FutureImperfect

by Stefan Petrucha

  At the time, he thought that last part was just a fantasy. Nevertheless, he studied the Nostradamus quatrains the way he studied everything else, the way his late tutor, Mr. Chabbers, had made him study: completely, thoroughly, doggedly. He looked not so much at the words, but searched for similarities, patterns, a formula.

  Months later, he found one, but not at all the sort he expected. The predictions actually contained a code, based on equidistant letter sequences. If you took all of Nostradamus’s quatrains, ordered in the way he had numbered them, and used an algorithm to select particular letters, a new poem appeared, along with some numbers. Roughly translated, it read;

  Where time is a snake with no head or tail

  There dwell among the beasts of fate

  Obscure masters of all God’s arts

  Who practice the highest truths and by confusion reign

  Jeremy was thrilled that he found this amazing dance of math and word. He was even more excited by what the message said. Obscure Masters. The title tickled him, especially the “master” part. “All God’s arts” was clearly just a superstitious way of saying everything. “The highest truths” sounded coolest of all. It seemed so total, so complete.

  But he wasn’t finished. Not yet. There were still the numbers to figure out. Most of them gave up their secrets easily enough. They formed a longitude and latitude, a location on the globe, centering on Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, Nostradamus’s birthplace. But there were still two numbers left, an eight and a ten. They puzzled Jeremy for months, that eight and that ten, because his was a mind that had been trained, at all costs, not to ever let go.

  The more he obsessed, the more he became convinced he was onto something big, something that might even make up for the fact that he still wasn’t the greatest chess player in the world, and instead ranked—”only,” as his parents said—sixteenth. He wondered if he’d found a hidden way to the top. A secret, grand success. Book, poem, and numbers burned inside him for months. The school year nearly ended, and he’d never even started his computer program.

  Then, by what smaller minds would again see only as some bizarre coincidence, Jeremy heard that his over-reaching French teacher was sponsoring a summer trip to France, and one of the stops was Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. That was all it took to convince him. The coincidence was too glaring. The hand of these Obscure Masters must be behind it. It was then he first suspected they were, in fact, guiding him to them.

  He put up with the long wait, with the tour of Paris, with the French girls who he should have been delighted with, until finally they reached Nostradamus’s home. When the group came to the exact room the coordinates indicated, he lingered behind until the fat guide, the enthusiastic teacher, and the rest of the students went ahead and left him alone with his dream.

  It was only then, in that moment, staring at the cut stones that comprised the walls, that he figured out the final puzzle piece. He counted the stones on the top row from the northeastern corner, eight up, ten to the left.

  Giddy as a child on Christmas morning, he tugged at the tenth stone. The oblong stone slipped out easily, as if oiled on all sides. It thudded at his feet and fell prostrate, as if worshipping him. The filthy little bag that had been wedged behind it tumbled into his long-fingered hands as flecks of centuries-old mortar hovered in the air like stars.

  He knew then he’d won something better than all the trophies, better than all the girls, better than the rush he got from slamming the pigskin on the grass after making a touchdown and pretending he was hitting Father’s or Mother’s face with it.

  Translating the handwritten note inside the bag alone should have gotten him the A-plus, but he never showed that work to Mrs. Larousa. Instead he followed the directions that told him to keep it a secret and described how to brew the herbs.

  Now all that, like the phone repairman’s work on Siara’s cell, seemed an accident. But Jeremy now knew for a fact that the universe was too ordered for that. It had to make sense. It just had to. There were no accidents, just the machinations of Obscure Masters who by confusion reign. And Jeremy, Jeremy was meant to win every game he played, meant to find that small bag, to find the Masters. Meant to triumph.

  Anything else would be like a sin.

  As his head swam, he saw the sky outside his window darken, lighten, then darken again. Below, the little lives of little people rolled back to insignificant births and ahead to petty deaths. The buildings—the stores, theaters, skyscrapers, the hundred-year-old churches—all rose and fell like ocean waves. Soon all he could distinguish from the blur were the stars in the circling sky as they winked in and out of existence across a billion years, as if they were flecks of mortar floating in the air of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.

  Remembering Siara Warner’s fondness for poems, he thought:

  I am such stuff as dreams are made on.

  With a roar, the world exploded, until everything remained—the everything; the endless shifting trails his crushed rival dubbed A-Time, reality raveled into patterns and paths. To the uninitiated, even to Jeremy, it still mostly looked like a big, unruly mess, but the Obscure Masters could see the needles in the haystack, the method in the mess, and they would teach him if he won.

  Steadfast, the Initiate strode along the curved surfaces, moving with speed and confidence. In short order he found what he was looking for: Harry Keller’s rumbling, bumbling life trail, which vexed him like an unscratchable spider bite.

  His nostrils flared as he scanned its surface. Even being near Keller’s trail pissed him off. But he had to be sure, so he looked, and looked carefully. Good. There’d been no change. All was as he’d left it after the fire. Keller was hopelessly insane.

  He’d come close to getting rid of him before, but now the sedatives and antipsychotics in Keller’s bloodstream were preventing him from even entering A-Time, so there was no way for his fate to change again.

  Weird how some chemicals could get you there and others keep you out. Weirder still how someone like Keller could get into A-Time without any herbs, but Jeremy needed his tea.

  Oh well, the Masters would explain that, too. Jeremy only wished he could have killed Keller. He’d wanted so badly to have Keller die in the fire, but there were too many factors, too many variables. Maybe the fact that Keller was a time walker himself somehow protected him. The closest he could manage was insanity, and for that, Jeremy had had to endure a whack in the skull with a crowbar.

  Well, maybe after tomorrow night, he’d try again.

  An unexpected rumble caught his attention. Ripples appeared in the trails near Keller’s future. They shifted in unison, like choreographed serpents, making room for a new arrival.

  This again?

  Jeremy grimaced. He was annoyed, but only slightly surprised, to see Siara’s trail veering back toward Harry’s in the near future.

  Tweedledum on her way to save Tweedledee.

  It looked like she might try to arrive at Windfree tomorrow afternoon.

  Had she found another ride? Was she planning to hitch? This was such a pain in the ass. No matter how many times, no matter how many ways Jeremy tried to separate them, they came together. He’d even dated her himself, just to keep them apart, but they kept growing toward one another, like weeds. It was another puzzle. How could Siara reject him, over and over, against all common sense, for that addled sack of crap? He once thought she’d seemed so smart, but she was obviously a loser, too.

  If Keller ever did die, her trail would probably spend the rest of its time circling the point where he died, forever, like the clock in her stupid poem.

  But Jeremy had other plans for her, and now he had to seal the deal.

  Fighting a feeling of disgust, he drove his strong, long-fingered hands deep into the muck of Harry and felt his way around, turning his head to the side, as if it smelled like a cesspool.

  His sense of revulsion was worse than the scalding tea, almost worse than killing his parents. But it was all about control. Concent
rating, he shaped this part, pulled at that. He was tickled to think he was getting better at it, or maybe he just wasn’t having as much interference. Now that Keller was stuck in linear time, his life was just like anyone else’s.

  Just like anyone else’s.

  Hmm. Maybe he could kill him.

  Soon, the desired changes rattled through Keller’s already-dismal future, shortening it considerably. His fingers still in the trail, Jeremy saw Keller’s end quite clearly:

  “Please!” the white-haired cop said. “Don’t do it. The negotiator will be here in just a second and she’ll know just what to say. Just wait a little while…please!”

  No! We’ve waited so long! Just jump!

  Tough choice. Who to believe?

  Harry looked out at the world, at the tops of the buildings, the little people down below, connected by so many things, disconnected by so few. Subject to disease and war, one hand reaching for the stars, the other slinking back to the darkest cave. And all this time, he thought it somehow all made sense, that he could figure it out.

  But he was wrong.

  “When you’re right, you’re right,” he said to himself, to the Fool. “It doesn’t make any sense. Not one bit.”

  He turned to look at the cop. “I’m really sorry about this, he said.

  The cop lunged forward to grab him, but Harry smiled, shrugged, and let the Quirk-shard move his feet over the ledge.

  Briefly, Harry felt weightless, just like he had so many years ago, trapped in his father’s arms at the top of an amusement park ride. There’d be no parachute this time, though. His stomach lurched. Everything spun. He was expecting to fly, but the Fool had lied. He wasn’t flying. He was falling. It would all be over in seconds.

  Thanks, so so much! the Quirk-shard said.

  “Don’t mention it,” Harry answered, falling faster and faster.

  Grinning wickedly, Jeremy pulled his hands from the muck. He wondered why Keller never figured out that you didn’t have to be in a trail to see what was in it. Probably because he was an idiot. That was why he’d die this time for sure. That was why Jeremy would win.

  Nearby, Jeremy’s Quirk yipped merrily at the changes. It extended its single eye beyond the row of teeth that formed its mouth, to ferret out a spot for itself in Keller.

  When it did, and as it stuffed its eye deep into the delicious cranny, Siara’s life—like a large blind worm—veered away, back toward the fate Jeremy planned for it. When it reached his massive sculpture, his masterpiece, Siara’s life trail was sucked in like a piece of spaghetti into the mouth of a starving demon.

  It was locked now, as if with a key. A keystone.

  It was done. Really done.

  Now there’s nothing that can save either of you. Nothing.

  5.

  Nothing. Zero. The Fool.

  The giant loomed above Harry Keller, the size of a Thanksgiving Day balloon. No, bigger. Much bigger. It was the size of the whole damn Thanksgiving Day parade. Its moon-size eyes twinkled. The wide swath of red that circled its cheeks elongated its mad smile so it covered half the huge white face.

  As Harry lay on his back, cowering, an image popped into his mind; a card from Aunt Shirley’s tarot deck, the one with the vagabond staring at the sky as he merrily marched off a cliff, a small dog nipping at his heels. The image didn’t comfort him, it only frightened him more. Panicked questions rushed from his mouth like rats deserting a sinking ship: “Who? What? Where?”

  “YES! YES AND YES!” the clown boomed back.

  Harry raised his arms to protect himself, not from the big clown, but from the words. Each YES set Harry’s body bouncing and sent a swarm of sights, sounds, and feelings careening through his head; smiley faces, a parent handing him sticky candy, a girl’s moist kiss, an A-plus scribbled in blue pen on a paper, Siara visiting his apartment. Every possible derivation, manifestation, and connotation of YES hit him like a fist, as if the meaning-volume of his soul’s ears had been turned up full.

  Harry thought he was being killed, but when the inner onslaught ended, miraculously, he wasn’t only still alive, he was thinking clearer, cleaner, as if the giant’s words had burned some of his madness away.

  Harry looked around. Glimpses of life trails, Quirks, Glitches, and drifting Timeflys poked from between the enormous polka-dot folds of the clown’s floppy pant-legs. He was in A-Time. Despite the drugs, he’d gone timeless.

  How?

  “Because I brought you here,” the clown responded, though Harry’s question hadn’t been asked out loud.

  Its lips parted into a grin, revealing again its massive white teeth and horrid pink tongue. It looked awful happy. Was that a good thing? Better than having it angry, Harry supposed.

  “Are you going to kill me?” It seemed as good a time as any to ask.

  It shook its head. “We’re not enemies, Harry. This isn’t Godzilla versus Cremora.”

  “Umm…isn’t that Gammera?”

  “No. Cremora. Seems the big lizard is lactose intolerant.”

  When Harry didn’t react, the clown’s face turned serious.

  “It’s a joke. Get it?”

  Harry just stared at it. Yeah, a bad joke…

  “No, a good one.” It opened its cavernous mouth and laughed, releasing a gale that pushed Harry’s body deep into the terrain beneath him.

  The clown raised an eyebrow. “See? A joke. You should lighten up a little, y’know?”

  Harry raised himself from the Harry-shaped hole that had formed beneath him. “Lighten up? How can I, with you haunting me, ever since…ever since…”

  “Yes?” the clown asked.

  Ever since what?

  Harry realized he’d been seeing the clown since his father died. Ever since he was struck by lightning when the preacher asked God to do just that. Like a joke. Like a big, bad joke, a killer punch line no joker could resist.

  Like Godzilla versus Cremora.

  Emotion overwhelmed Harry’s fear. “Did you kill my father?”

  The giant’s head shook gently from side to side. “Not exactly. Closer to say I am your father’s death.”

  Harry’s body shivered, but his brow furrowed defiantly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  The clown gave him a half smile. “That I manifest in certain events. I’m an archetype, Harry, the visible face of a god. Specifically, the Fool, the Trickster, Azeban, Brer Rabbit, Aunt Nancy, Bamapana, Tezcatlipoca, Puck, the Monkey King, Satan, Renart the Fox, Bugs Bunny, Prometheus, Hermes Trismegistus, Coyote, Kokopelli, Kantjil, Amaguq, Kitsune, Mantis, Nasreddin, Loki, Sosruko, Nanabush, Maui, Agu Tonpa, Cin-an-ev, Baron Samedi, Anansi, Eshu, Ozat, Meribank, even Spongebob Squarepants…”

  Just like the YESes that came before, each name carried a score of impressions: steamy African veldts, windswept North American plains, smoky European cities, places of heat, of cold, and all the temperatures in between.

  Harry shook his head, trying to shed the maelstrom, and said, “You’re the balloon. The one that led me to Todd and Melody.”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you were a memory, a statue at Dreamland. Just something left over from childhood.”

  “That, too. Just not just.”

  An archetype. A god. Sure. According to Jung and Campbell, they were the building blocks of the human mind. Of course, you weren’t supposed to be able to chat with them. But if it were true, Harry was staring at something created by the timeless energies of everyone on the planet, past, present, and future. Everyone.

  Maybe it was a god.

  A glint appeared in the Fool’s eyes. From its expression, Harry could tell it’d heard each of his thoughts and found his despair amusing.

  Harry swallowed. “Am I imagining you, like I did Elijah?”

  The clown chuckled. “Yes and no. You have to be able to imagine to see me, but it’s really more like redistricting—same pie, different slices.”

  “Redistricting? Redistricting what? What kind of pie?”


  Its huge index finger poked Harry in the chest. He felt as if he were being tapped with the base of a telephone pole. “The self-pie. Like Elijah said, it has loose boundaries. Slice it one way and you might find your feminine side, like Elijah, but slice it deep enough and you wind up outside again, where you’ll find something like me.”

  A giant white glove reached down and squeezed Harry’s hopelessly tiny hand between its massive thumb and finger. It took him a moment to realize the thing was shaking hands with him.

  “Congratulations. You the man. You made it all the way to nothing.”

  “Uh…thanks?”

  It pulled, yanking Harry into a seated position. Then it crossed its legs and sat in front of him.

  “You’re welcome, but let’s get down to it. You’ve got questions, I’ve got answers, some of which may even be true. Before we go any further, I want to spell out the deal. You ask whatever you like, and I’ll answer, but for every question you ask, I’m going to hit you, really, really hard.”

  Without thinking, Harry asked, “Why would you do that?”

  SWAT!

  The next thing Harry knew, he was skidding along the terrain, scraping the uneven surfaces like a rock skimming ripples in a pond. When he finally slowed, rolled, and settled into a moaning heap, the giant Fool trotted up, shaking the trails with his steps—thud, thud, thud.

  It leaned over and looked at the fallen Harry. “Because I feel like it.”

  Harry touched the side if his face. No bruises. He felt his arm and ribcage. No broken bones. Everything hurt though. Still, he couldn’t keep from asking, “Can you tell me how to stop Jeremy, save Siara, and get rid of the Quirk inside me?”

  WHACK!

  Again, Harry flew, crashed, rolled, slowed, and stopped. Again, the Fool trotted up—thud, thud, thud

  “That was three questions, but since there’s one answer, I’ll let it go. No. You have to figure that out yourself. I’m not your advisor. I’m more like the scorpion in the fable. You know, he can’t get across the river so he asks the frog for a ride? The frog says, Are you nuts? You’ll sting me! The scorpion says, Why would I sting you? I’d drown, too. So the frog says okay. Halfway across, the scorpion stings him. The dying frog asks, What’d you do that for? The drowning scorpion says, Sorry, it’s my nature.