“But are you going to be able to live with that?”
“I have been living with that, one way or another, for months. She was dead, but now she’s not, and that is the way it will always be. So I have two choices.”
“Which are?”
“Find a way to be happy in the face of all that.”
“Or?”
“There is no other choice. I live with it.”
There was no answer for that, and Pandora didn’t try to find one. Sometimes a loving silence is the only useful thing you can offer.
They sat there together for a very long time. The wind died away and there was moonlight on the water. The palm shadows lay on the window. Morning was on the doorstep, but not yet knocking.
Jack turned to her, smiled at her. “Did you meet Annabelle? Or did you meet Pandora?”
“Both. We got along beautifully.”
“Where did she go?”
“Nowhere. She’s right here.”
Another silence, but now of a different kind.
Pandora moved into him, put her arm across his chest, moved in much closer, breathing him in.
“So. In this world, do you love her, or do you love me?”
“Well, which one are you? Are you Pandora, or are you Annabelle?”
“Ask me what my favorite dessert is?”
“I know that one. Chocolate parfait?”
She kissed him, a long lingering kiss. “That was a very good answer.”
departures
Two weeks later, the season changing, Jack and Pandora and Julie Karras flew up to Florissant to attend the burial of the Walker family, in a pretty glade of cottonwoods beside a little river.
Gerald Walker was there, surrounded by friends and family. Four caskets lay in a shaft of sidelong sun, gleaming oak, suspended over the open graves.
Walker saw them, standing at a distance, unwilling to intrude, but feeling that something was owed. He came up the long grassy slope, walking with a cane, still thin, but filling out. His face was etched in grief, and it would stay that way.
“You came,” he said. “Thank you.”
He looked at Julie Karras, also a little thinner and a pale white scar on her temple. She stepped forward, ready to take whatever he had to say. But he just offered his hand, and smiled, a sad smile, but kindly.
“You’re the police officer my daughters attacked. Officer Karras?”
“Yes. I can’t tell you how sorry—”
“I know. I’m glad you’re here. I want to apologize for what my daughters did. I want you to know I have no anger in my heart. I’m glad you’re alive, Officer Karras.”
Julie Karras, touched, found she had nothing to say.
Walker released her hand, looked at Jack and Pandora. “I hear you got her.”
“Yes. We did.”
“Good. Where is she now? She gonna get the chair, or what?”
Pandora looked at Jack, and then came back to Gerald Walker. “No, not the chair.”
“Then what?”
“Time, Mr. Walker. She got time.”
* * * * *
author’s note
The Rules of Engagement with Time
Einstein and Gödel disagreed about the nature of Time, but they both agreed that Newton’s idea—that Time moved in a straightforward direction throughout the universe—was wrong, at least on a quantum level. So writing about Time is fair game, and many good people have tried their hand at it, with varying degrees of success. And now I have, and along the way I learned some Rules of Engagement.
1. Be consistent. There will be contradictions and paradoxes and lots of very smart people will be judging how well you deal with them. So deal with them. Have it clear in your mind what is happening, what has just happened and what will happen because of the first two.
2. Play fair. There is only one way to get your reader to go all the way to the end without throwing your book at the wall. Have an idea how Time works in your story, and stick to it. Convince the reader that it might actually work and your reader will go along with you, if only out of curiosity. Which is wonderful.
3. Your idea about how Time works had better be a good one. In The Shimmer, I deal with the various Time Travel Paradoxes by stealing from a much better mind, and it belonged to Hugh Everett.
He believed—on the quantum level—that each event in Time that could have gone either way actually went both ways, and when it did, a second parallel universe was created, one that was very slightly different from the previous one.
If you take Everett’s view, you dodge the usual paradoxes about how screwing up the past will screw up your own future, because what you are doing is creating a new world that is very much like your previous one, but not quite. So that is the time travel idea in The Shimmer.
Jack and Clete and Selena and Annabelle and Pandora aren’t changing the future they left, they’re changing the one they’re headed for.
Which, by the way, is what we’re all doing, whether we realize it or not.
Carsten Stroud
New Year’s Day 2018
Destin, Florida
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ISBN: 9781489265449
TITLE: THE SHIMMER
First Australian Publication 2018
Copyright © 2018 Carsten Stroud
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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