Now & Again (6 page)

Enjoying himself, he got up and began to play to the audience. “No, you jumped right into the middle of one and came out with…confusion. So you can manipulate data and slap together clips and trucks and people; so what?” He noted the brief wince in Quyron’s eyes. “Oh, I’m not saying you don’t believe what you’ve presented here. No, I’m just saying, I’m not persuaded. And it seems to me that none of us here should be surprised that your findings are so illogical.”

Quyron looked steadily at the smug scientist. “Did I say they were illogical?”

The satisfied look vanished as Vandermark sharpened his voice. “Please! You’re testing our patience. Timelines are unaware of each other, by definition. You know that. It’s a demand of the wave function itself.”

The scientist modulated his voice to add some artificial warmth. “You know I’m right. None of us are aware of the splits happening right now, in this very room. Right now, I’m sure you’re agreeing with me, somewhere. And somewhere else…you’re fleeing the room in tears.”

Quyron smiled darkly but her eyes betrayed nothing of her feelings.

“Okay, fine, sorry about that, but
the point
is that neither of us is aware of the splits, and neither are our copies. It’s a law of quantum mechanics. Everything depends on it. There are no exceptions.”

Quyron coldly indicated the men behind her, still caught in their freeze frame. “Tell that to them.”

Vandermark shook his head, feigning exasperation. “Oh yes, your amazing truck drivers! Let me count the impossibilities. They were aware of their own branching. And not only that, but they were actually interacting across those branches. Oh, and not just interacting, let me be clear, they were
jumping
between segments. Wait! And not just jumping but keeping their memories intact so they could use that knowledge in the next line. Does that about cover it?”

Quyron breathed in through her nose. “That’s only the most obvious implications but my…”

He pounced on her words with an icy tone. “Well then, maybe you’re right, that’s not
illogical
. It’s laughable!”

Quyron grimly replied. “How would you explain it then, Dr. Vandermark?”

He waved his arms dismissively at the room. “There’s nothing to explain. I’ve told you. You’re lost in a nexus! You’ve cut together nano errors, or random data, I don’t know. Maybe you’re tracking the wrong truck. Clearly, there has to be a rational answer. Or is this some – some twisted joke you or your team prepared? Or Echo?”

A clear, young, confident female voice came from the speakers in the ceiling. “There are no mechanical or technical errors indicated, Dr. Vandermark. It is not random. It is the right truck. And I cannot joke.”

Quyron folded her hands in a forced calming technique, but her words still carried an edge. “You saw the same timeline segments we all saw, Dr. Vandermark. Despite your comments, this is no trick. I have no agenda. You can parade around the room and wiggle all you want, but these men reacted before they should have…four indisputable times! Help me explain it.”

Vandermark ignored her challenge, acting as if she hadn’t spoken at all, and turned to Newbauer. “Jonathan, we obviously need to assign someone more…
familiar
to look into all this.”

Quyron bristled, “I’m sorry, but the truth is, that’s not your choice.”

Vandermark looked harshly at Newbauer and the VP squirmed as he replied. “Quyron and her team were brought in and financed by the President himself.”

“And why wasn’t I informed?”

“But I assumed you were.”

“I see.” Vandermark took a quick breath and let it out slowly. “My apologies, then, Ms. Shur, for my…intemperate remarks.”

Quyron nodded slightly.

Vandermark returned to his seat. “It’s just hard for those of us at the front of the battle to be patient with those who are counting noses from the back – so to speak.”

Quyron briefly locked eyes with him and wondered again why she had chosen a field that tolerated such arrogant asses. “I can see how you’d feel that way. In my work, facts are facts, and you deal with them honestly, wherever they’re found.”

Newbauer noisily cleared his throat. “If we could get back to your…your update, please? Is this, whatever it is, connected in some way to the other problems you were hired to check on?”

Quyron cocked her head. “The transmission issue? I don’t know yet. This event seems different but I’m becoming convinced that something we’re doing may be at the root of both.”

Vandermark reacted, “Something we’re doing? What does that mean? And who’s we?”

“Unknown.”

“I see, another hunch. I’m almost afraid to ask if you have any evidence to back it up?

“Not enough.”

Vandermark took a quick drink from his glass of water. “Ms. Shur, what if I were willing to accept your earlier analyses regarding your…truckers?”

“I wouldn’t believe you.”

Some surprised laughs erupted from the gallery and then quickly choked themselves off in embarrassment. Vandermark took it in stride.

“Of course, I can appreciate that, and I wouldn’t blame you. But for the sake of the moment, and ignoring everything I’ve said to the contrary, how would
you
explain what they did? What are they?”

Quyron gazed at the attentive faces around the room. Many of the eyes were fixed on the still image of Kendall and Josh. Everyone was definitely caught up in the moment.

“How they do what they do is unclear,” she answered in a steady voice. “But I think they are something we’ve never seen before, never imagined.”

Quyron stepped back from the screen and she too stared at the freeze-frame of the men. “I believe these two are natural-born jumpers. I don’t know how else to explain it. My guess is they are a kind of mutation within the multiverse – a failsafe, if you will. I don’t know how many there may be, or if these are the only ones, but their sudden appearance now is not an accident – it’s a response.”

She nodded toward Echo, and the frozen scene played on. Everyone silently watched as the men re-animated to continue their race for the ridge top. They leaped the guard rail just before flame and debris roared through behind them.

In the trees outside the brick-faced McCaslin home in suburban Cincinnati, it was after midnight. The fall air was cool and still, and the stars in the black sky were bright. An adult barred owl, with wide facial discs around dark eyes, sat her silent watch in an oak tree near the red Honda. Pale brown body with white mottling above and brown streaking below, the silent killer was nearly invisible on her perch. Her head rotated smoothly through half its impressive arc while her compact body remained motionless. Her large eyes settled on a repetitive movement below.

An anxious mouse was transporting seeds from summer storage to winter larder. His grey back hunched and stilled as he carefully crossed the grass to the rain gutter’s down spout next to the driveway.

Hidden under feathers on either side of the head, an owl has openings, called apertures, in place of ears. Typically, the holes are asymmetrical, which helps to triangulate on the location of very subtle but specific sounds – such as seeds scraping on dirt or fur rubbing against grass blades. Owls have four black talons on each feathered foot – three curve forward and one backwards, creating an exceptionally effective snare.

The barred owl released her talons’ mechanical hold on the branch and fell forward into a deadly silent descent. Her primary flight feathers had leading edges that were fimbriate; that is they had comb-like extensions to muffle the whisper of air passing over them.

The mouse moved unaware, other instinctual business cluttering his mind, until talons closed upon him like a multifaceted trap. A single swallowed “cheep” and the tinny tumblings of seeds upon the metal spout were all that escaped.

And multiple universes tumbled away undetected around the moment. In one, the owl missed. In another, the mouse fought back. In countless other variations, the mouse abandoned his seeds and made it to the gutter; the owl was distracted and looked the other way; the grass was not mowed and so the mouse passed unseen; the owl perched in the elm instead of the oak; the mouse waited for a better night to move his food; a car passed by and spoiled the hunt; and on and on in a myriad of possibilities, all realized and super positioned upon each other, without a whit of trouble or observation.

The owl flared her sound-dampened wings as she reclaimed her perch with the prize, oblivious to the universes that had spiraled off her every wing beat. Pleased with the fat, warm meal ahead, she considered the night with her merciless eyes before turning to her repast in earnest.

* * *

In an upper bedroom of the house, Kendall’s eyes were wide open and troubled. He had a butterfly bandage on his forehead and a nasal attachment in his nose. The nose probes were strapped to his head and connected to a coiled hose, which in turn was coupled to a CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) unit sitting on his bedside table. The cumbersome apparatus hissed rhythmically, keeping time with his breathing. Apparently, he snored, which was new information to parts of him when Leah chided his forgetfulness. He minimized the lapse as he relied on his other memories to guide him through the filling of the water reservoir, the positioning of headgear and hose and bed covers, before the lights went out. His newly familiar fingers rediscovered the soft switch that turned it on. The whole experience was reminiscent of the rest of his strange day, a marriage of opposites: death, life; pain, joy; confusion, clarity; and now strange and familiar. He opened his mouth and, surprisingly, air streamed out as long as he left it open. Sealing his lips again, he felt no internal sensation of the elevated air pressure at all. How that prevented snoring, he hadn’t a clue.

He gazed over at Leah – his precious, lost and re-found love – safely asleep beside him, and silently marveled to himself. He shuffled through his memories and wondered again where he was, what he was, and what he knew or didn’t know. He knew, for example, that he didn’t snore but he knew he did now. A moment’s thought took him back to the sleep apnea test and the net of leads they attached to his scalp, his face, his chest, his arms, and his feet. He could see again the friendly face of the matronly technician clucking, “There you go. All wired up and snug as a bug. Your job is to go to sleep now and we’ll all be watching you. Okay?”

And he knew he never took a snoring test.

What had happened on that freeway? His one clear notion was that sleep was no longer on his agenda for tonight. He fumbled in his alien memories until he saw again an image of the soft off/on switch behind the heating dial, and then reached out in the dark to deftly shut it off.

* * *

Josh sat at the head of the dining room table wrapped in a blanket and working a laptop. A nearly empty glass of milk and a cell phone crowded his elbow as he typed and moused with an easy efficiency.

The McCaslin dining room was large and carried a cheery but relaxed country feel. The sturdy mission hills style oak table with matching slat back chairs sat on a cream and rose colored rug which Leah claimed made her think of her home. Against the wall, an oak china cabinet displayed off-white pottery, Grandma McCaslin’s Havilland china and a small collection of pale pink Depression glass. Four sets of windows were hidden behind closed wooden shutters and an oak sideboard completed the wall. Above, a curvy wrought iron chandelier cast a soft illumination over the table.

Josh noted the sound of Kendall coming down the stairs and barely looked up. “Couldn’t sleep either, huh?”

“Not a chance. You?”

“Afraid to go to sleep.”

Kendall acknowledged the comment with a grunt and disappeared into the kitchen. Josh heard sets of cabinet doors being opened and shut, one after the other, along with the rattle of china and numerous thumps and mutterings. Josh shook his head. Finally, he heard the refrigerator door open and then milk filling a glass.

Josh moused the computer and talked without turning his head. “So, I found this Dell laptop in my room, okay? And a part of me knew the password, even though it’s one I never thought of before. And another part remembered that I only use Macs.”

Kendall appeared beside the table holding his glass of milk. “Yeah, and since when did Mom move the glasses to the wrong cabinet?”

“Left cabinet? Right cabinet? Try finding chips.” Josh was tense. “Get used to it! Everything’s shifted. Oh, and by the way, I don’t live at home anymore – right?”

Kendall slid into a chair and took a swig of milk. “Right. I know – well, some part of me knows.”

“And yet, here I am.”

“Yeah, here we are.”

“You wanna know somethin’ else? I called Hannah’s number on my weird cell phone, but it’s somebody else’s now.”

“Her phone number?”

“Yeah. Some guy…said it’s always been his number for years.”

“You sure you dialed right?”

“Oh yeah. I talked to the dude twice, and it’s late, okay? So I checked online. Guess what? No facebook.”

“Whaddya mean? She’s not on facebook? You mean her…page?”

“No, not her face page. Not her profile. Not her anything. There’s no
facebook
.”

Kendall stared at him blankly. “No facebook?”

“Yeah. No facebook. It doesn’t exist. I even Googled
Zuckerberg,
and he’s nowhere either.”

They sat and stared at each other across the table. Kendall finally said what they both were thinking. “Where in the world are we?”

Josh shrugged. “I checked my e-mail. Nothing from Hannah – ever. I searched all over the place. Her family never adopted her, she never lived at her apartment, she never went to her college, and she never worked at her work. Huh? Where is she?”

Kendall softly set his glass down. “I don’t know, Josh.”

“We got Mom back but I lost Hannah. This is seriously messed up! Is that mom upstairs – really Mom?” Josh was getting louder. “I mean she’s not the one I held hands with when she was dying, is she? So, if she’s not that one, than who is she?” He looked away, trying not to break down. “If I go to sleep here tonight, what am I gonna wake up to tomorrow?”