Recursion(69)

The deliveryman whimpers.

Alonzo says, “Fuck.”

Helena feels mist on her face, and then a wall of water blasts out of the smoke carrying cars and people.

It hits Helena like a wall of freezing bricks, sweeping her off her feet, and she’s tumbling in a vortex of frigid violence, slamming into walls, the ceiling, then crashing into a woman in a business suit, their eyes meeting for two surreal seconds before Helena is speared through the windshield of a FedEx truck.



* * *





Helena stands at the window in her living room, her nose bleeding, head throbbing, trying to process what just happened.

Though she can still feel the terror of being swept through the tube in a debris-wave of water, cars, and people, her death in the tunnel never happened.

It’s all a dead memory.

She woke up, made breakfast, got ready, and was heading out the door when she heard two explosions so loud and close they shook the floor and rattled the glass.

She ran back into the living room, and through the window, watched in stunned amazement as the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge burned. After five minutes, she gained the false memories of dying in the tunnel.

Now, the two towers of the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge that frame Roosevelt Island are engulfed in twisting columns of flame reaching hundreds of feet into the air and burning hot enough for her to feel the heat, even from a thousand feet away and through the window.

What the fuck is happening?

The span of bridge between Manhattan and Roosevelt Island is draped across the East River like a severed tendon, its trusses still clinging to the Manhattan tower. Cars are sliding down the steep pavement into the river, people clinging to the railing as the current slowly pulls the bridge segment out of socket with a torqueing shriek she can feel in her fillings.

She wipes the blood from her nose as it hits her—I experienced a reality shift. I died in the tunnel. Now I’m here. Someone is using the chair.

The span connecting Roosevelt Island and Queens has already torn completely off, and downriver, she sees a thousand-foot section of burning roadway crash into a container ship, impaling its hull with spearlike jags of sheared-off metal trussing.

Even inside the apartment, the air smells of things burning that shouldn’t be able to burn, and the wail of the sirens of hundreds of incoming emergency vehicles is deafening.

As her phone vibrates behind her on the kitchen island, the last threads of metal pull loose from the Manhattan tower like whips cracking, and with a tremendous groan, the bridge segment breaks free, plummeting a hundred and thirty feet, the double-decker roadway smashing through concrete into FDR Drive, crushing traffic, leveling trees by the shoreline, then scraping slowly across the eastern terminus of Fifty-Ninth and Fifty-Eighth Streets, gouging out the entire northeast aspect of a skyscraper, and just missing Helena’s building before sliding into the East River.

She rushes into the kitchen and answers the phone with, “Who’s using the chair?”

“It’s not us,” John says.

“Bullshit. I just shifted from dying in the Midtown Tunnel to standing in my apartment, watching this bridge burn.”

“Just get here as fast as you can.”

“Why?”

“We’re fucked, Helena. We are so fucked.”

The door to her apartment bursts open. Alonzo and Jessica rush inside, noses bleeding, looking scared out of their minds.

Helena senses a deceleration of all movement.

Another shift coming?

Jessica says, “What the hell is—”



* * *





Now Helena is staring through the tinted glass of the backseat window, looking north up the East River toward Harlem and the Bronx.

She never died in the tunnel.

The destruction of the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge didn’t happen.

In fact, they’re halfway across the upper level of the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge, which stands fully intact at this moment.

From behind the wheel, Jessica says, “Oh God.”

The Suburban swerves into the adjacent lane, and Alonzo reaches over, grabs the steering wheel from the passenger seat, and whips the vehicle back into its lane.

Straight ahead, a bus drifts into their lane, sideswiping three cars and crushing them into the divider in a spray of sparks and shattering glass.

Jessica cranks the steering wheel, just missing the pileup as the car momentarily leans over on two wheels.

“Look behind us,” she says.

Helena glances back, sees massive columns of smoke rising out of Midtown.

“It’s some false-memory thing, isn’t it?” Jessica says.

Helena dials Shaw, holds the phone to her ear, thinking, Someone’s using the chair to shift reality from one disaster to the next.

“All circuits are busy, please try your call again.”

Alonzo turns on the radio.

“—getting reports that two semitrucks exploded near Grand Central Terminal. There’s quite a bit of confusion. There were reports earlier of some type of accident at the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, and I remember seeing the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge go down, but…I don’t know how this is possible—I see it standing in perfect condition on our tower cam right—”



* * *





—and they’re stopped on East Fifty-Seventh Street, the air choked with smoke, her ears ringing.