—a couple of particularly nasty bouts of flu, a run-in wi
th some parasite-filled water in the big desert—but nothing like this. The contents of her stomach are already long gone, so she’s moved on to the occasional dry heave punctuated by fits of wracking coughs. Her sense of balance is so tripped out it might as well not exist at all. Each time she opens her eyes, the world spins, but each time she closes them, flashing white lights appear and dance around her mind. There’s even a high-pitched squealing in her ears that sounds like someone’s scraping their front teeth across a blackboard.
At least I didn’t piss myself, she thinks as she lies on the ground in a little ball and waits for death. I suppose that’s something.
Tak sits next to her with a hand on her back, rubbing it around and around in a small circle. Occasionally, he holds her hair out of the way so she can do her business, but otherwise the hand never leaves her. She’s comforted by its weight; right now, it’s the only thing grounding her in the world.
As to the identity of that world, she doesn’t have a clue. Before the sickness came, she was able to see a grove of dead trees and some spindly wisps of brown grass. She can tell that Tak is concerned by where they ended up even though he’s trying not to show it, and that worries her. She pulls her hands tighter against the knot in her stomach and makes a mental note to ask him once she can speak again.
Time passes in a blur. Eventually, her limbs begin to regain their normal gravity although the tips of her fingers still feel as if they’re holding heavy lead weights. The spinning slows to a more manageable rocking sensation, and her stomach finally agrees to stop expelling things that haven’t been there for quite some time. Slowly, very slowly, she uncurls herself and rolls onto her back in a half-fetal position. She feels Tak reach for her foot and try to pull it away from her body, but she resists.
“Wait, wait,” she says. “Oh my God, don’t. Don’t touch me.”
“You need to stretch,” he says, continuing to pull the leg. “Trust me. Stretch your limbs as far as you can. Otherwise, they’re going to feel heavy and weird.”
