Diana pushed some random buttons and let the machine dispense whatever it felt like. “Wait a second. Is this the guy you like? The guy you work with?”
“Do you think I should get a Mars bar or a Twix?”
“Twix,” said Diana. “Don’t change the subject. Is this the guy?”
Sharon nodded very slightly, as if confessing to some terrible sin. “But you can’t tell him. You have to promise me.”
“I wouldn’t tell him. But what makes you think he doesn’t already know? Don’t you two already live together?”
“Sort of.” Sharon leaned against the machine, resting her forehead against the display window. “It’s complicated. I told you he just doesn’t see me in that way. In most ways he’s very human. But not in that way. He doesn’t function like that.”
Sensing she was encroaching on dangerous territory, Diana didn’t ask any more questions. Sharon volunteered answers without being asked.
“He’s not a sexual being. I’m not just talking about the act of sex itself. I’m talking about the entire reproductive element of what makes us humans tick. He’s eternal. He doesn’t need to. And I’m not sure he finds us attractive. I’ve never even seen him check out another woman. Or man, for that matter.
“I know he likes me and appreciates what I do for him. But I’ll always just be a friend. That’s all I can be.”
They gathered their candies, chips, and sodas.
“I guess there are worse things to be,” said Diana.
“I’m lucky to have known him. Luckier to have been so close to him before he leaves.”
“Where’s he going?”
Sharon hesitated.
“Away. Just away.” She paused, then pasted on a smile. “It’s not important.”
Diana wanted to ask more questions, but she didn’t know Sharon well enough to press.
Vom pounced on them. “Oh, Butterfinger.”
Diana held up her hand. “This is for everyone. So you have to share.”
“But Zap is just going to vaporize his.”
“Remember our discussion about sharing? Now you can have a soda and two candy bars.”
He wasn’t happy about it, but he’d take what he could get. Zap picked out a pack of Skittles. He disintegrated the snack with tiny bolts of lightning. Whether or not that qualified as eating for him, Diana couldn’t guess.
“Ah, I wanted a Mars bar,” said Calvin.
“Here. You can have mine.” His fingers brushed her thumb as he took the candy from her.
The universe exploded.
Not literally, although it took her a few seconds to realize it hadn’t self-destructed. This was all a misfire of her senses, an overload in her perceptions. She lost sight of the ordinary world. In its place, dancing patterns and swirling vortexes. She could smell eternity and taste the color blue and hear the atoms as they crashed against the shores of uncertainty.
Everything she knew and everything she didn’t know were little more than intangible knots of colors and shapes. Laid bare, they were too much for her to absorb, but her sanity was saved by a singular object that drew her attention away from the more unsavory, unfathomable secrets exposed to her.
In this ethereal wasteland Calvin was the only thing with any weight. Tubes of color flowed up and out, and her eyes followed them skyward, although there was no sky anymore, so she was just guessing at that.
The moon was the second thing she could really see. Like Calvin, it was a sparkling diamond, making everything else pale and immaterial by comparison. The third and final object was the shrieking, writhing form of Fenris.
The moon god howled. Its pain was overwhelming.
Diana’s instincts screamed, but she ignored them. She was getting used to this, and while this experience was beyond her ability to withstand for long, she knew panicking would only make it worse. She closed her eyes and covered her ears. Most importantly, she made no attempt to understand what was happening to her. To open herself up in any way was sure to destroy her mind. This would pass. She only needed to wait it out.
Even with her eyes closed she could see the future unravel, the world come undone. Time was just another dimension, a flat plane spreading out before her. And on the horizon a storm was brewing, a moment inescapable and so overwhelming that it rippled through history written and unwritten, causing her universe to fold and bend on itself.
The storm was the reason her reality was broken, the cause of all the glitches that allowed inhuman monsters and dangerous alien things to slip into realms they were never meant to touch.
But it wasn’t just one storm. There were three. Three swirling vortexes of anarchy drawing closer with each day. The storm was coming to a head, and a universe that struggled daily to hold itself together against the thrashing tentacles of an unspeakable horror was in for a hell of a time. She had no idea what waited on the other side. Or even if there would be another side to see. It was possible that there was no future and that the storm would even undo the past, a tide of annihilation sweeping throughout the planes of time to swallow everything in perpetual stillness.
Her vision cleared. Or was obscured, depending on how one chose to look at it. Either way, her perceptions of her universe fell into more human ranges.
“Thanks,” said Calvin.
Diana opened her eyes. What had seemed like twenty seconds of terror had been less than an instant. Nobody else had seemed to notice. Not even Calvin.
“You’re looking a little pale,” said Sharon. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Diana sat down. Her head cleared, and the memories of what she’d seen were fading. In a few minutes she doubted she’d remember any of it.
“It’s your frame,” said Vom.
She gave him permission to bowl for her, and nobody minded. Diana sat beside Zap and waited for her head to clear. She almost convinced herself that it was all an illusion. The doom lurking over her portion of the universe was merely a misfire of her underdeveloped human brain trying to make sense of realities it had never been meant to contemplate, much less actually witness.
“It’s doomsday,” said Zap.
She looked into his giant eye. He’d seen it too.
“Damn it.”
She didn’t want to know this, but she didn’t want to know a lot of things she now knew. She decided to ignore the vision. It was easier to do than she had imagined. She didn’t see a destroyer of worlds in Calvin, who was an affable fellow. Or at least a realistic enough simulation that she couldn’t tell the difference, just as long as she didn’t touch him. A second touch might give her another revelation, but she had no interest. She could only gaze at the secrets of the universe so many times in a day before her sanity was forfeit.
After the game was over, Sharon suggested getting something to eat.
Diana’s first thought was to cut the evening short, but the best excuse she could think of was a fictional early doctor’s appointment in the morning. But it was barely eight o’clock, and she didn’t need to go to doctors now.
She didn’t see the point anyway. Whatever Calvin was, the future, past, or present wouldn’t be shaped by whether she had a meal with him or not. And Vom was always up for a bite to eat.
They picked a buffet place, which Vom liked even more.
“Only ten trips,” said Diana.
“But it says all you can eat.”
“Yes, but I don’t think they had someone like you in mind with that rule.”
He frowned. “And how is that my fault?”
“Look at it this way. If you put all the buffets out of business, where will you go to stuff yourself?”
He had to admit she had a point.
They all got their food. Without planning it, Diana arrived back at the table with Zap. They stared at Calvin. It seemed to her that the universe revolved around him. Not just figuratively, either.
Diana wolfed down a chicken wing, bones and all. The need to know overwhelmed her. That was Zap’s
