September 2009

By Elliot Richard Dorfman

Having nothing better to do that Saturday night, Andy Langford went to a party held somewhere in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It was being given by Rex Stein, one of his former students who had recently written a successful Broadway musical. Years ago, he had also tried writing a musical score, but it had resulted in a big failure, So becoming extremely discouraged, he gave up the notion of composing and settled into a secure job of teaching music at a New York high school.

Now hitting forty, and recently divorced, he was becoming apathetic to almost everything around him. And just why not? Life seemed to have lost any challenge that it once seemed to hold.

His thoughts were interrupted when a pretty, young blond walked over to him and gave him a friendly smile.

“You look so sad I ‘ve decided to try and cheer you up,” she warmly said. "I'm Norma Martin, Rex’s new next door neighbor. I just moved to Manhattan from the Adirondack region in Upstate New York.”

The two conversed all through the party. She was bright, independent, and very mature for a person her age. They seemed to have a lot in common, despite the fact that she was twenty years his junior. By the end of evening, he asked her out on a date. She accepted with no hesitation.

From then on, the more Andy saw of Norma, the happier he became. It was such a delight going to concerts and the theatre with her. She absorbed everything with such zest. Their relationship seemed to affect his appearance and manner. He looked more youthful and relaxed. Even if this was a summer-spring romance, he knew it was the real thing. A few months later, he persuaded her to move into his Battery Park apartment.

It was a muggy August morning, early in September.Norma sat in the kitchen looking out of the window with a sort of melancholy expression.

“Time to change her mood,” he happily thought, pulling out an expensive diamond engagement ring from a small blue velvet-lined box.

“Honey, it’s time to make our relationship official,” he announced and tried slipping the ring on her finger. But Norma stopped him as her eyes teared up.

“I ‘m so sorry, Andy, but I can’t. There’s something in my background that prevents it.”

“You’re not a criminal or are in some kind of trouble, are you?” he nervously asked.

“I doubt it. Look, you never met my parents. I think we should do it now. Dad will be able to explain the problem much better than I would.”

“I’ll give him a call and see if can be today,” she said, taking out her phone.

An hour later, they were on their way to see her parents in the Adirondack mountains.

The Martin’s home was a charming colonial located on an acre of well-groomed land.

A flicker of sadness crossed Norma’s face. “It’s only rented until the middle of September.”

He was about to ask where her parents permanently lived, when Vernon and Thelma Martin opened the door and escorted them inside.

The Martins were extremely congenial. Like their daughter, they had a way of making you like them within minutes of meeting them. Hungry after the long ride, Andy and Norma washed up then dinner was served. Everything was delicious. He remembered Norma telling him him that her mother loved to cook.

After the meal, Andy complimented Thelma. “Compliments to the chief. I never tasted such a good roast chicken.”

Thelma smiled. “Actually, it wasn’t chicken. Andy and I are vegans, but of course any type of food can now be structurally altered to taste the way you desire it.”

Vernon nervously laughed. “I think Thelma meant that certain food can be prepared to taste like something else. Vegan chiefs are noted for that, right dear?”

After the dishes were cleared, they all settled in the living room. Vernon turned to Andy.

Andy could feel himself getting angry. "But why? “Norma mentioned that there was some kind of an obstacle. Just what is it? ”

“Andy, do you believe a person can travel back in time?”
Andy looked at him with surprise. At first he thought Vernon was trying to change the subject and make some kind of a joke, but his face remained serious.

“Five hundred years from now they’ll think differently. Eventually after many trials and tribulations, time travel will become a reality, and people will be able return to the past with the proper knowledge on how to behave while they are visiting and not affect the future time line.”

“Because Thelma, Norma and I have come from the future. We are taking a break from our daily life by having this extended vacation in the early twenty-first century. We’ve found the simple amenities of the Adirondacks very enjoyable. Our world is so much more technical and faster paced. However, Norma, who is still young, felt this region is too dull, so she went to the city where she met you. ”

Andy scowled. “Excuse me, Sir, but all this is hard for me to believe. It sounds like some kind of fantastic science fiction story.”

Vernon pulled out a small gold colored oval object and pointed it to the window. Instantly all of them were transported out to the patio.

Vernon continued. “The important point is that our vacation is shortly coming to a close. We must soon return to our regular life in our own time frame.”

Vernon shook his head. “It would be too complicated and unfair to her. She would have to abide by lots of difficult restrictions in order not to upset the future. That means Norma could not have her own children, do anything notable that could alter the achievements of others, and so on. No, it’s quite impossible.”
“ Then what about if I came with you?”suggested Andy. “I’d be perfectly willing to give up everything here to be with your daughter.”

Vernon gently put his hands on the teacher’s shoulders. “ Are you that sure? It would require you acclimating yourself to quite a different way of living. That could cause a lot of stress. Think it over.”

Norma’s eyes filled with tears as she walked to Andy and give him a kiss. “Andy, darling, as much as I want you to be with me, it seems wrong that you should have to sacrifice your identity and all that you accomplished in your present life.

Perhaps some other woman will eventually come along that’s right for you after I ‘m gone.” Distruaght, she broke away from him and tried running out of the room, but Andy grabbed her into his arms.

“I believe our destiny was meant be together. If I lose you, my life will never again be happy or complete. With you at my side, I’m not afraid of what lies ahead. My love for you will give me the strength to deal with any situation. Please, I must go with you.

Vernon smiled. “Yes, I see how determined you are, but it could be dangerous. Coming with us may cause a negative reaction by changing or stopping some kind of event that would effect the time spectrum. It’s all very complex. To be on the safe side, I will have to contact a friend from my time who has the official access to look up your life records. We should then know how to proceed.”

“If there are no complications, about forty-five minutes. In the meanwhile, why don’t you and Norma take a stroll in the garden, it’s such a lovely autumn night.” Vernon went into the study and closed the door.

The two walked slowly on the moon-drenched path. The air was crisp and clean. The gentle sounds of the night creatures could be heard coming from a nearby pond.

When they returned inside, Thelma silently gave the couple a glass of whiskey to fortify them. A moment later, Vernon came from the study, grinning from ear to ear.

“It’s all right, Andy. It looks like everything is going according to your natural destiny after all.”

“Well, the records indicated that you strangely disappeared without a trace on a September night in the early part of the twenty-first century. So it looks like the cost is clear.”

In his happiness, Andy picked up Norma and twirled her around. Never in his life had he felt so ecstatically happy.

As it turned out, Andy made the transition into the future very nicely. Eventually he even returned to teaching, except now he taught a history course about the latter half of the twentieth century. After all, the man was highly qualified for that.

We never seem to have enough time to do all of the things we want to. Here is one mans take on how to resolve that problem...

"If it were up to Me, Dr. Prang, you'd have Tenure tomorrow. By all accounts you're a Fabulous teacher, a Credit to Our University. Students even show up for your Summer Course. But, alas--." He spread his hands in a well-practiced gesture of resignation; again his lips quivered as if trying to remember a movement last made many years before. After a moment he continued, his voice oozing sincerity, still speaking in intermittent capitals."But you know the Rules. And you simply haven't Published nearly enough. And I'm afraid the Committee on Tenure will make a Most Unfortunate Decision at its Meeting at the Beginning of Second Term in January."

An uncomfortable silence dropped like the curtain at an amateur play. The dean fidgeted for a moment."But there is," he said at last, in an overly hearty tone, "still Time. And that is, after all, what you're most Knowledgeable about, is it not?"

"Well, thanks for the heads up, Dean Mossback. I'll see what I can do." He nodded again, and left the room.

Though his expression remained calm, Professor Prang's brain roiled with worries. He'd been distracted over the last three years, no doubt, but the tenure committee had as little interest in the personal lives of the professors as most of those professors had in the lives of their students. He needed tenure desperately; buying and repairing the old farm had been a gamble from the beginning, but the death of his wife and the illness of their two year-old daughter had stretched his financial resources to the limit or even beyond, if one took the ruinous interest rates charged by MegaCard into account. He couldn't lose this job, not now.

But what could he do? Not for the first time he half-regretted having allowed himself to be swayed by the large checks for the six popular science articles in Sunday Cavalcade Magazine; virtually all of his colleagues had frowned on the idea of making complex ideas easily available to the general public.Though a year had passed since the last of the articles, Lucius Prang had yet to be invited again to any faculty parties. Not having published more than a smattering of serious articles in peer-reviewed journals was sin enough, but having published in the mainstream press might well be the kiss of death.

He sighed. It was just as well that no one among his colleagues had the faintest idea of his tinkering with the idea, and fact, of a time machine. They'd write him off as a crackpot for certain. For now he was merely suspect; should word of the extensive laboratory in the barn behind his house leak out he might as well start applying for jobs at the local electronics warehouse.

He reached his office in a funk. He had five months before the tenure committee met; given his teaching load, he could scarcely expect to write even one serious article, let alone get it reviewed and accepted for publication before then. Nor could he imagine developing and displaying some spectacular, and highly remunerative, practical application of his theoretical work. He was, in a word, doomed. He sat back and stared out the window, trying to imagine what might come next, and how he and his daughter would survive it.

"Oh, uh,--" the gawky redheaded student poking his head in the door swallowed nervously; his Adam's apple bobbed up and down as if trying to climb a greased fire pole.

"Come in, Delbert," Professor Prang said with a smile. "What have you got for me today?"

Delbert Widdicombe, despite his utter lack of social graces, was Prang's favorite pupil. His grasp of theoretical physics was astonishing, and he rarely failed to find some unexpected detail to question in even what appeared the most straightforward examples. In discussions regarding science he was never at a loss for words; in discussions regarding anything else he could seldom find a dozen connected words at a time. Professor Prang usually finished a conversation with Delbert feeling stimulated mentally, and exhausted linguistically.

"Well, I'm, uh, wondering about what, um, you said in our final History of Science seminar. About Einstein's heat theory."

"So the energy of each oscillator is-- may I?"Assuming an affirmative answer he leapt at the small blackboard and scrawled a formula: Ei = nhf. "So then the heat capacity is--" he scribbled a second formula, "if we let x be--" a third formula appeared, "so that--" the final figure rippled from his chalky fingers: F(x) = x2ex/(ex-1)2. Right?"

Prang smiled. "That's what I get for throwing in a little extraneous comment at the end of the course, which was supposed to be on just the period up to Einstein. You're jumping ahead of where we stopped. Within a couple of years the Nernst-Lindemann Theory will refine that account by breaking Einstein's oscillator in two. And not long after that Franz Simon will show why the experimental results always ended up a little off theoretical prediction. The third law of thermodynamics: as the temperature approaches zero the entropic contribution of any aspect in internal thermodynamic equilibrium also approaches zero. That's why you can't reduce any system to absolute zero with a finite number of steps."

He squeezed a lengthier equation onto the board in the small space Delbert had left. "See?"

"Ah, of course." Delbert grinned lopsidedly. "I should have seen it coming. I assume the same would be true of any absolute entropic system."

"Well, um, er, thanks for your time." Delbert twitched his head and stood, his fingers twiddling an imaginary pencil. "Um, Professor?"

Prang sat motionless. "Absolute entropy," he murmured. "Time. Time. TIME!!" He leapt up, muttering formulas under his breath, and charged out the door. Only when he was half way home did he realize that he'd left Delbert in his office. "Oh well," he thought, "he'll understand."

The house seemed unduly quiet as Professor Prang let himself in, until he recollected that Emily was at her aunt's for the week.

"Hope she has a good time," Prang muttered as he tossed his coat in the direction of the closet. "Time.Time." He passed through the kitchen, grabbing a handful of walnuts on the way. "Absolute entropy."He crossed the yard toward the barn which housed his laboratory, gnawing thoughtfully on the husk of a walnut, then throwing it aside and starting on another."You can't make a time machine at all," he told a puzzled squirrel. "You're basically trying to reverse entropy and absolutize it simultaneously." He fumbled in his pockets, found the key, and opened the door. "But--." He groped for a switch, then blinked in surprise when the lights flickered on."Stopping time. If I could localize the effect I'd simply be cheating entropy, not negating it."

At the board he began to write, and as he wrote he began to think of the equipment he'd need. Most of it could come from the hulk of his time machine; the rest from supplies already laid in. Some he would have to build afresh.

"To work, to work," Prang bellowed as he wrenched a rheostat from the coil of wires and gadgetry standing in the corner. "You haven't got all the time in the world!"

Many hours later Prang stepped back from a small device and frowned. "It doesn't look very impressive," he muttered. I'll have to find some way to perk it up for trade shows." He yawned. "One test.Then I've got to get some sleep." He plugged the device into a power bar already so crowded it looked like a pudgy plastic hedgehog.

"Well, here goes." Prang rested his finger on the switch, feeling vaguely that he ought to make a speech celebrating the historic moment. His mouth opened, he took a breath, and then he froze.

"Good god, no," he said. "Oh, what a mistake I almost made." He pulled his finger slowly away, as if afraid passing ripples in the air might set off the machine. "I forgot the other three dimensions."

Professor Prang glanced toward the skylight as if calculating the amount of glass contained therein, then down at the floor. "Everything else is still in motion, of course; my little ball of stopped time would have-- well, I mean that the universe would have moved on, leaving a great fat hole somewhere.Perhaps in my head-- no, that would be redundant."He threw up his hands and left the lab, scratching his stubble contemplatively.

Correcting the problem took two days. A dimensional oscillator set up a pattern of interference pulses, absorbing the quantum irregularities and regurgitating them as a subdimensional wave perpendicular to reality. "Or something like that," Prang said quietly as he tightened one last loose screw. "I'll have to figure out a better way to put it for conferences." He plugged in a chronometer calibrated for accuracy in microseconds, and stood back as if half-expecting time to suddenly halt of its own accord just to remind him of a forgotten step in the massive series of equations covering his blackboards and several hundred scattered slips of paper. Nothing happened.

Prang flipped the master switch. The lights dimmed for a fraction of a second, then the switch snapped back to the off position. Nothing else happened. The clock on the device continued to ripple through the microseconds without pause. Prang scratched his nose.

"Odd." He checked the connections. All held firmly.He checked the plug. It too--

"Of course!" Prang shouted at a spider and fly in a web under the plug. "The machine generates the nega-time wave around itself. Turn it on and no power can get through, because that would take time. It's as if I never did anything at all." The spider twitched for a moment as if considering the significance of the revelation, then turned its attention back to the fly, which latter appeared even less interested in Prang's announcement than had the spider.

"I'll need to construct some sort of torus wave generator. I wonder...." Prang plunged again into his stockpile of electronics and quickly outfitted the dimensional oscillator with a diminutive entropic projector. Fine-tuning this took some hours, as the device showed a distressing tendency to dissolve small portions of the floor into their constituent molecules. "The trick," Prang told the spider, "is to set up a revolving resonance factor which counteracts the nega-time field along the energy flow into the device without deforming the subdimensional wave too drastically. It's a sort of timeless doughnut around the machine." Thinking of this reminded him that he hadn't eaten in some time-- "there's that word again"-- unless those walnuts counted. He didn't suppose they really did, save perhaps for the squirrel.

He'd been shopping only days before, and the larder still groaned with all sorts of food, but preparing almost any of it would take too much time. Prang took down a bowl and a box of cereal. Halfway through the bowl of Peanut Puffs, Professor Prang remembered the milk. He poured some, then returned refreshed to the lab, wondering obscurely why he still felt hungry. He glanced up at the skylight and smiled at the full moon which hung dead center."Wish me luck, old boy," he said as he flipped the switch.

A sudden burst of sunlight startled Prang. Blinking in bedazzlement he spun away, nose wrinkling at the acrid smell of the ozone-laden smoke which had appeared without warning all over the laboratory.Glass crunched underfoot, and Prang looked over to see a row of voltmeters fizzing and sparking in their death throes. Prang stood in puzzlement, then raised his eyebrows and gulped nervously. Crossing to the wall phone he dialed the local time and temperature number.

"Save time AND money this summer with our easy one-step vacation loan process. Ask us about how you too can qualify. Lake City Savings bank time twelve forty-three. Lake City Savings Bank temperature sixty-seven."

Prang hung up and left the smoky lab, nibbling nervously on his lower lip. On the front porch of his house he found three newspapers; he'd remained frozen in time for over sixty hours. The world outside the lab had noticed nothing, but inside the lab, there had been no changes at all, as there had been no time in which changes could occur.

Electric bill is going to hurt this month, he thought.But at least the enormous drain had blown out the system and shut down the machine. Otherwise....Prang swallowed as he imagined the expressions on the faces of those who might have found him, unmoving and immovable, had the torus loop been slightly smaller and slightly less of a power drain. He supposed his immobile body might eventually have become a sort of monument to scientific hubris, presuming that anyone ever figured out what he'd done to get that way. He'd have to be more careful; only blind luck had saved him this time.

Prang cleaned up the mess and replaced the burned out equipment. What he needed now, he realized, was a nega-time projector alongside the entropic one. The inverted chronometric waves would piggyback the entropic harmonics along a fifth-dimensional meta-reality stream, isolating the forward momentum of the nega-time wave from the projector and power source.

"At least," Prang muttered at the wall where the spider web had been, "I think so." The spider watched from the safety of a knothole above one of the closets, but vouchsafed no opinion regarding Prang's theorizing.

A full day later an exhausted Lucius Lucullus Prang twisted the last cotter pin into place and stepped back from the projector, which rather resembled a monstrous dented flugelhorn. He checked the connections, installed more sensitive circuit breakers, then gingerly prodded at the master switch.

The machine hummed for a moment. A small black dot appeared at the front of the projector, then began to expand outward, balling up like black frost on a garden hose dipped in liquid nitrogen. Prang stared, fascinated, as the ball grew larger; he found it impossible to focus his gaze on the blackness, impossible to discern the faintest trace of features on the bulging sphere. No, not blackness, but rather the utter absence of all motion, of all color, of all--

"No!" Only seconds before the dark globe reached him Prang slapped the master switch and shut off the power. The blackness vanished with a brief soft rubbery hiss, and Prang, his legs even more rubbery, sank into a nearby chair. Almost again he had come close to a disaster, this one even worse than all the others. He grabbed a fresh notebook and buried himself in row after row of calculations, all the while considering his dilemma. He'd succeeded in stopping time, at least as far as he could tell, but it seemed that either he did so in such a way as to leave no trace or in such a way as to render observation impossible, which was much the same thing. The nega-time field needed both the dimensional oscillator and the torus wave, yet the two combined generated some sort of infra-chronometric sub-field which engulfed the experimenter as well. The equations didn't lie: time existed as observed change, and the presence of an observer recreated time by negating the negation of time, unless the observer became part of that which was being negated, and was thus negated as well.

Had the globe reached Prang he would indeed have remained eternally free of time, for nothing within the globe's purview could move, motion being change and change requiring time, but he would never have known his fate. The globe would have stopped growing then, until another observer appeared, whereupon it would have expanded to encompass that observer, and the next, and the next, and-- Prang shuddered at what he'd nearly unleashed. Not a doughnut this time, but a doughnut hole, eating away at the doughnut from inside. And the doughnut thus eaten would have been nothing less than the Earth itself.

"I'd better face it," Prang muttered sadly as he turned off the lights and left the lab, "stopping time just wasn't a very good idea. I'd better start looking at the job ads."

The next morning he awoke still subdued in mood, having dreamed of a molasses river bearing his canoe ever so slowly toward a slothful waterfall. At least, he thought, Emily comes home tomorrow, and I'll have more important things to worry about. It seems so long since she left. More a matter of months than days. Months.... His face wrinkled in concentration and his lips parsed a complex formula."Months," he muttered. "Days."

All at once he sprang from his bed, hurtled down the stairs, out the door and across the yard to the lab.He burst in with a yell, "days!" and threw himself at the machinery. "How foolish," he said, tapping his head as if to dislodge a needed thought. "Stopping time is just like trying to reach absolute zero-- a state of no motion whatsoever. Doesn't matter where you're doing it, or on what scale, the process is still contrary to the laws of physics. But speeding it up...." His eyes flashed with passion and hope. "A different matter altogether."

The spider, hanging from a thread above the main work table, reconsidered its move and worked its way back behind the fluorescent light fixture.Professor Prang had gotten on to Verdi now in his enthusiasm. "La tempo è mobile," he warbled, more or less on key, as he recircuited various elements of his device. "Neither a finite nor an infinite number of steps," he muttered at a rheostat, "but a transfinite number." He whacked a large copper helix with the wrench. "Built-in flaws. Make sure that the system never has the time--" he laughed, a touch maniacally-- "never has the time to attempt to stop. And invert the torus n-dimensionally.All except--" his eyes flickered around the lab, then toward the door, still open-- "all except a radius of, hmm, seventy-five feet. No, say eighty-five. But not too much, or it will attract unneeded attention."

For several hours snatches of Verdi alternated with odd electronic squeals and scratches and bumps and clangs as Prang reconfigured the nega-time projector. At last all sound stopped. Prang emerged from the lab bearing a coil of wire, which he spooled out toward the house. In the library the wire ran out; Prang attached a small knife switch, which he set on his desk. Running back to the lab, he set the machinery in operation, then returned, more slowly, to the house. "Now let me see," he said to the squirrel, which was waiting in the hope of more walnuts, "time equals observed change multiplied by c over e delta, allowing for semi-dimensional inversions of the metachronic implosion field. Or words to that effect. Now, if I reverse the polarity on the torus generator and refine the molecular input so as to avoid the putative perfection effect, then everything outside the field should stand in relation to me at a ratio of about n/eß times the square root of pi. Give or take a few minutes."

As he reached the library Prang hesitated. "But suppose I'm wrong," he said. "Then the inverse law holds, and I'll be about a hundred and forty when Emily returns tomorrow morning. Give or take a few minutes." He ran over the figures again, searching for a flaw, but found none. He shrugged; so far as he could tell, he would harm no one but himself should he be wrong, and he would save his job and career were he right. "Best to proceed," he said, "before I think of some other problem."

Verdi wouldn't do here, and Prang had long since given up the idea of making a speech to mark the launch of each new aspect of his project. Putting on a CD of Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time," he pressed the knife switch solidly to its bed.Nothing happened. "Which is," Prang murmured, "as it should be." He opened the curtains. A squirrel ran across the porch. Prang looked beyond the squirrel, and saw the hedges by the driveway shimmering oddly. He smiled. From his perspective the shrubs would be moving much more slowly than they would for a person across the street; the light from them had to accelerate as it passed through the boundaries of the time field to reach his eyes.

Arlene Vulp, Prang's late wife's sister, gazed at her brother-in-law and nodded her head judiciously.

"You're too pale," she said. "You need more sunlight. You look as if you haven't been outdoors in weeks. But the beard looks good. Though I can't for the life of me recall you having even stubble last week."

Professor Prang stroked his beard. "Ah, yes," he said. "My facial hair has always grown quickly. But to change the subject-- do let me take you and Emily out for dinner as thanks for your help." And because I've eaten every scrap of food in the house over the last four months, he thought, grateful that Emily was too young to have an edible pet.

"Why, thank you. And I must say you're looking a bit underfed. Won't do you any harm either."

Most of the back lawn needed mowing quite badly, Prang saw as they walked to the car, but otherwise the only traces of his experiment seemed to be the beard, the enormous electric bill soon to arrive, and the six top-flight theoretical papers regarding time lying on his desk. He'd insist that the tenure committee read them with due care; by the time they'd finished he could hope to have responses from one or more of the proper journals. And regarding those responses he felt confident.Indeed, Prang thought as he looked lovingly at Emily, staring curiously at her father's new beard, he felt confident about much more these days. After all, he had all the time in the world in which to do whatever needed to be done.

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Sometimes a walk in the park is just that; sometimes it can be so much more, as Ted discovers in this Twilight Zonish story...

The Toy

The sounds of the morning traffic were muted, but still made their way into the park. Ted ambled slowly enjoying the opportunity to be outside and not rushing to work. It was a day off, which had been rare in recent months. He passed a pond and watched the swans floating lazily on the serene surface. The depth of quietness increased as he walked farther into the oasis.While having grown up in the city, the solitude and sonic isolation in the park had frequently drawn him to its core.

His hands were thrust deep into his pants pockets. The weather was not yet warm, but the winter chill was not present this morning. His coat was light, a welcome change from the uniform of the corporate world in which he lived. He heard the light foot falls on the concrete and they were hypnotic. He considered how the nature of sound was tied to emotion.

Ted’s eyes fell onto a bench well off the sidewalk. He did not recall having seen it before in his many passings. It was empty and he thought it seemed out of place. He altered his direction and climbed the slight hill. Grass grew around the bench and he looked about him as he neared it. His eyes turned back and he saw an object resting on the seat. He again allowed his eyes to roam the surroundings, but he saw no one and sensed that he was alone.

As he neared, the object began to take shape. It was small, about six inches across and essentially round.While gray, there were elements of dark brown on its surface as well. Its dull surface still managed to cause him to squint as the sun emerged from behind a cloud. He paused before it and thought it to be a child’s toy. Ted walked to the other end of the bench and sat. The sun rode the sky for nearly an hour as he varied between staring onto the pastoral scene and reading the sports section he had brought with him tucked in his jacket.

The morning’s coolness was lifting and he put the paper on the bench beside him. He glanced toward the toy and thought it seemed closer than it had. He studied it with the disinterested expression of a worker looking at the in-box. It had indentations and ridges. Remembering its ability to reflect sunlight, he reached for it. He was expecting a light, plastic toy with a painted surface. As his hand began to lift it from the bench his wrist bent. It weighed several pounds. Ted’s eyes widened before narrowing. He palmed it and brought it to him. Using both hands, he squeezed and felt a slight give in the material, but it was not plastic. The odd texture kept his hands rubbing it. It rotated in his grasp and he saw no “Made In” sign or door. It did not appear to be a container and he was certain it would not bounce should it be dropped given its heft. His mind conjured the idea of rubberized metal, but he was not familiar with such a substance.

Ted began pressing on the surface. At times, he thought he felt a ‘click’ sensation as if he had pushed a button.However, there was no audible sound. He began pushing the indentations across the ball. After one was touched, he thought the orb felt measurably lighter. He nearly dropped it as he put it down and he quickly stood up. His eyes were riveted on what he no longer thought of as a toy. Ted rubbed his hands on his jacket to clean them from the unpleasant sensation. Walking around it, he never let his eyes drift away. He circled and returned to standing in front of the ball. Abruptly, he turned and looked about the park. No one was watching him. He stepped back before he turned to look at it again.

He did not want to touch it, but he did not want to leave it. He removed his coat and he gently wrapped it around the object. Holding it away from his body, he began walking back to his apartment.

Once inside, he put the coat on his table. He questioned if he should have brought it home, but he knew the answer. He grasped one corner of his jacket and pealed it back. The orb looked the same in the interior light. Ted began searching online for orbs and spheres, but saw nothing that looked like what he had found. He tried describing a change in mass as his search term, but he was unable to find anything useful.

He looked at the clock and saw it was now nearly 11:30 a.m. He looked about the room for a more permanent site for the object. He went to the kitchen and retrieved plastic gloves. After inserting his hands, he lifted the ball as if it were both very valuable and quite dangerous. He placed it on the coffee table after which he stood back and looked. His head jerked up and he went to the bathroom and he quickly returned with scales. Ted put the ball on the scales and decided it weighed approximately 3 pounds. He then hesitantly began touching various locations on its surface. He was not able to detect any change in weight, but to be sure he occasionally would place it on the scales and see it registered the same each time. After several minutes of this, he put the ball back on the table and took the scales back to their location under the sink. He spent the remainder of the day reading magazines that had collected since January.

Ted looked at the clock on the table and folded the newspaper. The television was on, but muted. The sky had been dark for hours and he reached his hands over his head and stretched. His head turned and the object came into view. He sat up and reached for it. He quickly decided its weight was the same three pounds it had been earlier. He had decided much earlier in the day his perception of its sudden change in weight had been an illusion. The firm yet rubberized feeling was still present and his fingers massaged the surface. A sudden depression in the surface occurred and he felt the familiar ‘click’ sensation. His hands dropped to his lap still cradling the object. Ted’s eyes widened and his hands froze. The object now seemed to weigh 20 pounds or more.

Gently, he placed the object back on the table. His hands slowly pulled away from its sides and he sat back and looked at it. After a moment, he realized he was rubbing his hands on his pants.

His mind began running through the various websites he had read earlier in the day. Nothing he had found had seemed relevant. However, he was now certain the object had changed weight in response to its surface being depressed.

He brought a lamp over and allowed the light to pour onto the surface. He closely examined it, though he had no specific thing for which he was searching. Periodically, he let his fingers barely touch the surface before pulling back and spending more time staring at it. He held and stroked it while his mind drifted.

Ted pulled back and scowled as his mind wrestled with the enigma. Across the room, he saw large letters appear on the television screen. He switched off the mute and listened as the anchor described breaking news. A strong earthquake had occurred in a remote region of Asia. Ted watched for a moment before muting it again and returning his gaze to the orb. He simultaneously placed each of his fingers in the contours and lightly massaged.He enjoyed the odd sensation that was returned.

The pace of time seemed to quicken. He looked up when he heard a passing siren and saw that nearly half an hour had elapsed. He glanced at the television and noticed the newscast was still reporting on the breaking news. He casually watched the images as he kneaded the object.He watched footage of collapsed buildings and saw rescuers rushing to the scene. Something about the images seemed to nag at his mind. His eyes narrowed slightly as he studied the picture. Images from a remote region should not have made it to a cable news outlet yet.He sat upright and touched the mute button. The anchor spoke of the disaster that had struck the western United States. Ted was unsure as to its nature, but significant damage was evident. Cities from throughout California, Oregon, and Washington were reporting injuries. Ted’s eyes blinked in rapid succession as he attempted to grasp the enormity of what he viewed. The network attempted to reach the office of each Governor in the three affected states, but had not been successful.

Ted watched with a combination of fascination and horror as more details emerged. However, it became clear to him that the network still was uncertain as to the cause of the calamity. Some witnesses spoke of wind while others were sure there had been an earthquake.Ted absently rubbed the sphere. He suddenly felt uncomfortable given the nature of the disaster he was watching was unknown and he lived in a major metropolitan area. He turned his head and looked down onto the street below. After a moment, he relaxed and resumed his voyeurism into the pain on the other coast.His hands flexed and depressed the surface of the object.Nearly forty minutes passed before citizens of other regions of the country began watching reports of the absence of the section of Manhattan where Ted had lived.

The death of the victim does not always mean the perpetrator is safe from vengance...

Sway

By Chris Castle

Iris woke in the park amongst the frosted leaves. It was night. She pulled her face from the ground. She gathered herself up and got to her feet. She brushed herself down but nothing seemed to stick to her clothes. Before she could be scared or confused or anything else, she wondered why she didn’t feel the cold. She stretched her fingers didn’t feel a chill. She couldn’t see her breath pumping out in front of herself. She didn’t feel anything at all.

“You’re names Iris.” Iris turned and saw a girl standing by the thickest tree. She was cool and pale, didn’t stand out from the branches. Iris knew the girl was smiling even though the girls face was a blur; like she’d been caught moving in a photograph.

“You were found lying there a while ago. I was nearby, by the swings.” The girl’s voice was steady and moved in and out of the air, the trees. Iris listened to the girl and she seemed to answer Iris’ questions even though Iris said nothing.

“My name’s Daisy. We’re both flowers.” The girl began to giggle, though it was more the frozen leaves crackling and the wind cutting through the branches.

“You don’t have to be scared anymore, Iris. We’re all together now; the front pages call us the ‘Missing.’ But that’s not true. We’re called ‘The Sway’.” She stopped giggling now and her voice was low now. It was made of the spinning park ride steel.

“Why are we called that?” Iris asked. She knew she said ‘we.’ It had already begun to feel right.

“That’s how they see us; take my hand, Iris.” The girls’ hand spilled over and Iris took it even though she hadn’t moved. The two of them seemed to pull along the thick grasses and into the corners of the park where no-one played. Places parents warned of. They poured into the dark of the dirtiest corner of the park. Iris felt her head ache, almost remembering something about the place. When she turned her head, the other girl, Daisy, was not alone. There were others, almost as if Daisy had multiplied and spread without a sound or a second. They all seemed the same blur of pale. Iris made to ask a question, but one of the cool hands pointed into the dark.

Iris followed the hand, the outstretched finger until she saw him. Her teacher. Her

friend. Who had talked kindly to her, walked her home that one Saturday when they

had bumped into each other at the local shop. Who had met her in the park after

school to read the books they did not teach in class but they both loved. Who…

“Don’t think.” Said a thousand Daisy voices inside her head. Even as Iris tried to

remember the missing hours, the time between reading with him and waking up cool

and unfeeling in the park, the voice blocked her.

“Wait.” They said. Iris closed her eyes hard trying to recall, but the voice was too strong, even though it was quiet and insistent, not angry and demanding like…she opened her eyes.

She watched the teacher stumbling through the corner of the park. He had changed too; he was no longer tanned and fizzing with colour in his smile. He was like Iris; cool and pale, the colour washed out; glowing, sour milk. But his eyes were still alert and wild unlike theirs. He staggered closer and closer to them and she wondered why he didn’t run away. She felt herself moving along with the others, moving as one.

As they grew closer, the countless voices let her remember those last few hours; what had happened to Iris Parker, ‘the gentle girl’ described in the papers. And as she remembered she felt herself become something new, no longer pale and uncertain but raw. As she moved in time to the countless others she saw herself reflected in the final look in his eye; their bodies furious, their movement a single furious sway as they lunged into the night and onto his helpless body.

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Sometime you have an appointment you shouldn't keep...

Rush
by Joseph DeRepentigny

Mark was a busy man. Everyday he got up at 4:00 AM, ordered coffee and Danish from room service, took a shower, and was dressed and out of the door by 5 AM. He adhered to his schedule rigorously. Nothing and nobody would interfere with his schedule.

When he got to the desk and said one quick phrase to the clerk, “Checking out.” He would then pass the key and his credit card at the same time to the clerk.

While he waiting for his receipt, he powered up his PDA/cell-phone. Time was precious and wasting it talking to an obvious nobody was out of the question. He ignored the clerk’s questions, signed the slip of paper, and left without a word to the waiting taxicabs. Time was money and he needed to get to the airport.

The airport, like Mark, never stopped moving. Here was his home. The din of announcements and people talking energized Mark. This was the place where he did almost all his business and half his living. Here, he could, while waiting for his flight, make his calls, and do business.

He was a walking talking mobile office. His system linked him to the corporate network so his e-mail was up to date. His appointments confirmed he could confer with corporate and learn of any changes. With restaurants and facilities at the every major airport in the world, Mark never needed to go to corporate.

It was now 6:00 am and the people at corporate that supported Mark were just now getting in. While he waited, he reviewed his schedule and made notes to check on the progress in his past dealings. He paced around the empty gate area nervously going over his day’s schedule. Then that he noticed someone standing in front of him.

It was an ordinary looking man in a dark business suit carrying a PDA/cell-phone. The man had a weary look on his face. He could be a competitor or even a colleague Mark thought to himself. Either way he did not trust him.

“What?” Mark asked the man suspiciously.

“We have an appointment, Mark.” The man replied.

Mark looked down at his PDA to confirm an appointment and saw nothing for the next hour.

“I don’t have you listed and I don’t make it a habit of talking to anyone unless I schedule an appointment.” Mark said sternly. “Just call my people and make an appointment.”

“You misunderstand me.” The man said sadly. “You made the appointment.”

“No I didn’t!” Mark said almost shouting. “If I made the appointment it would be on the schedule.”

The man smiled at Mark and said. “Yes, you made the appointment and now you’ve kept it.” With that, he placed a gentle hand on Mark’s shoulder. Mark’s eyes glazed over and he collapsed to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

The man looked down at Mark and shook his head sadly. He envied him; death was after all just a vacation. Unfortunately, as an employee of Death Interdimensional, his schedule did not include vacations. Nothing and nobody could change his schedule.

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