Broken: A Plague Journal

Paul Evan Hughes Broken: A Plague Journal The Silver Trilogy: Book Three

“You’ve blotted the rich form of desire from my life and left me only some vaguely eccentric behaviors that have grown up to integrate so much pleasure into the mundane world around me. What text could I write now? It’s as though I cannot even remember what I once desired! All I can look for now, when I have the energy, is lost desire itself-and I look for it by clearly inadequate means. At best such an account as I might write would read like the life of anyone else, with, now and again, a bizarre and interruptive incident, largely mysterious and completely demystified-at least that’s what it has become without the day-to-day, moment-to-moment web of wanting that you have unstrung from about my universe. Without it, all falls apart, Japril. In a single gesture you’ve turned me into the most ordinary of human creatures and at once left me an obsessive, pleasureless eccentric, trapped in a set of habits which no longer have reason because they no longer lead to reward. And if I had enough self-confidence, in the midst of this bland continual chaos into which you’ve shunted me, for hate, I should hate you. But I don’t have it.”

Samuel R. Delany

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand

ALPHA

and all broken tomorrows: bracketing those dead to us, delineating the forms and histories of our desires, in a breath, in tears, in the pattern two opposing collections of striation compose in the catalytic reaction of palm to palm, all physics are bent, and all probabilities, all convenient presuppositions and extrapolations of futures not yet lived are erased: all we have is now, this moment, this beautiful, fragile moment, and

He inhaled.

“Storm’s coming in.”

“You sure this is him?”

She nodded. Across the gulf, lightning licked at waterspouts. She brushed the fine salt spray from her cheeks.

“Specifics?”

“Pattern confirmed. Subject is Fourteen-Seven When intact. Age twenty-three… twenty-three years and thirteen hours. REM signature confirmed; this is the author.”

“What’s a kid from the sticks of New York doing alone on the Gulf Coast on his birthday?”

“The library’s empty.” The mathematician shrugged. “Watching the lightning. Getting high. Running away?”

West nodded. “He wanted to die down here, away from everyone he knew. Tonight was the night.”

“Shit, he’s got another fifty years before—”

“That’s why we’re here.”

“It’s all there, everything we need?”

“It’s there.”

Benton sighed. “Hard to believe this kid caused it all.”

“Wasn’t really his fault.”

“What if we—”

“Hope, I’m disappointed.” West took a handful of sand, let the grains sift through his fingers. They danced with the wind. “You of all people should know that killing him wouldn’t stop this.”

“I’m just a mathematician.”

He scoffed. “Our best quantum X theorist.”

“Just a maths egg.”

He wiped his hands of the beach. “You ready?”

“Guess so.”

“Unlock the When.”

Benton tapped the subdermal in her throat. A halo sparked to life around her head. “Agents West and Benton, Fourteen-Seven When, request immediate unlock on my mark. Play.”

nav fix on your position. jog to play in three, two—

And I knew somehow that on that night in Lincoln, Nebraska, Abigail wasn’t sleeping well. Thoughts of tomorrow’s flight to Vermont, the uncertainty of a future spent mostly between airports and stages, behind cameras, and I knew that a baby was born, and his parents would name him David for his father, Smith for his mother’s side. The family lived three blocks east of Abigail, one block west of the recording studio where Lullaby recorded the album I couldn’t get out of my head.

All I saw was silver: in the lightning, in the waterspouts, in the sand. The stillness between stars.

“Paul?”

He jumped.

West studied the tension of muscles, hardening of jawline, narrowing of brow. Eyes lost somewhere between green and gray and mud went to one, went to other, went to one. Even in shadow, he saw the boy’s nose was sunburned.

“Eri—?”

“No.” She bent, extended her hand. Shake. “Benton. Hope. And you’re Paul?”

“Yeah.” Something crawled behind his eyes. Heartbeat and suspicion. Names of people and places and scents and tastes; this was…. This was. “Have we met?”

“No…” Benton looked to West.

“What do you want?” He stood; he brushed sand from cargo shorts filled with bottlecaps and cigarettes, golden discount cards to the strip’s most popular clubs. “I don’t have any money, and I’m not into—”

“We’re not here to hurt you. We’re just—”

“Spring break?”

“No.” West regarded the thousands amidst light and sound behind them. There was such stillness in the impending storm. “We’re here for you.”

The author stepped back. “I don’t know you.”

“You do, though.”

“I’ve never seen you be—”

“You have.”

Black coat flapping in the breeze over black uniform, burn fresh on temple. Gray eyes.

He smiled. “Great. So you’ve read the book, right? You’re a big fan. You tracked me down and want my autograph, right? Listen, this is flattering, but—”

Benton grabbed his arm. He looked into colorless blue eyes. “You know that’s not true. You know who we are.”

“I—”

“You see her in me. You’re right; she’s a part of me, but you knew the character wouldn’t be purely her. I’m a combination of many. The name Hope because she loved it, the name Benton because of that band. You feel it behind your eyes. You—”

He shrugged her off. “Don’t touch me.”

West pulled the pack of Marlboros from Paul’s chest pocket, withdrew one. Lit.

“They were right.” Exhale. “Every possible world that ever could have existed will someday exist in perfect