by Stuart Young
Vines and foliage covered the hospital’s main entrance, a jungle spreading across the concrete forecourt and over to the multi-storey car park. A Tyrannosaurus Rex stomped through the foliage, chasing after a group of fleeing Cavaliers and Roundheads. Soldiers in bulky mecha-armour screeched across the sky, the vapour trail from their jetpacks tracing an arc across the heavens as their plasma-cannons blasted a passing airship, sending its blazing wreckage crashing to the ground. Dimensional wormholes shimmered open and giant slug-like creatures from Blatnurt III slithered out, spooking the elephant conveying a passing Indian prince. South Sea islanders dropped the pearls they had collected, fleeing as Viking warriors charged them, battleaxes swinging – the Vikings themselves falling as they were attacked by a swarm of luminous butterflies that fed on testosterone.
Laura ducked behind a bench, overwhelmed by the wonders and monstrosities before her, wondering how she could so easily recognise people from different times and places let alone creatures from alien worlds.
Threats and war cries and pleadings for mercy hammered at her ears in a hundred different languages. Yet somehow she could understand all of them.
And in understanding the babble around her she came a step closer to understanding what was happening.
‘The first law of Quantum Chrono-Dynamics states that geo-temporal superpositions are the fundamental building blocks of the space-time continuum – ’
‘Eternal Zinmar, please protect your loyal servant –’
‘Indra’s jewelled net spreads across infinity, each jewel reflecting all the others, the whole of reality mirrored in their facets –’
‘In order to survive the Web must by necessity incorporate the Great Temporal Tundra –’
‘Time is what stops everything happening at once –’
The voices echoed around Laura’s head, each providing a tiny piece of the puzzle. The problem was cutting through the panicked bleating and ferocious roars to focus on the voices that actually mattered.
There! Something about time’s arrow. And something else about the Ocean of Endlessness being composed of Waves of Moments.
Solving the puzzle seemed the only way out of this.
Information. She needed more information.
She also needed somewhere else to hide. A cannonball from a Napoleonic frigate shattered the bench to splinters, sending Laura sprawling. She lay dazed, her ears ringing, fragments of wood adding to the wounds she already carried.
Struggling to her feet she watched the frigate sail by on the sea that now filled the ambulance bay. Then a swarm of law enforcement nanites plunged beneath the water, transmuting it into an incarceration prism made of unbreakable plastic.
Laura staggered back towards the hospital. At least there she would be under cover. As she reached the glass doors her reflection gaped back at her – she was an old woman, wrinkled and grey. Yet her normal face was in the reflection too, her cheek still covered in bandages. And another face, young and smooth and full of innocence, crowned with a wisp of baby hair.
She jumped back in fright, nearly tripping over something trailing around her feet. A thick rope of flesh covered in blood and mucus – her umbilical cord. It flapped around her ankles – her mother should be at the end of it. Where was her mother?
Hysterical, she tugged at the doors with hands simultaneously youthful and contorted by arthritis. The doors refused to open. She sobbed, her voice consisting of her wheezy smoke-tinged rasp, an old woman’s cackle and a baby’s ear-splitting wail.
As she yanked at the door handles her reflection gained more layers; different hairstyles, different fashions, acne, braces, flat-chested, bosomy, short, tall, happy, sad, angry, frightened. Every instant of her life superimposed over each other, all existing simultaneously.
More voices babbled about her, the languages translating as they were uttered. One voice, more bizarre than the rest, suddenly broke through.
As she listened her hands dropped away from the door handles to dangle listlessly by her sides. The creature in the hospital hadn’t been trying to fry her brain; it had been trying to communicate. It was a science-poet of Chi-nu-sal, trying to give her the answer to the puzzle.
Time was not a series of discrete moments, it was a constant flow of endless possibilities, each bleeding seamlessly into the next, stretching in every imaginable direction. To co-exist with space to create space-time this flow needed to be frozen into a denser, more solid state: the universe which we know and inhabit.
But if the balance between fluidity and solidity became disturbed chaos would reign, the resulting cataclysm akin to a tidal wave smashing down onto an unfinished jigsaw puzzle. Past, present and future colliding; continents, planets and galaxies crashing together.
The science-poet understood this part of the puzzle, had tried to warn her.
Turning, Laura gazed back out at the scene behind her. Everyone had gained images of their past and future; wrinkles, cataracts and grey hair mingling with supple skin, clear eyes and lustrous manes. As she watched the symbols appeared in the sky, great fiery equations scrawled across the heavens: Feynman diagrams, Jarnuul hieroglyphics, multi-dimensional reality helixes. And at the centre the two cones forming an hourglass, along with the infinity symbol and the zero.
Even with this latest revelation as to their meaning she still didn’t understand how the equations could cause the collapse of space-time. Had some dangerous experiment in the far future disrupted the fabric of reality? Or some revolutionary form of space travel warped the structure of the universe? Or had the piecing together of the different theories by myriad cultures and species somehow caused a breakdown in consciousness; linear space-time suddenly viewed as omni-directional; the expansion of our usually limited perceptions exposing us to an insanity-inducing reality from which we normally remained ignorant?
The voices around her proposed all these scenarios and more; embellishing and correcting, revising and contradicting. She clutched her hands to her head praying for it all to end.
Her body image shifted again. Clothes that didn’t belong to her, skins of different colours, appendages that belonged to a different species. She was no longer just overlapping her own timeline but with those around her. Every living being in the entirety of history all existing in a single point.
Snowflakes wafted down from the sky to settle upon Laura’s cheeks. Only one or two at first, the number increasing as the sky drew nearer and the horizons crept closer, physical dimensions dwindling, leaving Laura as the only place where the snowflakes could possibly alight. Snow encrusted her, the icy crystals glistening as they enveloped her body in a layer of frost.
Weeping, Laura clasped her hands together. But it was not just her own hands she clutched; it was the hands of everyone in creation.
A multitude of minds swept over her, an ocean of souls. All the love and joy contained within the universe. But also all the hate, sorrow and despair. And beneath that lay boredom and banality as emotion flatlined, fading into the grey tedium of everyday existence.
The different thoughts and emotions hammered at her; genius intellects, damaged minds, alien psyches. She couldn’t cope, couldn’t contain it all. She just wanted it to end.
But it wouldn’t.
Time no longer existed so nothing could ever end. And space had disappeared so there was nowhere to escape to.
The only thing left was the ever-lasting present. An infinite reign of nothingness. Nothing but pure consciousness; Laura and all the others, locked together forever in a torturous embrace. Trapped. Imprisoned.
Frozen.
Vanishings
The wind sliced at Will, each fresh gust seeming to contain razor blades.
He stepped across the rooftop, his hands cupped about his lighter as he attempted to light his cigarette. Beside him an air vent exhaled a cloud of smoke, mocking his inability to produce even a single puff from his fag.
Flicking the lighter’s wheel for the millionth time he gazed at the view from
the top of his tower block. Below him streets twisted and wound across the town in an intricate maze of tarmac and paving slabs. Hordes of parked cars skulked alongside kerbs, jealous of their cousins that still prowled the roads, engines revving, headlights glistening. Rows of houses bore ‘For Sale’ signs like coats of arms; their owners’ silhouettes performing shadow plays on the curtains covering brightly lit windows.
Will finally managed to get a steady flame from the lighter and touched it to the end of his cigarette, the ash igniting, turning to orange cinder.
‘I’ll tell Mum.’
Looking down he saw Michael, his nine-year-old son, staring up at him with a disapproving gaze. ‘You promised Mum you’d quit.’
‘I promised I’d try to quit.’ Will beamed his most charming smile. Once he had been handsome but now his hair grew thin, his face lined. He hoped that it made him look distinguished but he had a nagging doubt that it just made him look old. Charm was all he had left.
Michael stared at the cigarette in fascination. ‘Can I have one?’
‘No. They’re bad for you.’
‘You smoke them.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m older and dumber than you.’
Gazing back out into the gathering dusk Will waited for Michael’s whine of how unfair that was. It never came. Instead he heard a weird, screeching flute music, the notes howling as if tearing at the air, ripping the world asunder.
He turned to Michael. ‘You hear that?’
Michael was gone.
Half-suspecting a game of hide and seek Will stepped forward, searching for possible hiding places. But Michael was nowhere to be seen. Will’s pace quickened, became more frantic. He rushed towards different hiding places, each one filling his vision before he ducked around them to find nothing but air. Air vents. Nothing. The entrance to the stairwell. Nothing.
Eventually he came to a halt, the truth crushing down on him. Michael had vanished.
He shivered. But not because of the wind.
Will served the customers. Not smiling.
He said goodbye to his co-workers. Not smiling.
He rode the bus home. Not smiling.
Climbing wearily up the stairwell of his tower block he reached the door of his flat. About to insert the key into the lock, he paused. He might not have any good cheer for strangers but he needed to find some for his family. He had to be a rock. Strong, secure, the source of all that was good in the world.
If only he could remember how to smile.
He searched his memories, looking for something that would trigger the correct response. Family memories were too painful, reminding him of Michael. But then he flashed on an old episode of Only Fools and Horses. His lips moved slightly, defying the gravity of his despair. Armed with memories of Del Boy he slid the key into the lock and went in to meet his family.
Walking through the flat he found Janie and Josh in the kitchen. Josh sat at the table slurping juice, his schoolbag slung over the back of his chair. The tantalising aroma of mince and bolognese sauce filled the kitchen as Janie busied herself at the stove, steam rising from bubbling pots and pans.
Will smiled. ‘All right?’
Janie shot him a weary glance. Her long blonde hair had lost its lustrous gold sheen, turning pale, almost white, blending with her wan face. She seemed to fade a little more each time he looked at her; Will could imagine a time when her only recognisable feature would be the deeply etched bags under her eyes.
Still smiling Will turned to Josh, nodding to the water pistol that lay on the kitchen table. ‘Hey, Champ. You still going trick or treating as Action Man this year?’
‘I s’pose.’ Josh shrugged his seven-year-old shoulders. ‘Mum still hasn’t finished my costume.’
Will turned a questioning gaze to Janie but then caught her exasperated expression and immediately dropped the subject. ‘Well … there’s still time.’
Will went to the fridge, pulled out a carton of orange juice. He caught a glimpse of the note stuck to the door – “I love you, Mummy.” The childish scrawl was the last thing Michael had written before being snatched. Will wished that the note also said, “I love you, Daddy” but Janie had always been Michael’s favourite. And he had been hers.
Pouring himself some juice Will sat down next to Josh. He kept smiling despite feeling the first stabs of a migraine lancing through his skull. Didn’t help that in the eight months since Michael had disappeared he hadn’t smoked a single cigarette. Fishing a bottle of aspirin out his pocket he wrestled with the lid. After ten seconds or so he admitted defeat, placing the bottle on the kitchen table. Sodding childproof tops.
Josh promptly picked up the bottle, opened it and handed him an aspirin.
Smile still just about in place Will swallowed the pill, washed it down with orange juice.
Janie picked up a pan, drained the pasta into the sink. Hot water hit the metal colander, sending up steam, turning the sink into a mini-sauna. ‘Josh, go wash your hands.’
‘Oh, Mum, do I have to?’
‘You’ve been playing with Sully. I don’t want mouse germs everywhere. Now go. And put your schoolbag in your room.’
Josh looked over at Will, hoping for a reprieve. He was disappointed. ‘Do as your mum says.’
Josh slouched out of the kitchen. ‘You keep making me wash my hands one day they’ll dissolve.’
Will broadened his smile. ‘If that happens I’ll pay for the prosthetic hooks to replace them. Until then you keep washing them.’
As soon as Josh was out of earshot Janie spoke to Will over her shoulder. ‘You remember we’ve got an appointment with the marriage counsellor tomorrow?’
‘Yeah. Two thirty. I cleared it with my supervisor.’ He fidgeted with the aspirin bottle. ‘You think we’re making any progress?’
He saw her head bow, her shoulders hunch. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’ Finally she turned and faced him. ‘Just stop smiling all the bloody time, okay? You’re freaking out Josh.’
* * *
The bed was cold and empty. Will felt as though he lay upon a mausoleum slab.
Janie should have been lying next to him on the crisp white sheets, warming him with her soft, slim body. Instead she was down the hall, huddled inside Michael’s bed, the sheets clutched in her hands, her body twitching in fitful sleep as she dreamt of Michael’s return.
She couldn’t accept that he had gone. That he wasn’t just going to walk in through the door with some silly excuse about losing track of the time. She had to cling to her delusion. It was the anchor that got her through the long, endless nights.
In the same way Will knew that cooking was what got her through the days. Peeling potatoes, slicing tomatoes, dicing carrots. Preparing everything a growing boy needed even though he wasn’t there to eat it.
No wonder they needed to see a marriage counsellor.
He lay awake, tormenting himself. If only he hadn’t turned away from Michael at the vital second, he could have saved him. But Will had been relaxed, complacent. He and Michael had been alone on the roof. It was impossible that someone could have snatched Michael. Impossible.
But someone had.
The screeching music that had played just before Michael was snatched echoed around Will’s head, taunting him.
A tiny creak sounded on the far side of the bedroom. The door opened, the tiny chink of light around the doorjamb widening to reveal the hallway outside.
Josh stood in the doorway, a teddy bear hugged to his chest. ‘Daddy? Can I sleep with you tonight?’
‘Course you can.’ Will pulled back the sheets. ‘Hop in.’
Josh hesitated. The gloom made the flat white rectangle of the bed look like a ghost that had lost a fight with a steamroller. Then, steeling himself, he climbed in. ‘I heard a monster outside my bedroom window. But I don’t think it’ll come after me in here.’
‘Because I’m here to protect you?’
‘No, it’s just that the fire escape doesn’t reach outside your window s
o the monster can’t climb up to your room like it can mine.’
Will nodded, deflated. ‘Right.’
Josh snuggled up to him. ‘But you would protect me, wouldn’t you, Daddy?’
‘That’s right. I won’t let the bogeyman get you.’
Satisfied, Josh was soon fast asleep.
Will lay awake. He couldn’t get that bloody flute music out of his head.
The name on the door said “V.J. Ramachandran, Marriage Counsellor;” the letters spelled out on frosted glass. The atmosphere in the office was frosted too.
Will and Janie sat in separate chairs, arms folded, not speaking, not even looking at each other.
Dr Ramachandran, a slim Indian who looked far too young to be a marriage counsellor, sat behind his desk. He glanced at his watch. Sighed. ‘Well, that’s the end of another successful session.’
Will shut the door behind him, washed his hands after taking out the binbags. He looked back out at the street, frowned, then turned back to Janie. ‘You know a bloke lives round here; long hair, dresses all in black?’
Janie shook her head without looking up from where she was cutting a recipe out of a magazine.
‘I was taking out the rubbish and he waved to me.’
‘Probably just being friendly.’
‘I don’t even know the bloke. What’s he got to be friendly about?’
Will sat down, sprawling back in his chair. Then he leaned forward, twitchy, anxious. ‘He looked a right weirdo.’
Janie put down her scissors. ‘You are not calling the police.’
‘I didn’t say anything about calling the police.’
‘You know what they said after that last time.’
‘The word “police” didn’t even touch my lips.’
‘“Wasting police time is a serious business.”’
‘You’re the one talking about the police, I was talking about taking out the rubbish.’
