Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 114

by Neil Clarke

  “Is there anything to do?” the android said.

  I squinted at the back of its skull.

  “On Leviathan,” the android continued, “I was to have tasks.”

  “This isn’t Leviathan.”

  The Companion said, “Would you like to talk about your tasks?”

  “If anyone wants to hear about them, yes.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Okay. I’m going out to secure the rover.” I yanked on my suit and helmet and got out of there. I had suited up so fast, I forgot to strap on the utility belt with its holstered laser. The rover didn’t need any securing. I’d just wanted to escape from the crowded shelter. Which was ridiculous. The shelter was mine. The Companion was nothing but a reflection, and the android a reflection of a reflection.

  After staggering around in the storm for a few minutes, I returned to the shelter. But when I tried to open the outer door, it wouldn’t budge.

  I activated the comlink. “Companion?”

  “Yes?”

  “The door won’t open.”

  “I know.”

  Wind buffeted me and I staggered sideways. “That’s wonderful that you know. Now could you open it, please?”

  Silence.

  “Companion?”

  “The android has disabled the lock.”

  “What? Well, make it un-disable it.”

  “I’m sorry, Badar.”

  “This is ridiculous. Make the android let me in.”

  “We’re talking about it.”

  I stared at the wind-and-grit-polished surface of the outer door, which held my own blurred reflection. My frustration boiled over, and I pounded the door with my fist. It hurt, so I stopped. Fine. I’d cut my way in. I reached for the laser—and it wasn’t there. Behind me, the rover hunkered in a fury of blowing grit and dust. It was my only option.

  Inside the rover’s cab I removed my helmet. A haze of abrasive dust lingered. Coughing, I cranked the scrubbers until the air cleared. After that, there was nothing to do. I had food and potable water sufficient for a three-day excursion. But there was no place to excursion to. I considered ramming the rover into the shelter, smashing open the outer door. But I’d never be able to repair the damage.

  To keep the batts charged, I periodically ran the engine. And I rationed the food and water. Sooner or later, though, it would all run out. Fuel, battery, water, food. Air. I was alone on Kepler-186f, but then I’d always been alone, seperated by choice from friends and family, cut off, even, from the emotional boobytraps in my own psyche. When my mother died, I’d fled a houseful of weeping relatives and hid in the backseat of the family vehicle. I wanted to move away from pain. Eventually, someone found me and made me come in.

  The storm subsided. The cloud cover cleared, and Kepler’s muted energy shone through. On Kepler-186f it was always twilight, except when it was full dark. I looked towards the shelter. Light filtered up from the living quarters and softly illuminated the observation dome. It was a homey light, but nobody was going to find me and make me come in.

  I wondered what they were talking about inside the shelter. I wondered if I was already forgotten—by myselves. Emotion tightened across my chest. I opened a comlink to the Companion, but at first I couldn’t speak. Finally I said, “Please. I want to come in.”

  Silence resonated through the link. The Companion needed a question.

  “Companion, can I come home?”

  After a minute, she replied, “Are you running out of air?”

  “No.” I swallowed. “I’m . . . lonely.”

  Another moment, then, “The outer door is unlocked, Badar.”

  About the Author

  In 2001, Jack Skillingstead submitted a story to Stephen King’s “On Writing” contest. He won—and not long afterward began selling regularly to major science fiction and fantasy markets. To date he has sold forty stories to various magazines, Year’s Best volumes and original anthologies. In 2003 his story “Dead Worlds” was a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Award and in 2009 his novel Life on The Preservation was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. Jack lives in Seattle with his wife, writer Nancy Kress.

  Seven Cups of Coffee

  A.C. Wise

  One

  Here, in this now, our first cup of coffee is still in your future. It’s 1941, and you’ve been married to your husband for two years, three months, and seven days. He doesn’t know about the way you look at the women in fashion magazines and clothing catalogs. The way you find yourself imagining how the drape of this skirt, the brush of that hemline, would feel against their skin in particular. You barely admit to yourself the way your fingers want to stray to the back of your neck, the outline of your collarbone, the shape of your mouth when you look at them. Your skin flushes hot, only partly shame, and you put the pages away quickly, telling yourself it’s only your imagination, the flutter deep in your belly when you look at them.

  They are too pretty, too perfect, the women in those magazines and catalogs. It’s only that you want to be them. You want hair that never strays out of place, and lips that stay bright and unsmudged all day long. Nothing else.

  After the first cup of coffee, which is in your future and my past, everything will change. It is the beginning of the end for you. For me, in this now, in every now I’ve found yet, it is already too late. I can’t change anything, I can’t fix anything. I’ve tried. But I’m not giving up. Ever. I will not give up on us, on you.

  Two

  It is 1983 and I’m sitting across from a woman who hasn’t given me her real name, saying only to call her Scarlett. I’m here because I answered a want ad for a cleaning woman. I’m here because I’m running out of options; I have nowhere else to go.

  Scarlett smirks, the cat after the canary. I should leave, but the steaming cup of coffee between my hands, followed by the plate piled high with fluffy eggs, greasy bacon, and crisp golden toast, keeps me in place. I haven’t had more than saltines and the last dregs of Cheez Whiz in the now-empty jar over the past three days. And Scarlett is buying.

  “Time travel,” she says, and I’m sure I misheard, but I don’t stop shoveling food in my mouth to check.

  In this now, I haven’t yet seen her time machine. I’ve lived my life linearly, scrounging odd jobs and crashing on friends’ couches. In this now, my parents want nothing to do with me—words like “no daughter of mine” and “not under my roof” still ringing in my ears, better at least than my mother’s tearful, “if you just try” and “you’re so pretty, girls like you don’t have to be . . . that way.”

  In this now, the closest I’ve gotten to time travel is occasionally getting high—losing minutes or hours, or slowing everything down, stretching it out when it gets to be too much and I don’t want to think about the hole where my family used to be. I have no idea yet what is and isn’t possible. How going into the past or the future can rip a person apart in ways they never imagined, ways they can’t see until it’s far too late.

  I haven’t met you yet, not in this here and now. All I know is that I’m down to almost my last saltine. My on-again-off-again girlfriend called it off for good and kicked me out, and I desperately need a job. So ‘cleaning woman’ sounds pretty good right about now.

  Three

  It is 1945, and you are pregnant with your first child. The first one you’re counting that is—at least out loud. There was a miscarriage, just over a year ago, but you’re trying not to think about that. You’re trying to move on, think positive thoughts, look ahead to the future so bright and full of promise.

  This time, everything will be okay. You’re sure of it. You glow softly with the knowledge, even though sometimes you can still smell the bleach—taste it, the scent thick at the back of your throat—burning as you scrub blood from white tile. This time, things will be different. Everything will be the way it is supposed to be, because you love your husband and you are a good wife and you will be a good mother soon, too.

  You’ve stopped subscribing to fashi
on magazines, and when you go to the post office to collect your mail, you tell the clerk to throw the catalogs away. You shop at the new department store downtown with your sister-in-law, and you don’t think about the women in the other changing rooms, pulling silk stockings over the length of their legs and clipping them in place. You don’t think of cotton and wool tugged over their heads, or their hands smoothing the fabric against their hips and bellies. And those long afternoon hours waiting for your husband to get home, sitting by the apartment window, which you have open for the breeze, your skin barely flushes at all, and your thoughts are completely under your control.

  You’ve barely begun to show. You haven’t told your husband yet, just in case. You keep the secret tucked inside your cheek, biting your lips against the fullness of a smile. You’ve always wanted to be a mother. You’ve dreamed of holding your little girl in your arms, singing songs, and making up silly stories so she’ll laugh. You already know you’re going to name her Alice, just like you know for sure she’s going to be a girl, but you keep that knowledge secret, too.

  In this here and now, I don’t know any of this yet, because I haven’t met you. I’m standing on a street corner, holding an anachronistic cup of coffee brought back with me from 1983. I’m blowing on it while I wait, not wanting to burn my tongue, and trying to calm my nerves, distract myself from what I’m about to do.

  It’s snowing. Christmas week and the streetlights and shop windows glow, making each individual snowflake glitter and shine. Any moment now, you’ll come down the street your arms full of packages, not paying attention. You’ll be thinking about the carefully chosen tie for your husband, and the sweater for your sister-in-law. How you’ll wrap everything and place it just so under the Christmas tree. And then, when every present has been opened, you’ll pull out one last package you’ve been keeping hidden and place it in your husband’s hands. A silver rattle, and you’ll tell him what a wonderful father he’ll be.

  With all these thoughts filling up your mind, all I have to do is step out in front of you, just another distracted shopper, my head full of Christmas, not paying attention to where I’m going. I won’t even have to brush your arm, accidental fingertips on the thickness of your wool coat, or nudge your hip with mine as you pass. A simple step, and you’ll move out of my way, miss your footing, and slip into the road just as the number eight bus comes along. And it will be too late for the bus to stop, fish-tailing on the ice. Brakes squealing, and pedestrians gasping as your packages fly through the air—that carefully chosen tie, the beautiful sweater for your sister-in-law, and even the little silver rattle—falling to soak in the slush on the ground.

  Scarlett has told me all this, every last detail she thinks I need to know to make sure everything goes perfectly. That doesn’t include your name, or anything about you, or why it’s so important to make sure the baby in your belly—little Alice who you want so badly to meet and hold in your arms—is never born.

  Without a face or a name, I can pretend it really is an accident. I’m not a murderer, just a clumsy pedestrian. I can collect my cash and choose where and when to live out the rest of my life. That’s what Scarlett promised—do the job, and I get one last trip. Then I never have to see a time machine again if I don’t want to.

  So I’m waiting in the falling snow, blowing on my cup of coffee, and in exactly one minute, you’ll walk down the street toward me. Easy. Simple and clean.

  After all, in this here and now, what are you to me? Nothing. Just a date and a time and a precise location. A step to the left at exactly the right moment. I don’t even know what you look like, not yet. Though in time I will know every detail of your body, where your waist dips toward the curve of your hipbone, the scent of your skin late in the afternoon just before your husband gets home, and the way your lips taste in the bruise-dark hours between three and four a.m. when he’s out of town.

  But for now, I know none of these things. I look at my watch and count silently, my breath steaming in the winter cold. And when the moment comes, I drop my anachronistic cup of coffee and take that one little step to the left, eyes closed, heart pounding, tears hot against the winter cold.

  Four

  It’s 1984, New Year’s Day. I’m shaking, my jaw clenched to keep my teeth from chattering. The diner is warm, the only place open on the entire snowy street. In all its seventeen years, the diner has prided itself on never once being closed.

  The windows steam. I sweat inside my coat, but I can’t bear to remove it. My hands are wrapped around a cup of coffee, but the thought of putting food in my mouth is abhorrent.

  Scarlett slides into the booth across from me—not a hair out of place, her make-up immaculate as always. It’s the same diner where I first met her. She’s still smiling, not quite smirking her cat-with-the-canary look, until she gets a good look at me.

  “I want to go back,” I say. “I changed my mind. I want to undo it. Find someone else if you have to, I don’t care. I’ll give the money back, and I won’t tell anyone. You’ll never see me again, I promise.”

  I expect her eyes to go hard when the words stop, and for a moment they do. Then a real glimmer of regret, a hint of sympathy creeps through. Her hands cover mine, still wrapped around the coffee mug. I wonder about her real name, how she got here, about the shadows under her perfect skin, and the brief flicker of pain behind her eyes.

  She speaks softly, even though we’re the only two in the diner, holding my gaze the entire time.

  “It doesn’t work that way. I’m sorry.”

  I want to spit in her face, call her liar. I want to slap her and make her take the words back, but deep down, I’m afraid they’re true. A time machine isn’t a magic wand. I can’t undo what I’ve done. I made a choice, and now your blood is on my hands.

  I don’t ask again. Instead, I beg Scarlett to at least tell me your name. I have to know. I have to own this thing, fully and completely. If your death is going to be on me for the rest of my life, it will be your death, a specific death, belonging to a real woman, not just a place and a time and a step to the left with eyes closed and tires shrieking in the fresh-fallen snow.

  “It won’t help you sleep at night,” Scarlett says. “In fact, it will only make things worse. Why do that to yourself?”

  “Please,” I say.

  She relents, partway. She tells me your name, and nothing more. Not where to find you before that day in 1945. Not why the child in your belly had to die. I leave the diner pretending that will be enough. I have your name. I can mourn. I can try to make some kind of peace with what I’ve done.

  Five

  It is 2037, February, and the stainless steel screw-top cup from a thermos of coffee is passing back and forth from my mittened hand to the hand of a woman named Mona. Mona is from 1961, hiding out here in the future, another of Scarlett’s ‘cleaning women’. We met here in 2037, coincidentally picking the same year out of all the years Scarlett offered us after our jobs were done. We were both trying to see how far we could run, and recognized something haunted in each other under all the slick, bright neon of a future that wasn’t what we wanted after all.

  “My time, or yours,” I’d said, the cheesiest of pick-up lines.

  We fell into each other hard, not love, but desperation, something to cling to because we were both terrified of being alone inside our skins.

  What we learned together is what we both already knew apart—there is no place far enough that either of us can run. Even this here, this now—where women can love women, where men can kiss each other and vow to spend the rest of their lives together, where people of both or neither genders can live their lives in peace—we can’t be happy. Our pasts are a shadow; we can’t live in all this light until we’ve found a way to undo what we’ve done. Then, maybe then, we would deserve a future like this one.

  The coffee passing between us is spiked liberally with brandy, the last of the bottle drunk before we set out into the cold. We’re here to sneak into Scarlett’s
time machine, stalling and stamping our feet against the cold as we gather courage. This is another thing we’ve learned. There has always been a time machine here. As far as we know, there always will be one. Whether Scarlett built it or found it doesn’t matter. What matters is we’ve seen her operate it just enough times between us to know how it’s done.

  I boost Mona up first, then scramble over the chain link fence behind her. From this angle, the time machine looks like nothing, a strange fragment of light refracted in a way it shouldn’t be, a bend of the universe. Not even a machine, but time folded somehow, impossible, but possible, because both of us are here.

  This is goodbye, but we don’t say it aloud. Mona goes first, back to 1961, I assume, though I never asked. Just like she never asked me where I was running. She slips into the machine that isn’t a machine and it unfolds, throwing loops of light around her body so bright I have to shade my eyes. Then she’s gone.

  I drink the last of the coffee in the thermos, down to the dregs, and leave the stainless steel screw-top cup behind. Deep breath, and I step forward. Light encompasses me, the machine hurtling me backward through the years as though it doesn’t care that my one and only goal is to unravel time.

  Six

  It’s 1943, before your first child, the one you never even had the chance to name. Before the bleach and the chemical sting behind your eyes, burning your skin as you scrubbed and scrubbed the bathroom floor. You still subscribe to fashion magazines in this here and now. In this here and now, you know what my fingers feel like sliding silk stockings down the length of your calves, bunching cotton and wool in my fists and rucking it up over your hips and your belly.

  Our first cup of coffee is in your past, my past. And I know that in the bruise-dark hours between 3 and 4 a.m., your mouth tastes like plums.

  I have tried every way I know to convince you to run away with me. I’ve played out every scenario I can imagine, trying to undo the future, change what I haven’t yet done, what I will do, what I have always done, in my past and your future.