FutureImperfect

by Stefan Petrucha

  “Oh, give it up, will you? Making a mistake I can deal with. I can fix it and move on. But you, Keller, you’re like a little piece of hot dog in my stomach that just won’t digest.”

  “Have you tried antacid?”

  Jeremy didn’t answer. He just jumped across the twisting trails, scooped Harry into the air, and spun. Harry felt his body whirl, saw A-Time blend into a kaleidoscopic haze. He punched at the powerful hands that held him, slamming his knuckles into the backs of Jeremy’s hands, making him let go. As he sailed into the A-Time air, Harry could hear the annoyed gurgle in Jeremy’s throat as he flew toward Jeremy’s great big Thing of Death.

  Harry didn’t hit it, he just skimmed the side, but his skin burned where he touched it. He landed at the tower’s base, where Siara’s trail entered. Her life felt warm, reassuring, as close to a pillow as A-Time terrain could get. It pained him to see it writhing, trying to earn its freedom from its Jeremy-intended future.

  As the Initiate maneuvered the gyrating trails to reach him, Harry stuck his hands into Siara’s life and again tried to pull it away. Unable to guess at what the keystone could be, he tried changing everything he could think of—timing, outfits, phone calls, traffic lights—but her life remained lodged firm and fast in the base of the thing, and could not be moved.

  It was futile.

  Jeremy was coming, so Harry stuck his head and shoulders in. He could make out the stage with the big hydrogen tank and the sleek metal-and-plastic display engine. He saw Siara pushing her cart, listening to Jeremy’s hypnotic words on her earbuds.

  Fake world or not, he’s not just working from A-Time, Harry realized. He’s covering all his bets.

  Before he could see anything else, Jeremy grabbed him by the feet and pulled. Harry grabbed at the tunnel walls, trying to keep himself in, and the two tugged back and forth. Harry’s hands scrambled for a hold, his arms ached with the strain, but he held on until he heard a horrible sound, a sound he would always remember but never, ever be able to describe.

  He turned his head toward Siara’s future, saw where her life entered the tower, and felt a cold, horrid wind, a total blackness that made him wonder if maybe changing the past would do something screwy to everyone’s filters, if maybe time really would just…end.

  He gasped and let go. Jeremy yanked him up immediately.

  Now Harry lay on his back, his ankles in Jeremy’s hands. The sky was dark, darker then he’d ever seen a sky, and the terrain utterly barren. If he was going to do something, it would have to be soon.

  Unable to think of anything else, he screamed. “Look around you, you quantum pedantic! Your sick-ass plan just shot past psycho and into something else entirely! All the Quirks are gone! The Timeflys, too! Look at the cracks! Look at the sky!”

  From the look on Jeremy’s face, Harry thought he might be getting through. He let go of Harry, rolled his shoulders, and looked around. There were flashes of something like lightning centering around the tower, and a sound like rolling thunder, only rather than a low, steady boom, it sounded more like some great beast, its voice deeper than an ocean, weeping.

  Jeremy shrugged. “So maybe I got some details wrong. I’ll fix it later. But not before I take care of you!”

  Harry shook his head is disbelief. He stood, pulled back, and punched Jeremy square in the jaw. Shocked by the bold frontal assault, Jeremy staggered backwards.

  “Then come and get me, asshole,” Harry said.

  And he waited for Jeremy to charge.

  Heeding the heavy force of gravity, the cart pulled forward, against Siara’s will. Its nature made it want to roll down the aisle and smash into the side of the stage, to spill and make a mess of itself, but she wouldn’t let it, insisting instead that it do as it was told. As the speeches and introductions filled the hall, she chose to keep the cart in control, to make it walk when it wanted to run.

  Like yesterday, when her father held her back from seeing Harry. No, that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t really her father, was it? The window was open and he was in the kitchen. She could have dived out into the street and hitched. Then she would have made it there, maybe in time to save him. So it wasn’t her father who stopped her, or Jeremy, either. It was herself. Trapped between two worlds, she’d chosen neither and just let things happen. Hers were the hands that held back her own rolling fruit cart of a life.

  Was that what growing up was about? Getting to a place where you felt like you couldn’t make choices anymore? Like her dad working a job he hated for decades, to keep a roof over his family, only to have his daughter disappoint him?

  How could that possibly ever be worth it if, in the end, like Harry, you only died anyway?

  She opened her hands slightly, letting the cart get an inch ahead before she grabbed it again. She was teasing it, making it think she’d let it go, but she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Not ever.

  Was it worth it?

  An answer welled inside her, free for a second, teasing that it might come to her, only to be beaten back by the numbness that almost felt like a natural part of her body now. The music in her ears was the only answer she had:

  No, no it’s not worth living

  But do as you’re told

  And soon you’ll see Harry again

  Pete Loam, her mother’s boss, held aloft a small box only slightly bigger than the iPod in Siara’s pocket. He was a funny guy, always buttoning and unbuttoning his dark jacket, as if never sure what the proper etiquette was. Sometimes he’d leave it unbuttoned as he stood and buttoned as he sat, which Siara thought was backward.

  “Inside the vehicle,” he said, unbuttoning, “the hydrogen will be stored in these small canisters, making the fuel cell vehicle literally as safe as one powered by gasoline. Safer, if you remember its only emissions are heat and water.”

  Then he buttoned his jacket again. Buttoned, unbuttoned. You could set your watch by him. Like Sisyphus.

  Jeremy Gronson and Harry Keller toppled into each other and rolled in the increasingly chaotic terrain. Jeremy punched, Harry blocked, and even slid in a shot with his left. Jeremy shook it off and came around again with his right, but before he could make contact, Harry kneed him in the gut and seemed to knock the wind out of him.

  Pleased though Harry was, he knew he shouldn’t be winning a fist fight with Jeremy Gronson. Something was wrong. Out of breath himself, he pulled back, stood, and looked at his opponent.

  Harry had learned something about Jeremy while playing chess with him back in school. He settled on a single plan and stuck to it, while Harry sacrificed for position. In a way it was the same as asking questions in exchange for getting hit. Sure, he got pummeled, but he also got information. Even in that chess game, though, sacrificing confused the crap out of Jeremy.

  Harry intended his assault as just another way to sacrifice for position, so he was surprised to find himself even briefly with the upper hand. After all, Harry couldn’t beat him, just surprise him, piss him off. But now Jeremy was on one knee, huffing, eyes twisted, face turning red, lips white, the opposite of the gaily colored Fool. He clenched his hands into fists, tighter and tighter, his muscles straining so much and his skin turning so red, it looked as if he might drive his fingers through the palms of his own hands. It was like the jock was so angry, he wasn’t thinking anymore.

  He was losing it.

  But was that a good thing or a bad thing, and did it even matter? The event horizon inched toward the tower, which was no longer a simple dark thing. Now it divided reality into polar opposites, sucking out all that remained of the color in the past, mixing it into the blackening future. More fractures formed in the past as the horizon moved, more howls came from the future.

  “Keller!” Jeremy called. “We’re not done.”

  Back on his feet, he raced at Harry, thudding clumsily on the wobbling ground, as if he were a bear forced to walk upright. Harry stuck his foot out. Jeremy fell for it—he tripped and sprawled forward.

  But what good would it do?
Jeremy would just keep coming until the school exploded. Harry wasn’t even sure why he kept doing it, except maybe in the weird hope that if he made Jeremy mad enough, he might explode instead.

  How far can I push him? Harry wondered.

  Jeremy lunged. Harry moved out of the way again, this time managing to slam Jeremy in the back of the head, sending him down once more.

  “How do you do that?” Jeremy screamed. “How?”

  “By being willing to get hit,” Harry told him, trying to sound all smug and confident. “But I wouldn’t expect you to understand. It would be like a dog talking Latin.”

  Jeremy’s nostrils flared. “You mean, like speaking Latin to a dog, moron!”

  “Oh yeah? If I’m a moron, why do you need herbal tea to get here?”

  “Shut up, bag man!”

  “Make me, tea-bag man!”

  Jeremy rose just in time for a new, stronger rumbling to hurl them both off their feet. The cracks in the past were becoming crevices. A large, horrible sound, as if the sky itself had split open, caused them both to turn toward the tower. A wide vertical seam opened in its center. Within it, Harry could make out only a darker dark, but the rush of air and all the colors in the sky now seemed headed toward it.

  “Jeremy,” Harry said softly. “It looks like something’s broken.”

  “Yeah,” Jeremy said. The sound seemed to sober him a little, calm him down. “Guess I should fix that, too. Just as soon as I’m done with you.”

  Ignoring Harry, he turned back to his path, to do whatever it was he thought would kill Harry. Harry tried following, but the trails were behaving less and less like solid objects and more and more like an angry sea.

  Harry was already regretting pissing Jeremy off. He was, after all, the only one who really knew what was going on with the tower.

  “Jeremy!” Harry shouted to him. “Maybe I can wait? Maybe you should fix it now? I promise I won’t go anywhere and you can kill me later.”

  Jeremy paused. “Another sacrifice, Keller?”

  Harry watched as he rose up and down on a pulsing trail. The black-robed figure turned toward the tower, then looked back at the spot in the terrain that was his goal. His eyelids fluttered, briefly covering the madness. He thought about it. He shook his head.

  “No. We’re past that now. I don’t care about that thing anymore. I don’t care about the Initiation. I don’t care about my plans. I don’t care about the Masters. Gone, all gone, like dreams. And you know what’s left? Just you and me. Just you and my desire to kill you.”

  He hopped from one wobbly trail to another, finally reaching his goal—Harry’s life trail.

  “It’s been beyond annoying dealing with you! It’s been cosmic!”

  Jeremy wasn’t just yelling anymore, he was ripping his voice raw trying to make it rage above the wind and rumbling terrain. He bent down and dug his hands, up to the elbows, into Harry’s life.

  Harry’s brow furrowed. Is he just going to try to change my trail? Was that his great big idea?

  But then he felt kind of funny, as if something were being yanked from his chest, like his heart and lungs. He looked down at himself. He seemed fine, still just trying to stay on his feet, but then the pain came again, stronger, harder.

  He looked at Jeremy. Now he was really sorry he’d pissed him off so much. The jock wasn’t trying to change things, he was trying to destroy them. He was yanking huge chunks out of Harry’s life trail and tossing them onto a growing pile, as if they were garbage. That was his great idea. And it wasn’t bad. After all, if that trail was the source of his timeless self, destroying it would destroy Harry completely.

  Harry tried to run toward him, but the land was too unmanageable. He fell more than moved.

  “Do you know how God created the universe?” Jeremy called.

  “With love and kindness?” Harry offered.

  “No,” Jeremy answered, pulling more and more chunks of trail away. “That’s something Chabbers taught me. It was by destroying chaos. By kicking its ass. By beating it into shape. By slamming it down, so that the only thing left was His order.”

  With that, he dove full-body under Harry’s trail.

  If Harry felt funny before, now he felt hysterical, like something huge and monstrous was right behind him, ready to swallow him whole. He watched, in utmost horror, as his trail rose, lifted out of the terrain, bowing in the center.

  Harry fell. His hands started to shimmy and wobble, like the water in a pond when you toss in a stone. Dizzy, he tried to keep his focus on his trail. Jeremy was standing under it, lifting it over his head, pushing with those powerful muscles of his. The pressure was starting to make it tear.

  Jeremy continued his shredding, yanking huge, oozing hunks out and hurling them this way and that. The more he tore away, the less Harry there was. His hands weren’t just wobbling now, they were vanishing, along with his legs and torso. There wasn’t much Harry could do about it. Armless, legless, he tried to roll toward Jeremy, but even that was fruitless.

  Just as it seemed that the whole world was ready to end, Harry Keller vanished into a whole new nothing.

  14.

  These are the consequences of time.

  Before Harry Keller was born, there was an entire eternity of time without Harry Keller, and without which Harry Keller would never have been. But once Harry Keller was born, there Harry Keller was. Once Harry Keller died, of course, there’d be a whole other eternity of time without Harry Keller. While it could be argued that the second entire eternity of time wouldn’t be quite the same without there having been a Harry Keller, what could not be argued was the fact that having been born, Harry Keller was, and always would have been.

  Yet here there was no time to speak of, no space, no soul, no sight, no sound, no tree to fall, no forest for it to not fall in. Here there wasn’t, had not, would not, nor could there be, a Harry Keller, because there was no had, no would, no could.

  But there Harry Keller was. Because Harry Keller wasn’t dead. Not yet. Not exactly.

  How? Maybe he was just an idea now, a reference point, driven by momentum or a memory, the memory of fear, or of love for Siara, or for the ethics his father taught him.

  Or maybe he just didn’t know when to quit?

  Or maybe he had to go on.

  Because he couldn’t go on.

  So he went on.

  Am I like Elijah now? I should give her a call. Ask her out for fake coffee. Can I do that without a body? And if I don’t have a body, is this what it’s like to be dead?

  Not knowing many dead, he couldn’t tell. In fact, the only dead he really knew were his parents. The moment he thought of them, their faces floated up from the dark.

  He’d seen his mother in photos, sensed her in the tremble of his father’s voice. But this was the first time he’d just seen her, hanging there, moving neither forward nor back. She was as he’d pictured, only more so: passionate, artistic, fiery, but burning so brightly so often, her energies tripped on each other and folded themselves into madness.

  His father was next to her. He was no less passionate than his mother, no less insane. His fire was different, as if he were a hunter, using his intellect like a spear. It seemed so strange that such a man believed in something as irrational as God. Maybe he was trying to cover all the angles—before the angels covered him.

  Their faces hung there, melting into one another in a way that made Harry feel as though he were looking in a mirror, but that the reflection was more real than he.

  No wonder Harry was crazy. He was alive and so was life. What was that poem Mr. Tippicks quoted once, by that guy, E. T. Something?

  Mankind cannot bear too much reality.

  That was it.

  So his parents were human, crazy, and he forgave and loved them for it.

  As he did, the faces faded. Like the giant clown said, they were a map, a mask, a filter. With his parent-gods gone, he was alone in zero G, maskless, mapless, feeling no difference between h
imself and the dark as he hovered above invisible waters. He churned with them, unburdened as they lapped and crashed, their gentle voices of chaos singing sweetly undisturbed.

  And then he heard a voice. It wasn’t speaking words, ordering the light from the dark, or separating land from sea as if they were quarreling siblings. It wasn’t announcing any plan to shape the void and fill it with purpose.

  It was just laughing.

  It was the same force that had stopped Melody, had made her put down the gun. It was a sad, hearty, serious laugh, a sound that rang though Harry in waves. It shaped the darkness, even though it didn’t mean to, in a way that chastened death.

  So he laughed with it, realizing it had been so silly to be alive, to have a shape at all, but at the same time, terribly endearing. Now it was easy to let it all go. His fear went, then his love. All desire shivered and faded, washing away the last shimmering borders of self. At the same moment Harry Keller stopped being afraid of life, because it was absurd, he fell hopelessly in love with it, because it was absurd.

  The waters shook, the darkness crumbled, and there was light.

  He was back in A-Time. And though it felt as if he’d been gone an eternity, he had to admit, it might have been just a moment.

  Harry’s trail, wounded but no longer being shredded, lay back in its place in the rolling terrain. The pieces torn from it crawled like little Quirks back into it, filling in the gaps.

  “Unk! Unk! Unk!” they cried as they worked to make Harry whole.

  Jeremy had failed. Something had stopped him. But what? Where was he? Did a Quirk get him? Did his great big tower fall on him?

  Harry looked around. No, the tower was still there, deadly as ever, the event horizon minutes away. And there was Jeremy, too.