The Collapse: Time Bomb

by Penelope Wright

  I didn’t have to wait for a replacement letter-mate like Ellen did; Dad intervened and paired us up himself. We didn’t have to go through official channels or observe a waiting period. There’re twenty-five of us left from our original litter cycle of forty-two children. It was a smaller than normal year for our litter cycle. The biggest one we’ve ever had was three hundred and sixteen babies.

  Every year, the commanders of each tower perform a census. Food production, water stores, and other resources are counted and forecasted, and after blending those figures together, the tower commanders decide how many new children to incubate.

  Most women lost the ability to have children within a few years after The Collapse, so they tested everyone and harvested the few remaining healthy ovaries, then stored the eggs cryogenically. A new litter cycle starts every year on April nineteenth, the anniversary date of The Collapse. Any man can donate his DNA to the gene pool, but with only a few biological mother eggs to choose from, most of us look a lot alike, and nobody knows the actual parentage of any of the zygotes.

  A year later, the infants are harvested. Some are given to adults to raise, family-style, but most live on children’s floors in one tower or another until they’re six years old. That’s when their skills are assessed and they’re sent to a tower that’s deemed most representative of their potential. The banking towers aren’t good. But it’s better than being a picker, living on a barge with no assigned tower, wading the half-flooded floors and sorting through the junk and debris that storms continually send our way. Traveling from building to building, never allowed past the second-lowest floor. I shudder at the thought.

  I leave Dad’s office and walk a few short hallways to my quarters. Our rooms are on the seventy-fifth floor of Columbia Tower. Dad’s not only the commander of the most important building in the United Towers, he’s also the president of our whole society. At fifty-four years old, he’s the youngest living survivor of The Collapse. Most of us were born in the aftermath. Dad’s mother, Rosarita Columbia, founded our world, ensuring the survival of humanity post-Collapse, and she taught Dad everything she knew. It’s kind of hard to top that as far as leadership experience goes.

  I walk through our quarters, my feet making scant noise on the thin, sixty-year-old industrial-grade carpet. “Sarah, I’m home,” I call out.

  I wait two seconds. No response. I look at our radio frequency ID floor plan. Sarah’s dot is in her and Dad’s room, but it’s not moving. Sarah wears her chip in a bracelet. She’s probably asleep, my brain whispers quickly. Waking her would be rude. I scurry to my room, delighted that I don’t have to deal with my stepmom for the time being. At least I can honestly say I tried. Just, you know, not hard at all. I pull my own RFID necklace over my head. I never, ever wear it on a mission, but I always put it on as soon as I’m back in tower.

  I walk to my comm and punch in Ellen’s number. The comm emits a dull tone, and a couple seconds later, she picks up.

  “Hello?” Her voice is crackly and distorted on the comm.

  “Ellen, it’s me!”

  “Rosie?” Even with the static on the comm, I can hear the smile in her voice.

  “Yes!”

  “Where have you been?”

  This is a first for me. One of the weirdest things about time travel is that no one ever seems to know that I’ve been gone. Sometimes I have to come up with excuses for why I don’t remember things that supposedly happened in the last couple days, but no one has ever asked me where I’ve been. Dad says that in a few years, he plans to have me travel back and fill in all the gaps in time that I’ve missed in my own present. He says that just by saying his plan out loud, and meaning it, it’s probably already come true in some dimension somewhere, which is why no one questions my absences. Because they truly don’t even realize I’m gone because I’ve already made the lost time up. But I know that by doing that, somewhere in the future, I’ll have other big gaps of time where I’m not around. It’s like a constant game of leapfrog that I can never win. I try not to think about it too much because it drives me kind of crazy.

  But that’s why Ellen’s question throws me for a loop. Dad and the technicians who help me prepare for travel are the only people who have ever realized I’ve been gone before, and they’d certainly never ask me probing questions about where I was the whole time. I should have planned for this contingency, though, and I’m irritated that I’m not better prepared. “Oh, um, I was in the infirmary.” I’d spent two nights in the past, so that was how much time elapsed here. It seemed like a safe bet. “Doc wanted me there for observation for a couple of days.”

  “That makes sense,” Ellen replies.

  I’m not sure why it makes sense to her – I pulled it out of thin air with no explanation – but Ellen usually accepts my words at face value. I appreciate that about her.

  Since she already seems to know I’ve been absent, I might as well ask her some questions so I can be the one in control of the conversation. “What’s been going on in lessons?” I ask.

  “We had another no-net climb. You’ll probably have to make it up.”

  “Oh, man. How did everybody do?”

  “Pretty good except for me. I almost bit it right at the end. I was a hundred feet up and the concrete gave away right between my toes. I was hanging on by my left hand and just flailing around with my right.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “I know. I’m all crazy, thinking ‘this is it, I’m gonna die,’ and the whole class is screaming, and right then my eyes fall on Boris’s viewing window, and he’s just absolutely thrilled, you know? He can’t wipe the smile off his face, ’cause he’s sure there’s about to be an opening.”

  We lost Boris’s letter-mate, Brian, nine months ago. Boris has been alone ever since.

  “I would never be letter-mates with Boris,” I say staunchly. “I’d fly solo.”

  “Well, you don’t have to this time because that look of joy on his face pissed me off. I faced my fear, I let it wash over me, and when it was gone, I prevailed. I kicked a chunk of concrete out of the climbing structure and made myself a new toehold. Then I reached up a little higher and felt a knob. A real knob! Right there, five inches above my head. After that, I got myself up no problem.”

  “A knob! They hardly ever have those in no-net climbs.”

  “I know. I got really lucky.”

  “Or somebody in charge shot one out because they wanted you to live.”

  “Yeah, unlikely,” Ellen says.

  She’s right, so I don’t argue. My silence must go on a little too long, because she changes the subject.

  “Wanna listen to a game together?” she asks.

  “Sure.” I reach over to my radio console. I twist the dial to turn it on and adjust the volume. We have one radio broadcast in the United Towers. Every once in a while, my dad or another top official will get on and make a speech, but usually the station plays a nonstop loop of sporting events or news programs from the past. I have most of the broadcasts memorized. I like the football, baseball, and soccer games the best. I always close my eyes and try to imagine the players: healthy, athletic people pushing themselves to the brink and beyond, not because their lives depended on it, but because it was fun. Right now one of my favorite recordings is on, a preseason football game from 2018.

  Ellen and I listen to the broadcast together over the comm. We recite the football commentary word for word; Ellen has it memorized too. Ellen’s voice is shrill when she gets excited, I think involuntarily. Piercing, my brain corrects. Strident. Authoritative. I love Ellen. I really do. And I don’t like words with negative connotations regarding that girl, especially not when they’re coming from my own disloyal brain.

  Loyalty. It’s huge for me. Closely intertwined is trust. They’re different things, but you can’t really have one without the other. She’ll never be Rachel, but I’d still die for Ellen. I don’t know what will happen to her when our training is over. As my letter-mate, she might be able t
o come to Columbia, to live and work in my tower. We’re only sixteen, so we still have another year of scoring before anything’s decided for good.

  “Hey, Rosie,” she asks, “is your heart in this one?”

  I shake my head. My mind isn’t in the game and Ellen needs me. Because when you’re in your last two years of training, the instructors are always watching. Everything. Even something as simple as reciting a football game could be graded; it could be the difference between being a welder living on the forty-sixth floor of the Third Ave tower – or disappearing onto a barge for the rest of your life to sort flotsam. As David Columbia’s daughter, I don’t have to worry much about stuff like that, and sometimes it slips my mind completely. Ellen doesn’t have that luxury. “Sorry. I’m not trying to wreck things,” I say.

  I slip back into the recitation. “Colby spins back, scrambling, Drew is wide open in the end zone. Colby rears back…” The announcer gasps and his voice grows wild. We match him word for word. “And the ball is batted out of his hands. Is that a fumble or an incomplete pass? Was there forward motion? They’re going to send this one up to New York, and we’ll take a quick break.”

  “You probably shouldn’t use the words ‘wreck things’ after what happened with that helicopter,” Ellen drawls during the brief pause in the broadcast. “Might want to reconsider your phrasing for a few weeks. Or years. Your call.”

  My eyes dart around the room nervously for a second before I get myself under control and I’m glad Ellen can’t see me. “Ha ha, yeah,” I say.

  The game starts up again, but neither of us is parroting along with it anymore.

  “What kind of punishment did you get?” Ellen asks.

  How am I supposed to answer that? I have no idea what she’s talking about. I try something vague but safe. “They went pretty easy on me.”

  “They went easy on you? Seriously? If it had been me, I would’ve gotten thrown off the roof.”

  A lump travels painfully down my throat. Barely anyone gets thrown off the roof anymore. Sent to the barges, maybe, or banished to a useless building like Insignia, but executed? Our population is too fragile for us to intentionally kill each other very often. Thrown off the roof? What had I done?

  I decide to play it off like she’s kidding. “Dad joked about that too.”

  Ellen’s silence lasts a little bit too long before she responds. “I bet you got off easier because you got hurt. Enjoy freedom now; your dad might rain hell on you once your legs heal.”

  I look down at my perfectly healthy legs. “Yeah, maybe,” I say faintly.

  “What’s the food like in the Columbia infirmary?” Ellen asks.

  I don’t know since I haven’t been there in months. This conversation has veered left and gone straight out the window. I shake my head, glad Ellen can’t read my mind. Deflect attention. Raise another subject. “Better than the stuff Sarah makes.”

  “Sarah? Ugh. She’s so pointless.”

  “Yeah. But she’s got great skin and my dad seems to like her, so there you go.”

  “I can’t believe he married someone from Insignia. All those citizens do is fight with each other and cause trouble.”

  “Yeah.” I decide not to say anything about my stepmother, or how Dad only met her three days before he decided to spend the rest of his life with her. I know all these things, but I don’t want anyone else who happens to be listening in on the comm to be privy to them.

  “How much older is your dad than her?” Ellen asks.

  “Twenty-six years.”

  “Gross.”

  I can’t help but agree with that. “Yeah.”

  “I never pegged him as the trophy-wife type, but stranger things have happened.”

  You could say that again. I almost mutter it out loud, and for a second I’m scared I did. Talking to Ellen is almost like thinking things over in my own mind; we’ve become that close over the years since we were paired up. And I know she would never, ever betray me. But I’m still surprised at how reckless I’m feeling right now. I’m really rattled.

  The regular alarm bing-bongs through my room, as if my dad knows I need an escape route out of this conversation. “Hey, my dad’s home. Let’s comm again later. I want to tell Dad about your climb and ask him if he knows anything about the knob.”

  “Copy that,” Ellen replies. “Tell me if he does.”

  “Roger.” I switch the comm off and I take a quick look at our RFID floor plan. Sarah’s dot is still in their bedroom. Dad’s in his planning room. I slip my feet in my shoes and hurry to catch him before the opportunity is lost.

  I rush through the hall and scurry to his office. I tap on his wooden door. I know he can see my dot so I don’t have to identify myself, but I call out softly anyway as I knock. “Dad?”

  “Come in.”

  My feelings must be written all over my face because when I walk through the door, Dad stands, opens his arms, and enfolds me in a hug. “Rosarita, Rosarita, my little refried bean,” he croons, stroking my hair.

  I blink rapidly. He hardly ever calls me that anymore. I turn my head to the side and nestle into his hug. The surge of emotion I feel is totally unexpected.

  “What’s the matter, Rosie? Did something happen? Is it Ellen?” He steps back and holds me by the shoulders, searching my face.

  “Ellen’s fine, but it does have something to do with her. Something she said. It’s happened again, Dad. She says I got hurt. And…I think I might have stolen a helicopter.”

  Dad jerks his head, startled. He lets go of my shoulders and circles back around to the other side of his planning table and leans against it, palms down. “I don’t know anything about a helicopter.”

  “Well, Ellen did. She told me I shouldn’t talk about wrecking things after what happened with the helicopter, and she asked me what you did to punish me. I said not much, and she said you probably would once my legs healed.”

  “What did you say to her?”

  “I deflected and then changed the subject to Sarah.”

  “Oh, great. Couldn’t you think of any other topic?”

  “I was on the spot, Dad.”

  “I’m sure you were very complimentary.”

  “Um…not so much. I criticized Sarah’s cooking.”

  Dad sighs. “I suppose I should be delighted that you acted natural in the situation.” He drums his fingers on the tabletop, thinking out loud. “I don’t know anything about a helicopter. It could be that it’s time travel related, and in the timeline that you and I are aware of, it hasn’t happened yet. Make sure you note it in your journal.”

  That’s it? I steal a helicopter – maybe – and injure myself – maybe – and all Dad can come up with is ‘put it in your journal’? Great. I work so hard to leave an invisible footprint when I travel, but more and more, people are referring to stuff that I’ve supposedly done…that I have no memory of. I’ve got a growing list of timeline discrepancies, and I’m starting to worry that I’ve inadvertently caused a conundrum – a logical impossibility that is nevertheless true – which could destroy our whole world. But no pressure. I’ll just write this latest piece of the puzzle down in my diary, and maybe I’ll know what it means in forty years. Or maybe it’ll be crystal clear after my next mission. Dad’s advice is always the same: redirect the conversation and stick as close to the truth as possible so I don’t have to keep track of a million made-up cover stories, then journal it afterward. I feel like I need more than that, but what do I expect from him? He doesn’t know what do to with a conundrum. We’ve never had one before. That we know of. Maybe we’re living one right now.

  I roll my eyes, my head sags forward, and Dad misinterprets my thoughts.

  “Did you say ‘hello’ to Sarah when you went to quarters, like I told you to?”

  I keep my head down. “I said ‘I’m home’ and no one answered.”

  Dad is silent for so long, I finally look up. His lips are set in a thin line. He blows a long stream of air out of his nose. �
��Rosarita, it was just you and me for most of your life. I understand that my marriage is likely a difficult change for you, but you are an intelligent, capable person. Your inability to follow direction on this one boggles my mind. Return to quarters, locate your stepmother, and be cordial until I arrive. That is an order.”

  I grind my back teeth together involuntarily. “Yes, sir.” I stand up and walk to the door, knowing I’ve been dismissed.

  “Rosie?” Dad says softly.

  His change in tone surprises me, and I turn at the door. “Sir?”

  The expression on his face is one I almost never see. The word ‘vulnerable’ springs to mind, and I don’t know if it’s completely accurate, but it’s the word my brain is supplying. “I know things are strange right now,” he says, “and I don’t have an explanation for all of it. But you need to know one thing. I’m the luckiest father in the history of the universe.”

  Tears spring into my eyes.

  “I love you,” he continues. “That is an immutable fact, and no slip in the space time continuum will ever change it. I need to make that very clear.”

  “Thank you, Daddy,” I choke out.

  Dad’s face slides back into his usual gruff mask. “Now. Go be nice to Sarah.”

  This time when I say, ‘Yes, sir,’ I sound like I mean it.

  Chapter Two

  March 14, 2074

  Sarah’s RFID dot is still in their bedroom, so I tap very gently on her door. I need to wake her up and have a productive conversation with her, I promised Dad, but I don’t want to startle her out of her nap and get off on the wrong foot.

  I hear a muffled groan from behind the door, and a staticky pop, as if she’s disconnecting the comm. “Come in.”

  The lock mechanism disengages with a click and I push the door open.

  Sarah sits with her back to me at her dressing table. She’s brushing her hair, and our eyes meet in the mirror. I don’t want to look away first, but I also don’t need to begin this interview with a staring contest. I’m here to be nice. I avert my glance. “I thought you were napping,” I say.