by R. A. Rock
“I don’t have much time,” I said, as I gave her a hug. “Long story short, Yumi and I created a construct of a construct.”
Gracie’s eyebrows nearly hit her hairline.
“Don’t say it,” I said, holding up my hands. “It was the only way I could be sure she wouldn’t melt my mind.”
“I get it,” she said, shaking her head. “Like Audrey said, you two never do things by half, do you?”
“So what do you need help with?”
She shrugged helplessly.
“Controlling my powers. I’m afraid if I try teleporting us again, we’ll end up in the ground or a hundred feet in the air. And I will have killed us all. It’s a miracle we only landed four feet in the air when I teleported us without any kind of control, even so, Audrey twisted her ankle when we fell.”
“Okay, I’m going to go talk to Yumi and then I’ll contact you again.”
“Good. I’m glad you’re okay, Chad. We were worried about you two.”
“I’m glad you’re okay, too,” I said. “I really hate not being able to use our powers.”
She nodded.
“I have to go now but I’ll contact you soon, okay?”
“Okay, please be careful, Chad,” she said. “You know there’s nothing more dangerous for a mind than a construct of a construct that collapses.”
“I know,” I said. “I’ll be careful. Don’t worry. We’ll get you guys back.”
Though I had no idea how.
Pastoral
Chad
I crawled back through the brick and Yumi was there to help me stand up and brush the dust off of me. I could tell she had been worried but was trying not to show it.
“I found them,” I said.
“Where are they?”
“Niagara Falls.”
“Seriously?”
I nodded.
“Grace is terrified she’s going to kill them all if she tries to teleport them again.”
“It’s a real possibility,” Yumi admitted.
Those people whose ability was teleportation practised for years on inanimate objects. Only at the very end of their training when they had demonstrated control to a hairsbreadth, would they be allowed to teleport themselves. Then and only then, when they showed that they could do that with precision, then they were allowed to teleport other people.
Because nobody wanted only part of them teleported — yes that can happen — or to be teleported into the middle of a tree or another solid object, resulting in instantaneous death.
Gracie had always been the most controlled and meticulous Kinetic in our entire organization. That was why she was allowed to train as a Kinetic surgeon, because her abilities were that precise.
And if she didn’t have control, she could easily miss her mark and land them somewhere that would kill them.
“We need to help her control her power, the way they helped me when I… saved you,” Yumi said, not meeting my eyes.
But preferably without the disastrous consequences.
“Right,” I said. “But how?”
I was distracted for a moment by a book popping off the shelf, floating in the air and beginning to read itself. The voice read in Polish and was vaguely reminiscent of my Dziadek’s.
“Well,” Yumi said, thinking. “Shiv and Audrey alone can’t control Grace. I’m pretty sure we could, though as for that, she’s pretty damn powerful.”
“We could,” I said, feeling confident. “If we made a two person Circle.”
“A Circle?” Yumi squinted at me. “That would mean we would have to link minds.”
“Yes.”
“But you made us jump through all these hoops to protect you from joining minds with me.”
“I know.”
“And now you want me to go out of the construct and join minds with you?”
I huffed out a breath of frustration.
“I know it’s a one hundred and eighty degree turn from what I was saying before. But what else, Tanaka? We don’t have a choice. They’re stuck there so far away it would likely take them months, if not a year to get to us. If they even survived the trip. Meanwhile our chances of fixing the bracelets would slowly dwindle. The others coming back physically is not an option.”
“Okay,” she said, folding her arms over her chest, her delicate black eyebrows drawing together. She didn’t like the idea, but she was listening.
“So that means we need to do what Grace and Shiv did for you. We need to rein in Grace’s powers so that she can teleport them safely. I’ll be the link to Grace and the construct of a construct will keep me safe from her out of control powers.”
“Right.”
“But we don’t have much time, the construct is already becoming irregular,” he said, frowning as a cup of coffee rose out of the floor and a wave of daffodils flowed through the air emerging from one wall and exiting out the other.
“Chad, this is too dangerous,” she said, wrinkling her nose at the fluffy cotton balls dancing along the floor — their movements perfectly synchronized. “If you lose control of the construct it could collapse on you and damage your mind irreparably.”
“As I’ve already pointed out, what is the alternative, Yumi? Being stuck in this time forever? If we don’t have the others, we can’t time travel. And if we get stuck here and they’re there, we might never see Grace, Shiv, and Audrey again.”
“Fine,” she said, a pained look on her face.
“Okay. Then you and I need to join minds and make a Circle. That way we can control Grace’s powers while she teleports them.”
“Are you sure? What about… I’m very partial to my brain and I don’t want it melted?” she said, lowering her voice in an attempt to imitate me.
I snorted. I couldn’t help it. Her impression of me was terrible but somehow funny at the same time. Maybe it was the stress of the situation. I tried to breathe deeply and not lose it.
“Are you sure that you’re back in control?” I said, searching her eyes. “You talked for an entire hour trying to convince me of the fact that you are.”
“I am,” she said, not sounding one hundred percent confident.
“You don’t sound sure.”
“I’m pretty sure.”
“Pretty sure means only half my mind gets melted?” I said, wincing.
She looked scared.
“I already messed up your mind enough, Chad. If I hurt you again…” She swallowed, shaking her head. “I don’t know if I could handle it. I’m not sure it’s worth it.”
“Yumi,” I said, taking her hands and trying to convey how few options we had in this matter. “I don’t think we have a choice. Unless you want to settle down in 2020 and never see the others again, then we have to do this.”
The thought was briefly enticing. I imagined us building a little cabin and falling back in love and living out our lives growing vegetables in a garden and hunting and…
Yumi rolled her eyes having caught my thought, though there was a tiny half-smile on her face.
“That’s a bit pastoral for us, isn’t it?” she said, sending me a memory of a huge starship fighter battle we had been in once.
The scene was so different that I couldn’t think of anything that was more opposite of what I had just been imagining. But the strange thing was that no matter what time I was in, as long as Yumi was there, I felt like everything would be alright. Whether it was in the far distant future where spaceships, teleportation, and faster than light travel were common place — or here where tech was gone and there wasn’t even any civilization. That’s why it was such a damn shame that we had ruined what we had.
“Chad…” she said, her eyes sad. Oops. She had heard the entirety of that thought. Shit. I focused on the matter at hand. We needed to do this. We didn’t have a choice.
“If we don’t do this, then we may never get home or see Grace, Shiv, and Audrey again.”
“You know I don’t want that,” she said, conflicted.
�
��Then I trust you not to melt my mind.”
“Oh God,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut.
“Tanaka, look at me.”
She opened her eyes again.
“I trust you. Let’s make a Circle.”
***
Yumi
I popped out of the construct of his public mind and went straight into his real public mind, ready to link up.
Then I stopped — frozen with indecision.
Chad should not trust me.
I know that I had said that I was in control before. And I know I had been trying to convince him to link minds with me. But I didn’t want to anymore. Not now that he had actually given me permission to do it and there was a real chance I might liquify his brains.
But he had made it quite clear that we didn’t have a choice. And he was right. What if I killed him, though? I couldn’t handle it. I didn’t care if he never got back together with me. I couldn’t live without him. And I wouldn’t.
I felt resolve fill me.
Fine. I would do this. But if he died, then I would kill myself.
Somehow I found this thought comforting.
Because I’m fucked up like that.
“No way, Tanaka,” Chad’s voice came through sounding tinny because it was coming from the construct. “Promise me that if I die you won’t kill yourself.”
“Not going to happen, Red,” I said. “You want to do this or not?”
“Fine,” he said. And his voice sounded irritated but I could sense that he was glad I didn’t want to live without him.
God, we were so messed up.
And perfect for each other.
Too bad we had screwed it all up.
“Here we go,” I said, pulling in all my control and power. And with a deep breath, I slowly began to link minds with Chad.
Winnipeg
Yumi
The mental procedure to help Grace control her powers and allow her to teleport them all back had been relatively straight forward after that.
And when Chad and I woke up and saw the three of them standing there in the little bedroom in the abandoned farm house, I have to admit that I might have cried a bit. The stress of the situation had been too much. There were hugs all around and I’ve never been so glad to see my friends.
After a bunch of argument, Chad allowed Gracie to transport us all the remaining distance so that we would arrive just outside of Winnipeg. We only had about an hour’s walk to arrive at the Perimeter highway, which in this time was a road that circled the whole city — hence the name.
“Everyone’s still holding their shields, right?” I said, checking again as I periodically did. Everyone nodded.
“Well, Audrey,” Chad said, turning his head to talk to Audrey who was getting a piggy back because she couldn’t walk on her injured ankle. “Now you can say that you’ve seen one of the greatest sights that Earth has to offer. What did you think?”
“It was pretty impressive,” she said, reluctantly.
“We were starting to wonder if we’d have to walk back to Winnipeg when you showed up,” Shiv said, his face dismayed at the thought of trying to go on foot or even by canoe from Niagara Falls to Winnipeg.
I wasn’t sure how long it took the voyageurs that had travelled those distances regularly — months, probably — but it would no doubt have taken these three a lot longer. Thank goodness we had figured out how to help Gracie’s control her powers so she could teleport them.
“And what happened to you two, while we were honeymooning at Niagara Falls,” Grace said with a smirk.
“Honeymooning?” I said, glancing at Grace speculatively and hoping that she wasn’t noticing my blush as I mentioned marriage. “Thought you had to be married to go on a honeymoon.”
“Whatever,” Grace said. “It’s the honeymoon capital of the world. We were honeymooning.”
Audrey rolled her eyes, whereas Shiv looked quite well satisfied with himself.
Hm. Grace would be spilling details later.
For now, I tried to think how to tell what had happened without getting into too much of the emotional messiness. The sun was beginning its descent towards the horizon and the cheerful orange light had the opposite effect on me, giving me a bleak, empty feeling as I watched the sun start to disappear.
“Well, when you accidentally teleported the three of you a Plague Carrier had come up to us.”
“You mean that crazy looking guy?” Shiv said with a shudder. “He was seriously creepy.”
Chad nodded vehemently and Audrey pulled her head back so he didn’t bump her in the nose.
“That’s what those crazy people are called around here,” Chad said. “Plague Carriers. So, we ran from him but then hundreds of them surrounded us. It was like they were coming out of the sand itself.”
Everyone stared at him.
“We thought we were going to die.”
“Oh my God,” Grace said, putting her hand over her mouth in dismay. “And we were messing around at Niagara Falls.”
“But then Chad started singing and mesmerized them,” I said, sure he would downplay how he had saved our lives by keeping them away until the Survivors showed up.
“Are you kidding?” Shiv said, giving Chad a look.
“Well, you know what they say about music and beasts,” Chad said, with a wink. “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.”
“And then this band of — Survivors, they call themselves — came up and chased off the Plague Carriers. And saved us,” I continued the narrative.
“Really?” Audrey said, incredulous.
“Yes,” Chad said. “But there was a catch…”
We had them all dying to know what happened next, so the storyteller in him had kicked in and he drew out the drama.
“What sort of catch?” Shiv said.
“We had to go with them and be auctioned off to the highest bidder.”
“What?” Grace cried, horrified. “As a slave?”
I shook my head, picking up the thread of the story.
“As a husband or wife. Turns out that the Survivors place a very high value on the institution of marriage. So, they auctioned me off to the highest bidder.”
“Yumi.” Even Audrey was appalled by now.
“Except that I am brilliant,” Chad went on.
“And he saved me,” I said, giving him an admiring glance. He really had been brilliant. “He saved us.”
“How?” Gracie was bouncing on her toes, dying to hear how the story turned out.
“I told them she was my wife,” he said, and as he said it again, our eyes met and electricity arced between us.
“And?”
“And they believe in marriage so strongly that they wouldn’t make us break our vows.”
Yeah, we didn’t need any help with breaking our vows. We managed that quite fine on our own, I thought as a smidge of bitterness seeped back into my heart where I had thought forgiveness now reigned supreme. Whatever happened to swearing to stay together through everything… till death do us part? Had the words meant so little when we said them?
Shiv and Audrey both looked skeptical.
“You’re sure that’s why they let you go? Seems unlikely.”
“You know what I think?” Chad said, looking thoughtful.
“What?” Grace said, curious.
“I think that when everything around you crumbles to dust and the life and the world you thought were going to be there forever… suddenly disappear, I think that the only thing to hold on to is the people that you care about.” He looked around at the rest of us, his eyes serious. “And that’s what the Survivor community is all about. It’s a bunch of people just surviving and spending time with their loved ones. I don’t think it’s so surprising or unlikely.”
“True,” Shiv said, convinced. “When we thought that you guys were a year’s travel away and we might never see you again, all I wanted was for the five of us to be back together. Nothing else mattered.”
“M
e too,” Grace added.
“Me three,” Audrey said, and I was surprised at this show of sentiment from her.
“Let’s pick up the pace,” Grace suggested. “Any time now, we should see those buildings. What did they call them? Cloud cutters?”
“Sky scrapers,” Chad corrected her.
“Right. Winnipeg has a bunch of those sky scrapers, right? So, we should see them soon.”
“That’s fine as long as we’re on guard for any threats,” I added, probably bumming them out based on their long faces. But it was true. We did need to be careful. Sure, Matt and Nessa had been friendly and helpful. But the other people we had met so far had only wanted to hurt us or use us. And we couldn’t let that happen. It wasn’t on my agenda for today. So we needed to be wary.
“Any minute now,” Grace said, squinting in the direction where they should be.
But no sky scrapers appeared. The sun dropped lower and lower, tinting everything with scarlet, orange, and yellow. The shadows lengthened but we didn’t see any big buildings.
We began to walk more quickly, following the river. It was the same riverbed that Chad and I had walked in when we left the desert. It slowed to a trickle and eventually dried up when it arrived at The Wastelands.
“Soon,” Grace said, though I could tell she was confused.
After a half an hour, we were all worried.
“Could it be that we’re not where we think we are?” I said to Shiv.
He shook his head.
“There is no river this big that runs through Manitoba other than the Red River.”
“Hm. What about if the big buildings had been blown up?” Audrey suggested. This was plausible and gave us all a sense of hope — false hope, it turned out.
Finally we were forced to stop at the confluence of two rivers. Audrey slid to the ground and Chad stretched his arms over his head, then dropped them to his side.
“Okay, I’m totally confused now,” Grace said. “What river is this that crosses the Red?”
“Oh no,” Chad said, appalled. He had figured it out about the same time as I had. The fresh scent of the water blowing past on the light breeze ought to have been comforting but because of what it meant, it was nothing but upsetting.
