“The question is, do they get along?” said Twenty-Seven. “Put her in Lilah’s old apartment and it works out okay. They argue in spurts, but it blows by pretty fast if you ignore it. Don’t ever get involved or take sides and you’ll be okay. Mom ends up staying for a week.”
Sitting back on the couch, they put their feet up on the coffee table. Twenty-Seven ran a fingernail along the edge of the label on his beer bottle, then looked at Diesel. “How is the year of growth starting out?”
“The humiliation is deep and personal,” said Diesel, “and I’m only a month into it.”
A month ago, Diesel became Twenty-Six, Twenty-Six became Twenty-Seven, and so on up to Fifty-Eight. They’d lost the new Fifty-Nine after the Big Meeting last week, and that had everyone on edge.
On the day he became Twenty-Six, he interviewed Twenty-Five, newly arrived from Berkeley, California.
Diesel learned that day that he’d never before experienced humiliation, not really, not like he felt when he met his younger self. In short, Twenty-Five was a punk. His approach to life was short-sighted, his priorities trivial, he had trouble following a conversation, and he complained incessantly.
Diesel refused to believe that simple creature became him; the transition seemed impossible. Yet he recognized some of the dialogue from last year, so he knew it was true.
And then the idiot stabbed himself with a knife.
“Give him a chance,” said Twenty-Seven “It gets better. Look at how you turned out.”
Diesel laughed, then stood and tilted his head toward the door. “I have a few more boxes in the trunk of my car. Give me a hand?”
They traipsed down to Bump’s main floor, then outside and down to the car. Diesel lifted the trunk lid to shield them from the camera located outside Bump Analytics’ front door, blocking them from Ciopova’s view. He waited for Twenty-Seven to come around.
Twenty-Seven spoke without preamble. “They’re in the desk drawer. I ate yours already.”
Diesel nodded. “When should we meet?”
“Let’s make it three weeks. Lilah is going to be preoccupied until then.”
* * Earlier in the Year * *
Like a detective working a case, Lilah spent long hours assembling a jigsaw puzzle of facts about future Lilahs and their enigmatic deaths. Data collection was her biggest hurdle, the same problem that had slowed the brothers’ progress for years.
Since Diesel couldn’t carry anything with him, he had to memorize the questions Lilah wanted to ask of her namesakes and his brothers up the line. Then he had to travel to that year, try to memorize their answers, and travel back to Lilah to report. Not surprisingly, the cumbersome method proved slow and prone to error.
If Lilah had even a simple follow-up question, such as “Did she say she wanted to do it, or had to do it?” it would send Diesel into a spin of confusion, sometimes requiring a second journey. But when he knew the answer, or thought he did, his confidence outran his accuracy, and that made Lilah reluctant to stake too much on her conclusions.
Optimism returned when she thought of tattooing facts onto Diesel’s skin. He experimented by having “Lilah” inked onto his shoulder at the Divine Messenger tattoo parlor. The good news was that the tattoo survived a T-box journey. But practical issues limited the utility of the method.
A tattoo took hours, even for simple text, especially when they factored in prepping the design and waiting for a turn if the shop was crowded. Beyond that, Diesel grimaced when the tattoo artist had put just five simple letters on his arm, admitting later that it hurt like hell. Lilah wanted him to do a hundred times that. The project seemed daunting, yet he agreed to the plan.
Lilah mapped out a grid for his body, dividing his total expanse of skin below his neck into thirty-three small plots, one for each of his now thirty-three brothers. Then she started to build a symbolic code so answers could be recorded in a fraction of the space that words would take.
They were sitting in the apartment living area when Diesel put a damper on Lilah’s excitement. “Do we even know if tattooing is still around ten or twenty years from now?”
“People have been marking their bodies since the dawn of civilization. I’m confident they have something we can use.”
“I agree. But does it survive time travel?” Diesel, snacking as he talked, took a peanut from a jar, twirled it between his thumb and forefinger, then popped it in his mouth.
As he chewed, Lilah watched him pick out his next nut and repeat the process.
“What?” he asked when he saw her staring.
“Food isn’t Diesel. Why doesn’t it get left behind?” On impulse, she went into the kitchen, rummaged through the junk drawer near the sink, and came back with a pea-sized ball made of white plastic.
“Swallow this,” she said.
“No way.” He took it from her and rolled it in the palm of his hand. “What is it?”
“It’s a plastic bead from a broken necklace. I want to know if the machine counts it as food. You eat it and time travel. If it’s still there afterward, it’s food.”
“How will we know?”
Lilah looked at him without speaking.
Then his brain circuits clicked. “I’m not digging for it.”
Still she didn’t speak.
“Are you thinking that if this works, I’d swallow a computer drive?” He studied his index finger as if he were contemplating the idea.
“That has metal, plus you’d have compatibility problems across the years. I’m thinking more old school. You take notes on a small piece of paper, roll it tight, wrap it with plastic, then swallow it.”
“Like a drug mule? I think they use condoms.”
“That would work. And this way you won’t need to memorize or tattoo anything.”
* * Twenty-Six at the Big Meeting * *
Diesel arrived at his second Big Meeting, glad that he didn’t have to worry about medical issues or being hazed as the new guy. Even so, he carried a burden on this trip in the form of an assignment from Lilah, one he didn’t want to mess up.
She’d prepped him with a list of questions that centered on the state of the relationship between Ciopova and the future Lilahs. She wanted to know the time frames when Lilah and Ciopova argued, the dominant issues in the arguments, whether either party made threats, when it was that Lilah died relative to the peak of the arguments, the manner of her death, and which high school Rose ended up attending.
Diesel’s job was to collect the information and transport it back to her, doing so without the AI recognizing his actions as potentially threatening.
When he landed at the Big Meeting, his first chore was to scrounge supplies from Fifty-Five’s office. But that meant killing time while the new Twenty-Five had his arm and teeth treated.
Without thinking about how it would affect the movement of paper scrolls through his gut, Diesel hung out at the buffet. The extra-long table was a thing of beauty, the sumptuous spread producing sweet and savory smells that made his mouth water.
He headed for the meat section and, glancing farther down the table, saw items that shouldn’t be there for a feast created by him for his own consumption.
“What’s with all the fruit, salad, and whatever that is?” he asked Thirty, who was in front of him in line.
“Apparently we develop a taste for it as we age.”
“Yuck,” Diesel replied, taking the carving knife and cutting a thick slab of beef off a standing rib roast.
He ate and chatted, and then he saw Twenty-Five, marked by the wrap on his arm, descend the stairs. Shoving the last chunk of meat into his mouth, Diesel rose and made for the office. He nodded to Fifty-Five as he passed, and told Twenty-Five he’d join him with the other red shirts in a few minutes.
At Fifty-Five’s desk, Diesel cut paper into strips, and then rolled them into tight scrolls. With a dozen of them lined up on the desk, he confirmed what he already suspected—he couldn’t swallow even ten of these. He could carry maybe fo
ur of them, tops. After that, he’d be putting his health at risk.
He got partway toward a solution by having the brothers write edge-to-edge and top to bottom, covering both back and front surfaces of the scrolls with text. He finished by enlisting Twenty-Seven as a fellow mule.
It took most of the evening before everyone had a chance to record their answers. Writing with care, the brothers fit everything onto just six scrolls. Diesel and Twenty-Seven split the load, each swallowing three plastic-wrapped packets about the size of the last two joints of their pinkies.
Everything went smoothly until Diesel returned home. After two days, the scrolls remained at large. “Maybe the machine left them behind?” he suggested to a very pregnant Lilah.
The baby had dropped in Lilah’s abdomen earlier in the week, signaling that birth was imminent. In spite of her past enthusiasm at moving the data-gathering project forward, today she had different priorities.
“Ohhh,” she groaned, lying on the couch with both hands on her swollen belly. “I think that was a contraction.”
“How far apart are they? Should I get the car?”
“I need a second one to know how far apart they are. Relax, we have time.” The second contraction showed up an hour later. Nothing happened for the next three hours. Then Diesel gave birth to the absent scrolls.
While staying near Lilah, he made copies of everything, repackaged the scrolls for Twenty-Seven, and stowed them in his desk drawer near the T-box. Twenty-Seven was scheduled to visit in a few days. When he did, he’d take Diesel’s scrolls and leave his own behind. In the end, they’d both have the complete set of data to study.
Lilah suffered in discomfort for another two days, and then the contractions returned with a vengeance. After checking with her doctor, she called to Diesel. “It’s time. You may get the car.” Nine hours later, the perfect Rose Spencer Lagerford joined the world.
Lilah and Rose stayed in the hospital until morning, and then Diesel ushered his family home. Twenty-Seven greeted them as they entered the apartment.
Diesel noted that the entertainment center had been shifted back to make way for a diaper-changing station. In the center of the room, the portable crib sat unpackaged and assembled. These projects took time, and that meant Twenty-Seven had been there for a while, perhaps long enough to pass his scrolls.
Later, when they met behind the trunk lid of Diesel’s car, Twenty-Seven confirmed it. “They’re in the desk drawer. I ate yours already.”
Diesel nodded. “When should we meet?”
“Let’s make it three weeks. Lilah is going to be preoccupied until then.” Twenty-Seven grabbed a box of diapers from the trunk. “My own Lilah is really anxious to see your half of the data. She has some ideas and wants to see if they hold up.”
Diesel shook his head. “Don’t tell me yet. Let’s see if both Lilahs reach the same conclusion independently. And obviously, I want to hear what you think, too.”
“Think about what?” said an unfamiliar voice.
The trunk lid of the car slammed shut, just missing Diesel’s fingers. A fat hand, fingernails dark with grime, rested on top of the trunk. It belonged to a big man with a dirty face and greasy hair wearing a new brown hoodie.
The Brown stepped around the car and moved toward the two. “What are you guys talking about?”
Between almost losing his finger and the aggressive approach of the Brown, adrenaline flooded the new father’s veins. Dead tired and emotionally vulnerable as his life priorities recentered on the care of a new daughter, he reacted, stepping forward and slapping the fat face, using the base of his palm to deliver a solid blow to the man’s jaw.
Staggered, the Brown raised a hand to his lip. His look of surprise transitioned into fury and he lunged at Diesel.
Diesel feinted by lifting his knee. The Brown lowered his hands to protect his groin from a kick. With his face wide open, Diesel stepped forward and threw a punch into the Brown’s cheek, the solid blow dropping the man to the ground. The altercation was over in an instant.
“Ow!” yelped the Brown, curling into the fetal position, his hands to his face. After a few moments of rocking back and forth on the ground, he climbed to his feet, turned, and started down the street, lumbering with an awkward gait.
After twenty paces, he stopped and pointed back at Diesel. “Wait till I tell him what you did.” He turned and resumed his escape.
“That went well,” said Twenty-Seven as Diesel licked a raw spot on his knuckles.
“He started it.” Then Diesel thought about his brothers up the line who lived with extra Brown aggression because they, too, had reacted under pressure and struck one of the men. “I messed up.”
“I would have punched him if you hadn’t.”
* * *
Diesel’s next nights were a blur as Rose, her powerful lungs signaling her distress, pushed them both into sleep deprivation. He wasn’t sure if she got better over time, or maybe they just got used to sleeping in spurts, but by week two he was able to concentrate enough to enter the brothers’ information from the Big Meeting into a spreadsheet.
The effort went faster than expected because the brothers were remarkably consistent in how they worded their answers. He diagrammed the responses, drawing boxes connected by arrows to account for the different choices.
The end of the diagram split in two boxes, one for attending the arts high school, the other for attending the math and science academy. He’d worked through about half of the pile when he realized where it was headed.
Diesel was a foot wiggler, and as he hastened to the end, his foot wiggled faster and faster. Finished, he sat back and shook his head. Then he printed a copy to take to Lilah.
The results required no interpretation. Rose ended up at the math and science academy in every case but two. In those, she transferred to the academy after her freshman year.
28. Twenty-Eight years old
“Long live Lilah!” called Diesel, lifting his beer into the air.
“Here, here.” A chorus of voices echoed the sentiment.
At an impromptu midday celebration at Forty-Four’s house, the nine brothers who’d been able to make the party lifted their beers to observe this Lilah’s forty-fourth birthday, the oldest living Lilah ever, at least since they’d been keeping records.
Two years ago, Diesel had discovered that while the majority of Lilahs wanted their daughters to attend the arts high school, Rose always ended up attending the math and science academy.
When he’d shown the information to his Lilah, she’d shaken her head in disbelief. “I’m killed so Rose will switch schools?”
“Correlation is not causation,” Diesel had replied. “Thirty-Five was telling me that the brothers switch schools because of transportation. Apparently, the science school has a bus and the arts school doesn’t. If I’m home alone with a thousand things to do, that has to play into it.”
“That’s what makes this causation, David. My death causes her to change schools.”
Uncomfortable with the conversation, Diesel stayed silent, waiting for her to spin down.
She hadn’t finished. “I see two scenarios. One is that I die because of temporal constancy. It’s part of history or whatever, and that’s just the way it is. Or two, I’m killed as a way to cause Rose to switch schools.”
“We can test the second one straightaway. We’ll pass the word and have everyone put their Rose into the science track starting from grade school.”
“Grade schools don’t have science tracks.”
“You know what I mean.”
Lilah folded her arms. “What can we do if it’s a temporal constancy thing?”
“We’ll bump time. Hell, we run a company that specializes in just that ability.” He took her in his arms. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
In the days after, Diesel had passed the word to his brothers, and all Roses had switched to the math and science academy track. Now, two years later, no Lilahs had died. And i
n an unprecedented and exciting outcome, a Lilah had reached the ripe old age of forty-four.
“Thank you all,” said forty-four-year-old Lilah. “I was worried there, but I believed in you. You didn’t let me down.”
The brothers finished their drinks and headed home, either for their own private Lilah birthday celebration, or for a quiet time of remembrance with their Rose, depending on their circumstances.
When Diesel entered his apartment, he found Lilah in the kitchen arranging the flowers he’d ordered for her birthday. Two-year-old Rose was “helping,” using her own colorful plastic dishes on the floor.
“They just arrived.” She gave him a kiss. “Thank you so much. They’re beautiful.”
“You’re beautiful.” He bent over and gave Rose a kiss on the top of her head. Then, leaning back against the countertop, he watched her work. “We did it, my love. We have a Lilah who is forty-four and going strong. It’s the best birthday present I could think to give you.”
Lilah stopped arranging the flowers for a moment but didn’t look at him. “I want to believe it. I need to, in fact. But it’s been only two years. I’ll celebrate when no Lilahs die for five years.”
Diesel sat on the floor to help Rose stack her cups and saucers.
“I do it,” insisted the girl, pushing her father’s hand away so she could show him she was capable of building a tower. When she finished, she looked at him with a serious expression, then she pushed it over. They both laughed, and she let him help as they built a new tower together.
“Let’s plan a celebration for then,” said Lilah. “I choose a tour of either Italy or France. You can decide between those two.”
“If they’re all alive at the five-year mark, we’ll spend a summer touring all of Europe.”
“What’s alive, Mommy?” asked Rose.
“Something about your distant aunts, sweetheart,” said Lilah. “No one you’ve met or need to worry about.”
Two weeks later, they were eating breakfast when they heard a rap on the door. Twenty-Nine entered, a solemn look on his face. He caught Diesel’s eye and bowed his head.
Bump Time Origin Page 22
