All Our Wrong Todays(91)
All of that has to happen in the next twenty-one seconds.
Which means I have twenty seconds to save the world.
131
T wenty. The first energy plume erupts from the Engine’s absorption coils. The Sixteen Witnesses react in shock, delight, fascination. Tom doesn’t know the rest of us are in his mind, but because he’s distracted by the Engine I have an opportunity to wrench away control. But before I can take over, Victor attacks, pulling me into the layered walls of memory. They look solid, but they’re gummy and pliant like a membrane and we fall into one, a quicksand portal to another time.
Nineteen. The second energy plume bursts out. This is the one that disrupts Tom’s invisibility field, but he’s too busy being dazzled by the glittery whorls to realize his camouflage is gone. I’m in Robin Swelter’s bedroom. She screams as her brother punches me in the face. But this is dream logic, greasy and unstable, so it’s Victor’s fist that sends me sprawling into another memory.
Eighteen. Lionel is stunned to see Tom appear out of nowhere in his lab. I land in a chair in the conference room at John’s architecture office. Victor lunges across the epoxied maple table at me, the junior associates mute and staring. Everything is sticky and elastic, a land of melting wax.
Seventeen. Tom freezes when he realizes Lionel can see him. But it’s not just inchoate panic. It’s a mess in here, multiple consciousnesses jockeying for cognitive control. To Tom, his thoughts are a stuttering echo of clashing imperatives that he mistakes for fear. I’m on the front lawn of the housing unit, my mother reading her novel on the grass, my father working at his desk, the lemon tree guarding his office window. Victor pilots a hover car, veering out of formation, but he’s not aiming for my mother—he’s aiming for me. When I try to dodge, John grabs me tight. I thought he was safely walled away, but once John understood his prison was viscid and loose he broke out. I pull free just in time and the impact hurls the two of them away.
Sixteen. I manage to get control of Tom just long enough to make him reset the invisibility field, so he winks out of sight. John and Victor pull me into another memory. There’s something familiar about Victor that I can’t quite place. I thought of John as a worse version of me, but what if I’m just a better version of him that never realized there could be a rival whispering in his other ear, cunning enough to stay hidden until now?
Fifteen. Lionel asks the confused observers if anyone saw what he saw. John and Victor loom at me in the Hong Kong alley where I got mugged. They don’t just want to take control of Tom. They want to wipe me out. I’m not a fighter. I’m a runner. So I run.
Fourteen. Jerome looks suspicious of Ursula’s familiar tone with Lionel. As I race down the alley, the walls of the buildings blur into thickets of close-pressed trees, an impossibly tall forest, the ground underfoot springy with fallen pine needles. John chases me, but Victor uses this moment to seize the reins of Tom’s mind.
Thirteen. Tom wants to trigger the emergency return function and blast out of the past. But it’s actually Victor guiding Tom, trying to evict him from the present so nobody can stop the meltdown. I run through the forest, unsure if John is even still behind me.
Twelve. Lionel panics and yanks down the activation lever to shut off the Engine. This is the point of no return for all of us. The forest floor is no longer littered with pine needles—it’s decaying books, each one a hardback edition of Great Expectations, open to the page my mother was reading when she died.
Eleven. The Engine shudders and spews jagged fingers of energy. No wonder Tom’s frozen—there are three versions of him churning in his mind. I’m in the abandoned library and growing from the heap of moldered books are lemon trees just like the one that saved my father’s life. I follow an instinct to dig through the rotting books with my hands, clawing through the pages, ink staining my hands, the words tattooed onto my skin in nonsensical syntax.
Ten. The previously harmless energy plumes turn a fiery blue, destroying the control console. Victor flexes his will, keeping Tom paralyzed. All he needs is to stop Tom from doing anything while the Engine overloads. I tunnel through the ceiling of John’s condo and fall to the floor. Victor and John take positions to attack me. I look for somewhere to run, a door, a window, but they’re blocking any escape. Victor directs John to corner me . . . and that familiarity I couldn’t place smashes into focus. The day I was annihilated, the day John did those awful things—Victor was there. Because that was the same day Lionel broke reality’s shell. It wasn’t John that slipped through. John was already there. It was Victor. He’s the one that made John do what he did. And now he’s controlling John again, trying to eliminate the only obstacle to his existence—me. I feel his desperation, he just wants his ruined world to live, but that means killing billions of people. I can’t let it happen. I won’t. I feel a current charge through me, like a dull metal filament that suddenly flares incandescent. It’s not anger. It’s not fear. It’s simpler than those impulses, calm and ready and true. It’s resolve. I guess I finally found a fight I can’t run away from.
Nine. Ursula screams at Lionel to get back. And there’s something in that scream. Something I’m not yet grasping, a word on the tip of my tongue. No, not a word. A feeling. Until now, I’ve been on the defensive, so Victor doesn’t expect me to launch him through the wall of framed pulp anthologies. We land in Tom’s place on the 184th floor of the octagonal complex, hover cars darting past the windows, careening into each other in fiery, silent explosions. Victor lashes out, fierce, and it’s clear he’s too strong to beat in a fight. But there has to be another way. Something I have that he doesn’t. Something that Victor wouldn’t even perceive as a threat. And that’s when I see it. On the bed. A strand of Penelope’s hair. And it hits me—none of the memories we’ve been fighting through involved Penny. She’s the key. No, not the key. The lock.