Asimov's Science Fiction
Kindle Edition, 2016 © Penny Publications
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WHERE THERE IS NOTHING, THERE IS GOD
David Erik Nelson | 22378 words
(A NEW GUYS TIME PORTAL NOVELLA)
David Erik Nelson lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and has become increasingly aware that he may be “that unsavory character” in other people’s anecdotes. In addition to telling you stories about time travel, he’ll also spin tales about nonEuclidean houses and teach you to build your own synthesizers. His latest tale for Asimov’s is a Time Portal story full of unsavory characters and set in the same universe as “The New Guys Always Work Overtime” (February 2013) and “There Was No Sound of Thunder” (June 2014). The first two tales can now be found online, as can he at davideriknelson.com.
From the Journal of Pastor Ephraim Otis, Quansigamog Pond, Massachusetts, 1770
A missionary comes to us from the wilderness to the west. Only the smith, Young Charles Bull, has yet spoken to him. Young Charles is agitated greatly. He says this man of God bears a New Gospel, a physical Gospel of the Manifest Christ. Prior to this wandering parson’s advent, Young Charles had been no paragon of Faith nor Industry. But now he is ebullient, his face unnaturally full of the Spirit of the Lord, his workshop perpetually ablaze as he prepares cask upon cask of iron nails to take to market in Boston town.
It is frightful to look upon him; one fears being seared by the intensity of Young Charles’ sudden zeal.
Chico and the portal guy were waiting for me outside FDA Annex D. Chico was smoking a cigarette. If this was a screenplay, his entire character description would read “sinister Mexican.” The portal guy was just standing there, hands in pockets, staring up at the stars and whistling that “Yakkety Sax” song from Benny Hill. He abruptly cut off as I climbed out of my car.
“This is your New Guy?” he asked Chico. The portal guy was one of those cheapblue-oxford-&-khaki-pants cubicle drones, but younger and skinnier than the stock character. He looked pretty damn rumpled—not just “it’s three A.M.” tired, although it was three A.M. It was more the “I’m tired of my whole stupid life” kind of tired. Chico blew twin streams of smoke out his nose, flicking away his cigarette butt without acknowledging the portal guy’s question.
“New guy?” I mugged like a vaudevillian, joining them at the glass door, “What happened to the old guy?”
“Gal,” the portal guy answered as he waved us in through the glass doors of FDA Annex D. “She got burned as a witch.” We walked through a grey little reception area, and into a dim office space broken up into cubicles.
“Taaay-lor,” Chico scolded the portal guy like a naughty puppy, then turned to me without breaking stride. “Don’t mind him, Paul.”
The portal guy—Taylor—shrugged and led us into a bright conference room, immediately heading over to fiddle with a wall-mounted touchpad hanging next to a door-shaped rectangle of blue masking tape. The rest of the office had seemed pretty lived-in—papers and knickknacks festooning the desks, calendars and family photos pinned to the cubicle walls—but this little conference room showed no such signs of life. There wasn’t even a conference table, just a scattering of chairs and some boxes stacked along the back wall. One box was open, revealing a tangle of computer cables and mice with one of those starfish-shaped conference-call phones partially embedded in it.
“Taylor is being a dick, Paul. They didn’t burn no witches in Salem, Mass,” Chico explained, “They hanged ’em.” He barked laughter.
“And crushed,” Taylor added over his shoulder, the second word turning into a yawn he didn’t bother to stifle.
“Yeah, and crushed. Madison, she got crushed. But that was Salem, Paul, that was sixteen-whatever. Mistakes was made. We bringing our A-game now; Massachusetts 1770 is easy money. No hitches.” His eyes drifted down to my feet, and one eyebrow climbed fretfully as he noted my plastic flip-flops.
“It’s okay,” I said, stepping out of the sandals, then using my toes to nudge them together. “I talked to someone I know who’s doing a dramaturgy internship at the Guthrie Theater.” Chico looked alarmed, and I rushed to explain. “In a strictly hypothetical way. Getting period shoes right is really, really hard, especially when you start thinking about distressing them properly. Given our options—and the character I’ve conceived—barefoot is our best bet.”
Chico nodded appreciatively. “You got your method on, like Marlon Brando. I get that.” Chico slapped me on the shoulder. “I admire that. You ready for this shit, Pablocito?”
I was not, in fact, ready for this or any other shit. My woolen cassock—a singlebreasted Chesterfield front with thirty-nine buttons, liberated from the University of North Carolina costume shop—was hot, itchy as hell, and the set-in sleeves were binding me in the armpits something fierce.
Also, I was about to walk through a wall into the past. What had seemed like a fun little gig when I was raiding the UNC costume shop suddenly seemed suicidal.
Chico set one hard hand on my shoulder. “You got stage fright or portal fright?” He asked gently. “If it’s stage fright,” he said, “You just picture all them fuckers naked, ¿claro? And if it’s portal fright, you just picture the roll of money you gonna get when you come out.”
What I had was Chico Fright—but I didn’t want to say that, so instead I asked: “Didn’t one of these portals turn a Chinese guy inside out?”
Chico frowned and turned to look at Taylor, who shook his head. “That was a teleporter,” he said. “And that was in China.”
Chico turned back to me. “See? That was a chingada teleporter, Pablo. That was in chingada China. This is a time portal. This is America. This shit is FDA-approved.”
I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and thought about the money. I’ve never found picturing the audience naked to do much for stage fright, but thinking about that money sure did help ease my Chico Fright. “Okay.”
“¡Qué bueno!” Chico slapped my back again. “Knock ’em dead and break they legs, Pablocito.” It was only then that he handed me the snuffbox, which I slipped into my rough-woven satchel.
“Anywho,” Taylor yawned, “Bon voyage, Parson Brown.” He tapped the control panel—which turned out to be just an off-brand tablet computer glued to the wall—and I forgot all about the money.
The portal seeped out of the drywall like lightless, tar-black water seeping through a paper placemat. But it wasn’t water, wasn’t a fluid at all. It was a hole. A deep hole, so hot it made the air waver the way a BBQ grill does in the summer. And there was a light, a tiny light like Venus in a clear winter sky, waaaaay down at the bottom of that hole.
I know this makes it sound scary, but it wasn’t. It was beautiful. Seeing it form gave you vertigo, but also this rush, like getting high, a clean, clear high, without the jangling, jaw-clenching babblecrash of your own hyper-speed thoughts.
Looking at that tiny glimmer so deep back down in that lightless well, you could believe in God.
How’d I meet Chico? It’s sorta complicated, but just to clarify: I was never a “meth head.”
But that’s sort of getting the cart before the horse.
A couple months back I was leaving a Subway sandwich shop when this tweaky little made-for-TV meth hag stopped me. She looked just gawdawful: Her brown hair a lusterless rat’s nest pulled back into a sloppy ponytail, her skin sickly and scabbed. She had that off-center burn on her lower lip, the kind you get from getting the pipe too hot while trying to smoke meth cut with too much ground glass. That burn, so stereotypical of the dedicated meth aficionado that it’s almost a cliché. I didn’t even realize she was saying my name until she grabbed my wrist. Her hand was cold a
nd clammy and awful.
“Hey, hey,” she was saying, “Hey, Paul, it’s me, it’s Tina.” Her voice was croaky and ancient from smoking cheap-ass Basic cigarettes. “It’s okay, Paulie.” She smiled a ghastly, rotten smile. “You’re with friends, Paulie. You’re safe.”
“Tina?” I said blankly. I sorta knew a Tina, but hadn’t seen her in almost five years, not since I’d gotten my degree from UNC. My Tina had been pretty, round-faced and athletic. She played rugby or soccer or something. I’d been really into EDM—electronic dance music—and would hit all sorts of warehouse shows with this sound guy, Dale, and his roomie, Wei Xen. Wei cooked these great little batches of crystal, and loved to share. Tina was one of those people we’d habitually bump into at shows.
But we weren’t “meth heads.”
Just like most of the bubbas who drink a beer or six while watching the Tarheels aren’t Lifetime-movie alcoholics, we weren’t scary-PSA-ad “meth heads.” We’d bump some meth, dance all night, have a hangover the next day, and get on with our lives. Dale got his degree and a job remastering and digitizing back-catalogue country blues albums in Nashville. Wei Xen—the “Man from Shenzhen”—went to work for Dow-Corning. I steadily worked my way up to waiting nice tables. EMD got big enough that there wasn’t an “on the way up” that included Asheville warehouses anymore. And with day jobs and no shows worth seeing, why bother getting high? The world had moved on, us included.
Except for Tina, apparently.
“Tina,” she repeated. “Tina. Dancing Tina.” It all clicked, and I could suddenly see the shadow of Tina’s round, bright face hidden inside this loose, mottled mask. My heart sank. “Hey—” she asked, her eyes roving around. “You carrying anything heavy?” I looked at my sandwich, not understanding at all, and then realized she meant drugs.
“Noo-oo,” I said carefully, “I... um... made some lifestyle changes. Decided not to lift anything heavy any more.”
She sighed, disappointed but resigned to a life of disappointments. Then she brightened. “But you still act, right?”
I smiled back, because I do. Voice acting mostly. Not much, but it’s work.
Now Tina was positively beaming. “Yeah! Yeah! I’ve seen you! Well, heard you, I guess. The ad with the personal injury attorney and the fish!”
I nodded humbly. Whiplash Bass. People still love those ads. One time, at a different Subway, the stoner kid making my footlong was so pumped to meet Whiplash Bass that he gave me the combo for free.
“Gosh! That’s great, Paulie! That’s really great for you, man. Because I know this guy, he’s a glass installer,” she enunciated the words as though she was telling an Asian tourist a street name, “Pella, Anderson, Weather-Seal—lots and lots of heavy, heavy lifting, lots of glass, and I owe him a really big favor. Introducing him to a good, quiet actor...” she trailed off. She was still smiling, but it was a brave-face smile: her eyes were shimmering and about to spill over. “It would really, really get me out of a really uncomfortable situation if I could introduce my friend Chico to a good quiet actor, a good guy like my old dance partner Paul.”
And that’s how I met Chico.
Looking at the fuming black time-portal hole in the wall, you’d think “Man, I’ve got a long walk ahead of me to the Light.” But stepping past the threshold, it was like sliding into a swimming pool full of orgasm. The light got brighter and brighter and brighter and then pop!-ed. The next thing I knew I was hearing panicked birds bursting through thick foliage.
My vision came back, and I was standing beside a babbling brook in the forest primeval of what I’d been told would be eighteenth century Massachusetts, with Taylor’s portal thing crackling away behind me like a chintzy fake fire. I turned around to look at it, and was surprised at how totally different it looked from that side: No long black tunnel, no light at the end, just a flat pool of dappled, shimmering light hanging in the air.
I took a deep breath, but when I let it out it came in shudders and giggles. I shook it all out and tried again. I was Parson Mordecai Brown and Parson Mordecai Brown’s face has hospital corners. I ran my hands over my face and close-cropped scalp, taking another deep breath, blowing it out slowly, getting into character.
I’ve been walking a long while, but I’m not a bit tired.
I’m sustained not by food or drink but by the Lord’s New Communion and Manifest Gospel.
It was morning and the air was pleasantly crisp, but you could tell it was going to get hot. I was glad that I wouldn’t be sticking around in my long wool cassock.
Then my iPhone eeped its low-power warning and my heart leapt into my throat. I hiked my cassock up and inventoried my pockets. I had indeed accidentally brought my cracked iPhone—which had no service, but faithfully reported it was 3:14 A.M. where I’d come from and that its battery was at 20 percent. I powered it down, then checked my other pockets. I’d thought to leave my wallet in my car, but still had my keys and a tube of Burt’s Bees beeswax lip balm. The portal behind me closed with a tidy snap. It would reopen in thirty minutes. The clock was ticking. This was my cue, and I was not ready to make my entrance.
Heart racing, I dropped to my knees, dumped out my rough-hewn satchel, and sifted through my hand props—a suitably distressed prayerbook in illegibly small type, an apple, a crust of artisanal bread; the kind of things you’d expect to find in a colonial preacher’s purse—until I found the hourglass, which was really a thirty-minute glass. I tapped all the sand into one ampule, then flipped it, checked the flow, slipped a dark leather cord through its wooden frame, and tied it around my waist like a belt. I scooped everything back up into the satchel and put Chico’s extra-special snuffbox in my cassock pocket.
I was nine kinds of panicked, right on the edge of blowing the performance. So I just stopped, blew out my breath, and centered myself. I listened to the silent forest, which, of course, wasn’t silent silent; it was audience silent, full of the little sounds of life: The unbearably clear brook chuckling over the rocks; birds flipping through the branches, chirping; squirrels bitching at each other from opposing trees only to be shushed by a rising breeze.
It was an expectant silence, leaning forward, waiting for something worth watching to happen.
I took a breath, and the air smelled faintly of wood smoke and nothing else. I’d never realized how much stuff I’m constantly smelling, stuff that people have labored to make and buy and use and discard: Exhaust and plastic, shampoo and body spray, fryer grease and sewer gas. Our world.
I took another breath. I didn’t really care about Tina. And I didn’t care about what Chico would do if I blew this. And I didn’t care about what he’d pay me if I nailed it. I cared about the role, I cared about the show—my show, my character: I was Mordecai Brown, the Barefoot Parson, in a one-act, one-man, one-night-only improvisational show, and that show must go on.
I followed the brook downstream until I came to the outermost fringe of the settlement, just as Chico had described. It was a rough-hewn little cabin with an open-air lean-to tacked on to the side. The lean-to was dominated by what looked to me like an enormous stone barbecue grill: A forge. Thick black smoke poured out of the chimney. In the shade of the lean-to a darker shadow hulked and toiled at the forge’s base, working the bellows with mechanical regularity.
“Hullo!” I called, my voice a Connecticut Yankee’s nasal lilt. “Hullo, brother! How fare you this excellent morn?”
The figure stopped his labors and looked up at me, then ducked out from beneath his awning. He was shorter than I’d expected, shorter than me, but Jesus, what a brute! He was shirtless, with a leather apron over blue breeches. His forearms were as thick around as my calves. His chest was broad and muscled like an ox’s back, scarred from countless stray embers. He was greased with sweat, like he’d just run a marathon, but not a bit out of breath. As he approached he rubbed his hands clean on the seat of his breeches and looked at me curiously. Then he caught sight of my bare feet and froze, agog.
Fr
om the Journal of Pastor Ephraim Otis, Quansigamog Pond, Massachusetts, 1770
The smith, Young Charles Bull, is not himself. Previously he was an isolated and phlegmatic lad, tending toward melancholy, and even a black biliousness. But he is suddenly now sanguine in the extreme, speaking without pause even as he works the bellows, hammer, and tongs. He jigs about his workshop from place to place, periodically clapping his hands or calling out in praise of the Lord. He is a font of energy, but of an ill sort, like the fierce lightning storms that harrow the autumn fields.
Though long known for his taciturnity, today Young Charles was only too eager to speak of matters diverse and disjoint. On the topic of that wandering parson he was quite insistent.
“His feet!” Young Charles enthused, enraptured. “His hands! He came from the forest, unshod and bareheaded, but there was no kiss of the sun on his pate.” He worked the bellows ceaselessly as he spoke, heating a rod. “His hands and feet were as soft and pink and clean as a newborn sprat’s!” He pulled forth the rod, which seemed almost overheated; it nigh on drooped, and its end was as bright and searingly yellow as the brassy midsummer sun. “That, that, that was how I knew,” he swung his hammer, pounding and turning the rod in excellent synchronousness, squaring it off and drawing it to a point. “How I knew, knew he was an angel of the Lord.”
Charles laid the rod upon the anvil and, with a swinging arm and jigging twirl, switched his hammer for long-armed snips. He took up the rod and freed the halffinished nail from the thick rod single-handed. He then twirled the snips back onto his workbench and took up tongs with a flourish, using these to set the hot iron into the die on his anvil. “And he’s come here to us,” Young Charles pounded out the head of his nail with the passion of Cain bludgeoning his brother to death. “Come to us, come to us, come to us! He’s come to us with the Lord’s New Sacrament!” He quenched his fresh-forged nail in a bucket of water. It sizzled and he panted, reining in his galloping fervor.
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