Chapter Text
A young female Khao Manee cat stepped out of the idling car.
The headlights illuminated a massive metal structure in front of her. It was hard to even identify it as a door – huge ribs of metal and obscure mechanisms covered the solid plate coated in chipping off layers of white and yellow paint. In its center surrounded by the snaking tubes and cables a logo glinted in the warm beams of light – a black triangle bisecting three concentric rings.
The cat approached the right side of the door, quickly crossing the bright beams of light. Recessed into the crumbling concrete she saw a panel with a slot for a card. Reaching for the side pocket on a backpack, she produced a very old and heavily scratched piece of plastic. The photo, now barely visible on the print, matched her almost perfectly, but the name next to it was not hers. In fact, the small title placard on her thin red shirt declared to anyone interested that her name was Lucy – just Lucy, no last name or honorifics. Which probably was expected of a simple courier uniform.
The card in her hand, however, was titled Dr. Ophelia Turner.
Acting confidently, Lucy slipped the card into the slot, and it disappeared inside. There was a long pause, then a click. The longer she waited, the more she showed that her composure was not perfect. After a dozen of seconds of wait, she nervously turned her head back to the late afternoon daylight beyond the lip of a short tunnel, clearly feeling ever widening cracks in her resolve.
Then suddenly, there was a short melodic ding and the card slipped out. Lucy immediately picked it up and put it back into the side pocket of her backpack. Another silent moment of uncertainty passed, and then she noticed that the massive blast door was actually moving. She didn’t hear any noise at all – even a quarter of a century of neglect at very least didn’t affect the perfectly greased bearings and rollers of a door that probably weighed several hundred tons.
Lucy hurried to the car and slipped inside. Not wanting to find out how long the door would stay open, she gently pressed the pedal and rolled forward into the dark and seemingly endless tunnel.
Right behind the blast door she saw a long stretch of strange structures hanging from the ceiling that looked like several high-voltage substations rolled together into a tight forest of metal and ceramic spikes. Lucy instinctively ducked her head as if the sharp protrusions would reach her somehow through the roof of her car. And maybe it was just general unease, but she felt as if she passed through something almost solid. It felt like gazes of thousands of angry ghosts peered into her soul, judging her for this trespass.
With a glance into the mirror Lucy noticed that the door was already rolling back behind her. And again maybe simply because of nerves she heard and even felt the dull thud of a massive plate of metal as it slid back into its housing. A certain finality that told her – if she had any doubts she should’ve been addressing them before this threshold. There is no way back now, until she gets what she came here for.
Steeling herself, she stepped on the accelerator and sped down the tunnel. Unadorned concrete tube snaked for thousands of feet, dipping down, then rising back up, and soon she saw the daylight again.
Her small hatchback, painted in corporate red, shot out of the tunnel and into a large clearing. A rocky hill behind her and a dense dark forest in front of her were lit by the golden late afternoon sun and looked exactly the same as the stretch of woods she passed before entering the tunnel. Nothing yet disturbed the serene beauty of the Pacific North-West wilderness, if you managed to not pay attention to a fifteen hundred feet tall concrete wall behind the hill looming like an apocalyptic wave.
Lucy slowed down a little, looking everywhere around her, trying to see where to go next. The road snaked through the hilly clearing and disappeared in the deep shade under the tall firs. Realistically, there was only one way from here.
Seeing the path forward, Lucy increased the speed again, but immediately had to slam the brakes to avoid a huge piece of the road rising out of the ground like a bollard. A bollard as wide as the car itself, made of dirt and roots and layers of rocks. The car stopped almost touching the still rising wall of dirt.
Lucy sat there for a moment, her mouth open. If she was looking sideways at that moment, her adventure would’ve complicated itself quite a bit before it truly began.
She rolled back for a stretch and gave the weird pillar a wide berth, now trying to pay more attention to what was directly in front of her.
Now, after she had seen up close that this place was working by a completely different set of rules, she started to notice more strangeness in the woods around her. Some trees were weird and twisted, and there was also a mysterious blue glow coming from somewhere deep in the forest’s shade. As if to highlight that, the daylight changed – the sunlight dimmed, obscured by heavy dark clouds above. The muddy yellow-gray twilight revealed in stark colors the strange glows and motes of light snaking along the ground and trunks of wilted trees.
It wasn't just lights that forced Lucy to look around with wide eyes, wondering what was going on in this place. There were also signs of decay – all around the road she saw dozens of abandoned cars, their wheels missing, and some even completely stripped down to their frames. Some looked more or less intact, but most were just piles of scrap lying there, covered in moss and lichen, with young trees growing through the openings.
Some cars were still on the road, lined up like everyday traffic, and Lucy wondered what happened to their drivers and passengers. Were they like her – trespassers from outside, that came here in search of something important to them? Or were they the original inhabitants of this place, suddenly caught in a trap.
She decided for herself that she should make it her top priority to avoid scraping even a single abandoned car. She didn’t care much for her own small hatchback – it was pretty much a sacrifice for her plans from the beginning. But still, she feared to disturb something by making too much noise or touching the dead cars.
And her fears found a confirmation soon – at a particularly hard turn, where she had to squeeze between one of the wrecks and a mass of boulders lazily floating in the air, she finally scraped some paint and rust off the rear panel of an abandoned yellow car.
The noise was grating, but what was more horrifying to Lucy, was that it got a response. Same metallic screech, shifted in tone, came from the dark woods to the right. Then closer, from the left. It wasn’t easy for her to exactly position the sounds, with only one ear working, but the jump from one side to the other, and, more important, closer, was noticeable enough for her anyway.
With heart gripped by fear, she pushed hard on the accelerator and sped forward, avoiding the cars by cutting through bushes on the side of the road.
Wet leaves and blades of grass stuck to the windshield, and soon were joined by the heavy droplets of rain. The visibility started to drop with the heavy mist rolling from the row of dark trees.
Despite that Lucy pressed on, wanting to put in as much distance as possible between her and the source of the weird noises. She wasn’t driving completely blind – there was a plan – an old paper map she studied before coming here.
Along with the access card, Augustus provided her with some notes from his mysterious sources, and an old Olympic Park road map that showed her in a bold red circle a place marked as “perpetual stability”. If the map was accurate, then the road she was on should take her to that place in less than an hour of brisk driving.
The map wasn’t entirely accurate, however. For one, it didn’t have a large and sudden clearing that was coming towards Lucy as the car climbed over the hill. She slowed down a little to figure out what she was seeing, but it was too late. The car suddenly lurched and flew down, weightless.
“Oh, shit!!” screamed Lucy, watching as a patch of scorched dirt and burnt trees was rapidly approaching her windshield.
***
There was a short knock on the door. Lucy raised her head from the spread of papers on the floor where she sat cross-legged and responded:
“Come in!”
Door opened and Augustus poked his head in. He said with a carefree smile:
“Hey, Lucy. Wanna go to the mall with me and Jordan?”
“No, sorry. Not feeling it,” she responded, looking back at the sheets of paper.
“What are you up to? Studying?”
“Not really, no. Just looking some stuff up.”
Augustus fully entered the room and closed the door behind him. He approached Lucy and sat down on the floor next to her.
“Wow, that’s some high level nerd stuff right there,” he said with a note of awe. “What even is this?”
“Electronics and microwave physics, I think? I have no idea myself,” Lucy shrugged.
“And why the hell are you reading that? I don’t think that’s even college level. You already got the SAT in the bag, so why bother with this?”
“It’s… kinda complicated. Remember I said I went to my aunt after that… you know, Mike thing?”
Augustus narrowed his eyes.
“I remember alright. What’s that have to do with microwave physics?”
“Nothing directly,” muttered Lucy, looking at the formula-covered pages with unfocused eyes.
“But?..” pressed Augustus, leaning closer.
“I learned something curious there, and for a while I didn’t really think about it, but now when we were shopping for college applications for a while, it got me thinking,” said Lucy and reached towards a cardboard box next to her bed. She pulled it closer and rummaged through it. “Apparently I had a relative who made some big splash in physics a long time ago. My grand-grand-aunt. She was an inventor, who discovered something very big.”
She pulled out a frame with an old black and white photograph. In the image there was a young Khao Manee cat in a bit awkward-looking dress that was probably not formal enough for such a setting. She was shaking the hand of a very serious looking old cat with large sharp ears and a striped pattern on his face. Looking closely, Augustus noticed that the woman in the photo was looking strikingly similar to Lucy – same guarded awkward smile, same cheek-tufts and a big bushy tail sticking up. He quickly looked up to his friend and back at the photograph, and then back again.
“Yes, I’ve noticed too. That also made me think, you know,” grumbled Lucy. “Do I really look this awkward in photos?”
“Dunno. You always look kinda awkward,” laughed Augustus.
Lucy pinched his arm with annoyance but immediately smiled anyway.
“Yes, well. The point is – I feel like it sort of means something, I don’t know. I came to believe I won’t amount to much, and then there is her, looking like me, standing next to this important looking guy. Who is it anyway?”
“I think that’s… what’s his face… Koch. Lawrence Koch, yes, that’s right. He was a president, I think, somewhere around the fifties,” responded Augustus after a few minutes of deep thinking.
“Never heard of him, actually.”
“I mean, maybe it’s a complete fabrication, or maybe he was real. Looking at this photo now, I don’t know what to think. I recognize him because I watched some show about ancient aliens or something, a couple of weeks ago, actually. There was a whole section about him, like he was a whole term president, and a half-a-century long Washington senator, but apparently never existed. Mandela effect sort of thing. It was weird.”
“Hmm. Not gonna comment on your TV preferences. But you’re confirming something for me. That feels like a pattern with my grand-aunt stuff.”
“Okay, that’s curious. You got me hooked. But wait, go back a step. You said – ‘I won’t amount to much’. What did you mean by that?” Augustus sat straight, looking directly into Lucy’s eyes. He continued with a disapproval in his voice: “Why are you speaking that way about yourself? Is this a Mike thing again?”
“No! He has nothing to do with this!” frustrated, Lucy dropped the photo back into the box. “Or… maybe it is a Mike thing, in some way. I don’t know.”
“I’m almost certain it is.”
“I just… feel like I’m just flailing. I don’t know what I should do next, and then I look at the college programs and I feel dumb. I just… I don't know. Everything looks like too much. Or not enough. Or boring as shit. Maybe I should just go for some sport scholarship and just coast it, like Jordan. Take Sam for example. He knows what he wants. He got it all locked down tight and just went forward like a train. He’s a goddamn nerd and never had any fun in his life, but now he’s a big shot. And what did I have to aspire to? A teacher? A nurse? Please. That just feels like the default options for all girls, you know?”
Lucy sighed and winced a little.
“And yes… I admit. Sue was sharing with me some news about what’s going on in their little friend group, and she says Mike already secured something big for himself, with a scholarship. Don’t know how he managed that, but he did, and now he’s sitting there all smug. Sue says she was glad I didn’t see him bragging, or there would’ve been a massacre. Paulo was already sharpening his claws.”
“Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. Yep, that’s definitely a Mike thing. The way you described your relationship with him through your entire childhood… He defines your expectations, not you. Directly, or indirectly. Even after almost two years of barely any contact, he is still here, in your head,” Augustus pointed his finger at Lucy’s forehead.
Lucy batted his hand, and frowned:
“You don’t have to go all therapist on me again. We’ve already figured that stuff out before.”
“We did, but it’s not a one time thing, you know. So as I was saying – you were building your life on external opinion. You feel worthless, because he told you so that one time. Or, more likely, he bound you to himself, so everything you do without him just feels wrong and returns to that single moment when he called you that. But you’re not worthless, and never was.”
Lucy sighed hard.
“Maybe. But I think it’s more than just that. I genuinely feel dumb when I look at college programs and requirements. If I think hard then it becomes a bit less intimidating, but then it just doubles down if I spend a minute longer on trying to pick something. Or I lose interest completely.”
“Hey, same here, Lucy,” Augustus smiled. “I’ve climbed the walls all that time since last year. I was aiming as high as I could, and I almost got it, but you know… Not enough for a scholarship. And I don’t want to sell my soul for that top shelf loan, so I settled for something in my weight category. Not feeling good about it, but it’s fine. But you still have your shot, and I know you’ll do it. You’re smart, I know that. Smarter than me. No, don’t argue. I’m certain. So just… don’t overthink it. Once you start to go into that loop in your head, once you start thinking you can’t do that – that’s when the self-fulfilling prophecy is happening.”
“That’s some corny bullshit, Gus.”
“Yep. I know. But that’s what I figured out for myself, when I came to live with your family, and that’s what actually kept me going. I might’ve actually lived by the same idea before, just never put it in actual words.”
Lucy sighed and shook her head.
“If you say so. I have to figure it out for myself yet. Just words are not enough for something like that.”
“I mean, figure it out however you wish, but just look at yourself – reading some obscure high-brow stuff just because you feel like it,” Augustus gestured at the large spread of papers on the floor. “That’s not how I’d want to spend a Saturday afternoon in the summer, you know. But you do, somehow. Nerd.”
Lucy snorted and playfully hit her friend on his shoulder. He smiled, and finished his thought:
“And that, actually, is a good thing. That means you’re finding your own direction here, by yourself and for yourself.”
Lucy smiled, and fidgeted with an open notebook on her lap.
They sat silently for a while, Augustus looking at Lucy, waiting for her to continue. Eventually, she did:
“So anyway, what I was talking about. This great-grand-aunt, her name was Ophelia Turner. My aunt didn’t talk about her much… I think they weren’t on good terms, and she came here to the East Coast only when things went really badly for her, about ten years ago or so. She didn’t stay for long… She was pretty old and sick by that point, so you can guess the rest. I don’t know the details, but nobody in the family was happy about this. How she just dropped on my aunt’s doorstep, dumped all these boxes too, just showing up for the first time after decades. She always avoided all the gatherings and barely talked to anyone ever.”
“Not a lot of us even knew she even existed, which is really weird, because like... She discovered an entire new field in physics! She had publications, laboratories, an entire company, I think? I can’t find any references to this “LIM” she discovered, it’s all drowned by a million of things on the internet. But there are all these notebooks and papers here. Don’t know what that means yet, really, but it’s very, very weird. Like, modern computers in the forties level of weird. Or teleportation. Or levitation. Or you name it.”
“Huh. And why has nobody ever heard of it?”
“That’s another weird thing. There is almost nothing about her anywhere. Some things are just hard to find as I said. But a lot of specific things just don’t show up at all! Whatever that discovery was, it was all covered up. The only link is this Mandela effect president that never existed. See what I mean?”
Augustus raised an eyebrow:
“I know I like to watch some conspiracy trash, but you actually think this might be real?”
“Maybe? Don’t know yet,” Lucy shrugged. “That’s why I’m reading this. There is a lot of stuff left from Ophelia in my aunt’s attic. I took just one box, but there are a lot of notes and some devices too. Took one of them with me. I just couldn’t resist, you know? It’s so weird, and also kinda cool.”
“Devices, huh?” Augustus reached for the box. “May I look?”
“Sure.” Lucy shrugged and nodded. Her passionate speech about all those mysteries has left her slightly breathless.
He pulled the box closer and started to remove layers of old frayed notebooks and sheaves of paper.
Eventually he reached deep inside and pulled out a square metallic case with a flat densely woven basket made of thick wire on top. It was attached to the case on a freely spinning axis in the middle and it rotated slowly with a quiet ticking noise in response to the slightest motion. The whole thing looked like it was assembled from various mismatching spare parts of both consumer and lab electronics, and the case itself was made of roughly cut and sloppily soldered bare aluminum. Augustus spun it around in his hands and looked at a frontal panel that had a few unmarked buttons and a simple digital display with a dark splotch of a leaked liquid crystal.
“What is that thing?” he asked as he touched the basket on top and sent it spinning. Thick wire spokes that held it together formed hypnotizing moire patterns with the vent grill underneath. “Some sort of scale?”
“This notebook,” said Lucy as she waved one of the large leather-bound notebooks in front of Augustus. “Refers to it as ARC prototype C1. And I’ve spent almost a whole day trying to figure it out. No idea yet. But supposedly it’s what all of this is about. Something to do with a self-sustained electromagnetic resonance, whatever that means.”
Augustus turned the basket one more time, looking at it with one eye, then put it back in the box.
“Alright. This is beyond me and I’m not afraid to admit it,” He stood up and started towards the door. “I’ll let you nerd out on your own then. You don’t mind?”
“No, it’s fine. Go get Jordan out of his funk. I can feel his gay sadness through the walls,” Lucy smiled widely and motioned Augustus to go ahead.
“That’s the idea. Tell me if you find something cool there, okay?” he said and walked out of the room.
Lucy showed him a thumbs up, and motioned for him to close the door behind him.
Around the same time the next day, Lucy came running into Augustus' room. Without knocking she barged in with a wide excited smile. Surprised, the boy jumped off the bed, fumbling his flip-phone, which went flying into the room’s corner.
“Hey, Lucy, what gives?!” he exclaimed and ran towards the phone. He picked it up and inspected it from different angles for damages.
“Heh, sorry,” Lucy smiled awkwardly, picking at her neck bow. “I just found something about that ARC prototype. Let’s go, you need to see this!”
“Okay, let’s see,” The boy followed behind her.
The room was now in even more chaos than the day before – open notebooks and pages were now covering most of the floor and the bed, joined by a whole slew of colorful sticky notes, with various markings and symbols made by Lucy’s hand. The ARC device stood on the desk blinking small green and yellow lights on its lower panel. Augustus noticed that the device was now connected to the power filter next to her computer.
“Hey, are you sure it’s safe to plug this thing in?” Augustus nervously scratched his neck, looking at the ARC from a distance.
“Should be okay,” Lucy shrugged. “I had my doubts too, but so far it works fine. Notes don’t mention any warnings. Now, let me show you something really cool!”
She picked up a pencil from her desk and carefully placed it over the center of the round panel on top of the device. Pencil jumped from her hand like it was snatched by some invisible force and hung there suspended in the air and slowly rotating.
“Huh. It’s not magnetic, isn’t it? The pencil I mean,” said Augustus, finding courage to come a little closer.
“No, and that’s not the cool part. Now look,” Lucy lowered herself to her knees and pressed a button on the device’s panel.
It hummed loudly, then there was a loud crack, like a snapping twig. The pencil disappeared.
“What?” Augustus made a step back, unsure if what he saw was safe to be around. “Where did it go?”
“Somewhere,” Lucy shrugged. “But that’s not all.”
She pressed a few more buttons and the device whined again. Now the sound was much more unpleasant, vibrating on their teeth and it felt like it’ll never end. The plate on top rotated faster and faster, turning into a blur.
There was also a faint red glow coming off the plate, forming strange looping shapes – it was very hard to see, almost a ghost of a light than the light itself. The light in the room grew dimmer and started to flicker for a few seconds before returning back to normal.
Suddenly the whining stopped and another crack shook the air in the room. The missing pencil appeared again, floating over the panel, but after a moment it was joined by another. And another, and then a dozen more. They snapped into reality in a perfect hexagonal grid, and then suddenly dropped down and scattered.
“Whoa” the only thing Augustus managed to say looking at the scattered pencils with wide eyes. “This… this…”
“This is the coolest thing! Imagine what we can do with this!” Lucy exclaimed, raising her hands high.
“N-no, that’s not what I wanted to say,” Augustus looked very pale and a little sick. “This is a recipe for a disaster, Lucy. We don’t know what this thing actually does. And if it’s really just copying stuff… We’ll have to look behind our backs all our lives. You can’t even imagine how many people there are in the world, who will murder your entire family for this. Our… family. And I’m not speaking just of the government.”
“Hm,” Lucy frowned, looking at the device. Even if she noticed her friend’s remark about who belonged to her family, she didn’t show it. “It was in the aunt’s attic for how long, ten years? Probably more. Nobody came after her.”
“Well, that just means she didn’t do anything with it, so she flew under the radar. What I mean is that no one must know about this. No one at all. Including everyone in this house. I may be too paranoid, but I know how some of the vilest bastards out there are thinking.”
“We’ll be careful then. But still, I feel like I have to do something about this,” Lucy crossed her arms, looking at Augustus. “Seriously, this is the first thing in the past couple of years that actually gives me some kind of hope and motivation – I want to learn how this thing works, and I want the world to become a better place for it.”
“Finding your own path I get, but this is a bit more ambitious. This really is that important to you?..” Augustus scratched his chin. Looking back at the device, he noticed the glow again – it was growing brighter. “Hey, is this thing still supposed to do something else?”
Lucy turned towards the device. Raising her ears she noticed that the high-pitched whine was picking up again.
“Wait, no. That’s not supposed to happen unless I press the reprojection button,” Lucy hurried to the device and lowered back to her knees trying to see what’s written on a damaged display.
Whine grew louder and the red light emanating from the plate started to coalesce into bright loops dancing over the device. Absentmindedly, Augustus thought they looked like those plasma loops on the surface of the Sun – the prominences. Snapping out of this short-lived trance, he dashed towards the socket.
“We need to switch it off!” he shouted, yanking the cord.
The glow and whine didn’t stop however, and continued to grow stronger.
“Oh no, no-no-no!” Lucy jumped to her feet and ran towards the pile of notebooks on her bed. “There has to be something about this! I remember she mentioned that LIM can be self-sustained. There has to be a way to disrupt it!”
“Please do it faster!” Augustus backed away from the device, watching as the plasma loops became brighter and bigger, now gliding through the furniture and walls. A small mercy that those bright red lines didn’t ignite anything, but the moment one of them touched the boy’s hand, he knew it was not just a trick of the light – the searing pain shot through his entire arm, making it numb.
“Lucy, we need to get out of here!” he shouted, hissing in pain. “This is too dangerous!”
As soon as he said it, he knew that it was too late – the loops propagated themselves far enough to cover the door entirely. There was only one way out – the window. Without hesitating for a single second more, he grabbed Lucy by the waist and dragged her towards it. She struggled to free herself from his grip, reaching for an open notebook left on the bed.
“I almost got it, Gus, stop it!” she protested, flailing her arms and legs.
The boy didn’t respond, struggling with his unfeeling hand to unlock the window. He looked back – the loops grew even larger and angrier in color. There was now a weird iridescent mist coalescing in the room, like a drop of oil on the surface of a puddle, and it also grew larger, swirling faster with each moment. Hissing a curse, he stopped trying to open the window and just kicked the frame with his foot with as much desperate force as he could muster. The thin wood planks and panels of glass gave way immediately and flew out of their place in the frame in a burst of splinters.
Lucy stopped struggling at that point, looking in awe at the horrifying dance of energy now engulfing her entire room. And just like that she flopped like a rag doll on top of Augustus as he landed on the lawn in front of the house. She felt her friend letting her go and laying her down on the grass. He ran back towards the house entrance, but stopped half-way, remembering they were alone this Sunday evening. He hurried back and leaned over Lucy.
“What have I done?” she muttered, watching as burning loops rose over the roof, painting the sky above in angry red.
“Hey, Lucy!” Augustus snapped his fingers in front of her face. “We need to move. We need to evacuate everyone before it’s too late. Get up!”
“Hey, guys! What’s going on?!” there came a shout from the sidewalk. Lucy turned her head and saw an inverted shape of her ex-friend, Mike. He was running towards them with a panicking expression, his scarf trailing behind. Looking up and then back down he added: “Lucy! Are you alright?! Is she alright?”
Lucy rolled and rose unsteadily to her knees. Using one hand for support, she raised another trying to say two things at the same time with one gesture – “I’m okay” and “Go away.”
Mike was running closer on the driveway, when the loud whining disappeared suddenly, and everything became silent like the entire world was suddenly packed tight with cotton balls. Mike slowed down, looking up. Lucy started to raise her head as well, when all the sound returned in a single powerful burst. The wave or red and yellow loops passed through everything, feeling like a powerful sandblast. Then one of the loops snapped, turning into a straight red lightning.
It struck Mike directly.
“No!!” Lucy screamed, jumping to her feet.
Mike, however, appeared to not notice it at all, continuing to run towards Lucy. But he ran slower now, gliding through the air like in a movie, and both Lucy and Augustus watched with their mouths open as Mike’s shape started to fray at the edges and dissolve into rainbow mist. Only a small gust of wind with a scent of his deodorant reached them when he was supposed to.
“No, no, no…” Lucy repeated non-stop slowly walking towards where Mike disappeared. She didn’t feel anything at all in her body; everything became numb and distant, and all noise faded away too, even Augustus shouts behind her.
She raised her arm as if trying to touch the space where he was, when another wave hit her from behind. She still didn’t feel anything, and just stood straight, at the same spot.
Then the world shattered like a glass pane and went white.
***
World reassembled itself again and the white void faded from Lucy’s vision.
She was standing in her room, a ringing silence filling her ears. She frowned and looked around. Room has changed noticeably – all the notes and papers she collected for her project were gone. Walls were painted in a different shade now, and the window was whole again.
Feeling the panic gripping her heart, she spun around, and immediately noticed that her body now also felt different somehow. Slightly taller and heavier? A small twinge of pain pricked her in the back. She reached her hand, and felt something like a long thin bump across her spine, rubbing awkwardly against a thin shirt she was now wearing for some reason. Her sides rubbed against her arm strangely – she noticed that somehow she gained some weight.
“Gus?” she called with an unsteady voice. Nobody responded.
She walked towards the door, once again noticing how wrong her movement felt, like she was wearing thick winter clothes a size smaller.
She exited her room and walked to the guest room where Augustus lived. Door was the same as her own, and it stood closed in a dark corridor with only a thin line of daylight seeping from underneath. She rotated the handle and the door opened with a loud groan of long unoiled hinges.
As she entered the room, Lucy gasped silently, and looked around not understanding what she was seeing. The room was empty and covered in dust – the motes danced in the diffuse overcast light, disturbed by the opening door. The bed stood as just an empty frame with a small pile of old winter clothes thrown on top of it. It looked like this room was used for a long time as just storage – a lot of open space was filled with old stained and dusty boxes, stacks of books and unused plates and bowls.
“What?” she finally managed, scanning the room with wide eyes for a second time, as if hoping to dispel the illusion.
She went down the stairs, noticing that the house felt a lot colder and emptier now. Before, even when nobody was home, it was evident that a large family lives here – everything always was slightly in disarray, clothes and just random nick-knacks everywhere, and the smell of a living home permeating everything. Now everything was a little too neat, and maybe a little dusty, like someone just laid out things in the places they actually belonged to and hadn't touched them for years. Smell too was strange – still homely, but muted and diminished.
Lucy entered the kitchen, still looking around with a sense of unreality. But at least there was a familiar sight – her mom was sitting there at the table, reading something from an almost comically oversized phone. Lucy smiled, but immediately her smile faded again as she noticed that her mom looked way older than she remembered.
“Mom?” she said softly. “Where is Augustus?”
Her mother snapped her head up in surprise, and immediately her face turned to that specific expression of motherly worry and pity Lucy knew well from her high school troubles.
“Oh, honey,” Mom stood up and hurried towards her. She took Lucy by her shoulders and looked into her eyes. “How do you feel? Does your head hurt? Your back?”
“I’m fine,” Lucy frowned. “What’s going on?”
“You had another episode. A first one in years. But you’re going to be fine, it’ll come to you within hours,” mother explained, and pulled Lucy into a hug. “Just don’t worry, let me make you some tea and you’ll wait it out, okay? That old injury is giving you trouble again, but it’s going to be fine. That day was a long time ago.”
“Episode?” Lucy muttered, standing stiff. “Where is Gus, mom?”
She struggled against the hug, a fight between anger and paralyzing dread rocking her chest.
“Augustus is fine, we talked with him just yesterday. He moved out eight years ago. He finished college and is now working on something important in Seattle. That young man is just as smart as you, my little kitten. You both made me very proud.”
“Eight years?..” Lucy’s throat hitched and she felt very weak in her knees.
Her mother, feeling this and, probably, knowing exactly what was happening by experience, immediately guided her towards the chair, sat her down and hurried to the cupboards to prepare some tea.
“And Mike? What happened to him?” Lucy asked after a few minutes, accepting the steaming mug.
“Mike? That horrible boy? I remember you asking about him each time, but you never told me why.”
“He… he was also injured that day, wasn’t he?”
“No. He couldn’t be here on that day at all, his parents moved out months before. And that’s good. Never liked those people, I tell you what.”
“But… but I saw him… he…”
“No, you were the only one who got injured in that storm, nobody else. Even Augustus managed to get away with just some torn clothes. I’ve talked to the doctors after you mentioned that for the first time. They say the neurological damage from the lightning strike can do strange things to the memories. And that’s what’s happening – you get amnesia episodes occasionally, and you get false memories too.”
“Lightning strike? That doesn’t sound right,” Lucy frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s okay, it’ll pass. Last time you got all your memories back by the evening. But I hoped that was it and it won’t happen anymore… We need to go check you up. I don’t have you on my insurance anymore, of course, and your own also ran out this year, but it’s not a big deal. We’ll figure it out.”
Lucy made another sip of her tea, but couldn’t bring herself to continue sitting in one place. She needed to know what really happened.
“I need… I need to check something,” slamming the cup down on the table so hard it spilled a little, she stood up and marched rigidly back upstairs. Older white cat stayed at the table, looking at her with a sad expression.
Lucy entered her room, and once again it hit her with the strangeness of how it looked now. She gave it another look, and immediately noticed new things hanging on the walls. One of them was a framed photo of her and Augustus, happily smiling and hugging each other by the shoulders in front of a large mountain. Augustus still had long hair, but it was now flowing a little more freely. She had stylish aviator sunglasses and a baseball hat. She had longer hair as well, covering her signature neck bow.
Another frame was next to her computer, which, she noticed, now looked much thinner and shinier than before. This frame apparently held a University diploma. She approached it and looked at the fancy lettering.
“Stanford?! Master of Electrical Engineering?” Lucy exclaimed incredulously. “How did I manage to pull that one off?”
She thought hard, trying to remember anything. For a while there was only the ringing silence and fog, but then there were some echoes of something vague. She remembered the hot Californian sun, rows and rows of thick palm trees, and hundreds of different faces, some of them she probably called friends. Dozens of disjointed images of rooms and streets. Something was slowly coalescing in her mind, but she still couldn’t see it clearly.
She shook her head and sat in front of the computer. She needed to make sure that what had happened to her was real, so she had to check. The glassy surface lit up with painfully bright and vivid colors – Lucy was almost taken aback by that screen, a far cry from her old one that she got used to.
Old password full of childish puns that she came up with in middle school still worked, however.
She opened the browser and immediately went to search. The moment she entered July 19 2009, the suggestion popped with “Roseville lightning strike”. Lucy hesitated, looking at those words. This was another evidence that it was indeed, as her mom put it, “an episode”.
She frowned and clicked on the suggestion to get to the results.
Strangely enough, there was nothing relevant. A lot of the links in the search results were purple, so it was clear that she went through all of them at some point before. On the third page the results deteriorated completely and now showed her something completely inane and not even in English.
She frowned harder. This had to be registered in some way or another. There were dozens of small local newspapers in New Jersey, that would report on the most boring things, so a high-schooler hit by a lightning in her own home should be pretty high on the list, not to mention all kinds of UFOlogists who would go bananas over mysterious lights in a boring suburb town.
She closed the browser and leaned on her chair not knowing what to do next. And at that moment she noticed an icon tucked into a corner of the desktop. A single html file, named 07-19-2010.
She immediately clicked it and saw a saved page from one of such local newspapers. Most of the page layout was broken, but there was text and a couple of photos.
The title proclaimed in large bold letters: “Local high-schooler almost killed in a freak thunderstorm”.
The photo showed her house – the focus on the rough hole in place of the window that Augustus kicked down trying to save her. She scrolled down, reading the page:
“The sunny afternoon of July 19th was probably the most unusual moment in the history of New Jersey from the point of view of our meteorologists. Nothing could have predicted the strange and still unexplained event that almost caused a tragedy. While the ‘bolt of the blue’ is not an unheard of phenomena, our weather experts assure us that the rarity of such an event in our part of the country makes it pretty much impossible.”
“However, as much of an impossibility as we might think it was, a seventeen year old student of Roseville High was unlucky enough to experience a lightning strike right into her window. Lucky for her, however, another recent graduate of Roseville High happened to be nearby and was able to apply first aid and call for an ambulance. We applaud this young man’s quick thinking and knowledge, as the medics who arrived in half an hour due to some traffic issues were able to get her to hospital without any additional complications.”
“We also applaud his dedication as he insisted on following the strike’s victim to the hospital, not willing to let her out of sight. Due to confidentiality laws we weren’t able to get any details about what happened next to the girl, however hospital staff assured us that she is stable and most likely will be released within a week.”
“We tried to get a few more comments out of the state meteorology service, but unfortunately they weren’t able to tell us anything conclusive. Very small thunderstorms quickly forming and dissipating without any prior warning are possible, the experts told us, but they require very extreme pressure gradients in the atmosphere which usually are not happening over flat coastal areas in the northern US.”
“Searching for more answers we also questioned some of the local residents of that particular subdivision. Most declined any comments, referring to being out and about on the Sunday afternoon, but those who did answer our inquiries shared a very interesting observation – apparently this thunderstorm was not just very sudden, it was also featuring red lightning and almost no clouds. One particular resident even added, and we quote:”
“‘Dunno what kind of a thunderstorm was that. I saw some freaky ones, but this one takes the ******* cake. And I tell you, I’ve been to Oklahoma, there’s some wild **** over there. But that one – nope, no way, it’s them kids playing with explosives or something. I mean, have you ever seen a thunderstorm with bright red clouds and lightning shaped like laser beams?’”
“An update on July 25: We’re happy to report that the victim of the event successfully returned home and her heroic friend, who originally called the medics, was accompanying her each step of the way.”
“On an additional note, apparently the scientific value of this event was high enough to bring some federal resources to Roseville. Our local meteorological station is now being renovated and is temporarily under new management from a central weather research institution titled ‘FBC’. If you ask me, I don’t think I ever heard of that particular governmental branch, and when approached they refused to decipher the name of their organization, but it’s clear that they are dedicated scientists with community safety at the forefront of their work.”
The second photo of the page showed what Lucy assumed was the meteorological station – an evenly spaced array of small boxes and wanes, which also had a group of people in white lab coats walking about and a van with an inverted black triangle symbol on its side. Van was also sporting an entire forest of antennas and dishes on its roof and was clearly guarded by a serious looking man in a poncho-like raincoat.
“Well, that looks ominous.” commented Lucy, looking closely at the photo. “No wonder the article got deleted.”
Acting on a hunch, she stood up and walked around the room.
There was no Oppy’s box anywhere. She looked under the bed and in the closet. She expanded her search to the Augustus room, but the box was also nowhere to be found.
“No…” she groaned. “They took it away… Of course they did.”
She returned to her room and noticed a phone on the desk – the same black slate type that Mike got his hands on back then, but this one was thinner and way larger.
She picked it up. It was really large, barely fitting on her palm.
“What is this new nonsense?” she muttered, immediately distracted. “Give me back my flip-phone…”
After fumbling for a few seconds, she managed to unlock it with her finger. Inside she found the phone book, and right on top of the list – Augustus.
Not hesitating a second, she pressed the button to call.
There was a few long seconds of wait, while she paced around the room.
Eventually there was a click, and a barely recognizable voice responded:
“Lucy?”
“Gus! Finally!” exclaimed Lucy.
“You’re calling directly on the phone – that means it happened again, right? How do you feel?”
“Yes, mom already explained it to me… and I saw the article. I’m okay.”
“Okay, good. You’re probably worrying about the box? Don’t. I took care of it. Or rather, good people did.”
“The guys from the article?”
“…yes.”
“But why? You said it yourself, nobody must know.”
“Well, hold on a moment. Let me call you back.”
He hung up, and Lucy looked at her phone puzzled. That was strange even by Gus' paranoid standards. A couple of seconds later, the phone rang, but not with the same image on screen as when she called him. This one was from some side app installed on the phone somewhere. It didn’t have any logo or any visual adornments of its interface. Just very basic lines and square buttons on a white background with a big black inverted triangle in the middle and a hex code instead of a contact name. Lucy stared at it for a moment, feeling like she was in a spy movie.
“Okay,” said Augustus, his voice serious. “I was sort of right when I warned you about your safety with that thing. But there is more to this. Those guys, the FBC; they are not bad people. At least, so far they treated us fair. We wouldn’t afford our Stanford degrees otherwise, you know.”
“So… what does it mean? Why would they pay for us?”
“I’m not sure, but they explained that they monitor and provide help to good ‘Candidates’, whatever that means, and they were happy to learn we exist. They also have some plans about the old Ophelia’s projects, so they were very interested in what I told them.”
“So you just went and blabbed about it?”
“I didn’t. Not at first. But they just knew everything there is to know about it and more, so they were just looking for confirmation. I wasn’t about to play stupid games, you know.”
“So, okay, a mysterious governmental organization not only didn’t throw us into a ditch, but also paid for our education. Sounds plausible and not nefarious at all.”
“Yes, pretty much. They know about Mike.”
“They what?” Lucy’s breath caught in her throat. “Mom said that he couldn’t be there, he moved out of town before it happened.”
“Yes, well, they didn’t really share any logistics of what actually happened. But they know that he was struck by the Instability Storm, like you, but unlike you, he disappeared. They don’t know where. Or not telling me, which is more plausible.”
“So… does that mean…”
“Yes, some bad and some good news. We saw what we saw and it was true. Good news is that we might be able to get him back from whatever shadow realm he is in.”
“What makes you think that?” Lucy stopped in her pacing, looking out of the window on the spot where Mike disappeared eight years ago… Or today, from her point of view.
“I’m not entirely sure. But the agent I was speaking with said that this is tied to Ophelia’s experiments with space and time using her LIM tech. He said that Mike could be displaced in time or he could be in some kind of stasis. Or he could be completely erased from existence, easily.”
“Don’t say that,” Lucy responded with a harsh voice.
“Hey. Don’t panic just yet. I have a plan. We discussed it a couple weeks before, actually, but I’ve had some progress since then.”
“Okay…” Lucy flopped onto her bed, not feeling very well. “What’s the plan?”
“When you’re ready, come to Seattle. I was digging some stuff around Olympic National Park, and I think I found a way in. You’ll pose as a courier servicing the ranger station there – that’ll get you clearance.”
“What’s there?”
“Well, you probably heard about the Bermuda Triangle of the PNW? Where hikers and hunters go and disappear without a trace. Well, that’s because it’s actually an enormous research facility that your great-grand-aunt founded. She lived there originally.”
“Seriously? That stupid conspiracy was true? I need to get used to that...” Lucy asked with a surprise in her voice, and sat on the bed.
“Yes, and it looks like if there are any chances to find the answers, it’s there. It’s almost impossible to get inside, but I think I found a safe bet. And another thing – looks like you’ll need to renew the medication the FBC gave you. It lasted for just five years… They promised you won’t relapse for at least ten. I’ll get a new dose as soon as you arrive.”
“Okay. I’ll go as soon as I can. I need to find some money first though.”
“Just check your account. I remember you have more than enough from our last project.”
“Huh. Alright. I’m glad you’re okay, by the way. And I read in the article how you saved me and cared for me. Thank you. You did it twice already, and… I… Thank you,” she sniffed, fighting a tear trying to escape from her eye.
“Heh. Any time, little sister. I’m always here for you.”
“Whoa,” Lucy sat straight. “Okay. I like the sound of that. See you, bro.”
“See you, Lucy.”
She pressed the “end call” button with a smile and wiped the wetness off her cheeks.
This day felt impossibly long, and maybe it was – it was bisected by a pause eight years long. She still couldn’t wrap her head around this fact, but at least those last few words brought something good to her clouded mind. It was a small glimmer in the gloom, but it was something. Tomorrow, she hoped, the fog that lay between her present and that summer day in 2009 will finally clear. She will get a chance to fix her mistake and she’ll be ready for what it might take.