FutureImperfect (13 page)

He was losing it.

But was that a good thing or a bad thing, and did it even matter? The event horizon inched toward the tower, which was no longer a simple dark thing. Now it divided reality into polar opposites, sucking out all that remained of the color in the past, mixing it into the blackening future. More fractures formed in the past as the horizon moved, more howls came from the future.

“Keller!”
Jeremy called. “We're not done.”

Back on his feet, he raced at Harry, thudding clumsily on the wobbling ground, as if he were a bear forced to walk upright. Harry stuck his foot out. Jeremy fell for it—he tripped and sprawled forward.

But what good would it do? Jeremy would just keep coming until the school exploded. Harry wasn't even sure why he kept doing it, except maybe in the weird hope that if he made Jeremy mad enough,
he
might explode instead.

How far can I push him?
Harry wondered.

Jeremy lunged. Harry moved out of the way again, this time managing to slam Jeremy in the back of the head, sending him down once more.

“How do you do that?” Jeremy screamed. “How?”

“By being willing to get hit,” Harry told him, trying to sound all smug and confident. “But I wouldn't expect you to understand. It would be like a dog talking Latin.”

Jeremy's nostrils flared. “You mean, like speaking Latin to a dog, moron!”

“Oh yeah? If I'm a moron, why do
you
need herbal tea to get here?”

“Shut up, bag man!”

“
Make
me, tea-bag man!”

Jeremy rose just in time for a new, stronger rumbling to hurl them both off their feet. The cracks in the past were becoming crevices. A large, horrible sound, as if the sky itself had split open, caused them both to turn toward the tower. A wide vertical seam opened in its center. Within it, Harry could make out only a darker dark, but the rush of air and all the colors in the sky now seemed headed toward it.

“Jeremy,” Harry said softly. “It looks like something's broken.”

“Yeah,” Jeremy said. The sound seemed to sober him a little, calm him down. “Guess I should fix that, too. Just as soon as I'm done with you.”

Ignoring Harry, he turned back to his path, to do whatever it was he thought would kill Harry. Harry tried following, but the trails were behaving less and less like solid objects and more and more like an angry sea.

Harry was already regretting pissing Jeremy off. He was, after all, the only one who really knew what was going on with the tower.

“Jeremy!” Harry shouted to him. “Maybe I can wait? Maybe you should fix it now? I promise I won't go anywhere and you can kill me later.”

Jeremy paused. “Another sacrifice, Keller?”

Harry watched as he rose up and down on a pulsing trail. The black-robed figure turned toward the tower, then looked back at the spot in the terrain that was his goal. His eyelids fluttered, briefly covering the madness. He thought about it. He shook his head.

“No. We're past that now. I don't care about that thing anymore. I don't care about the Initiation. I don't care about my plans. I don't care about the Masters. Gone, all gone, like dreams. And you know what's left? Just you and me. Just you and my desire to kill you.”

He hopped from one wobbly trail to another, finally reaching his goal—Harry's life trail.

“It's been
beyond
annoying dealing with you! It's been cosmic!”

Jeremy wasn't just yelling anymore, he was ripping his voice raw trying to make it rage above the wind and rumbling terrain. He bent down and dug his hands, up to the elbows, into Harry's life.

Harry's brow furrowed.
Is he just going to try to change my trail? Was that his great big idea?

But then he felt kind of funny, as if something were being yanked from his chest, like his heart and lungs. He looked down at himself. He seemed fine, still just trying to stay on his feet, but then the pain came again, stronger, harder.

He looked at Jeremy. Now he was
really
sorry he'd pissed him off so much. The jock wasn't trying to change things, he was trying to destroy them. He was yanking huge chunks out of Harry's life trail and tossing them onto a growing pile, as if they were garbage. That was his great idea. And it wasn't bad. After all, if that trail was the source of his timeless self, destroying it would destroy Harry completely.

Harry tried to run toward him, but the land was too unmanageable. He fell more than moved.

“Do you know how God created the universe?” Jeremy called.

“With love and kindness?” Harry offered.

“No,” Jeremy answered, pulling more and more chunks of trail away. “That's something Chabbers taught me. It was by destroying chaos. By kicking its ass. By beating it into shape. By slamming it down, so that the only thing left was His order.”

With that, he dove full-body under Harry's trail.

If Harry felt funny before, now he felt hysterical, like something huge and monstrous was right behind him, ready to swallow him whole. He watched, in utmost horror, as his trail rose, lifted out of the terrain, bowing in the center.

Harry fell. His hands started to shimmy and wobble, like the water in a pond when you toss in a stone. Dizzy, he tried to keep his focus on his trail. Jeremy was standing under it, lifting it over his head, pushing with those powerful muscles of his. The pressure was starting to make it tear.

Jeremy continued his shredding, yanking huge, oozing hunks out and hurling them this way and that. The more he tore away, the less Harry there was. His hands weren't just wobbling now, they were vanishing, along with his legs and torso. There wasn't much Harry could do about it. Armless, legless, he tried to roll toward Jeremy, but even that was fruitless.

Just as it seemed that the whole world was ready to end, Harry Keller vanished into a whole new nothing.

These are the consequences of time.

Before Harry Keller was born, there was an entire eternity of time without Harry Keller, and without which Harry Keller would never have been. But once Harry Keller was born, there Harry Keller was. Once Harry Keller died, of course, there'd be a whole other eternity of time without Harry Keller. While it could be argued that the second entire eternity of time wouldn't be quite the same without there having been a Harry Keller, what could not be argued was the fact that having been born, Harry Keller was, and always would have been.

Yet here there was no time to speak of, no space, no soul, no sight, no sound, no tree to fall, no forest for it to not fall in. Here there wasn't, had not, would not, nor could there be, a Harry Keller, because there was no
had
, no
would
, no
could
.

But there Harry Keller was. Because Harry Keller wasn't dead. Not yet. Not exactly.

How? Maybe he was just an idea now, a reference point, driven by momentum or a memory, the memory of fear, or of love for Siara, or for the ethics his father taught him.

Or maybe he just didn't know when to quit?

Or maybe he had to go on.

Because he couldn't go on.

So he went on.

Am I like Elijah now? I should give her a call. Ask her out for fake coffee. Can I do that without a body? And if I don't have a body, is this what it's like to be dead?

Not knowing many dead, he couldn't tell. In fact, the only dead he really knew were his parents. The moment he thought of them, their faces floated up from the dark.

He'd seen his mother in photos, sensed her in the tremble of his father's voice. But this was the first time he'd just seen
her
, hanging there, moving neither forward nor back. She was as he'd pictured, only more so: passionate, artistic, fiery, but burning so brightly so often, her energies tripped on each other and folded themselves into madness.

His father was next to her. He was no less passionate than his mother, no less insane. His fire was different, as if he were a hunter, using his intellect like a spear. It seemed so strange that such a man believed in something as irrational as God. Maybe he was trying to cover all the angles—before the angels covered him.

Their faces hung there, melting into one another in a way that made Harry feel as though he were looking in a mirror, but that the reflection was more real than he.

No wonder Harry was crazy. He was alive and so was life. What was that poem Mr. Tippicks quoted once, by that guy, E. T. Something?

Mankind cannot bear too much reality.

That was it.

So his parents were human, crazy, and he forgave and loved them for it.

As he did, the faces faded. Like the giant clown said, they were a map, a mask, a filter. With his parent-gods gone, he was alone in zero G, maskless, mapless, feeling no difference between himself and the dark as he hovered above invisible waters. He churned with them, unburdened as they lapped and crashed, their gentle voices of chaos singing sweetly undisturbed.

And then he heard a voice. It wasn't speaking words, ordering the light from the dark, or separating land from sea as if they were quarreling siblings. It wasn't announcing any plan to shape the void and fill it with purpose.

It was just laughing.

It was the same force that had stopped Melody, had made her put down the gun. It was a sad, hearty, serious laugh, a sound that rang though Harry in waves. It shaped the darkness, even though it didn't mean to, in a way that chastened death.

So he laughed with it, realizing it had been so silly to be alive, to have a shape at all, but at the same time, terribly endearing. Now it was easy to let it all go. His fear went, then his love. All desire shivered and faded, washing away the last shimmering borders of self. At the same moment Harry Keller stopped being afraid of life, because it was absurd, he fell hopelessly in love with it, because it was absurd.

The waters shook, the darkness crumbled, and there was light.

He was back in A-Time. And though it felt as if he'd been gone an eternity, he had to admit, it might have been just a moment.

 

Harry's trail, wounded but no longer being shredded, lay back in its place in the rolling terrain. The pieces torn from it crawled like little Quirks back into it, filling in the gaps.

“Unk! Unk! Unk!” they cried as they worked to make Harry whole.

Jeremy had failed. Something had stopped him. But what? Where was he? Did a Quirk get him? Did his great big tower fall on him?

Harry looked around. No, the tower was still there, deadly as ever, the event horizon minutes away. And there was Jeremy, too.

Seeing him, Harry scrambled to his feet, feeling woozy as the earth continued to tumble beneath him. He felt strongly that Jeremy should also be seeing Harry, but he didn't seem to. He was just standing there in his cool black robes, the wind making them ripple.

“Jeremy?” Harry called.

He didn't answer. There was something wrong with him. Something different about his face. He wasn't angry at all, not anymore. Harry tried to take a few steps closer. Jeremy stood stock-still as the terrain rose and fell around him, as though he were mounted on a wall like a prize fish, or hanging from a string. He looked…surprised.

As he neared, Harry could see that Jeremy's head was too high up from his chest. His neck was extended too far. His wide shoulders were slumped. The thick arms twitched slightly, sending small ripples through his robes that Harry had mistakenly thought were caused by the wind. When the trails dove low for an instant, he could see that the tips of Jeremy's feet were floating inches above the ground. He was being held up by something.

Once, when Harry was a boy, he came upon a hawk that had grabbed a squirrel by its shoulders and tried to fly off with it. At first, it seemed like one big creature, half fur and claw, half wing and brown feather. But when Harry saw the look of ultimate surprise in the squirrel's eyes, the knowing that it was about to be food, he realized exactly what was going on.

Jeremy looked like that squirrel.

“Jeremy, what is it? What's going on?”

Harry squinted, trying to make out what was above him. Then he saw it, the scruff of Jeremy's neck pinched between two enormous white-gloved fingers.

The face appeared next—or rather, Harry felt like he was being allowed to see it—the field of white, the red lips, the blue circles around the wide eyes, the forest of orange hair, and the gnashing teeth that now looked hungry.

When the Fool first appeared to Harry, it was a devastating, soul-consuming experience, but in comparison to the face that the archetype revealed now, it had been kind. The creature grinned and spoke.

“Hey, thanks!” it said.

“For what?” Harry asked, hoping it wouldn't hit him again.

“Don't you get it? You got him to give up his plan. As long as he was all about that plan, all about order, I couldn't touch him. But you, you drove him crazy, bit by bit, got him to stop caring about it. There's a thin line between intense order and total chaos. He crossed it, and my dad says I can keep him,” the Fool said.

Harry didn't want to know who its dad was; he didn't even know whether to feel proud or disgusted. In either case, Jeremy moaned, then started shrieking. He shrieked so loudly he no longer made words, just vowel sounds punctuated by random consonants. Some sounded like
Keller
, some sounded like
please
, but really, they were meaningless. In them, though, in the tone, Harry could hear Jeremy's mind unpeel.

As Harry watched, the Fool lifted Jeremy higher and higher, up and over his open mouth. Then he began to eat him, bit by bit, peeling off the robes, the arms, the torso.

As the crying, sobbing alpha male's handsome, genetically selected head finally disappeared between the huge gnashing teeth, Harry caught a glimpse of something not so ha-ha in the Fool, something dark and deep. For a brief flash, Harry's gargantuan benefactor didn't look so much like a playful planetary-sized puppy, or even a clown anymore.

He—
it
—looked like the Devil.

Harry shuddered. At the same moment, the Fool's meal disappeared. The bad boy was now in its belly.

A strange quiet ensued. The Fool was still there, as was the tower, as was the deadly storm, but all the shrieking was gone.

He scanned the sky, the future, made black by the tower. It wasn't at all like the darkness Harry had seen when he was dead, or nonextant, or whatever he was. That was peaceful, this malevolent. Colors burst from its ebon hues, but only in flashes that were sucked back into the storm. The event horizon was still moving toward the dark edifice; Siara was still about to toss the banana and blow the school up.

There was still a world to save. Maybe it was just a pretend world, but what the hell.

Harry leapt onto Siara's trail again and tugged at it, but the oozing stuff of the tower had seeped into it, and wherever Harry touched, it burned. He fell backward off the trail, grabbing his hands in agony, and saw the Fool look curiously down at him.

“Can you help?” Harry begged. “Can you stop the chaos?”

The Fool laughed. “Why would I want to do that? I
am
chaos!”

And then, as if their old game of question-and-punch were still in effect, the Fool swatted Harry into the air. When he came back down, he crashed through the surface of the terrain and found himself in something even more familiar.

 

Harry's eyes snapped open. He was back in the alley a few blocks from school, near where the truck had dropped him off, shivering from the cold and feeling nauseous from the smell of rotting garbage.

It was night. He didn't hear any sirens or large explosions, so he figured there was still time. He raced into the street, pushing his way past shoppers and pedestrians like the madman he was. The funny shoe bags from Windfree slowed him, so he shed them and felt cold asphalt press into his bare feet.

There's a chance, a chance, a chance….

As he approached the corner, a woman wheeling a baby carriage blocked his path. He leapt over the baby, landing in a puddle, almost falling. As he picked up speed again, he heard the woman's outraged cries behind him. He hit the crowded street, barely ducking out of the way of a truck. He heard two cars crash behind him.

But he kept going.

He huffed and puffed, expecting his lungs or legs to give out, but miraculously, neither did. Nothing slowed him in the least until he crossed another street and found himself charging along a long row of department store windows.

He happened to glance inside at what looked like an early Thanksgiving display that seemed more appropriate to a museum than a store. It was too somber, too realistic for the holiday season. Grim Native Americans sat around a roaring campfire. An elder in ceremonial garb reverentially held a small stone between his fingers. On it was a small crude drawing of a coyote. From a tree, an eagle watched, its head twisted sideways. Beyond this scene were distant hills and an evening sky that seemed to go on forever.

Despite its expert realism, Harry wouldn't have given it a second glance had the great bird not jumped off the fake tree, spread its wings, and started flying alongside him.

The window shattered as the bird flew through it. Harry felt a cool wind from the store that smelled of winter coming. He hesitated, but realized he was running out of time and had to keep going. As he did, to his right, he saw, quite clearly, what was once a fake eagle soar high into the city sky. To his left, past the window, he swore he saw the Native Americans move, but it was little more than a fleeting shadow.

A trick. A trick of the light mixing with his panic, he figured. It must be.

Trying to forget it, he kept going until the familiar brick-and-white-stone edge of RAW High School was visible in the distance. Though he thought he could run no faster, he picked up speed until a vast rush and the feeling of something huge and heavy above his shoulders made him turn again to the sky.

Whoa!

This was no bird, real or otherwise. It wasn't even the Fool. A vast white belly, rounded in the center, hovered in the air, with most of the structure unseen beyond it. Though it was a hundred yards straight up, Harry could see rows of rivets in it, indicating that whatever it was, it had been made.

A ship. It was some kind of ship. The sleek metal craft looked as if it had flown straight out of a science-fiction movie, its enormous engines glowing gold as it floated above him, blocking nearly all the stars.

What was it? What was going on? For the first time in his life, Harry knew he wasn't going crazy—the world was. The A-Time storm caused by Jeremy's sculpture was causing the filter of time to unravel completely, bits and pieces of past and future coming loose, popping into the present. Harry staggered as the ship sailed above him.

The one chance, the
only
chance, would be to find the keystone and stop Siara.

Harry lurched forward and ran again. He was on the same block as the school, passing the fenced-in courtyard, heading toward the familiar main entrance, when something large growled. Across the street was another giant, this one of flesh and blood. Taller than the glowing lamps, it stood fifteen to twenty feet high, and, from the tip of its nose to its tail, at least forty feet long.

Its massive jaw had clamped around Mr. Kaufmann's Honda Accord, its teeth ripping through the roof, shattering the glass windows. Harry knew what the large reptilian carnivore was, but even in his mind, he stuttered on the word.

T-t-t-t-t-t-t…

Beyond it, on a hill in the field, hooded men pulled on a dozen ropes tied to a great gray rock. Harry had read about the ancient megaliths that had been dug up near the school, but he had no idea who these guys were, and he didn't particularly want to know.