Yesterday's Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  Kayla harrumphs.

  “Wait.” I hold up my hand, taking advantage of the brief pause this causes Coleman. He looks at me like I’m a turd that just crawled off his shoe and asked to perform for the crowd.

  “No,” Coleman says.

  “About yesterday,” I start, ignoring him. Coleman takes a step towards me, but Felicity holds up a hand. Finally. Finally she has my back. And Coleman backs off.

  I keep the smile locked down, tight in my gut. I can’t afford to spoil this now.

  “I know we’ve talked about it before, about how teleportation is impossible. About how intradimensional magic is impossible.”

  From the corner of my eye, I see Felicity, almost imperceptibly, shake her head. But she’s backed me to this point. She’ll listen.

  “But I saw it happen yesterday.” I lock my eyes on Clyde and Tabitha. “A man teleported in front of me yesterday. Whatever science needed to be worked out—the Russians worked it out. They know how to do it.”

  “No, Arthur,” Tabitha starts.

  “It all goes back to Chernobyl.” I plunge on. I am not going to be shut down by denials. This is too big, too important. And I lay it all out for them, piece by piece, just the way Aiko and I went through it last night. Until it’s all there, before them. Definite. Undeniable.

  “Are you kidding me, Arthur?”

  Felicity says it. Felicity who has my back. She’s staring at me, incredulous. And no, she has to see this. She has to.

  Coleman chuckles quietly to himself.

  “Glamour, Arthur,” Tabitha says. “Illusion.”

  “We covered this,” Felicity says, exasperated.

  “That’s not how it was.” I shake my head. I look at Felicity. “You said you would look into this.”

  “I did, Arthur.” It’s Clyde who replies. “Took me all of two minutes to scan the literature. Gift of incorporeality and all that. It’s still impossible. There’s not a single dissenting voice in the thaumaturgic community. And that’s not a crowd known for being unanimous about things. Except perhaps the wonderfulness of beards. But, you know, Occham’s razor and all that. Look for the simplest solution. So rather than it being the impossible answer, maybe there’s something more obvious. Maybe, whatever you thought you saw…”

  He hesitates, looks to Shaw, who nods. “I looked up head trauma symptoms too, Arthur,” he says. “They can be terribly nasty buggers. Much like ferrets. Never saw why people keep those as pets. Teeth with furry tails and attitude problems if you ask me. Not the symptoms that is. Ferrets. But the symptoms, they include altered memories and changed perceptions. Which could account for everything you think you remember. How you interpret it. Seems a little more likely. Wouldn’t you say?” He nods encouragingly.

  Goddammit. This is… I shake my head vehemently. “I am not remembering this wrong.” I try to make it sound undeniable, but I fear I just sound petulant. “I saw what I saw. He moved. He teleported. It’s real. The game has changed. They’re going to change it. They’re going to go back and give teleportation technology to the Russians in the eighties. During the Magical Arms Race. They’re going to change it so that they win.”

  Coleman keeps on smiling like the mouse who got the whole fucking Edam. I look to Felicity, imploring.

  “Stop it, Arthur,” she says. “Just… Jesus, I thought you were going to apologize.”

  I throw up my hands. “I have nothing to bloody apologize for! I bought Clyde time. I had the shit kicked out of me.”

  And… I don’t know. When does fighting for what’s right just become banging your head against a wall? I look at the door.

  “Feel free,” Coleman says. He steps aside, proffers the exit with one sarcastically gracious hand.

  “George…” Felicity starts. But she doesn’t finish. Leaves the line and me hanging.

  “He’s your mistake, Felicity. Not mine.”

  And just because it will piss him off, just to piss on his goddamn parade, I pull out a chair and sit down.

  Devon, sitting next to me, reaches over and pats me on the back. I know she’s trying to be supportive but being patronized doesn’t exactly help.

  Coleman arches an eyebrow, then snorts and turns to the others. “Now we’re done with the clown’s performance,” he says, “maybe the adults can talk about what’s really going on.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  It’s Clyde who speaks. “Lightning strikes,” he says.

  I have a moment of, “Et tu, Brute?” Not happy with just dismissing my theories and damning all of western civilization, now he has to back Coleman up?

  It’s not a fair thought, of course. But God I preferred it when he wasn’t a mask.

  Clyde reaches, with a certain temerity, for Tabitha’s laptop. She spins it round to face us, but doesn’t let him touch it. Clyde’s hand tremors and Google pops up.

  “We thought,” he says, “that the Russians were using lightning primarily as an offensive tool.” On the screen fifty tiny images of forked lightning appear. “However, we’ve all noticed, at least I noticed, and Co-Directors Shaw and Coleman noticed, and Tabitha did too, and I’m assuming other people did, but, well, the appearance of lightning doesn’t always correlate with an actual attack. Plus the Russians are frequently hit as well. Not totally the way I’d attack people. I mean, it’s subjective I’m sure, but the less crispy I am the better, I always think.”

  Tabitha is sitting next to Clyde, not looking at him. She stares at the back of the laptop and chews her hair. Even Kayla looks more relaxed right now. Wasn’t there a day just last week when she would have been staring rapturously at Clyde?

  And I’m not the only one it seems, who misses the man behind the mask.

  Clyde’s hand shakes again. More images on Google: yellow signs with black lightning signs, a plug, a light bulb.

  “Electricity,” he says, “is the universal lubricant between realities. Allows us to breach this reality, reach into another, pull through a force, have an effect. Why I drop about seven hundred pounds on batteries a month. But the Russians,” a few images of Moscow appear on screen for no clear reason, “have worked out something very tricky.”

  My stomach lurches. And I know, of course I know, he’s not going to say intradimensional magic. But he should.

  “They’re pulling ambient electricity from their surroundings,” Clyde says. “From wiring, from passing cars, laptops, anything that has a charge really. Which is, I think I should really point out, some frighteningly cool physics. I mean it’s a virgin science. We all thought it was practically impossible at this point.”

  Another stomach flip. “Wait,” I say. “This we’re OK with believing? This impossibility we permit them, but mine is one too far?”

  Felicity puts her head between her hands.

  “Oh do be quiet,” Coleman says.

  And, hell, normally I like to spread the abuse I receive evenly throughout the day. Front-loading like this is really going to throw me off. But I open my mouth to bite back.

  “Wait…” Devon raises a hand slightly. “I mean, isn’t Arthur… Didn’t we just dismiss an impossible thing?”

  And, God, I could kiss her.

  “Oh,” Clyde says. “Well. Erm…” He works his hands, can’t quite bring himself to meet her eye.

  “Practically impossible,” Tabitha cuts in smoothly. Her lip curls, superior, and cruel. Apparently a chance to one-up Devon is just the thing to cure the my-boyfriend’s-an-inhuman-mask blues. “Versus actually impossible. Practically impossible equals theoretically possible. Actually impossible equals bullshit. We tend to avoid bullshit. Professionals at work.”

  I realize I’m only an incidental target of her bile, but it doesn’t stop it stinging.

  “Watch your tone.” Kayla’s voice is barely above a whisper but everyone hears.

  Devon’s cheeks are burning. “Quiet,” she hisses at Kayla, loud enough for people on the floor above to hear it.

  Somehow, Tabitha meets Kayla’s death sta
re head-on. “Know what?” she says. “Way you handle a sword these days, I might be willing to pick that fight.”

  And, I never thought I’d see the day, but Kayla actually averts her eyes.

  God. We put the world back so very, very wrong.

  And why didn’t Kurt Russell ever make a movie where he handily dealt with an awkward staff meeting? I could really use some life lessons here.

  “OK, shut up everyone.” Coleman stands up, dismissing Clyde and any additional comments with the back of his hand. “So,” he says, “in summary we’ve got ourselves some militant Ruskies with insane demands that an unidentified ‘West’ surrender to the U.S.S.R. even though it’s about as alive and kicking as the dodo. And the stick for that charming little carrot is the threat of a Chernobyl-level explosion in London. And they’ve given us six whole days to comply. Because the Ruskies are a generous people and all that PC hog crap.” He cracks his knuckles. “That said, while the demands are bullshit, the threat’s credible.”

  I’m disappointed to find myself forced to agree with everything the bastard just said.

  “The original Chernobyl,” he insists on continuing, “took a nuclear reactor to power it, so normally I’d start looking at major power sources. But they’ve got this whole wireless access to electricity, so that plan is viciously buggered.”

  He looks around the room, locking eyes with everyone except me. He gives Devon double time to make up for it. And despite his attempts to mentally fling Devon’s clothes all over me, I’m again confronted by the unavoidable accuracy of his summation of the information.

  If only he wasn’t drawing completely wrong conclusions from it.

  “Not that any of that’s much of a problem, of course,” Coleman says with a shrug.

  And that conclusion seems the furthest from reality that we’ve achieved today.

  “Always been a shortsighted people, the Ruskies,” Coleman informs us. “Their plan is still dependent on power. Just on a broader scale. But we can still deny it to them.” He claps his hands together as if that’s the case closed.

  My quizzical expression remains. And what the hell, I’m playing the role of village idiot anyway.

  “We can what?” I say.

  Coleman grunts as if my thick-headedness causes him physical pain. “Power, Arthur.” He speaks slowly and loudly. “To London. We cut it. They can’t have it. No bomb.”

  “All of London’s electricity?” I want to be sure I’ve got that quite right because something niggles there. And not just the obvious implausibility. Something I was saying earlier if only I could put my finger on it.

  “Why are you still talking?” Coleman’s expression has evolved from distaste to full-blown disgust.

  “Actually,” Devon raises her hand if not her head again, “I was sort of, well exactly really, but I was wondering about the same thing.”

  Why on earth would Clyde ever leave someone as wonderful as Devon?

  “Well, sweetheart—” Coleman’s tone is suddenly sugary smooth. “—basically we put out some announcement about sun activity and a danger to all electrical items for the next week. Whip the media into a frenzy. Government issues panicked warnings, etc. Then we EMP London. Take out anything the Ruskies are packing. Simple enough.”

  “EMP London?” It’s Tabitha’s turn to ask questions now.

  “Yes, yes,” Coleman snaps. “EMP. I thought you were meant to be the smart one.”

  “Know what it is.” It does my heart good to see Tabitha’s painted nail (white with a black skull) rise at Coleman. “Electromagnetic pulse. Wipe out anything electrical.”

  “Problem solved then.” Coleman turns away.

  “No.” Tabitha’s voice is a stiletto blade between the ribs. Coleman is forcibly stopped in his dismissal. He looks rather nonplussed. But Tabitha stared down Kayla today. Coleman doesn’t stand a chance.

  “Clyde,” Tabitha says. She reaches out and taps his mask twice with her knuckle. She suppresses a grimace. “Electronic. EMP London. You EMP him. And you kill him again. And I kill you.” She’s not joking. We can all feel it. And it’s not malice, and strangely enough it doesn’t even feel like love. It sounds like a woman stating the terms of her existence as she’s negotiated them.

  Coleman purses his lips, momentarily knocked from his stride.

  “Actually…” Every eye in the room snaps to Clyde. “Well, I mean, what I was thinking,” Clyde hedges towards his noncommittal comfort zone, “there’s a chance, well something I’ve been reading up on… and, obviously some existential thinking has occurred recently. Clear why, I suspect. But I’ve dived into a lot of philosophy, and more computer theory than I originally anticipated. Artificial intelligence, that sort of thing. Quite a lot of anime, truth be told, but I’m wandering off-topic.

  “What I’m trying to say, in a roundabout sort of way, is that I am not in a carbon-based meat body these days. Probably noticed. Hello, elephant in the room. But obviously that means some of the more comfortable assumptions about corporeality and mortality no longer apply.”

  He shrugs several times, seemingly trying to gear himself up for something. “Which, admittedly,” he says, standing, “is all rather just a sort of preamble to explaining that I’m pretty sure I can do this.”

  Abruptly Clyde’s head goes sideways. His arm snaps out. His legs kick. For a moment I get to wonder if Clyde has spent the evening reading texts about avant-garde art movements and is now treating us to a postmodern deconstruction of the traditional dance show aesthetic.

  Then he keels over and his head cracks sharply against the floor.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  “Clyde!” Tabitha barks.

  “Clyde!” Devon shrills in unison.

  They both step toward him, then Devon catches herself. This is not her watch any more. She turns away and I glimpse the pain and confusion on her face. Kayla moves towards her.

  Clyde starts to tremor on the floor. Felicity, efficient as ever, seizes a first-aid kit from a wall mount.

  “Hello?”

  Tabitha’s laptop, lying ignored and open on the desk. It speaks. It has an absurdly cheery tone. I stare at it. For a moment I seem to be the only one who’s noticed.

  “Can you hear me?” it says. “Are the speakers on? Do you need me to turn up the volume?”

  A familiar tone.

  It takes a moment for the realization that Clyde’s voice is coming from the laptop to permeate the room. One by one the others turn and stare with me.

  “Clyde?” Tabitha, kneeling by the body, says. Her voice is shaking. She swallows hard. “Did you just download yourself onto my laptop, Clyde?” Her question doesn’t so much have an edge as it has a 9mm barrel.

  “Well…” the laptop starts.

  And then Clyde sits up and rubs the back of his head. “Bugger,” he says. “Need to be doing the whole horizontal thing next time I try that.”

  Felicity does the full-on comedy double take. Clyde, laptop. Laptop, Clyde.

  Tabitha is shaking. Visibly shaking. Shudders quaking up her arms and spine.

  “Just trying to explain the whole thing,” says the laptop. Apparently to Clyde. So maybe Clyde says it to himself.

  “Oh marvelous!” Clyde nods. “Want to finish up?”

  “Oh no, you go ahead,” the laptop tells him.

  Something’s wrong with reality again. I can feel it. That odd sideways slipping feeling where my brain has to perform gymnastics it was not really built for.

  “Well,” Clyde—the meat Clyde, the real Clyde—says, “it’s all fairly simple. I’m a digital file. Big complicated one. But I can be copied. Rewritten. Backed up.” He sits up straighter. “Just a data compression problem really, but I’ve mostly solved that. Handy really.”

  Abruptly, and with a certain violence, Tabitha scrabbles away from him, crab-crawling on hands and feet. She hits the wall, slithers up against it, trying to put as much distance between herself and her boyfriend.

  “What?” she mana
ges. Her quaking hand points at the laptop. “What the fuck? Clyde, what the fuck is going on?”

  “Tabby?” Clyde sounds genuinely disturbed by her reaction. Genuinely upset. “It’s just a copy. Just another me. So I can’t die. When the EMP goes off.”

  “On my laptop?” Her head is twisted on one side. She’s near tears. And this is too much. This is a step too far.

  “Yes,” Clyde says. “I thought that would be a good place to keep it. So I’m always with—”

  “Which one of you am I fucking dating?” Tabitha screams it, her voice breaking on the last syllable. “Which one of you is my fucking boyfriend?”

  “Me.” Clyde taps his chest as if it’s obvious.

  “Him.” The laptop says.

  Tabitha lets out a noise that’s half shriek, half moan.

  And how could he have thought this was alright? How could he have not considered this as an outcome? Clyde’s a smart man.

  Was a smart man?

  Is a smart… what? God, what is he?

  Quickly, decisively, Felicity leans across the table and slaps down the lid of the laptop.

  “Hey!” it says, and then the voice is cut off.

  “I am not dating a computer program.” Tabitha has her head in her hands. “I am not dating a computer program.”

  “No,” Clyde says. “Of course not. It’s just a copy. Just in case.”

  “Away,” Tabitha moans. She slides along the wall, keeping the maximum distance between herself and Clyde. “Need air. Need fucking space.”

  “This could be terribly useful, Tabby,” Clyde says.

  Useful. God I hate that word.

  She keeps backing away.

  Everything about Clyde slumps. And he really didn’t see this coming. “I was just trying to be useful.” He reaches out to her.

  “Feckin’ stop it.” Kayla finally steps away from Devon. Three strides quick enough they blur together. She catches Clyde’s hand. An iron grip. “You’ve done e-feckin’-nough already.”

  “Leave him alone!” Tabitha spits her rage and confusion across the room. All the emotions she’s trying to not unleash on Clyde, all the pain—she dumps it on Kayla. “Fucking psycho bitch. Don’t need you. I’m not someone for you to defend. They’re gone. Your girls are gone. Fucking face it. I’m not one. Devon’s not one. Can’t just grab us and make us belong to you. You’re fucking alone. Fucking insane. Fucking pathetic.”