FutureImperfect (6 page)

Thud, thud, thud.

“Of course it is! Masks are incredibly important. Ralph Waldo Emerson said all we ever deal with are surfaces, and what's a surface if not a mask?”

“So…if it's real and important, what's the difference if it's all a mask or not?”

Harry winced and closed his eyes, bracing himself for the blow. When it didn't come, he slowly peeked out above his raised arm.

That was when the Fool slapped him again.

PHWAT!

He burst through a flock—an hour?—of Timeflys, and landed in a section of A-Time colored completely in shades of blue.

“Tsk, tsk!” the Fool boomed as it thudded up. “The point, Harry, is that even if everything you see is a mask, there still must be something
beneath
it. Masks may be the only way you have to understand things, but they're not where everything lives.”

It smiled. Harry furrowed his brow.

“Where
do
we live?”

He winced, buried his head in his shoulders, but this time the blow never came. Instead the Fool bent down, parted his enormous lips and whispered, gentle as a summer breeze, “Under the mask. You know, you can see when you're wrong, but you can't always see when you're right. You were right about a lot, all on your own. Filters shape the way people see the world. But you didn't free yourself from them; you just built a new one. A-Time is just another filter, still not the last word. Not a higher reality, not a lower one, just a different mask from what you were used to. Here, watch.”

The giant snapped its fingers and the hard past became soft, the soft future hard. Another snap returned things to normal: hard past, soft future.

If normal was ever what it was.

But the clown wasn't done. It waved its hand across the terrain. The Event Horizon, the sizzling line that stretched from one end of A-Time to another, the line that always moved, writing future into past, stopped short and moved back and forth a few times, like a windshield wiper.

Harry shook. He'd discovered this new world when his old one fell apart, thought it was bigger, sturdier, but here it was collapsing, too. You just couldn't find a good reliable reality these days.

And the Fool wasn't done yet. It pinched Harry's face between its fingers and came close.

“Pay attention. Here's the prize. The only time you're ever even
close
to reality is when you've just chucked one mask and haven't had a chance yet to pick up another. It only lasts a moment, but moments can last forever. When you really want things to change, find that moment.”

Harry shook his head. He furrowed his brow. He scrunched up his face.

“That doesn't make any sense.”
And it all has to make sense! It has to!

The Fool shook its head. “Thinking the world
has
to make sense is like using a screwdriver on a nail. Wrong tool. The world has sense
in
it, but it's bigger than sense. It's the Atman, you know, like Batman without the
B
? The All.”

“Like Ball without a B?”

WHAP!

Harry went flying. But this time, a giant hand caught him, and he found himself staring into the Fool's enormous pupils, two swarming blacknesses that looked like the primordial seas in which life formed, the waters above which God's spirit hovered in the moments before creation. And in that dark, the clown's voice boomed:

“Exactly! Saying everything is an illusion is as meaningless as saying everything's real. All things are contained in the world—good, bad, day, night, sense, nonsense—so everything
has
to be more than just sense. Make sense?”

Harry scrunched his face. “Is that a trick question?”

WHAM!

Rather than flying through the air, Harry felt his torso crunch into his legs as the force of the blow drove him not up, but deep into the terrain. When he opened his eyes, he saw he was pinned, buried up to his neck. The Fool, Harry realized, had made a fist, and used it to drive Harry into the ground.

Smiling all the while, the clown of his childhood, the clown of his visions, the clown of his nightmares, reached out and ripped Harry's head off.

It was funny seeing his own headless body like that, funnier still as the Fool seemed to warp and suck itself into the base of Harry's neck, pulling itself bit by bit into his aching skull. Harry's head was so full of Fool he thought it would pop. Instead, his head just floated gently down, back onto his neck where, he supposed, it belonged.

Though the Fool was inside him now, he could still see it winking, still hear it whisper, as it said, “They're
all
trick questions.”

Harry opened his eyes. He was back in his padded cell. Blinking, he felt the familiar sleepy grit around his eyes. The ceiling was right where it had been, no sign it'd been torn off by the hands of a god.

What about the book? Wasn't there a book?

It was gone, too.

The extreme clarity he'd enjoyed in the presence of the Fool had also vanished. Aside from the eye-jam, he was groggy, dry-mouthed, again feeling the numbing drugs course through his veins, making his every thought march through a bog.

It was likely he'd imagined it. After all, even in his addled memory, talking to the Fool felt a lot like talking to himself. Only worse.

A-Time was real, though; he knew that. The things he saw there affected linear time, changed destinies, saved or ended lives. Unless he'd been imagining everything.

And saying everything's fake is the same as saying everything's real, isn't it?

And no matter where you go, there you are.

Was there anything, anything at all different in the cell? Anything that could prove something had actually happened somewhere other than in his head? He strained his neck left, then right, looked around, scanned every inch of whiteness, hoping for anything that might be even slightly out of place.

White walls, floor, ceiling. And, well, there was the door. That was different.

It was open.

Open?

Light from the hallway was flooding in, highlighting the stains on the canvas.

Can it be? Can I get out?

Excited, he tried to stand, but his legs were too wobbly. He flopped to his side, unable to stop his fall because his arms were pinned by the straitjacket.

Ungh!

Since he was lying down now, the drugs wanted him to fall asleep, but he couldn't miss this opportunity, not with the door just open like that. He rolled onto his back, then used his legs to push himself along the floor until he hit the wall. He bent his head forward and kept pushing, flattening his torso. Slowly, he wriggled his back up the coarse surface, and once he was up high enough, he stood.

Feeling like a drugged, giant white penguin, Harry waddled across the springy surface to the open door. Cautiously, he peered into the hall. It was thin and severe, a gray flatness interrupted only by several thick doors—more cells, containing fellow crazy people. Every other ceiling light was off. That meant it was late. They conserved power at night, left on only what they needed.

But the most interesting thing in his field of vision was Jesus, the guard. He was lying in a heap in the center of the floor, snoring.

“Wow,” Harry said, surprised.

At the sound of Harry's voice, Jesus snorfled and smacked his lips.

Crap!
Harry thought, wishing he could slap his pinned hands over his stupid mouth.

Jesus moaned slightly, twitched, then snored again.

Lighten up, hell. What I
really
need to learn to do is keep my stupid mouth shut!

Satisfied the guard was out, he tiptoed over quietly and saw two bottles on the floor near the sleeping body, one of ibuprofen, the other sleeping pills, their contents spilled. The little white pills looked remarkably alike. An image flashed in Harry's head of Jesus, his head throbbing, mixing up his pills and suffering the consequences.

Quite the coincidence. Like the door. Exactly the sort of thing Harry would expect from someone mucking around in A-Time. Maybe the Fool, the big lug, was helping him escape. Whatever. No reason to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The linoleum in the hallway was cold compared to the padding, and his feet were only protected by the thin cloth coverings that passed for a crazy person's shoes. He padded quickly to the end of the hall, only to find the door to the stairwell locked. A card reader was mounted on the wall next to the silver door-handle.

Damn.

He waddled back to the guard. It didn't look like there was anything in his shirt, but he saw the tip of an old brown wallet jutting from the pants pocket, the fabric stretched thin by Jesus's enormous butt.

Carefully, gently, Harry went down to his knees, put his face near the butt, and used his teeth to pull at the wallet.

Please don't let anyone see me like this….

With a bit of tugging, it slid free and landed on the floor. Harry kicked it away from Jesus, then, using his nose, managed to unfold it and pull sundry plastic cards free—credit card, license, library card, and yeah, Windfree employee ID.

Getting the thin, flat plastic rectangle up from the floor proved the hardest part. Harry nearly broke a tooth trying to pry the card up but finally managed it. Card in teeth, he waddled back to the door, slid the card through the reader, and pressed the handle.

Click.

Now he was in the stairwell, leaning against the door with his shoulder, looking down at the concrete and steel stairs that led to the floors below.

Ha! I made it! Now it's down to the basement, and maybe I can sneak out of the building! Or better yet, up, up, up to the roof where I can jump off! The building must be six, seven flights. That should be high enough to—

Wait a minute! What am I thinking?

But it wasn't him thinking at all. It was the Quirk-shard. With the sedatives and antipsychotics in him, Harry's will was weak, and the shard had no such vulnerabilities. His body wavered at the top of the stairs. He wanted to walk down, but the shard was pulling him in the opposite direction.

Down, boy! Down!

No! Up, up, up!

Much to his chagrin, Harry watched his right foot move onto the stairway headed up, followed by his left. He pulled back, but not too hard, so it wasn't a very effective pull. Being in a straitjacket, he didn't want to pull hard enough to make himself fall. In a few seconds, despite his efforts, he was halfway up the stairs.

Not good. Definitely not good.

Step, step, step.

He could shout for help, if the shard let him, but then he'd just be tossed back in his cell.

Step, step, step.

Maybe there was something he could do in A-Time. He concentrated, trying to conjure the timeless state. The edges of the stairwell lights got a little blurry, but it was no use. The drugs were keeping him in linear time.

How had the Fool gotten him into A-Time? Maybe because he was a god and gods could pretty much do whatever the hell they wanted. Or maybe, if Harry could infest other people with his thoughts, giving them temporary access to A-Time, the Fool had just done the same to Harry.

What had the Fool said about finding a new mask?

Step, step, step.

He reached the first landing and rounded it.

Heh. The thought was so strange. An archetype generating a state of mind in Harry. Weren't archetypes just made up of people? Lots of people, yes…unless maybe it was the other way around, and people were made up of archetypes.

Weird.

Step, step, step.

There were more pressing issues at hand. The next flight was coming up. The Quirk was practically singing:

Jump, Harry! Jump! Jump, jump. jump!

At the next landing, he bit his tongue, hard. Pain lit his nervous system. His body reflexively jumped backward, into a wall. For a scant few seconds, the jumping urge disappeared. Harry used the moments to veer toward the door. He opened it, stepped into another hall, and slammed it shut.

No, no, no! Jump, jump, jump!

He pushed his back into the door, but his feet already wanted to resume the climb. Maybe he could lock himself in a closet and wait for the drugs to wear off so he could fight the Quirk-shard.

What was around him here? Again, half the lights were off. That was good news. The night staff at Windfree was less than half that of the day shift. Still, they checked on him at least every hour, and Jesus wouldn't stay asleep forever. It was only a matter of time before they realized he was gone. With a patient loose, the building would go into lockdown and he'd be trapped again.

But how could he escape if he couldn't trust his own damn feet?

He panted, and noticed he was only a few yards from another godsend: a wall phone. If he couldn't escape, at least he could warn Siara about her “boyfriend,” who was secretly the master of all evil in the world.

Harry walked over and nudged the receiver off the cradle with his forehead. It sailed down the length of its cord, then bounced in the air like a bungee jumper. The dial tone was clearly audible. Using his nose, he punched a nine to get an outside line, then dialed Siara's number.

It rang once, twice, and a familiar voice answered the phone.

“Keller?” it said, quite startled. “Harry Keller?”

“Jeremy Gronson?” Harry answered back, equally surprised.

There was a silence for a few moments, then, “Keller, why aren't you dead?”

Hearing that, Harry knew in a flash it was true, all true. Jeremy Gronson was the Daemon, the one who'd been stalking him in A-Time, the one who'd controlled Melody, who'd controlled Todd.
The one who was dating Siara.

Harry gritted his teeth and hissed, “You just did me the biggest favor in the world, you bastard. You just proved I'm not insane.”

“No, Keller,” Jeremy answered. “The biggest favor would be to put you out of your misery and kill you. But don't worry, I'll get to it. And by the way? You
are
insane. Totally.”

With a click the line went dead. Harry knew what would happen next. Gronson would go to A-Time and rearrange his trail so he'd wind up back in the cell, or worse.

Adrenaline surged through his body. When he thought of the danger Siara was in, the suicide voice yielded with a whimper. He ran full tilt down the center of the hall, looking for an exit. As he did, one by one, all the lights came on.

Jeremy was doing his thing in A-Time. How long did Harry have left? A minute? A second? He kept running. A bulletin board came loose from the wall, nearly tripping him, but Harry jumped over it. Soapy water sloshed across the floor from an unseen bucket, but he stopped and raced the other way.

At a corner he turned. There, down the long institutional hall, fifty yards away, was the red-and-white light of an emergency exit sign.

Footsteps came from behind; voices shouted. A door opened and a thin nurse wearing horn-rimmed glasses stepped out. She looked instantly repulsed when she saw Harry, as if he were some bad food she could swear she'd thrown away. Harry just smiled back.

He dove to her side, nearly fell, but caught himself and picked up speed. He was there, almost there, almost at the exit. He could taste it, could feel the handle give, feel the door open at his push, sense the cold outside air against his face.

He was just about convinced he'd made it when he felt something in his chest that made him stop short. All of a sudden, his body wouldn't respond. Something twisted in his gut, moved his arms this way instead of that. It was a strange sensation, one he'd never experienced before, as if someone had stuck their fingers into him, into his soul, into his future, and was yanking things around.

Jeremy.

Harry twisted, gasped and fell. In no time they were upon him, shouting, calling for a needle. As the sharp tip plunged into his arm, he remembered that the outside of the building was surrounded by a fence. He'd never have made it out anyway.

 

Tasting anger on his tongue as if it were the bitter tea, the Initiate yanked his hands out of Harry Keller's life and wondered,
How on earth did he get back in play?

Blowing air through his nostrils, he straightened, feeling his black robes tumble back down around his arms.

“Unk?”

His Quirk looked at him pleadingly, whining, wondering what was going on. It thought it was going to happen, then all of a sudden it didn't. It was tired of being yanked around.

“Unk!”

The Initiate kicked it, slamming it with the heel of his foot. With a pained howl, it ran off and hid behind a small bubbly hill in the future, occasionally sticking its single eye out from beyond the rim to look sheepishly at its master.

The Initiate turned away and closed his eyes to the terrain, to everything, so he could think. His brain strained, trying to hold all the possibilities, wondering what happened. If it wasn't for the phone call tipping Jeremy off, Keller might have done it, might have reached that door and freedom.

But how? He'd checked it over a million times. There was nothing, nothing in Keller's trail that could explain the seeming accidents, no sign his life had been interfered with by anyone other than the Initiate himself, no indication he was anything other than trapped, trapped in Windfree, trapped in linear time. But still he'd almost gotten out.

It would take something just shy of a god to create those sorts of coincidences and not leave so much as a mark behind.

A god, or a Master.

He paused and opened his mouth into a small circle.

So, was it them? Is this another part of my Initiation?

They'd always spoken of Keller as if he was just a distraction from his trial, but maybe that was a trick.

Yes.
It made sense. It fit the facts. The Obscure Masters had put that bumbling fool in his way to test his wherewithal. Keller was a straw dog, and they were protecting him. That was why Jeremy couldn't kill him, why he kept resurfacing.

That was it, it had to be. Keller was part of his test.

He whistled to the Quirk. It hesitated, smarting from the kick, so he had to whistle twice more. Cautiously, it trotted out and presented itself. It shied away a bit when the Initiate put out his hand, but it warmed as he patted it.

“Unk! Unk!”

“There, there. Sorry I was angry,” Jeremy said. “It's all right now. I think I understand. I just have to change my plans again.”