I love inspiration, but do I have time for a quantum change?
I tried. See what you think.
Check out Part One, Part Two, or Part Three first, if you're finding yourself somewhere in the middle of this story, and then...
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Full Stop - Part Four
A Short Story by Dianna Zaragoza
Based on 'The Day Time Stopped Moving' by Bradner Buckner
Joe spun towards the light, almost ghostly voice that came
from the bookcases behind him.
“Who’s there?”
A gray-haired woman emerged from between the rows, wearing a
brown sweater and jeans and army boots, her eyes wide beneath her silver-rimmed
glasses. Her wispy hair had been pulled back into a silver ponytail. Her
glove-covered hands came to her forehead, along with the pen and book her hands
still held.
“I thought I was talking to myself. Oh no….no no no no….”
Joe smiled and rushed over to her. “You’re…you’re still
moving, like me! Do you have any idea what’s going on here?”
“More than you know, young man. I’m afraid I’m the one who’s
created this situation.”
Joe’s smile fell. “What? You did all this? What do you
mean?”
The woman waved his hands in frustration over her notebook
as she talked, the paper littered with mathematical calculations and erasure
marks. “Well, I mean, I think I’ve pinpointed the problem. You know, there were
supposed to be four stages of amplification – four!” She laughed. “And I only
pushed through three. Regretting that now, obviously. Actually on second
thought, there should probably have been five, just to make sure…”
Joe lifted his hands to calm her, and extended one hand.
“Hi, I’m Joe. Joe Vigga. What’s your name?“
“I’m Lana. Lana Luther, of the Luther Foundation.”
Joe shook his head. “Never heard of it – sorry.”
She smiled and patted his hand. “Don’t be. That means my
lack of publicity campaign is working.” She threw her notes down on the
librarian’s desk nearby and shook his head, his eyes again widening. “We were
on the edge of a major breakthrough, and then this – “ Lana suddenly stared at
Joe’s face, perusing him closely.
“Are you sick, by any chance? Your skin looks flushed,” she
observed.
Joe smiled a little sheepishly, and rubbed one eye, suddenly
feeling the tiredness again. “Not unless you count drunk the same as being
sick. And drunk I did do to myself.”
“Drunk…” Lana’s eyes narrowed as she looked Joe up and down.
“No, drunk wouldn’t have done it. There must have been something else about
you. The impulsor isn’t that powerful.” She glanced down at the dog, now
sniffing the toys at the children’s table. “Where did you find him? Is it a him?”
“Major here? Yep. Over at the truck stop by Highway 80.”
Lana smiled, and rubbed his ears. Major smiled his dog smile
at her. “See? Now that I understand. He must have been hit by a car, poor
thing. He got caught in that moment between life and death. But you – I don’t
know.“
“I – oh.” Joe finally caught on to what Lana hinted at.
“Well, it’s a little embarrassing, really. I – I shot myself. In the head. “
He held two fingers up at his temple and made a sound like a
gunshot against his head. “My wife left me, and I was pretty drunk at the time.
Seemed like a good idea, but now, dead doesn’t seem like such an inspiration
after all…”
Lana’s face lit up in comprehension, and then she smiled.
“Are you sure you’re dead?”
“Pretty sure. I mean, how else would I have ended up here?”
“Oh, young man, you might be surprised.”
“I’m not really that young, you know. And you can call me
Joe.”
She smiled. “Sorry – I guess I can get a little brusque at
times in problem-solving mode. Lana’s fine for me too.”
Joe turned back toward the door of the library, where a
statue still held the door open. “So, Lana…if you know how we got here, any ideas
on how we get back? And can you explain in small words – I spend my days making
pizza instead of making…what did you call it?”
“The impulsor. Have you ever taken theoretical calculus, Joe?”
“Only if it came out of a bottle.”
“I’m afraid the details might be a little over your head
then. Suffice it to say that my foundation develops theories on time and its
characteristics. Conventional reasoning says that time is always being created
in a long stream of moments, but I’m not so sure these days.”
Lana moved into his line of vision, taking a seat over in the
children’s section of the library. She gestured over to him to join her. “It’s
my theory that time exists in perpetuity. Not like a chain link, with a
beginning and an end – I mean, who could imagine a time when time did not
exist?”
Joe shrugged as he sat next to her. Major put his head on
the table, and Joe petted him. “It might be a little easier for me now than it
was…”
“It’s been my theory that time already exists, but it’s
circular in nature, like a toy train.” She took hold of a toy train with a
smiling face on it sitting on the table and twirled it around on an imaginary
track on the table. “Eternity. No end. We mortals are merely riders on this
train that goes around and around on it. The future exists at the same time
with the past, in the moment when they finally come together.”
Joe felt his headache returning, and he lifted a hand to
cover one eye. “You say this as if I learned it in kindergarten. I have no clue
what you’re talking about. Past and future, meeting together…?”
Lana leaned forward, putting a hand on Joe’s shoulder. “I
know. I can’t expect you to understand all this, but try. Mostly I’m saying
this out loud so I can think it through myself, I suppose. A train on a
circular track is the best way I can describe it to you.”
“Okay, I see the train on the track. How do we get off?”
“We’ve already exited, Joe.” Lana laughed. “We jumped off
the train! Our problem isn’t getting off…it’s finding a way back on. If that’s
even possible.” She pointed to the front of the toy train. “When the train
reaches the original starting point, it’s starting to connect to the past.
Which it can’t do, without becoming the end instead of the front of the train –
a conundrum of nature! And so, that one point is the point that’s always ahead
of – and behind – time.”
“It was my idea that, with a strong enough stimulus, a person
could theoretically be ‘thrown from the train’ – to a point in his past. At
this point, he could neither catch up with the future, nor could he stand still
and let the time-train catch up to him. But – he could be thrown across the
circle and land farther back in time – which is what you and I and dear Major have
done – in a sense.”
“We’ve been almost thrown from a time-train?” Joe shook his
head.
Lana nodded. “We’re somewhere between the present point in
time and the past links in the circular chain. We are existing in an instant
where we can neither move forward or back. We have sailed off on a wave, with
who knows how many others, when I activated our time impulsor. We are castaways
on a beach of immortality.
Joe thought for a moment. “So, if this happened to you and
me and Major – if this happened to the three of us, and maybe a few others out
there in the world, what happened to everyone else? What happened to my wife?”
Lana’s face tensed, and she stood up from his chair,
grimacing and hopping on one foot. For a moment, she looked far away.
Joe stood to help her. “Are you all right?”
“Forgive me, my back…I can’t sit for long, but I’m so tired.
I walked for what felt like hours to get here.”
“Do you need to lay down? I don’t think anyone would object.”
“No, I’ll be alright. I hope.” She bent over the librarian’s
desk again, and then looked at him. “Your wife – she’s right here, you know.
Not here in this library, of course, but she’s in the time loop…and we’re not.
For us, time no longer exists.”
She held a hand to his back and winced.
“Sure you don’t want to lay down or something?”
“I’m fine. At my age, you never know when laying down means
you won’t get back up again.” She breathed heavily for a moment. “I hadn’t
expected this, you know. I hadn’t expected people to continue living on, in
this one discarded instant of time. Hadn’t expected something different from
those who are standing on the cliff, suspended in the air between life and the
void…”
“So we’re really dead then…” Joe resigned himself mentally
to the possibility.
Lana’s eyes seemed to brighten. “Well, we’re still talking
and moving, and my back still hurts…how dead is that? It’s probably more
accurate to say we are stuck between moments. When I activated the impulsor,
something went very wrong…” She patted himself down as if to reassure himself
he was still present. “I think something must have happened to me.”
Then he pointed to Joe.
“I think, in that very same instant, you shot yourself. We may both
actually be dying or dead, Joe. The only way for us to know for sure, is to somehow
get my machine working again, and catapult us back into the active flow of
time. But where we land is critical – “
“Where we land?”
“When we’re back in the flow of time, and I can’t predict
which way we’ll go. If we go back a moment, we might all live. If we land in
the present, well…”
“Hey, I still say we try. Anything’s better than this.” Joe
stood and walked over to Lana, now standing again on her own, stretching out
one leg. “What do you need from me?”
Lana looked weary and re-adjusted her glasses on her nose.
“I came here, hoping to fill in some of the gaps in my knowledge. My own notes
and my laptop, my books – they’re all locked in my study. The books here might
as well be rocks for all the good they’ve done me. I can’t even lift them off
the shelves. I suppose we could go back to the lab, but honestly, I don’t know
if I’ll make it.”
Joe nodded. “Sure, the lab. Maybe something’ll come to you
when you check the machine again – the whatsis?”
“The impulsor.”
“Yeah, that. I can carry you, if you like.”
“Are you sure? It’s a mighty long walk.”
Joe shrugged. “What else am I gonna do? My back is fine. I might
as well walk for you.”
He hoisted her up on his back. She seemed light in his arms.
“Nothing else left to try at this point. Pray, Joe. Pray to
whatever or whomever you believe in, because I’m coming up empty.”
Lana laughed. “That’s true. Movement’s
the only thing that sets us apart from the whole world right now.”
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