In Times Like These: eBook Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by Nathan Van Coops

  My mind settles on a desert. Serene and calm, but I’ve seen lots of deserts. The Mojave, Egypt. Egypt was a good memory. The buildings of clay and the lush green trees around the river.

  Suddenly my portal window opens, only this time, I’m not looking through a portal; I’m in the scene. I’m looking out at a young Egyptian girl gesturing for me to follow. Viznir next to me. Viznir. Still alive. I catch a glimpse of my own hands, and realize that I am inside my own head again. Holy crap. I’m back! But there is someone else here, too. It’s him. Me.

  “Benjamin!” I shout to him, elated at my success and desperate to get his attention. Even though I’m seeing through his eyes, my other self feels far off. Like I’m shouting across a chasm. I’m simultaneously inside the memory and trying to hold onto the Neverwhere at the same time. “Benjamin Travers!” For a moment I sense his recognition. He knows I’m here. Then the window collapses. The other consciousness crumbles into darkness. I can feel myself falling and I retreat from the vision instinctively.

  Whoa.

  I’m back in my apartment, but he heard me. The déjà vu hits me. I remember that moment.

  It was me. It was me the whole time.

  Emboldened by this glimpse of success, I reach out again, eyes closed, searching memories. “Ben? Are you there?” The question seems to bounce around my own mind, searching for a place to land. My memories are still too unfocused. I glance off them, careening through my own recent past. I reach for my other self again, but it’s like night swimming under water. I’m feeling my way forward more than seeing. There are no landmarks in this realm of consciousness, no guideposts to lead me to the proper threads. He’s there, somehow, but I can’t help but think I’m just a misplaced dream to him. He hasn’t recognized me yet.

  I keep my eyes shut tight, not trying to hold myself in the memory of my apartment any longer. I let go of the Neverwhere. I think he is drifting too. For a moment I see him, floating. Swimming? No. Drifting unconscious through space. I shout to him again but he can’t hear me. I get the vague sense he’s seen me. We’re on the verge of contact, but something has distracted him, something in the real world. A woman’s voice.

  “Oxygen levels at forty percent.”

  Claire.

  The synthetic voice triggers a pang of complicated emotions inside me. Fear of dying alone, gratitude that in that real moment floating through space that there was someone to talk to. If only I had that now.

  The other me is gone again. Awake. Back in reality. I reach for him, but can’t bridge the distance. This bouncing from one random memory to another isn’t working. I need to find another avenue, a moment when his mind was open to new possibilities—another dream or moment of reflection. Where else could he hear me?

  Probing the darkness, I search for another outlet. Any outlet.

  Then, like a light in the darkness, the window opens again. I’m seeing a hallway. There is a strange little man in overalls who doesn’t seem quite real. The other me is retreating from him, running into a hallway. Alone. Finally alone.

  “Ben,” I reach out for him.

  “WHAT!” He yells back. “WHAT NOW?”

  Holy shit. Did he really hear that?.

  “Ben, can you hear me?” I question this apparition, too overjoyed to believe it.

  “Ben? I hear you. Where are you?” His voice is distant but clear.

  Oh my God. What now? I have so incredibly much to ask him. So much I need to know. “Where are you?” I realize belatedly that he had asked me the same thing.

  “I’m here. I’m at the Academy in 2150, where are you?” He seems intent on listening but is straining at the same time. At least I haven’t knocked him unconscious this time. “What are you trying to tell me? What happened to you?”

  I’m almost too excited, too elated that he can hear me to even formulate a sentence. I try to focus on the items of most importance, remembering the cemetery and Benny. “Look, you need to protect Mym. Keep her from danger. There is another version of us. He’s, I don’t know how to describe him . . .”

  “Speak louder! I can’t quite hear.”

  The request throws me off. It sounds farther away somehow. Shit. Am I losing him?

  I try to focus on the other me, but the harder I try, the more the connection slips away. My apprehension forcing it farther from my grasp. “Ben? Can you still hear me?” I get a sudden vision of the actor from the Verizon TV ads. The memory of a guy in a charcoal, zip-up jacket and glasses, testing out cellular phone reception. “Can you hear me now?” he asks. And just like that, my concentration is broken.

  Damn it.

  I try to block the inane advertisement from my mind and get back to my other self, but like a set of catchy pop music lyrics, the more I try to displace the image of the Verizon guy, the more persistent he becomes.

  You son of a bitch.

  Finally I give up.

  I’m back in the memory of my apartment. I’m frustrated but happy at the same time. I made contact. I may have caused my other self to black out a few times in the process, but I’m making progress.

  It’s an odd thing to have multiple memories of the same events. In life, I lived those blackouts during the chronothon. I can clearly recall the confusion I felt when some otherworldly voice came out of nowhere and called to me. I was scared, but I also got the message. Now I’m the one on the other side.

  I still don’t know how another version of me is alive and walking around in that stairwell, but I’m glad he is. Last I knew I was dead, so whoever changed that certainly had the element of surprise. If I ever figure out this communication with my other self business, I’m hoping I can clear up that mystery. Right now I have a different puzzle to solve.

  I’m trying to get back in touch with this surviving version of myself, but don’t know where he’s headed. What is he doing in 2150, and more importantly, where is he heading next? If I’m going to have any chance of communicating with him, it would help to know where to look.

  I ruminate on the problem for a little while, but no obvious answers surface. Whatever he’s doing, he’s at least open to talking to me. The other one, Benji, didn’t even blink at my attempts to contact him. This one though, he was listening. He knows who I am. It may be that it’s up to him now to find me, and not the other way around.

  I sit in the silence, listening, hoping that somewhere out there, other me is finding his way through. I’m nervous with anticipation. What can he do? Will he look for some kind of medium? Some method of communing with the dead? Should I be practicing my Ouija board spelling?

  There is a pattering noise coming from outside—raindrops flung sideways against the windowpanes. Moving to the window, I take in the darkening view of my neighborhood. Water has overtaken the streets again, at least a few feet deep. It seems my memory is competing against one in which the homes around me are deteriorating. Zurvan’s future. The view gives me a shiver of anxiety, remembering my previous encounter with the owner of this memory. The changes haunt the corners of my vision, houses burnt to hollow shells or collapsed by the erosion of wind and water. They flicker in their ruined forms until I look directly at them, turn them solid and whole again with the power of my memory. I’ve lived in this apartment for years now. There are few aspects of this part of the neighborhood that have escaped my notice.

  When I don’t see Zurvan anywhere in view, I press my hands to the windows and concentrate on my surroundings. He may know this place as flood and storm but for me it’s mostly lived up to its nickname, “The Sunshine City.” Concentrating on a patch of the street, I use my memory, pushing the invading floodwaters away, restoring first my driveway and then the street itself, turning it to dry, sunlit concrete once more.

  The victory makes me smile. The turbaned man-god is not the only one with power here. In a realm stitched together from memory, the strongest memory will hold fast. This is home turf for me and, even if I’m trapped here, I don’t intend to live in fear. Holding back the floodwaters
is a small victory, but it buoys my courage. I abandon the apartment and trot downstairs, still dry despite the waters in the streets around me. I keep a circle of concrete clear ahead of me as I walk, repelling the rain and striding into the street, reveling in the view of the waters retreating before me. I am Moses parting the Red Sea.

  Rounding the corner I get an unobstructed view of the ruined downtown skyline. It’s at least twice as high as it was in my time. The disparity makes me waver. Will he feel me here? Should I be hiding, escaping the ruin of this place? The water around my feet creeps toward me again as if sensing my weakening resolve. I force it away, not willing to give in to this bleak apocalyptic world. I study the skyline with curiosity, attempting to read the clues in its existence. It’s clearly the future, a time in the city’s history when it fell from grace.

  St. Petersburg must have blossomed in the centuries after mine. The now ruined skyline is the shell of the bold and vibrant city I briefly saw before the girl in the church disappeared. The vast wings of the solar array lean out toward the bay, roughly where the city pier ought to be. It’s shot through with holes—cables and shredded plastic dangling from the outstretched arms like spider webs.

  I wonder what he’s up to now?

  I consider my options and move west, headed toward Fourth Street again and the site of my previous encounter with Zurvan. The fact that he tried to annihilate my mind the last time is not lost on me. I’m not a complete idiot. I have a plan. Sort of.

  I make a list of memories in my mind that I don’t think Zurvan could follow me to. There needs to be some sort of escape route, in case he decides to suffocate my soul again. Running away. That’s the best I’ve got at the moment. I’m not a glutton for punishment, but I need answers and I don’t think I’m going to find them in my apartment.

  According to Benny, Zurvan is communicating with someone in the real world. If he can do it, then it stands to reason that I can too. Now that I know there is someone on the other side attempting to reach me, the idea seems far more plausible. If I can see what Zurvan does, perhaps I can duplicate the process and get a message to my other self. It could mean the difference between futures—bare green grass, or a headstone with Mym’s name on it.

  Close to Fourth Street I let the waters creep in on me again. I reduce my bubble of dry land until it only encompasses the ground I’m walking on and push onward, doing my best not to make my presence known.

  There are differences in time again. Where previously I had been occupying a time period with a Chase bank and a Tijuana Flats Mexican restaurant, I’m looking at the ruined church with the central arched room raised high enough to be above the floodwaters. The adjustments were certainly not made by me, so I know Zurvan is near.

  Once again a fire is burning in the center of the little arched room. I hide this time, climbing a pile of ruins inside the building next door. The numerous holes and windows offer ample visibility of the scene below.

  I don’t have long to wait.

  The dark man in the flowing, sand-colored robes appears from the far side of the ruined church and mounts the steps to the raised platform. He’s producing a cloud of smoke around himself somehow. He has brought something with him that looks like a burlap sack. When he sets it down, I see that it’s filled with wood and kindling. He feeds the flames at the center of the room, building them to a steady roar. After he has made his additions and seems satisfied, he produces a metal object on a chain from one of his voluminous sleeves. I realize this is where the smoke has been issuing from and recognize the item as an incensor of the type priests use in blessings. He lifts the top on the incensor and blows on the coals, producing even more smoke in the process. He passes the incensor around the room, swinging it back and forth before finally placing it in a corner of the room to smolder.

  Satisfied with his preparations, Zurvan begins pacing back and forth in front of the fire bowl. The sound of his chanting reaches my hiding place, but is in a language I don’t understand. Nothing happens for a long while, but he continues to pace. I settle into a seated position to avoid having to stoop at the hole in the wall I’m peering through. I’m not tired or cramped. It is force of habit more than anything that is driving my actions. When I get settled, I look back through the hole and am startled by the presence of someone new. A boy has appeared in the fiery room, seemingly from nowhere.

  Scrambling back to my knees, I study the new arrival. He’s facing away from me, but from his build he looks young, perhaps sixteen. Zurvan has stopped his pacing. He is staring at the young man. There is something familiar and modern about the boy, even though he is dressed in robes very similar to Zurvan’s. He has an eagerness in his movements—awe at being here. If he’s dead, like me, he doesn’t seem especially upset about it. To the contrary, as he falls to his knees in front of the robed man and the fire bowl, he looks the epitome of a devoted disciple.

  “Oh, Great One,” the boy exclaims in English. “You honor me with your presence.” He prostrates himself at this. “All the brethren praise you and await your wisdom.”

  The voice reminds me of someone, but I can’t remember who. I wish I could see his face. I get up and creep sideways in the ruined building, trying to find a chink in the wall offering a better angle.

  Zurvan steps closer to the young man and stands next to the bowl of fire. “What news do you bring, disciple?”

  The young man lifts his forehead from the surface of the platform and settles back onto his heels, but keeps his face down, eyes fixed on Zurvan’s feet, his hands clasped in supplication in front of him. He begins to recite what is clearly a memorized speech. Unlike the girl who had sung her message, he delivers it in a steady and calm manner. “Elgin the Enduring bids you greeting and sends his deepest respect. He honors you with all the days of his never-ending years. The brethren of the Eternal Line of Gnomon likewise honor you with every moment of their—”

  “Enough of this blandishment,” Zurvan says. “What does Elgin have for excuses now? He stalls his promised deliverance and thinks to appease me with flattery and homage. I grow impatient with his lack of progress.”

  The young man is not prepared for this interruption. He attempts to recover his place in his speech, stammering a few words before Zurvan squats in front of him. “What news of the Alpha, and the scientist? Why does Elgin delay his action? I wallow in this drudgery while he placates me with words and inactivity.”

  The boy fumbles for an answer in his memory, searching for a response to this line of questioning. “The Eternal Line of Gnomon honors your greatness and knows that you are the true lord of space and time. This finite state of your imprisonment is but a sliver of a moment. The great river of time—”

  “The Eternal Line of Gnomon can presume to lecture me on the realities of the Neverwhere on the day you all arrive to sample them for yourselves. Until then, my own counsel will I keep on the nature of time in this forsaken land,” Zurvan growls, rising to a standing position and leering down at the boy. “If Elgin wishes to delay my deliverance, he need not send me more groveling children. He names himself an Eternal, but he is youthful in his ignorance and ineptitude.”

  “We have located the Lost Star, sir,” the boy blurts out. “We are ready for its arrival.”

  Zurvan smiles at this. “Ah. Finally we get to the point. You’ve made preparations? You have the power to harness it?”

  “Yes, sir. The brethren are in position now and will acquire the Lost Star. We also have the device to control it.”

  The man paces around the bowl of fire, the sweeping of his robes fanning the flames. “This message pleases me. I can begin to make plans.” He pauses to stare into the glow before returning his attention to the kneeling young man. “I suppose you have lived at the temple for your training. How long have you been a disciple of The Eternals, boy?”

  “If it pleases you, my lord, I have been studying your words on my own. I sought out the brethren and joined their cause. I wish to gain the wisdom of your
eternal greatness.”

  “My wisdom?” Zurvan scoffs. “You have no way of knowing whom you really speak to, disciple. You suffer the scourge of distance. Your eagerness to know the ancient ways cannot bridge the chasm of time that lies between your millennium and mine. More great truths have been lost to the shifting sands of those passing centuries than ever emerged again. You are a worm crawling inside the sun-bleached skull of an ox, seeking to divine its thoughts.”

  The boy finally looks up far enough for me to see his face. His expression is sincere, eager, trusting. I’d swear I know him, but I can’t quite place his voice. He maintains his devout posture, but lifts his head to observe the robed prophet, reciting another of his memorized speeches. “Oh, Great Zurvan, we know that when you return, you will right the wrongs of our world and give us a new and golden beginning. We trust in your justice and your promised reward.”

  Jonah. God, he looks like Jonah Sprocket!

  The bearded man looks the boy in the face, his own expression seeming to soften with pity at the state of the young man’s devotion. “I will indeed repay those who deserve justice. And my wrath. That much you can be assured of. Tell me, disciple, did Elgin tell you what would happen to you in this place?”

  Not Jonah. Jay. Puberty has changed his voice, but this is the older version of the boy I know.

  Jay is trembling slightly now. “My Lord Elgin told me that we do great honor to the brethren by bearing his greetings to you and that my reward would be unending joy in your presence. I would join those who have come to you before me and we will be in your exalted company upon your return.”

  Zurvan considers the young man thoughtfully. “It would seem your decision has been made for you. I cannot speak to joy, because I have found none in this place, but one thing I can offer you is my mercy. In return for your sacrifice in coming here, I will not subject you to the unending drudgery of this place. Consider this small mercy my gift to you.” As he says this, he extends his hand out over the young man’s prone form. The boy suddenly goes rigid, jerking upright.