Waking Gods (Themis Files #2)(2)

It’s hard to blame Londoners for seeing a creature similar to Themis as a friendly figure. They have been told that a race of aliens left her on Earth for our protection. Her metal face and backwards legs are on the telly almost every day and have made the front page of every red top for nearly a decade. There are Themis tee shirts for sale on every corner, and young Londoners have grown up playing with Themis action figures. Themis is a star. Her visit to another one of London’s Royal Parks a year ago felt more like a rock concert than first contact with something from an alien world.

This is a defining moment in the short history of the EDC. The fruit of a very fragile coalition, the organization has been called a public-relations stunt by its detractors. Many have argued that a single robot, no matter how powerful, could not defend a planet against an invader. By adding a second robot to its arsenal, or forging a formal alliance with another race, the EDC would come a long way in silencing its critics.





FILE NO. 1399

PERSONAL JOURNAL ENTRY—DR. ROSE FRANKLIN, HEAD OF SCIENCE DIVISION, EARTH DEFENSE CORPS

I had a cat. For some reason, no one remembers my having a cat. I’ve been picturing her curled into a ball on the kitchen floor, slowly starving to death while waiting for me to come home. I keep forgetting that Rose Franklin came home that night, that she—the other me—never left. I’m glad my cat didn’t starve, but part of me wishes she’d waited for me by the door. I miss her. My apartment feels incredibly empty without her small presence.

Maybe she died. She wasn’t that old, though. Maybe I got rid of her when my job became too demanding. Maybe she didn’t recognize the person who came home that night pretending to be me and ran away. I wish. She’d probably be afraid of me if she were still around. If there’s a “real” Rose Franklin, chances are I’m not it.

Thirteen years ago, I got into a traffic accident on my way to work. Strangers pulled me out of my car and I woke up on the side of the road, in Ireland, four years later. I hadn’t aged a day.

How is that possible? Did I travel to the future? Was I … frozen, cryogenized for four years? I’ll probably never know. I can live with that. What I’m having a hard time dealing with is that I wasn’t really gone for those four years. I—someone like me, anyway—was here. Rose Franklin went to work the next day. She did a whole bunch of things during those years. Somehow, she ended up studying the giant metal hand I had fallen onto as a child. She became convinced that there were more giant body parts lying around and devised a method for unearthing them. She pieced together a giant alien robot called Themis. Then she died.

It was a busy four years.

I don’t remember any of it, of course. I wasn’t there. Whoever did all those things died. I know for a fact it wasn’t me me. Rose Franklin was twenty-eight when she was put in charge of the research team studying the hand. She died at thirty. A year later, they found me. I was twenty-seven.

Themis ended up with the United Nations. They created a planetary defense branch, called the EDC, with the robot as its main asset. I wasn’t there for that either. One of me had died. The other hadn’t been found yet. They put me in charge of the EDC research team about a month after I reappeared. The other Rose must have made quite an impression because I was probably the least qualified person for the job. I had never even seen Themis. As far as I was concerned, the last time I had seen any part of her was on my eleventh birthday. They didn’t seem to care. Neither did I. I really wanted the job. I’ve been at it for nine years. Nine years. One would think that would be enough time to get over what happened to me. It’s not. I had four years of catching up to do, and that kept my mind busy for a while. But as I settled into some sort of routine, got more comfortable with my new job, my new life, I became more and more obsessed with who and what I am.

I realize that if I did travel through time, I probably don’t have the knowledge to fully understand it, but there shouldn’t have been two of us. Move an object from point A to point B, logic dictates you won’t find it at point A anymore. Am I a clone? A copy? I can live without knowing what happened to me, but I have to know if I’m … me. That’s an awful thing to doubt.

I know I don’t belong here, now. I’m … out of sync. It’s a familiar feeling, now that I think about it. Every so often—maybe two or three times a year—I would get this anxiety rush. I’d usually be really tired, maybe had too much coffee, and I’d start feeling … I never knew how to describe it. Every second that goes by feels like nails on a chalkboard. It usually lasts a minute or two but it feels like you’re just a tiny bit—half a second or so—out of sync with the universe. I was never able to really explain it, so I don’t know if I’m the only one who ever felt this. I suppose not, but that’s how I feel every minute of every day now, only that half second is getting longer and longer.

I have no real friends, no real relationships. The ones I have are based on experiences I didn’t share, and the ones I lost have been damaged by events I didn’t live through. My mother still calls me every other night. She doesn’t understand that we hadn’t spoken in over a year when I came back. How could she? She’s calling that other person, the one who isn’t still dealing with her father’s loss, the one who everyone liked. The one who died. I haven’t talked to any of my old friends from school, from home. They were at my funeral. That’s such a perfect ending to a relationship, I wouldn’t want to spoil that.