by Denny Taylor
“‘Up you go,’ she whispered. ‘Quick!’
“Terrified. I climbed. The fence was usually electrified but the generator must have been destroyed. I could hear trucks approaching with searchlights and the deafening sound of guns being fired, Sick-Reapers shouting orders, people crying.
“‘Come on!’ I whispered anxiously to my mother when I reached the top of the fence and before I climbed down the other side.
“‘I can’t go with you!’ she whispered, anxious and afraid. ‘I have to stay and help the others,’ she said. ‘Jump!’ she whispered fiercely, and then gentle and pleading. ‘Please hurry! You have what they are looking for! Keep it safe!’ I jumped and heard her say ‘I love you’ as I landed on the other side of the fence. ‘I love you!’ she said again and I knew she was saying goodbye. ‘Remember you’re a Truth Keeper – the only one left. You must survive.’”
Word stopped. No one spoke.
Cat’s front paws were covering her head and she was making gurgling sounds, moaning and crying.
“She blew me a kiss before turning and running back into the shadows away from where I was standing on the other side of the fence.
“She never looked back at me so they wouldn’t know where she’d been. When she reached the building she opened and slammed the door and made it look as if she had just come out of the building. A military truck came around the side of the compound and shone a spotlight on her. She put her arms up to cover her eyes. Then I heard gunfire and she fell. I watched one of the men with a gun go over and kick her to see if she was dead. I wanted to cry out, scream at them for killing my mother, but I did what she wanted me to do. I ran.”
Fifteen
“After I saw them kill my mother I started running and I heard a huge explosion,” Word continued. “I looked back and saw they’d blown-up the library, which was filled with the irreplaceable ancient texts that my mother loved so much. Pages of very old books were falling from the sky. A few pages landed near me and small pieces of vellum fell like confetti and I picked them up quickly and ran on. When I stopped to catch my breath I slipped them singed and crumbling into a notebook in my backpack.”
“Do you still have them?” Cat asked, stretching out on the rug by the Fire as if the question did not have any consequences.
“Hush!” Et said, “just for once don’t interrupt”.
“Well, do you?” Cat asked, ignoring Et and taking on her Bat persona.
“I still have them,” Word said. She hesitated, “and the package.”
“Here?” Bat asked, nonchalantly hanging upside-down swinging from the mantle.
“No,” she said, looking worried. “Not here.”
“What happened next?” Et asked, looking furiously at Death.
“What’s with the bat?” Word asked.
“I was getting too comfortable,” Death said. “All that fur.”
“Shall we get back to what happened on the bus?” Et said, not used to interruptions.
“Besides,” Death said, “Et has turned blue.”
“Why?” X-it asked.
“Because we may be running out of time,” Word said, looking at Et who now looked more like a painter’s rendition of the sky in the early morning light.
“We’re out of time,” Et said, smiling sadly.
“What do you mean,” X-it asked, nervous about the possibilities. “Are you saying we have somehow left the galaxy? Universe? And that the spacetime continuum no longer applies? Or –” X-it looked at Word and then at Et. “Or that we’ve reached the end of time?”
“Smart!” said Death giving up Bat and returning to being Cat. She padded over to where X-it was sitting and rubbed against his legs.
“Are we out of time?” Word asked quietly looking intently at Et who seemed to be less blue. “Or have we reached the end of time?”
“Both,” Et said, her claw hands returning, “but we might be able to suspend time a little longer, and if we are very clever, when the moment comes, we might be able to alter time.”
“Can we delay?” Word asked. “I’m not ready.”
“Me neither,” X-it said, then he added, “Ready for what?”
“You must have worked out by now that we are stuck in a split second,” Et said back in her Old Crone form, looking first at Word and then at X-it. “The longer we stay in this moment in time the more likely it is some Super Recognizer – some advanced A-I programed to sweep human consciousness – will find us.”
“When we leave this split second,” X-it asked, his heart beating faster and starting to sweat, totally getting it. “Will we be back in the water?”
“No,” Et said. “Not quite.”
“I’m not ready!” X-it said, standing and whisking Cat up and cuddling her.
Flames from the Fire shot up the chimney and the Four Corners prepared for whatever happened next.
“Can we delay?” Word asked.
“We will stand a better chance if we go back undetected,” Et said, “rather than being forced back because we’re under attack.”
“Agreed,” Word said. “But we’ll stand a better chance if we’re ready. It would help, I think, if we could tell you what happened to us and how I ended up in the Hudson.”
“You never know,” X-it said, “there might be some part of the story – of what happened to Word and me – because I jumped in the river to save her – that’ll clue us in to – to what to do when this bubble bursts – if you see what I mean.”
“I do indeed,” Et said, smiling at X-it. “Let’s get back to the story.”
“I heard three more large explosions but I didn’t look back,” Word said, picking up the thread, relieved to be staying in the split second. “I also heard automatic weapons being fired and there were military vehicles speeding along the road I was following. The headlights of the vehicles actually made it possible for me to see the road as they flashed by. I kept in the shadows – it was really helpful when the road was lit up because I could see the places where there was deep water and avoid them.
“It took three days for X-it to reach the buses where he waited in the line for hours,” Word said.
“I saw the buses just by chance in the parking lot of Walmart that had been totally destroyed by the storm. So many of the people standing in line for buses seemed to be in a confused state, as if they were not sure what was happening. It was easy to crawl underneath the nearest bus, which was parked close to some trees where the lower branches were scraping the windows.
“I knew I couldn’t come out from under the bus without the woman standing behind X-it seeing me,” Word said, “but she was brown-skinned and wearing Mardi Gras beads.”
“When we were on the bus,” X-it said, “she told us the beads meant a lot to her because of the good times she’d had with her kids at Mardi Gras, so she put them on as the water was rising in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, flooding her home.”
“More military were arriving,” Word said. “High-ups – giving orders to search for a girl they thought might try to get on a bus. They had a photo of me and I thought I was going to die like my mother. But I remembered what she’d said. I was the last Truth Keeper and I had to keep whatever was in that package safe.”
“By then I had been cleared to board the bus we were lining up next to,” X-it said. “Soldiers were walking towards us and the woman whispered to call her Grann and with her back to the soldiers she pulled an old yellow ‘Happy Mardi Gras’ t-shirt out of the plastic garbage bag she was carrying and gave it to Word.”
“I put it on over my clothes and it came almost to my knees,” Word said. “I remember it had a cartoon face with a Mardi Gras mask and a harlequin hat on it and I liked that.”
“The driver of the bus arrived,” X-it said. “And a soldier came up and gave him a list to check people getting on the bus.”
“‘Git!’ the woman said, giving us a push and putting some strands of beads over my head,” Word said. “Then she started crying and wringing
her hands calling on God to help her because she’d been left with her grandchildren to look after.”
“It was brave of her,” X-it said. “So cool.”
“She whispered, ‘Remember I’m your Grann,’” Word said. “‘You’ve got the same mother but different fathers.’”
“We climbed on the bus and she started yelling and swearing that she needed help to get on,” X-it said, “and the bus driver gave her a hand. Then the soldier started swearing at the driver but by that time Grann was on the bus and moving down the aisle behind us.”
“Grann kept scolding us and telling us to keep moving,” Word said, “and when we were a couple of rows from the back of the bus she told us to sit down.”
“She dropped some plastic bags and a duffle bag on the seat behind us,” X-it said, “and she dumped the garbage sack on my lap. ‘Put this under your sister’s seat for Grann,’ she said, loud enough for those around us to hear.”
Word picked up the story her eyes wide open as if it was just happening. “‘Wait!’ Grann said. ‘I’m going to be cold’ and she opened the garbage sack on X-it’s lap and started pulling out damp smelly clothes until she found the t-shirt she wanted, and then she reached across and took my backpack and shoved it to the bottom of the garbage bag and started putting all the clothes back in the sack.
“People were trying to get by and one man cursed at her and she cursed back and bending over further she shoved the garbage bag under the seat in front of me and standing up she looked around at the people now sitting around us and said, ‘Don’t like the smell of my washin’? Maybe you should git off the bus!’ And with that she sat down occupying two seats and making sure that nobody made a fuss.”
“Then,” X-it laughed, still impressed by what Grann did next, “she started swearing big time and bending forward she pulled a piece of paper off the bottom of her shoe. It was the list the soldier had given to the bus driver. She smoothed it out and swore again as – apparently by accident – she tore the list just where my name was written. Then she spat on her fingers and rubbed the paper as if trying to use spittle to glue it together. Then she got up and squeezing by the other people on the bus, upsetting many of them, she made her way to the front of the bus and gave the bus driver the almost unrecognizable list.”
“The bus driver thanked her!” Word said, laughing. “He hadn’t reported that he’d lost it. He was too frightened.”
“Grann told us later,” X-it said, “she knew he’d be grateful to her for giving him the list back – even if it was dirty, torn, and some names incomprehensible.”
“She also said that many of the people on the bus knew she was hiding us,” Word said. “Many of them knew her and she was revered by many in her community.”
“The people on the bus helped her protect us,” X-it said, agreeing with Word.
“We got stopped several times,” Word said, smiling, “and it was always a collaborative act of deception to save our lives.”
Sixteen
“Erectile dysfunction!” X-it yelled. “Cat’s tail! Wank! Wank! Wank!”
“Hacked!” Cat said, springing up on X-it’s lap. “Going in!” But she landed on his empty chair. X-it was no longer there.
“Where’d he go?” Word said, the surprise in her voice rapidly changing to fear. She scrambled to her feet, aware the Four Corners were moving, the Walls were rippling, and somewhere the bird was screeching, as she stood staring at X-it’s empty chair.
Cat was shattered. She looked like an alley cat again covered in mange and weeping sores. “My fault,” she said in a hoarse whisper, “I should have been on the prowl and I wasn’t.”
“Where’d he go?” Word asked again. Ignoring the lamenting Cat she turned to look at Et but her chair was also empty.
“Where’s Et?” she asked, her voice rising.
“Should have known!” Cat exclaimed, her fur less mangy. “Et’s got X-it,” she said. “He’ll be all right,” she added, but Word caught the doubt in Cat’s voice and felt her scabs oozing as she rubbed against her legs.
No energy left, Word sat on X-it’s chair and Cat padded back to the rug and started licking a sore on her stretched out right front paw.
“Erectile dysfunction?” Word said. “Cat’s tail? Wank? Wank? Wank?” She looked at Cat. “What’s with that?”
Cat stopped licking. She gave Word a Cheshire Cat lopsided grin. “Short story,” she said. “X-it had been hacked when I brought him to Et. There was an intruder in his consciousness. I attacked him –”
“The hacker?” Word asked.
“No X-it,” Cat said. “I clawed his face. He screamed ‘fuck Cat’ and a whole lot of other crazy stuff and it was enough to get him reassigned from an EDM – Extremely Dangerous Male, to EDP – Extremely Dangerous Psychotic.”
“Okay, I got it,” Word said. “You made it so they thought he was crazy, but what’s with the erectile dysfunction?”
“Crazy talk,” Cat said. “X-it was – is – smart. He had to do two things at once. First communicate with me that he had been hacked. Second communicate that he was psychotic to the hacker.”
“He’s something else,” Word said, appreciatively. “He confirmed his EDP biometric profile and alerted you that he was being hacked. I’m impressed. And wank?”
“I’d told him when I was mooching in his consciousness to watch my tail,” Cat said, her Cheshire smile less lopsided. “One swish for the presence of an intruder in his consciousness, two for danger, three for him about to be terminated.”
“The wank went with” – Word smiled – “the condition he was describing.”
“He’d never detected his consciousness being attacked before,” Cat said. “It must have been a deadly hack of his mind-brain continuum.”
“I have to ask,” Word said looking intently at Cat, “is there any chance they killed him?”
“Do not forget,” Cat said, “who I am,” finishing the sentence in her persona as the Grim Reaper.
“Could he die without you?” Word asked.
“Nobody dies without me,” Death said. “I am always there – it’s why this split second is so – I’m trying to find the word – I know terrible things are happening but to be stuck – as it were – in this split second with you and with X-it is such a – a – a wonderful thing for me.”
“And Et?” Word asked.
“I’ve known her forever,” Death said, once again Cat. “She’s taking care of X-it. She got him away quick. He’s probably in the same room where Et kept you safe.”
“I heard the bird screech,” Word said, remembering the bird that had watched over her.
“The bird knew the moment I knew, so did the Four Corners, every animate and inanimate –” Cat was stuck for a word “– thing – in this split second went on high alert the moment X-it signaled what was happening.”
“And Et?” Word asked.
“Yes,” Cat said looking at Word. “She knew. You must know by now that her part in all this is – is – is complicated.”
“If the hacker was still in X-it’s consciousness when Et took him –?”
“It will not have survived,” Cat said decisively. “Fortunately I do not have to be present at the death of an A-I, nor when their motherboards die.”
“Is that significant?” Word asked.
“Et will have traced the hacker back to its source,” Cat said. “It’ll be lights-out for many Super-Recognizers in their surveillance installations and it’s even possible that millions of people will get their consciousness back.”
Seventeen
Word sat in X-it’s chair thinking about the moment when he was there and then not there. It was tough keeping up her own safeguards against being hacked and also living constantly with the threat of invisible enemies existing undetected in X-it’s consciousness. The thought that if hackers were collecting data on everything he did, they were also collecting data on what she did, was always on her mind. Suddenly it was all too much.
&
nbsp; “I’m grateful for this split second too,” Word said to Cat. “X-it is safe with Et and I have a moment to just exist without being overwhelmed by the nightmare of living.”
“Exactly,” Death said, appearing for a liberating moment as her psychedelic Bowie self before returning to the more comforting persona of Cat. “But what’s the alternative?” she asked, adding a hasty, “don’t go there.”
“Sometimes I wonder if being a Truth Keeper in this day and age makes any sense at all?” Word said, as much to herself as Cat.
“Of course it makes sense,” Cat said. “It’s the only thing that makes sense – you don’t seem to realize that because you are a Truth Keeper you might save the people who still live in this world.”
“Protecting ancient works and finding lost scribal copies has occupied scholars for millennia,” Word said, looking pensive. “My mother would get so excited about the discovery of an early philological construction. Now digital texts have subverted the truths of ancient works and there is an all-out assault on the people – the Truth Keepers – who know something about these books of ancient truths.”
“Kill them all!” Cat said turning into the Ginger Tom, the most malevolent of the Lunatic Eight, but keeping her whiskers, as well as her tail, which turned orange. Then turning back into Cat again.
“Don’t do that!” Word laughed. “It’s not funny!”
“Gotta laugh,” Cat said, changing from black to marmalade. “What do you think of my yellow hair?”
“Stop it!” Word said, trying not to laugh. “You’re making me nervous. I met that one in Manhattan once, in Central Park, near what’s left of Columbus Circle –”
“The Ginger Tom?” Cat asked.
“Yes!” Word said, her skin creeping. “Terrifying.”
“Someone shouted, ‘It’s the Ginger Tom!’ and people started cheering and clapping. A crowd surrounded him and his bodyguards, and his personal militia looked nervous but less threatening than they usually did when they kept the people back.
