Authors: Richard E. Gropp
Bad Glass (42 page)
“Can I get a hit off that, Floyd?”
At first, I didn’t notice anything strange about the voice—just words floating in the space behind me—and I kept taking pictures. Then it registered. It was Devon.
By the time I turned, Taylor, Floyd, and Charlie were already facing the doorway. Devon was standing there with his arms crossed against his chest. He had an uncomfortable grin on his lips, expectant and wary.
“It bounces over seven hundred times,” he said. “Over two miles in length. That’s what they said, Charlie. That’s what your parents told me.”
Charlie and Floyd advanced at the same time. Only a couple of steps—Floyd angry, Charlie shocked, his hands out, imploring—before they both pulled to a stop. It was synchronized almost, and they both stood there for a prolonged beat, unsure of their next choreographed step.
“Wait, wait!” Devon said, holding up his hands to ward them off. His attention mostly remained fixed on Floyd. Floyd was the angry one. Charlie was just confused and desperate.
“You were spying on us!” Floyd barked. His voice was an angry growl at first; then it trailed off into weak confusion: “Pretending to be our friend, then watching us through binoculars. Staring at us through our windows! And then … the tunnels?”
“I can explain. Just … just stay calm. All of you.” His eyes flickered from Floyd to Taylor, as if he were looking to her for help, an assurance that she’d keep us all in line.
But Taylor just stared. I didn’t know what she was thinking. She hadn’t seen the radio, or the binoculars, or the wires beneath the house. It hadn’t been her father’s voice that had echoed out of Devon’s radio, reporting in and taking orders. But Devon
had
been spying for Terry. It was just a minor sin in my eyes, compared
with the rest of the things he’d done, but Taylor didn’t give him any quarter. She remained ice cold.
“Okay,” I said. “Everyone, let’s just be cool.”
I took a step forward and made soothing motions with my hands, trying to keep Floyd and Charlie back. I wanted to keep the situation under control. I crossed to Floyd’s side and put a hand on his shoulder. “We can let him talk. Okay?”
Floyd grunted, reluctantly acquiescing.
Devon thanked me with an appreciative nod, but I just shook my head. I was not his friend. I wasn’t doing this for him.
“I didn’t mean to cause you any harm—none of you, really—and I don’t think I did. I was just watching, making sure nothing bad happened.” He took a deep breath, bracing himself, then continued. “You see, I work for a group—” He paused for a moment, then came up with a new term. “—a consortium, I guess you could call it, with national and international business interests … and grand political schemes. Or maybe just grand political delusions—I’m not too sure about the reality on that one. My father got me the job; he’s pretty high up in the organization—sold his soul for that portfolio, right? Anyway, they placed me in the city. At first, I was an administrator in the investigative unit—” He gestured up toward the building above our heads. “—but I stayed on after it started falling apart, after the military took control. I wasn’t the only one. There were other moles, but most of them fled during the transition. And of the ones who stayed, I think I might be the last one left. At least, that’s the impression I get whenever they contact me. They’re getting desperate, you see. They lost their bead on the situation, and they’re not used to that. They’re not used to losing control.”
“What did they have you do?” I asked.
“Like I said, I was an administrator. It was my job to facilitate things, get the experts the gear and supplies they needed in order to do their research. I got them copy paper, I made sure their computers worked, I helped them organize their expeditions. I did
anything and everything they asked me to do. That was my job. I’d get in tight, you see, and they’d tell me all of their theories, all of their hypotheses, and I’d relay it back out of the city.” He nodded toward Charlie. “That’s how I met your parents. That’s how I learned about this.” He gestured toward the laser apparatus in the middle of the room.
“What is it?” I asked.
I addressed the question to Devon, but Charlie was the one who answered. “It’s measuring the speed of light,” he said quietly.
Devon nodded. He looked impressed. “It’s counting the length of time it takes for the laser beam to travel from one end of its path to the other.”
“But why?” Taylor asked. “That’s a known constant.”
“Not anymore,” Charlie answered. “At least, not here.” There was a terrified expression on his face as he turned and gestured toward one of the computer monitors. After a moment’s hesitation, Taylor, Floyd, and I approached. The screen was filled with lines of text, and each time the apparatus flashed, a new line appeared at the top of the screen. It was a time stamp, followed by a long string of digits.
As we watched, the digits changed: 299,792,457.99999908 became 299,792,457.99999907.
“Those are meters per second,” Charlie explained. “It’s getting slower. The speed of light … it’s changing.”
“Your parents had a hypothesis,” Devon said. “They believed that the universe was slowing down. Maybe it’s just stopped expanding, or maybe it’s actively shrinking, but either way, physics has changed—time has changed—and it’s still changing.”
“We wouldn’t be able to survive that,” Charlie said. “Even the slightest shift. The movement of atoms, neurons in the brain—it would all fail. If something like that happened, it’d be the end of everything! No life, no substance.”
“Yeah,” Devon replied, smiling grimly. “That’s what they tell me.”
“What are they doing now? My parents—are they here, are they trying to explain this?”
“No,” Devon said. “They aren’t here. Not anymore.”
“Then where? Where did they go?”
Devon paused for a long moment, casting careful glances at each of us in turn. “They’re dead, Charlie,” he finally replied. “They’re dead, and you know it.”
“No,” Charlie said, his brow furrowing in confusion. “They aren’t dead. They sent me emails. I have pictures of them, in the city. I heard you talking to my father!”
“No, Charlie. They’re dead,” Devon repeated. After a handful of seconds, he continued reluctantly: “Hell, you were there, at the funeral. September 15, just outside of Portland. I saw the pictures.”
“No,” Charlie said, shaking his head in disbelief. Then his face crinkled up in a sudden moment of doubt
—What is he thinking?
I wondered.
Right now, what does he remember?
—and he took a tentative step back. The way he was moving, I was afraid his legs were going to collapse beneath him. “It’s not true. You’re lying.” But now there was a note of desperation in his voice.
“Your parents ran tests. They confirmed—” He gestured toward the apparatus. “—they checked interference patterns or something. And then they took a car … I don’t think they could handle it anymore, watching the world fall apart—this was just after the mayor disappeared, when everyone in the building was starting to see things, starting to freak out. Your mother told me it was going to spread, it was going to infect the entire world. It was just a matter of time.” Devon paused. His voice turned soft, sympathetic. “The official reports—the police told you it was an accident, they told you that your father lost control of the car, but I think your parents just didn’t want to see what was coming. I don’t think they could handle it.”
“No. It’s a lie. It’s impossible. I don’t remember … why wouldn’t I remember?” Charlie turned abruptly and kicked out at the laser apparatus, slamming his foot into the nearest mirror. The laser tipped off its axis, and the next time it fired, it bounced high off the far mirror and shot up into the ceiling. I glanced at the tracking monitor and saw the word
ERROR
repeated a half dozen times on the topmost line. “This whole thing is bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. The universe doesn’t work that way … my parents, they don’t work that way!”
He started toward Devon, taking hard, violent strides, and then his legs
did
collapse, sending him sprawling to the floor. At first he braced himself on the heels of his hands, then he moved his palms up to his face, hiding his emotions in a hunched-up little ball.
“But we were listening on the radio,” I explained. “You were talking to somebody about plugging up leaks, about the information we were sending out. And what he said … whoever it was, it sounded like Charlie’s father.”
“I don’t know what you heard, but it wasn’t Charlie’s father.” Devon shook his head, a single shallow shake. If he was lying, he was doing a good job of it; he wasn’t overselling anything, merely stating facts. “At first, we were trying to keep the more troublesome aspects of the situation contained—my bosses had no idea what would happen to their business interests if some of this stuff leaked out—but that was a while ago. Now it’s just the military, with their communications freeze and their quarantine. When Charlie appeared, I was assigned to watch him, to make sure he didn’t get too close to his parents’ research. I still send out my reports, through the radio, but I don’t get anything back, not anymore. It’s just silence now. Just me—my voice—and nothing else.”
“You lie.” Suddenly Charlie’s hands fell away from his face, and the grief written there—in gleaming eyes and on tear-streaked cheeks—was gone. There was nothing but anger now, cold, hard anger. He stood up, slowly, and the way he was holding himself—fairly
quivering with mute energy—I was afraid he was going to attack Devon. “This is all an elaborate lie,” he continued, his voice level, barely restrained. “You’re trying to keep me away from my parents. You’re trying to shake me off their trail. That was my father on the radio, I’m sure of it, and that was my mother in that picture. They’re here, in the city, and for some reason you don’t want me to find them.”
“Why? Why would I do that?”
Charlie stood silent for a moment, his face screwed up in thought. Then he had his answer: “Because they know what you did—you and your dirty little organization! You did this. All of this. And you’re afraid … you’re afraid because they can fix it!” He swept his hand across the room, indicating the monitors, the laser apparatus, the city itself. “They can fix it all … if I can just find them. If I can save them.”
Devon laughed. “I wish that were true, Charlie, I really do. But we’re beyond that now. There’s no fixing the universe.” He shook his head. “Get out of the city. Go home. Go see your grandparents before it’s too late.”
At that, Charlie’s restraint disappeared, and he bolted forward—a scrawny seventeen-year-old computer geek, itching to stop Devon, itching to find answers … with his fists and blood and Devon’s broken bones.
Floyd barked a loud “Stop!” and stepped between the two combatants. He grabbed Charlie’s collar and pushed him back, holding on until the teen stopped squirming.
“Get the fuck out, Devon!” Floyd growled, whipping around to face the man in the doorway. “And stay away from us. Stay away from the house. You’ve done enough harm, you manipulative, spying piece of shit! So just go back to your tunnels and stay … the fuck … away!”
Devon nodded and made to leave; he started to turn, but then stopped suddenly. “Those aren’t our tunnels, by the way,” he said. “We used them, yeah, but we didn’t dig them, and they most certainly aren’t ours. But you know that, don’t you, Floyd?
You know what types of things are down there, lurking, waiting in the dark. For you. For me. For all of us.”
He paused thoughtfully, and a bitter, melancholy smile formed on his lips. “I hate to say it, boys—and girl—but our time has come. As a species, we’re finished. Maybe Charlie’s parents had the right idea.”
Then he turned and left.
Video clip. October 24, 02:35
P.M.
Sabine’s graffiti:
The camera sits a couple of feet off the ground, staring across a city street at the side of a brick building. The view is skewed slightly, tilted a few degrees to the left. It is day out—midmorning or noon or early afternoon—but the street is deserted, and the scene is not very bright; the color is all washed away, lost beneath a ceiling of clouds. In this light, the red brick wall has faded to a pinkish gray.
The camera jostles as the recording starts, and at first the view is nothing but the building wall, standing about twenty feet away. There is paint on the wall—dark lines forming squiggly shapes—but it is not visible for long. A young woman circles around from the camera’s rear, and the wall blurs, the lens focusing in on this new subject. She stops in the middle of the street and turns to face the camera.
Really, she’s not much more than a girl—small and delicate, barely five feet tall. Her skin is white porcelain, smeared with dirt. Her hair is charcoal black, pulled away from her face.
THE WOMAN—SABINE: My name is Sabine Pearl-Grey, and this is my statement.
She smiles slyly.
SABINE: There are some slights I can’t tolerate, some things that are just beggin’ for my response. And this … this is something I can’t turn away from. (Long beat.) I will
not
be ignored. If you turn your back on me, I’ll turn my fists on you. (She raises her hands into a fighter’s pose and holds it, serious, for a second. Then she lets out a tiny girlish giggle.)
The woman turns and darts offscreen, camera right. She is offscreen for only a handful of seconds, but it is long enough for the camera’s focus to readjust, for the paint on the wall to come clearly into view. It is a swarm of spray-painted spiders, surrounding a two-foot gash that starts about a foot off the ground. It looks like they are crawling out of that dark crevice, each one frozen in a mute acrylic pose.
When the woman returns, she is carrying a ladder twice her height, and there is a sagging messenger bag slung across her back. She carries the ladder to the wall and sets it carefully against the brick. Then she climbs all the way up to its penultimate rung. There is a window frame just about level with the top of her head, a couple of inches below the video’s topmost edge.
She reaches down and back, fumbles with her messenger bag for a moment, and comes up with a can of spray paint. She shakes the can for a couple of seconds, pops off the top, and starts to paint. It is a long and labored process: writing words on the wall—lines of text, starting with the left-hand side of each line—carefully leaning out over the sidewalk, inching down the ladder, rail by rail. She leans out too far at one point, and the ladder shifts beneath her weight, the right-hand foot lifting off the ground for a nerve-racking moment before once again settling back into place. When she is done with the left-hand side of the graffiti, she climbs down, moves the ladder eight feet to the right, and climbs back up to fill in the right-hand side. The entire process takes about five minutes.
The paint is a dark green. Olive and drab. It is a poem, drawn in bold, accusatory letters:
The Poet Inside
She hides because there’s no one there, inside.
The heart is empty and the head is hollow.
Her world is filled with corridors and echoes and shadows.
But it is all empty space.
And she wears a mask because she has no face.
She hides the end of the world inside.
The poem ends to the right of the gash in the wall. With just that single word:
inside
.
After she finishes writing, the woman moves the ladder a couple more feet to the right. She drops the can of green spray paint to the sidewalk and digs a new one from her bag. This one is bright red. She draws a giant arrow around the right-hand side of the poem, arcing up from the word
inside
and ending at the window above.
She’s pointing up toward the Poet. Pointing into her home.
When she finishes, the woman pulls back her arm and hurls the can of spray paint far into the distance; after a moment of hang time, there’s a loud clatter offscreen as the can skips across the pavement and collides with something solid—something metal and hollow that rings like a bell. The woman jumps down to the sidewalk, violently grabs hold of the ladder, and sends it crashing flat against the ground. Then she takes a couple of abrupt steps back, and—still facing the wall, still facing her poem and the Poet’s window—she raises her hands and gives the building a double-fisted two-finger salute.
SABINE: Just one more thing. One more thing and my work is done. (She glances back over her shoulder at the camera. The sly smile is once again there, twisting her face, somehow wedded to her anger and not at all incongruous.)
She grabs the top of the ladder and pulls it offscreen. When she returns a couple of seconds later, she is carrying a sledgehammer. Actually, she is
dragging
a sledgehammer; its massive head trails behind her, filling the air with a loud grating/grinding sound.
Laboring under its weight, the woman lifts the hammer from the ground and squares off in front of the gash in the wall. She swings, and the hammer crashes into the brick with a dull
thunk
. The left-hand edge of the gash caves in slightly, but the damage is rather unimpressive—just a dent, not a melodramatic burst of destruction. She lifts and swings again. This time a single brick topples through the gash, into the darkness beyond—half a spray-paint spider, disappearing into the void. She pauses and takes a deep breath. Already the effort seems to be taking its toll.
But she doesn’t stop. Over the next five minutes, the woman relentlessly assaults the wall, breaking bricks from the facade, usually one by one but occasionally triggering a miniature avalanche, sending a half dozen or more tumbling down into the darkness, or down to the sidewalk around her feet. By the time the gash is about four feet high and three feet wide, she has slowed down quite a bit. Her arms tremble visibly each time she lifts the hammer.
She hits the wall one final time—weakly, to absolutely no effect—and the sledgehammer drops from her hands, nearly crushing her feet. She collapses back against the wall. Her chest is heaving. Her arms dangle limply.
SABINE, IN A WEAK, BREATHLESS WHISPER:
Fuck me
, this is harder than I thought. (She smiles at the camera and lets out a single exhausted laugh.)
After about a half minute of rest, she pushes herself off the wall and turns to face the hole. Then she leans forward and peers inside. Her hands are motionless against the wall as she tilts her head
down and pauses, her face pressed into the darkness, peering down at … at
something
. There must be something down there to catch her attention, something hidden away in the dark. She stays perfectly still for another half minute.
Then her right hand starts to move, darting frantically—crawling like a spider—to the messenger bag at her back. Without taking her face from the hole, she manages to dig a pen-size flashlight from her bag. She whips it forward, into the hole next to her face, and immediately points it down into the gap behind the wall.
And she freezes. The scene remains still for nearly a minute. It is a frozen tableau, a static picture stretched across the screen: a woman—a girl—standing, crouched, on the sidewalk, surrounded by bricks from a damaged wall. Spray-paint spiders and words swarming up and out while she peers down and in, into the darkness.
Then she moves. Her left hand slides to the edge of the hole, quivering slightly. She grabs hold, braces herself, and lifts her leg over the litter of bricks, through the gap, and into the wall. She tests her weight on the other side—her foothold isn’t visible, but it looks to be about six inches below street level—then she crouches down and slides all the way in. Her messenger bag catches on the right-hand edge of the gash, and she has to reach back to pull it through. Her hands are moving slowly now, and they are definitely quivering—maybe from all that exertion with the sledgehammer. Or maybe it’s excitement. Maybe fear.
Once inside the hole, she pauses briefly, her back filling up the diamond-shaped gap. Then she starts
to inch away, into the space behind the wall. She is moving to the right but also down. Descending beneath the city streets.
Her left shoulder is the last thing we see. It is only about a foot above street level when it disappears from view.
Then she is gone. And there is no one on-screen for a very long time.