I thought. Of her. Out there.
The future was unwritten, but I was almost there. Accelerating into turns, plummeting into the future with each instant. Somewhere out there…I felt it, the falling, the gravity of our situation. I felt the desire, the need, the utter insignificance of
Guitar strings, nylon, strummed savagely, then gently, then the pure, resigned voice of yesterdays…Beauty in that submission. Minutes left before my ascension. Moments left, and
Almost there. I’m almost there.
West tossed his guttering cigarette into the gulf. “You’re a smart kid. You can handle it.”
The author’s hands gripped the guardrail. Palms pressed: texture of the names carved beneath. Fingers clawed down, nails on treated pine. Smell of brine. The wind brought with it fragments of the hurricane. A crack and lightning flared behind the veils of approaching rain, fell to black, uneasy, uncertain in that night. Music intruded from behind.
“It’s true?”
Benton sat between the railing and the overflowing garbage bin: popcorn boxes, beer cans, empty suntan lotion bottles, half-eaten barbecue, smokes, rubbers, detritus and evidence that people were here to play, to drink, to fuck, to burn. The shadow of the overhead pier lamp fell over her face. Arms draped around her knees, she focused on something in the gulf, something approaching with vicious silence and wind. “It’s true.” Voice barely audible, Paul didn’t know if she was answering or meditating. He felt what she saw behind blue eyes: the physics of immortality, the intersection of ineffable paths, the tangents, the blessings.
“How’s the book going?”
“It’s going.”
“Yeah.” West studied the weathered planks below. “It would’ve been okay for a while longer.”
“What do you mean?”
“Something’s going to happen in just under six months. There’ll be a crossover. Something’s going to happen in this When that shouldn’t.”
“And you’re here to tell me that it’s my fault, and I have to help you fix it?”
“No.” The rain started. West pulled his collar up. “It can’t be stopped now. It’s going to happen regardless of your help.”
Paul noted that the scarred man’s eyes tracked the running lights of a plane knifing takeoff through the rain above.
“How?”
“Tell me about silver.” Paul turned to Benton, still on the ground, still in stark shadow. An instant, an instant and those blues were something else, a tugging, and gone.
“‘Au’ on the periodic table—”
“‘Ag.’”
“Art major.”
“Your silver. Tell me.”
“Invasive biological contaminant, airborne, replaces flesh with—”
“No.” She got up. “Go back further. When did you first think of it?”
He frowned. “
“That’s the danger of revision.” She shook her head. “You lose track of the beginnings. It all merges into one.”
“I don’t—”
“The sixth revision was the first time you wrote about it. You shifted focus from the mystical nature of Shadow drives to a hard-edged quantum physical explanation for the technology. Original versions of the book barely contained the word ‘silver.’ Where did your obsession come from?”
“It just…” He considered. “I don’t know.”
West wiped rain from his brow, fingers lingering momentarily over his temple code burn. “We do.”
And as the sun rose, he knew that he had to leave with them. Hope sat at his side, her head on his shoulder. He smoked his last cigarette. The storm had wet the beach; they were apparently alone on that strip. Clubs dead behind, early-morning traffic just beginning: an army of chambermaids and custodians. West stood down the beach, staring into the western remnants of night.
“I remember you.”
She looked into hazel. “I’m not her.”
“Maybe not here.” Inhale, pause, exhale. “But somewhere.”
Coffee, black, served in a chipped cup. There was sugar on the table, a dangerous little container of cream that he’d never trusted. He drank his coffee black.
“Why this city?”
Sip, cup to tabletop. He didn’t answer.
“You were never specific in your locations. People wondered where Maire’s complex was. The only clue was the fact that the orbital gun rose from a body of water. Was it Seattle?”
“No.” He answered too quickly.
West nodded, looked away. Paul wondered what semantic thread he’d just uploaded to the Judith Mind- Essence.
Late afternoon crowd. Outside: rain. Nirvana on the jukebox. President Jennings on the link.
“It was always this same coffee house. Why?”
Paul shrugged.
“When did you first write it?”
He considered. “The first book. One of the last versions, the final scene. I wanted to give some form of closure to the novel, not just let the characters cut off without some acknowledgement of a positive future.”
“Ninety-eight? Ninety-nine?”
“Let’s say ninety-eight.”
A middle-aged man had come in since they’d arrived. He sat at the counter, spoke to the proprietress. She gave him a pack of smokes. Marlboro 100s.
“You know anyone here?”
Paul surveyed the crowd. “Simon. Maggie.” He stole a cursory glance of the woman behind the counter. “She looks familiar, but I can’t quite—”
“We pulled you out of Fourteen-Seven before—Well, it’s amazing what the mind allows you to forget.”
She rang up the bill for one of her customers. His girlfriend walked to stand next to him. There was a silver ring on one hand. The coffeehouse owner smiled, revealing one gunshot dimple.
Paul blinked away the recognition before it could take hold in that stillness between the heart and memory.
“Who else will I meet before our business is done?”
West sipped. He took his coffee with one sugar. “Not all of the characters survived. Some were just too far away to rescue. Would have been impractical to rescue some of the others. We’re still tracking the major players. They’ll produce a more viable calculus.”
“When do we go back to Judith Command?” Something about the owner…She’d laughed at something her cigarette customer had said. Something.
West marked Paul’s gaze, uploaded new matrices into the Judith ME. “I think we’re done for the day.”
“Right.” He sloshed coffee around the cup. “What’s your favorite book?”
West’s hand moved instinctively to his codeburn. “The one you haven’t written yet.”
of Samayel, of Katre, of countless others: Berlin, Frost, the Judiths, the Wests, the ocean of gods who were
