Split Second Solution

by Denny Taylor

  “Do you think I don’t know that?” Word responded, irritated with Cat.

  “Just sayin’,” Cat responded.

  “Try not to,” Et said.

  “And from the age of eight I lived with them,” Word said, not willing to let it go, “and X-it did too.”

  “I have to leave,” Et said to Word. “When I come back I want you to tell me what happened when you returned to New York City. In the meantime make peace with that irritating Cat. As strange as it seems she has always tried to protect you.”

  Twenty

  “Why do you keep asking me what’s in the package my mother gave me if you already know?” Word asked Cat. She was sitting in X-it’s chair with Cat on her lap waiting for Et to come back.

  “I keep asking you because I don’t know,” Cat said, sniffing, miffed. “Et does, but she won’t tell me.”

  “How does she know and you don’t?” Word asked, surprised by Cat’s response.

  “She knows because she was there at the beginning of time,” Cat said, matter of fact. “She’s the consciousness of the galaxy. She gave birth to the Universe, and she was there when the first life-forms on Earth gained consciousness.

  “You’re making it up!” Word said.

  “Of course I’m making it up,” Cat said, not very convincingly.

  “You’re not making it up,” Word said, sensing Cat was playing with her.

  “No, I’m not making it up,” Cat said, with a quizzical look and her usual Cheshire Cat grin.

  “That’s a lot to take in,” Word said.

  “Not really,” Cat said, looking solemnly at her. “When you look up at the sky and the vastness of space what you’re contemplating is the vast consciousness of the spacetime continuum. You can’t hold it or contain it – it’s not an inert object, it’s a living thing. It’s Et. When you contemplate your own consciousness you can’t hold it or contain it. It’s not an inert object, it’s a living thing – it’s you, Word.”

  “Heavy,” Word said, trying to get her head around the implications of what Cat was telling her, “Especially if you are the one who has to cope with the death of this unimaginably vast living thing.”

  “And the end is fast approaching,” Cat said, instantly mangy and covered in weeping sores. “Et knows the end is coming,” Cat said. “She can go back –”

  “And forward?” Word said.

  “That’s the problem,” Cat said. “There is no forward. For the first time in billions of years she cannot travel into the future. Spacetime ends with you.”

  Word turned her wrist over to show Cat the sign. “My mother said it’s an ancient sign for the powers of the human soul. Doesn’t matter what language people speak when they see it they all say, “In the beginning was the word.”

  “And when the end comes there will be no word,” Cat said. She looked up at Word. “There is no future without you.”

  “You make it sound as if I’m the world’s consciousness,” Word said.

  “I think the first word ever written is in the package that you have protected since your mother gave it to you,” Cat said, “and the last words are written on your body.”

  “Go on,” Word said.

  “If you had not jumped in the river those men would’ve done terrible things to you,” Cat said, “and then they would have flayed you alive to get what’s written on your body and you would have died.”

  “I embody them as they embody me,” Word said.

  “Et says the words mean nothing without you,” Cat said.

  “The words are all chosen so carefully,” Word said. “I’ve always known they are wrapped up with my destiny.”

  “Your destiny is to save what people think of as time – even though it does not exist – actually to save Et,” Cat said. “If you do not save her there will be no one to make time or save time. There will be no ripples or wrinkles in time. A great consciousness will die, and all living things on Earth will die with her.”

  “I’ve no idea what you just said,” Word said. “So is this the reason you’re so neurotic?” she asked. “Don’t you think you’re exaggerating? Being just a bit too dramatic?”

  “I love her you know,” Cat said. “We’ve been together forever – well – not quite forever. I didn’t arrive on the scene until the first conscious soul was dying and Et goes back before that to the very beginning of the spacetime continuum.”

  “The two of you must have been together for a long time – you’ve got bickering down to a fine art,” Word said, still trying to get her head around what Cat was telling her. “Where’s Et now?” she asked. “I presumed she was with X-it but –”

  “She’s on reconnaissance,” Cat said. “Checking things out, seeing for herself how close to the end we are, and hopefully figuring out what we can do to avert a cataclysmic disaster.”

  “I keep thinking of Rumi,” Word said, surprising Cat with what seemed like a non-segue. “He wrote ‘What you seek is seeking you.’”

  “And?” Cat asked, irritated by the interruption to her melodrama.

  “I think Et is right when she says we have to go back to the moment I jumped in the Hudson River,” Word said. “But I think we have to go back a few minutes before that. Those men had been seeking me for a long time. I have to go back and face them to find out what it means to be a Truth Keeper – if we’re going to find a way to save the future and the spacetime continuum.”

  Cat looked up at Word, her sores starting to dry up. “Rumi also wrote,” she said, “‘And you? When will you begin the long journey into yourself?’”

  “My journey into myself – my own consciousness – began the day they killed my mother,” Word said. “Now it’s a journey into the deep and meaningful consciousness I share with you and with Et and with X-it.”

  “Let’s celebrate that!” Cat said, springing off Word’s lap and appearing as Lady Gaga in a midnight blue, low cut, floor length, taffeta gown. “Isn’t life extraordinary!” she said. “Let’s hold on to it for as long as we can dear sweet Word. I am so grateful to you. I know Et is too.”

  “Not sure about the ‘dear’ and ‘sweet’ or why you would be grateful,” Word laughed. “I didn’t ask to be a superhero but it seems that’s what I am about to become.” She looked seriously at Lady Gaga. “You look very beautiful,” she said. “But I hope you won’t mind my saying, I like you best when you are a Cat.”

  “Is this better,” Cat said, jumping back on her lap.

  “Much,” Word said, reflecting on what Cat had told her. “My mother told me she’d been absolutely terrified every moment of her life. But she also said she’d never let anyone keep her from doing a single thing she wanted to do.”

  “What she wanted to do was read books,” Cat said, matter of factly, “and that’s the truth.”

  “True,” Word said. “She created her own world but it wasn’t a selfish act. She was driven by the knowledge – more than just a belief – that the only way to save the future was hidden in ancient texts.”

  “I think she was also driven by what happened to your father.”

  “I believe she also knew what was going to happen to me.”

  “I agree.”

  “I wasn’t quite truthful when I said I didn’t know anything about my dad.”

  “I know,” Cat said. “It’s a painful story and you didn’t want to repeat it.”

  “Something like that,” Word said, stroking Cat whose coat was now silky. “But if I talk to you about my dad I will also have to talk about my mother and even after all these years it’s still hard.”

  “Understood,” Cat said, kneading Word’s left leg.

  “I’d like to tell you,” Word said. “Shall I wait until Et gets back?”

  “The Four Corners will tell her,” Cat said. “They are in constant communication.”

  “Really?”

  Cat’s eyes were closing.

  “You’re falling asleep!”

  “No,” Cat said, her eyes opening wide
. “I’m enjoying a rare moment of contentment.”

  Twenty-One

  “When I was a little girl I imagined my mother working as an archeologist in North Africa,” Word said. “She had ancient texts from Mesopotamia – the cradle of civilization, which no longer exists – and that’s where I imagined her working.”

  “Go on,” Cat said.

  “Her work was very secret, very dangerous,” Word said. “I didn’t imagine that. She told me she’d made a discovery that could change the future of the world. What I imagined was that before I was born she was working with the man who would become my father and that together they excavated the site where the discovery was made.”

  “You were a very precocious little girl,” Cat said. “I have to remember you were reading Greek and Latin when you were two years old.”

  “Hieroglyphs and Sanskrit too,” Word said, “just to be accurate. Hieroglyphs are really fun when you are two years old.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Cat said, laughing at her own joke. “Get it – word for it?”

  “My mother studied Sumerian, which was an ancient language women as well as men learned to read in Mesopotamia,” Word said, dismissing Cat’s joke and revealing her enormous capacity for learning. “Many scholars believe Mesopotamians invented writing, making it possible for them to find a new way of looking at the world. My mother was convinced writing was invented many millennia before that.”

  “Back to your father,” Cat said, impatient with Word’s history lesson.

  “My mother did tell me he was gentle, kind, and very brave,” Word said. “In my imaginary account of what happened to my father there was a raid at the archeological site where they were working. There was a spy –”

  “They’re all louts,” Cat said.

  “But in my version of their story,” Word said, leaning forward and kissing Cat’s head, “there was a secret chamber at the dig and my father placed the small oilskin package in my mother’s hands, and telling her to keep it safe, he persuaded her to climb down into the chamber. I used to imagine my father in flowing desert robes embracing my mother – a hug seemed too ordinary – and telling her it was her only chance of survival. I could almost hear him saying, ‘I’ll love you till the end of time.’ And then guns firing, killing him.”

  “You have a very vivid imagination,” Cat said.

  “Wait,” Word said, “there’s more.”

  “Go on,” Cat said, pretending that the story was too long.

  “I used to imagine my mother in the chamber for almost a week,” Word said. “My father, being a good man –”

  “Are there any?” Cat asked.

  “Yes there are,” Word said. “You’re too cynical. X-it is a good man. Back to the story. I imagined my father had prepared for the attack at the archeological site and my mother had water and food and even clothes – a hijab – money and a passport. I imagined that to the men who killed my father, the entrance to the chamber looked like just a crack between the stones. It was very narrow and a large man could not have got through. My mother made sure that if they shone a light through there were no signs that anyone was in what seemed like a small indent at the entrance. It was not possible for the killers to see at an angle that there was an underground room and that it was cavernous.”

  “We can take any shape, anywhere, at any time,” the Four Corners said in unison, making Word jump. “Apologies for interrupting,” they said.

  “Let’s get back to the story shall we?” Cat said irritated, and sounding very much like Et when she was scolding her.

  “I imagined my mother put on the hijab,” Word said, not fazed a bit by the talking right angles, “and made her way to Cairo to the hotel where she had a room. Then she became western again and used the passport to travel to Milan and from there to New York where I was born.”

  “There’s no sex in your story,” Cat said.

  “I was a little girl!” Word said. “I didn’t imagine my mother having sex with my father.” For a moment Word did not speak. Cat closed her eyes and waited.

  “The real story was very steamy,” Word said, quietly, in a voice that gave away that she was going to tell Cat what really happened when her mother met her father.

  “At the beginning of 2000 my mother flew from Milan to Cairo to research some ancient documents that were in the Egyptian National Library and Archives.

  “She’d joined the faculty at the University of Milano-Bicocca in 1999 a year after the university was founded and she’d moved from Paris to Milan,” Word said. “It was, of course, a cover so she could continue her research on ancient texts that she was convinced would change the future of the world.”

  The Walls shuddered.

  “She stayed at a hotel near the National Library and Archives and received a telephone call from a researcher who said he was on the faculty of Alexandria University and he had some documents he thought she would want to see.”

  “Did she check his credentials?” Cat asked.

  “I don’t know,” Word said. “Wait. She said she’d met him once before at a conference so she must have known who he was.”

  “Go on,” Cat said.

  “She told me they had dinner,” Word said.

  “And?” Cat asked.

  “I don’t know what they talked about at dinner but my mother said she was mesmerized by him,” Word said.

  “Yes?” Cat asked. “Did they?”

  “Yes,” Word said. “My mother said she wanted me to know I was not an accident. She said she was sure they both knew they were making me. My father went back to her room and it was the most magical night of her life. Her face would flush and her back would arch when she told me about it – as if just the thought of being with him was enough for her to become orgasmic. Now, I imagine that night the way I used to imagine the archeological dig, only it’s my mother holding my father’s hand as she takes him into her room and they undress together and she runs her tongue over his body and he kisses her breasts and she lies back on the bed and he parts her legs and –”

  “Is it like that for you?” Cat asked.

  “That’s not a question you should ask,” Word said, slapping Cat.

  “Bad of me,” Cat said. “Apologies.”

  “Do you think it’s possible for a memory to be created at the moment of conception – when egg meets sperm?” Word asked. “Do you think in deep memory in my own spacetime continuum there is a trace of the very second when I was conceived? Could that be? Is it possible that traces of my mother’s orgasm and my father’s ejaculation – the beginning of time and space for me – are still rippling through my body and could be somewhere way back in my consciousness?”

  “In the beginning was the word,” Cat said. “The beginning was Word.”

  “I like to think I was there,” Word said. “It was the only time they were together. My mother told me they made love all night and my father left at 5:00 a.m. saying he would meet her again at the library,” Word said. “My mother packed her overnight bag and checked out of the hotel and arrived at the library at ten o’clock. She said there were officials – high-ups in the government – and police everywhere. The streets around the library were cordoned off but before she knew what had happened they let her through the barricades and escorted her to the library.

  “She was told that one of the library’s research associates from Alexandria University had been murdered. They’d found him on the steps of the library with his throat cut. The police questioned my mother but she didn’t tell them that she had spent the night with the man who had been murdered, so they had no reason to suspect that she was involved in the killing.”

  “It’s a terribly sad story,” Cat said, “but for you to have been conceived on such a night of love – and perhaps to even have a memory of the moment you were made – that is very special.”

  “There’s a bit more to the story,” Word said. “My mother had booked a flight back to Milan late in the afternoon and the polic
e saw no reason for her to remain in Cairo so she left. When she returned to her apartment in Milan she unpacked her overnight bag and wrapped in her nightdress she found a package – oiled paper tied up with old string – the same one she gave to me. She said that she also found a scrap of paper in her brief case on which my father had written, ‘In the beginning was the word. Keep it safe. I love you.’”

  “So what was in the package?” Cat asked.

  “I don’t know,” Word said. “My mother never opened it and neither have I.”

  Twenty-Two

  “What happened when you left Newark?” Et asked, appearing as the Old Crone and sitting in her chair as if she’d always been there.

  “You’re back!” Word said. “Is X-it okay? Can I see him?”

  “Yes, he’s okay. No you cannot see him,” Et said. “The people’s camp in the Field at 74th and Riverside Drive that borders the Westside Highway is gone. Destroyed. They sent in the military – more accurately the militia, the Ginger Tom’s armed thugs – with tear gas and heavy machinery –”

  “The Field where I was living?” Word asked, incredulous that Et had been there. “Everyone called it ‘The Jungle’ after the camp in Calais that was destroyed in 2016. The young people in the Field were just as vulnerable.”

  “There was no warning. The people living there – mostly young women, many with children – didn’t have time to gather their possessions,” Et said. “The ones that protested were beaten and gassed. Some were shot – killing children is now acceptable. Heinous.”

  “They were looking for me,” Word said, in tears.

  “Yes,” Et said, “but the Field is also too close to the river and what’s left of the West Side Highway. The Ginger Tom wanted them out but the hacking of X-it’s consciousness may have alerted them to the possibility that you’re still alive. They’ve surrounded the Field with razor sharp barbed wire. It sparkles in the sunlight but would cut people to shreds if they tried to go back to search for their possessions –”