Wearing the Cape

by Marion G. Harmon

  I'd expected them to grill me the moment I walked in, and, looking at them, I narrowed my eyes.

  "Okay, this is nice but you're all a little too happy for the room. What's going on?"

  Dane laughed.

  "I scored front-row seats for us at the Freakzone concert."

  Oh yeah, that would do it.

  Freakzone, led by the metamorphing "supervillain" Freakshow, was the latest megastar rapper group and all three otherwise sane girls were deeply into villain-rap. Burnout was so last decade.

  "Hey," he said. "I got six, would you like to come?"

  "Dane, do I look like I listen to villain-rap?"

  "I dunno. Still waters..."

  I shook my head. "Why? You're as vanilla as I am. You're not into it and I have no idea why they are."

  "Hello? We're right here." Megan said.

  Dane ignored her. "I think it's a transgressive thing, mostly for the style." Okay, he was a smart jock.

  Annabeth stuck out her tongue at him.

  "Hope, you've got to come."

  "No, nyet, nein, and again, no," I said, laughing. "I'd rather go shark-diving with a hundred paper cuts, but it's awfully nice of you. But maybe that means you don't want these."

  Silently blessing Mom for her suggestion, I handed each of them the early invitations for the foundation's Christmas Ball. I even had one for Dane I'd expected Annabeth to deliver. Although most people on the guest-list were public figures and big money, Mom liked to salt the crowd with beautiful, young, and connected people, as well as some purely entertaining ones. The Bees checked all the boxes. They already had plans to violently assault the fashion world together after graduation, and their families were old Chicago money. Dane, serious eye-candy himself, was being groomed to take over his dad's defense contracting company if they could tear him away from soccer (he'd already been accepted on the UofC team).

  The invitations elicited a round of shrieks; the Christmas Ball was legendary. I took a deep breath. Now I had to tell them.

  I opened my mouth, but before I could say anything Julie leaned over and whispered in my ear, scanning the room. "Guess who's here already? Mrs. Lori!"

  "What? No!"

  I looked around frantically, wanting to check everything again despite all my preparations. I spotted Mom across the room talking to Father Nolan, our own little priest and pastor of St. Chris. She'd obviously just handed him a plate of food, which he regarded in polite bemusement. Then I spotted Mrs. Lori, in conversation with Rush of all people. My small world was getting smaller.

  Mrs. Lori was one of Chicago's Grande Dames, and Mom's main rival in the charitable events business. She hosted only the most elite affairs, but always came to Mom's—probably hoping to catch her using black magic or something. I often thought she had no wrinkles because her closely knotted steel-gray hair pulled her face too tight.

  Giving air-kisses all around, I abandoned the Bees and wove my way through the crowd, trying not to touch anybody. I arrived at her side safely and with a silent sigh of relief. Now I just had to face the dragon.

  "Mrs. Lori." I curtsied. I couldn't help it—she always stood poker-straight and when she looked at me I knew she was doing a quick and critical inspection.

  She interrupted her conversation with Rush, out tonight in an evening suit with his newest wife (Tracy?), probably on Ajax's instructions. Beside them stood a little Buddha of a man I didn't recognize.

  "There you are, dear," she said. "You know Rush and Stacy, but I would like you to meet Dr. Royce. The good doctor heads the neurosurgery unit at Holy Cross. Hope is the daughter of our hostess and an indispensable help to her mother."

  "It's a pleasure to meet you," Dr. Royce said, briefly clasping my hand. "And I must thank your mother for her donation; the Faith Corrigan wing will be completed on schedule because of it."

  I banished my frown, but not before Mrs. Lori spotted it. I took a breath; I needed to focus.

  "Thank you, doctor," I said. "I'll relay your sentiments if you aren't able to find her in this crush. What do you think of the gallery?"

  "It's amazing!" he said. "I thought all the ivory not in museums was badly carved imitation."

  "It's true that new ivory is comparatively rare, but the best artists still work in it. But what you're looking at isn't ivory, doctor; it's white jade."

  The doctor had been gazing at my favorite piece, the center of the collection: an amazingly lifelike figure of a beautiful Asian woman, nearly four feet tall and carved in purest white jade. She wore Chinese imperial robes, her head bare and hair loose in a flowing western style, carved so fine you expected to see strands wave when you breathed. She held a sleeping infant in the crook of her left arm, and a parrot with a pearl in its mouth perched on her right hand. She watched her child, mouth curved in an adoring smile. The parrot gazed at her rapturously.

  "This," I said, "is a modern, nontraditional representation of Quan Yin, the Chinese goddess of mercy. Taoists worship her as an Immortal, Buddhists as a bodhisattva, and the Japanese as Kannon, one of the Celestial Kami. Asian Christians have noted her striking resemblance to the Virgin Mary, and secret Christians in Japan prayed to her as Mary for several centuries. This beautiful piece is a syncretic representation of her in that spirit."

  I reached up but stopped myself from touching her milky robes.

  "In China, superhumans gifted with beneficial powers are said to be 'kissed by Quan Yin.'"

  "She's beautiful." Dr. Royce lifted his hand too, and then lowered it, clearing his throat. I played tour guide for several other pieces before Mrs. Lori brought a new arrival to his attention and he reluctantly excused himself. A very bored Rush and Stacy found their own excuses. I cautiously grabbed a napkin and some finger food from a passing tray.

  Mrs. Lori graced me with a dry smile.

  "Thank you for not biting his head off, dear."

  "I'm sorry." I hung my head. "I still don't think Faith's name belongs on a hospital building. On a children's wing it just seems like the most important thing about her is she died."

  "It is the name of the foundation, dear. In any case, I think you've made a sale. I would not be surprised if your goddess ended up in the new wing."

  That made me smile. Quan Yin certainly belonged where she would comfort many instead of delighting only the buyer.

  "And perhaps when you're a director on the foundation board you can put Faith's name on a few schools?"

  I choked on the delicious bao yu I'd just bitten into. That was what Mom wanted, what I had wanted. Now? I saw a huge fight looming. Suddenly the bao yu didn't taste so good.

  "Honestly Mrs. Lori," I said, clearing my throat. "I'm already thinking about staying in school for graduate studies."

  She snorted. "Too much knowledge rots the brain. Unless it is the practical sort, such as how to fix my car or operate on my heart. Sometimes I think the more educated a person becomes the more useless he is to the rest of us. I can't bear to speak to half of my grandchildren because of their intellectual pretensions."

  "I will strive not to be useless." I said.

  That earned me another sharp look.

  "See that you do. You're mother infuriates me. She ignores half of the rules of society and mocks the rest, yet everyone forgives her. Worse, she throws common affairs like tonight's and expects everyone to come, and they do. She could auction manure in a stables and need help carrying the cash away."

  She smiled thinly.

  "And if you do not live up to her achievements I will be sorely disappointed."

  With that she took her leave, leaving me standing beside Quan Yin in mute astonishment.

  The event was a success, and I got to spend some time with the Bees between my hosting duties. But I wasn't able to tell them. There were moments when I could have, but I kept chickening out, feeling guilty as sin. Oh by the way, my cancer may have come back and I'm flying out to get experimented on at Johns Hopkins… No. I couldn't lie to their faces and accept their sympathy.<
br />
  Driving back to the Dome, I decided to meditate on it with a soak in the amazing tub that came with the shower, then curl up with Superpooh to start on one of the training manuals Ajax had given me. Solutions always seemed to come when I did something else.

  I got the bath, but before I could get to studying the Teatime Anarchist shot me.

  Chapter Nine

  Hindu scholars claim that the world has entered the next Vedic age. Many Shia and Sufi Muslims believe the Event a sign of the appearance of the Mahdi. The Catholic Church has declared the Event a Mystery, while many fundamentalist Christian sects consider it a sign of the End of Times. Scientists have no idea, although multiverse theory suggests some possibilities. The Awakened believe that the Event is evidence that the universe as we know it is a virtual reality inside a hypercomputer, most of us are simulations, and somebody changed the reality settings.

  Prof. Charles Gibbons, The New Heroic Age.

  * * *

  I was not well.

  The first and last time I drank hard liquor had been when Shelly and I wasted a bottle of her dad's finest scotch on a Friday night while her parents were in New York. I hadn't liked the taste, got drunk too fast to enjoy it, and woke up the next morning wishing I'd tripped on the stairs during the night and broken my neck, because then I'd have been dead.

  "Sorry about the head," a cultured New England voice said. "A neural disruptor might be the ultimate taser, but set too high it will make you wish you'd never been born."

  I opened my eyes and saw short dark curls and a serious gray gaze in the face of a tired angel who needed a shave. I remembered getting out of the bath, drying off and throwing on my UofC t-shirt and drawstring shorts, walking into my new bedroom... and getting shot by a very apologetic intruder (how had I not heard him?). Then nothing; one moment a man with the face of a mournful saint stood there pointing something at me, then the remembrance of single-malts past. I hurt so bad I could barely think.

  I looked down at myself, lying on my bed wearing what I'd thrown on, but also some kind of weird jewelry. Stylish bands of braided silver wires set with thin green jewel-toned disks circled each wrist and ankle.

  I tried to focus through the thundering pain behind my eyes. What was going on?

  "I'm sure you can't put two thoughts together," he said. "Again I apologize."

  "You shot me," I managed. Every twitch made me nauseous and each syllable echoed in my head like stone bells.

  "Yes I did," he said. "But now that you're awake I can do this."

  He pulled out a quarter-sized disk and stuck it to my forehead, and between one ragged breath and the next the pain flowed away. Now I could think, which meant I could be scared.

  I tried to sit up and the jewelry wouldn't cooperate. He backed up as I struggled, with rising hysteria. Putting enough fear-driven effort into it to toss a bus, I hardly moved at all.

  He simply waited, and, early hyperventilating, I fell back. Somehow the bands held me down as securely as any set of anchored Blacklock cuffs could have, and no matter how I wrenched at them, my arms and legs wouldn't move.

  I gave up and struggled for calm. Then I screamed.

  He didn't even flinch from the ear-rattling decibels.

  "I've erected a baffle-field in the room," he said, pulling my computer chair up beside the bed. "Sorry."

  He wore a long evening coat, cream-colored with a soft texture that looked almost like velvet, over gray slacks and shirt with a darker vest and tie. It all went together, but even in my fear I thought the cut looked strange.

  "First," he said in that cultured voice, "I'm going to tell you four things. You're not in danger. I'm a time traveler. I'm the Teatime Anarchist. And I'm not who you think I am."

  He didn't move when I tried to lunge at him, the green disks on my wrists and ankles flashing bright enough to turn the room green. I pushed so hard my vision went red and fuzzy as I struggled silently. I finally stopped, nearly sobbing with frustration.

  He watched me settle again, smiling sadly.

  "I'll start with the last point first," he continued as if nothing had happened. "I'm not the man who killed Senator Davis along with the other unfortunate victims of the Ashland bombing. There is no reason for you to believe me, of course, so we'll return to that later.

  "As for the second point, I offer the restraining bands you're wearing and the neural disruptor I used on you as evidence I've been to the future. We both know that to do the job with the best restraints available today would require hundred-pound titanium cuffs anchored in concrete. Do you agree?"

  He stopped and waited for my response.

  "... yes." I said, still breathing hard; I would have agreed with him if he declared himself a teapot. Keep him talking. If he's talking he's not doing something else.

  "Very good." He ignored my fear. "I'll be able to provide more proof later, but that will have to do for the moment. Now, let me state that time travel is impossible, at least time travel of the sort described in most fiction. To illustrate, have you heard of the Grandfather Paradox?"

  I shook my head.

  "A suicidal time traveler decides to rewrite history so he never existed. So he travels back in time to shoot his grandfather before his father is conceived, making sure he himself is never born. Will it work? Do you see the obvious problem?"

  Focus. Focus. Play his game. I thought hard, ignoring the screaming in my head.

  "It doesn't make sense," I finally said, hoping I had it right. "I think... if he killed his own grandfather and was never born, then who killed his grandfather?"

  He smiled like I'd answered a question for the class.

  "Exactly! The Grandfather Paradox demonstrates that history must be fixed and unchangeable—it's a matter of cause and effect. Scientists have tried to argue that time travel remains possible by postulating two theories."

  He settled back as I pulled in my flying thoughts.

  "One is the Observer Effect," he continued. "This theory states that, once something is observed to happen it can't unhappen. You can visit the past, but all of your actions are already part of history; you can't change anything. But why can't you? The theory breaks down to a circular argument for fate. If history is fixed then all of time, past and future, is fixed; there is no privileged present when free will is possible since your present is a future time traveler's past. There can be only a smooth continuum of fated progression from the beginning of time to its end, no deviations allowed.

  "The other is Multiverse Theory, which in this context states that, with any event for which two or more possible actions exist, both actions take place and each action creates its own universe. So there could be universes in which Hitler remained a commercial painter instead of leading the Third Reich. A time traveler in this scenario could go back and change the past all he liked—he would simply be creating another universe with a separate history rather than changing his own."

  He paused to make sure I was keeping up. I nodded quickly.

  "Very good. There is, however, a third theory which expresses the reality of time travel. Are you familiar with Schrodinger's Cat? It's a little thought-experiment involving a cat in a box that isn't really dead or alive until you open the box to look at it."

  "No."

  "It was intended to point out the problem with the theory of quantum superposition. A scientist puts a cat in a box with a vial of poison that will be broken by a trigger that will be tripped only if a particle of radioactive isotope also in the box decays. Quantum theory states that, until the outcome is observed, the particle both has and hasn't decayed and therefore the cat is both alive and dead until the scientist—the observer—looks in the box."

  Now he leaned in. I tried to curl up.

  "Time," he said, ignoring my flinch, "behaves according to what I call the Principle of Temporal Superposition. The future is a tangle of infinite possibilities existing simultaneously, which collapse to a single actuality as the present, the moment we're in now, advance
s second by second into the future. Free-will exists here, at the point of collapse where each decision is actually made. Trailing the present, the past is fixed—it can be visited but not changed. The future can be visited and interacted with, but is unfixed and indeterminate. When I visit the future I am only visiting the most likely future that would unfold from my moment of departure."

  It was like being lectured by my favorite teacher. My heart still raced, but the more he talked the less I was scared he would hurt me. I even found myself desperately interested in what he was trying to tell me; if he wasn't crazy, maybe I was safe.

  "Causality is preserved at each point," he concluded.