A Problematic Paradox

by Eliot Sappingfield

Hypatia curled herself violently into a ball, and her insane laughter turned into tears and racking sobs, and Warner was crying, too, but more weakly now. It was like whatever she was taking away from him was almost gone.

  Why had I roped them into this? Because I’d been scared and wanted friends with me. But she had no reason to keep them alive. Stupid! I shot the disruptor frantically at Tabbabitha. Shot after shot passed right through her, tearing gashes in the sod or hitting nothing at all. After a moment, Tabbabitha looked up. “That tickles! Can’t you wait till I’m done eating?”

  She stepped toward me, and her foot slid sideways into one of the ruts I’d just blasted into the field, which knocked her off balance. For a second, it looked like she might fall over.

  It was the last advantage I was going to get. I made a break for it, running full tilt around the left side of the field, just outside of where I knew the gap was. As I ran, I glanced back. She was no longer behind me. She was—

  “Boo!” Tabbabitha shouted from right in front of me.

  I collided with her at full speed. It was like running into the side of a bus. A slimy, gelatinous bus that makes you want to take a hot shower for the rest of your life. Her arms wrapped around me and held me close, almost tenderly. A stench I could not fathom overwhelmed me. My eyes watered, and my brain screamed in protest. Something that felt like a worm crawled into my left nostril and pulled my face forward, hard.

  A cloud of hot and acidic vapor burned my ear. “Hello, darling,” she whispered.

  Without thinking, I shot the gravitational disruptor directly at my own feet. My legs slammed against my body with unimaginable force. Dirt flew all around me. Stone-hard claws ripped at my clothes. Slick, sharp thorns clutched at my flesh . . . and failed. I was flying, and the football stadium went upside down and then right side up a moment later before inverting one last time.

  Then I noticed that the grass was pretty far away from me. Usually you want the grass right under you, but it could have been ten or fifteen feet below me. There was going to be a hard landing soon. I curled into a ball, closed my eyes, and wrapped my arms tightly around my head.

  The impact was a jarring, bone-shaking crash. I rolled once and found myself staring at a circle of bright blue grass. An irate pangolin stared back.

  “Oh . . . crap,” I said to nobody at all.

  I sat up and took a good look around, which didn’t take long because there was nothing to look at. I sat in the middle of the school logo, which was in the middle of a 170-foot-wide patch of grass that was marked with regular lines every ten yards and that appeared to be the entire universe.

  I might have thought I was floating in space on Football Island, but space has stars. My island was surrounded on all sides by absolute nothingness. I can’t really describe it properly. When you close your eyes or sit in a perfectly dark room, you see blackness. I didn’t see blackness—I saw nothing. It’s different—trust me.

  I did some thinking. It would take the Chaperone ten minutes or so to shut down the gap, in which time Tabbabitha could make herself comfortable and wait for my return, all while snacking on Warner and Hypatia. How long could they last?

  I realized she could see me, even though I could not see her, so I made some rude hand gestures in what I guessed was her general direction. “I’m right here,” I said. “Why don’t you come join me?”

  To my surprise, a second later, Tabbabitha stepped out of the black expanse as if strolling through a curtain.

  She let her gaze wander around the tiny universe she and I now shared and took a seat quietly not far from the edge.

  There was one last thing I could do. I stood and screamed, “Chaperone! I order you not to turn off the gap no matter what I say!”

  That got her attention. Tabbabitha locked her terrible, obscene gaze on me, and I felt instantly filthy and awful. She was stronger now. Had she finished off Warner and Hypatia before joining me? I couldn’t think about it.

  “Why would you do that?” she asked sweetly. “I was going to use you as collateral to get us out of this thing. Now I have to kill you.”

  “I thought I was special,” I said, considering my options. I had my disruptor, which was precisely worthless, my agar bracelet, which was less useful than the disruptor with Tabbabitha around, and . . . well that was it. Just to check, I tried to make my bracelet into a spear . . . nothing.

  “Oh, that wouldn’t do you any good anyway,” Tabbabitha said with a broad smile.

  “Felt like I should give it a shot. No stone unturned, you know.” Following her lead, I took a seat on the soft grass at the center of the circle.

  “Believe me, I get it. So listen: I’m going to go ahead and kill you in a second here, but I have a request. Could you try to suffer as much as possible? I mean, really fight me. It’s so much more fun.”

  “I’ll fight you to the last breath,” I vowed.

  She grinned and laughed. “Terrific! Sooooo many people just lie down and take it like your dumb friends out there. It’s been hundreds of years since anyone put up a good fight! You ready?”

  I held up my hands. “Wait! We’re going to be here awhile, right? Why rush? We never actually got a chance to talk. I don’t even know why you wanted to capture me in the first place.” I noticed my bracelet seemed to twitch when I moved my arm, but I tried controlling it again and got nothing.

  She frowned in consideration and shrugged. “To be honest, I don’t remember completely. Something about your brain, I think. Works differently from the other humans’, and not like the parahumans’, either. It’s all a bit fuzzy. Long story short, your very existence is a threat to us. But why doesn’t really matter now, does it?”

  “Earlier you said your dad missed you. Did he send you?”

  “No, he’s dead. Well, he’s sleeping—I’m fuzzy on that, too, but he’s been gone all my life. Maybe I need your help to wake him up.”

  “How could I do that, if you can’t?”

  Tabbabitha stuck out her tongue and blew an exasperated raspberry at me. “I told you I don’t remember. I just recall that if we can’t have you, it’s important to make sure nobody can.”

  My bracelet twitched. I felt it move, no question. Was she weakening? It didn’t look like it. In fact, I think she was getting bigger. Without breaking eye contact, I concentrated, trying to observe my bracelet changing out of the corner of my eye. Nothing happened. I quit trying, and as soon as I did, it twitched again, only more noticeably. It was squeezing my wrist faintly. Four times in quick succession it moved, then it stopped for about a quarter second and did it again, before squeezing harder twice.

  Then it hit me. There was a rhythm to the way the bracelet was pinching my wrist. It wasn’t random—I was feeling dits and dahs. Morse code.

  Dit dit dit dit—H. Dit dah dah—W.

  Hypatia and Warner are alive. They could see me, even though I couldn’t see them, and they were trying to communicate. I realized Tabbabitha might be able to block me from controlling the agar, but she had no power outside our little world. I pictured Hypatia and Warner running agar formation codes on their handhelds, just outside the blackness.

  Somehow, I’ll never know how, I did not break out into joyful laughter right there on the spot. Probably had something to do with all the mortal peril and all. Instead, I continued to stare down Tabbabitha and nodded ever so slightly. I hear you.

  To Tabbabitha, I said, “I don’t believe you. You wouldn’t forget why you came here.”

  “For reals! I’m being one hundred percent honest here. We Old Ones get a bit spongy in the memory department when we fall out of touch with the family or if we travel through time, and I’ve done both recently.” She tapped her head for emphasis.

  She traveled through time to get in? It didn’t make sense. How could someone use time travel to bypass the gap? It had been in constant operation for . . .

/>   Fifty years. My mouth fell open.

  “You thinking fourth-dimensionally yet?” she asked, clearly impressed with herself.

  “That’s how you got in!” I cried. It was suddenly so obvious. She had gone around the gap, but from a direction nobody had expected.

  She laughed. “Yeah! I think you’ve got it. Let’s hear your theory.”

  “The gap has been running for almost fifty years, and during that time, the School has not gone unprotected for as much as a second,” I said.

  Tabbabitha leaned forward, her hands folded before her. “Okay, keep going.”

  “So you went back in time, you went back more than fifty years, found a good hiding spot, and waited. You let the School grow around you. You’ve been here the entire time the School has existed!”

  Tabbabitha pumped her fist in the air. “Nice work, girlfriend! I said you were special, didn’t I? But I can tell you’re not finished thinking it through.”

  She was right. “You go into hibernation or die if you lose contact with the rest of the Old Ones for more than a month or so, let alone for fifty years. Once the gap was turned on, it could have killed you.”

  “A calculated risk on my part.”

  “So you went into hibernation, didn’t you? But how did you come out of it?”

  She winked at me. “I heard rumors about a little calamity that happened not too long ago . . .”

  “The sonic cannon attack disrupted the gap,” I said, remembering Dr. Foster telling me nothing could have gotten through other than electromagnetic signals. “But it was just down for a fraction of a second,”

  She sighed deeply and leaned back on the grass, her arms propping her up. “More than enough time. That single moment woke me up, reminded me why I’d come, and caught me up on current affairs.”

  She went on: “Let me tell you, it felt sooo good to wake up and feel the warm sun on my face with murder in my heart, after fifty years’ sleeping in a bricked-off sewage tunnel. The smell was terrible!”

  The bracelet twitched again. I’d let myself become distracted. “It smelled before or after you checked in?”

  She paused and gave me a sour look.

  “Can you hear me?” I asked her and my friends at the same time.

  Tabbabitha nodded. “I have to say, those stink jokes, they never get old. I might eat your fingers while they’re still attached, just to teach you a lesson.”

  My bracelet twitched. Hypatia and Warner had heard, too.

  I winked back. “You’ll be dead by then.”

  “I already am,” she said, producing a tube of pink glitter lip gloss, which she applied liberally to her mouth. “Shall we?”

  “Wait, I have more questions!” I said quickly. Warner and Hypatia could make something with my agar, even if I couldn’t. But make what? A shield wouldn’t keep her out for long. I didn’t think I could maneuver in close enough to stab her with those arms of hers, and trapping her was out of the question. I’d only seen her stumble when—I had an idea.

  “Who set off the cannon to wake you? You couldn’t have done it yourself.”

  “True! I have a special friend here who agreed to do me one small favor. Once I knew you were here, that was the only way I could get in. I didn’t go back in time till after I knew they had sabotaged it properly. A lot of planning went into this, you should know.”

  “So who was it?” I said.

  She shook her head and smiled. “Not talking about that. You can ask me one more question. I’m getting hungry.”

  I wanted more information on the mole. Maybe they had more trouble planned. But instead, I asked the first other thing that popped into my head. “Where is my dad?”

  “I already let slip that he was underground, and now you want to know where? Pretty greedy, if you ask me.”

  “You might as well tell me. It’s not like I’ll ever be able to do anything about it.”

  “Didn’t we already cover the fact that I’m not an idiot? You know your stupid Chaperone is on the other side of that black void taking notes on every word we say. Nice attempt at martyrdom. It doesn’t matter anyway. Our home is very inaccessible.”

  Their home? What did she mean?

  She stood and stretched her arms above her head and bent down to touch her toes a couple times. “Here’s the thing: it’s important to me that you die knowing you failed to do everything you hoped to accomplish in challenging me. I want it made clear that everything you want to know is right up here.” She tapped her head. “And you will die without ever finding out.”

  I nodded, planning furiously. She could move fast, but her tentacles—what the visible illusion of her arms hid—they weren’t good at getting a quick grip. “It was worth asking. But I need a weapon. Wouldn’t be a fair fight without one.”

  “Who said anything about fair?” Tabbabitha asked mildly.

  “A long sword, one sharp enough to cut anything,” I said. “That’s what I’d like.”

  “Why not ask for a bazooka? You’re not getting—” She stopped talking as my bracelet fell from my wrist and started becoming longer, thinner, and pointier.

  I reached down and picked it up by the handle. I was holding a pure white longsword, one that weighed almost nothing—one so sharp I couldn’t see the blade when I looked at the edge.

  They weren’t as fast as me, but Hypatia and Warner knew their way around the agar pretty well.

  Tabbabitha’s face fell. “How did you . . .” Then she smiled a big fake grin. “You know what? I love it! Classic move! The lone swordmaiden stands against the indestructible monster. It’s times like this I wish there was a little magic in the world. It’s a terrible shame you don’t stand a chance.” She sighed wistfully. “Thank you so much for this. You’ve really made it enjoyable.”

  I held my sword ready and bit my lip. Don’t let her distract you.

  She lowered her voice to a confidential whisper. “Hey . . . you wanna see something?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Tabbabitha dropped her disguise and showed me her true form.

  I screamed without knowing I had. She was a nightmare made real. Her form was an undulating, vaguely mailbox-shaped mass of wriggling tentacles, claws, and appendages. The substance called to mind a deformed stack of possessed gelatin—but not transparent. Her skin, if you could call it that, was mottled. Patches of brown, peach, and several colors that should not exist moved, grew, and dissipated at random, every shade an insult to the eye. Around her revolting form, tentacles blossomed out from her body. They moved and receded, extended and fell dead on the ground. At times, they grew strong and did things, like offering me a come hither gesture.

  To be more descriptive, Tabbabitha looked like the scent of your favorite pet after it’s been dead a month. She smelled like shoving your hand into a running garbage disposal. When she moved her many tentacles, they insulted everything every decent person has ever loved, moving up and down and backward and forward with offensive intent, snaking into the future and into the past, slithering into universes where they caressed my face and into empty black worlds where I was dead and glad of it.

  When the Chaperone had said that seeing an Old One could drive a person mad, I hadn’t understood. Now I did. I fought off a powerful urge to take my agar sword and stab out my own eyes. Anything to make it stop. But Tabbabitha broke the spell. Before I could react, something tentacle-like grabbed at my ankle from the side, wrenched me off my feet, and threw me on my back so hard the wind was knocked out of me. My hand nearly lost the sword. Almost.

  Another tentacle, studded with bony spikes that grasped at the air, descended toward my face. Without thinking, I lifted the sword to protect myself, and with no effort at all, I cut it completely in two. As soon as I realized it had worked, I bent down and cut the tentacle that had wound itself around my left leg. I was free.

  I clos
ed my eyes so I couldn’t see her, regained my footing, and hobbled toward the edge of the circle, near the black void. Every breath was painful. Blood ran down the leg she had grabbed in rivulets where the spikes had dug in. I couldn’t put much weight on it.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw the nightmare grab the tentacles I’d cut. She threw them and narrowly missed me twice. Each sailed into the void and instantly ceased to exist.

  The creature roared with insane volume.

  I needed to provoke her. I stood at the edge of infinity and swung the sword threateningly in her direction, slicing it deep into the soil with every motion. It passed through dirt like a stick moves through air. I forced myself to laugh as if I were toying with her. The soil beneath me moved slightly. I felt it drop an inch and stop. I had to be careful. If I cut too deeply, the edge of the circle could crumble into the void.

  I couldn’t hide. I had to look at her—I needed to see her. I looked at her directly again, fighting off the urge to hide. “You know, you’re actually a bit prettier this way,” I said.

  She—no, it—roared in furious rage. With amazing quickness, it shot across the field in my direction. I ran toward her, calculating where and when . . .

  Just before we met, I dropped and rolled. A thousand tentacle legs slithered over my body, passing over me as I went under her. I felt them cutting, ripping at me, but she was moving too fast. A second later, we had exchanged places, with me back at the center and her on the edge where I had been.

  The sword. It was gone. I saw it was now grasped in one of Tabbabitha’s many appendages. I knew I had cut two off, but it looked like she had twice as many as before. The beast snarled angrily.

  Then the sword came alive. Hypatia and Warner were causing it to grow long, needle-sharp spikes that sprang out and stabbed at the monster. It screamed and writhed in anger. It was all the distraction I was going to get. I pulled my disruptor back out and, struggling to hold my bleeding arm straight, shot the ground at Tabbabitha’s feet.

  The earth at the edge of the circle crumbled apart under the weight of the beast, weakened by the many cuts I had made and the blast I’d just dealt it. Just like a bite taken out of a cookie, the chunk of earth separated and fell away. Tabbabitha the indestructible monster shrieked with a sickening volume and force, stumbled on her writhing carpet of tentacles, slid backward on the tilting ground, and ceased to exist.