A World for Zan

We thought we understood the laws of physics. Since the Cataclysm, there are no laws. We should have paid more attention to Einstein.

Today will be unlike any other. Because every day is unlike the last or the next. Today, I can walk to the river; it was a river just last week if I am counting time correctly, but who knows what time is anymore? The Cataclysm robbed of us of that too. My brother and I are out of fresh water, and we are unlikely to find more if the river has stopped flowing.

I must make it in time, but time is broken.

I take a risk and decide to run, sprinting in my sudden decision. To my right I see a blur, just off my periphery. An acre or two away, I see grass growing right before my eyes. It’s taller than my head before I’ve passed by. I run harder. As the sweat rolls down my face, I’m struck by an odd sensation, like when a car would ease up next to you at a stoplight and you press the brake harder thinking you are the one moving. My sweat is pulling up, off, away from my skin. Off my scalp and into the air. This could be bad, but I don’t have time to waste on wondering.

The river should be close now. I slow my pace. I strain to hear the water. I am sharply aware of all around me. One false step and I could be trapped, alone, frozen in time. It’s the light; bending and seeking in its new -found freedom, robbing us of even the comfort of gravity. If I accidentally step into a light channel, I would be frozen in what might as well be eternity.

8 million years between steps. 10 million? Would anyone, or anything, be left when I finally step out of the warp?

Years ago, my father took us to the ocean. I’ll never forget the ocean’s magnetism, a gravity that pulls your attention out to its depths, but leaves you feeling full, strong, and whole. I understand the old classics, the stories of sailors and their sirens, and how fewer came home than had left. That is every day’s reality now. The sound of water is unmistakable. An excited churning and rushing that begs you to come and play. I pray for that sound now. Hope is hard to find these days.

The sweat is pouring down my face again and I hear it finally. I’m so close. The light channel appears so fast my brain cannot process the speed. It’s before me like magic. Two more steps and I would have been inside it. Rich in color, but indescribable, maybe purple, maybe red, it has blocked my entire path to the water. The water inside the light will be there… forever as far as we know. Who knows anymore? The water rushing into it will stay as well.

If I were to reach into that light column to pull water out, my hand would no longer be mine. Though still attached to my body, I would age around that ever-youthful hand, probably quicker than my natural lifespan as my blood slowly filled that trapped hand and never came back out to me in real time.

I stare, wasting precious moments, knowing the risk it will cost me to linger. Linger, wait, hurry: what do these words matter in a world like this??

Gulping a breath, I run, away this time.

I turn on my heel, my foot suddenly ice cold. I turn back. The time-freezing column of light can’t hold the force of the river and it’s pushing around, out, everywhere, and directly at me. I depressurize a canteen and lean down to fill it. One after another, until my pack is too heavy to make it all the way back to where I left Zan. He is not one to sit still. Perfect for this new world. He doesn’t remember the old one anyhow.

Another flash catches my eye, like a will-o’-the-wisp, bright and speeding across the top of the water. It tangles in my fingers as I start high-stepping out of the river. It’s up to my knees now. It will overtake me soon and I have no time to think.

When I reach the top of the hill, another large section of nature has grown up around me. I spare another moment to lean against a new tree that was not here 10 minutes ago, but its older than my country’s forming. Inspecting the object from the rushing water, the simplicity surprises me. It’s a necklace with a heart-shaped locket, and the cleanest, brightest metal I have ever seen. The average citizens of Yishun would not have access to jewelry like this. The metal is not like anything released on public markets. This would have to be from SAP or even Cisco Systems, where my father had worked. The metal looks like it could belong in the spacecraft Elon Musk was building to take his first team to Mars. I pull the chain over my head and start my run back to Zan. He’s waited long enough.

On the run back, my pace is slower than when I started. I see a woman from my old neighborhood where I lived as a child; a time when I could count on the sun rising and a full day of play. An eerie light column has closed around her completely. She has a fascinated look on her face and no detectable movement otherwise. Not breath in her body or breeze in her hair. She might as well be a picture in a history book, though I will be her history someday. She will step out of that purplish light into another world, from a time long forgotten. I hope we leave her a good one.

I take two more steps toward home and Zan, but unable to pull my eyes from her face it occurs to me that what looks like fascination could be the slow horror of her new reality spreading across her face. Maybe in 1000 years she will have made a full scream.

I turn to set off again when I am encased in purple and red, a light so thick and rich it feels like a cool fog around my body. I’m frozen. Not the burning cold of ice, but frozen from the fear that tells you, you are dead. You have died or will very soon. But not for me; I won’t be dead for a very, very long time.

My mind breaks.

It fractures with anger and desperation. I have the water Zan needs to survive. And somewhere in the mess of thinking many things at once, I try to solve the mystery of what was done to our planet when they released the technology that splintered our reality.

There were to be no more wires and infrastructure growth eating away at precious resources, all too scarce, even then. They thought they could channel the light and put our power and information directly into the light. Light is everywhere. Everyone has access. Best laid plans…

Humanity watched with hope as the technology activated; when time as we know it, stopped. There was no explanation from the technology companies. There was no more society. Because now, from here to there to anywhere, time does what it wants. And now time has imprisoned me.

Another few moments pass as my temper slows down and my head clears. I’m breathing. Not a long slow exhale that would last for a thousand, thousand years, but regular breath coming in and out of my body like normal. I take two rushing steps, more like leaps, out of this sickening, thick light.

I am not one to linger a second time. Running faster than this morning, I go straight back for Zan.

I left him too long now. I speed around a corner knowing the risk of not being able to see the path before me, and suddenly, there he is right where I left him. His smile at my approach turns to curiosity. At 6 years old, he is the smartest person I know. I would die for this kid, die to see him receive a proper education and maybe even hope that someone like him could fix all this one day.

Looking into his keen eyes, so bright and fearless, I can see he is already working out the clues of what my day has been with the sweat still pouring down, rightfully down where gravity should hold us. I blink, once, faster, again. If I could find a library, or get him into the Cisco Systems center, and find someone to train him, teach him the true laws of quantum physics that were destroyed that day 4 years ago, maybe I would have reason to hope again. It’s purely luck that it is right here in Singapore.

Zan could always talk circles around most adults. Most, but not my father. At 2 years old, mom and dad’s friends were so staggered by his intelligence they would look sideways at one another and whisper their discomfort. They rarely came to visit a second time. Why do adults fear being outdone when they could embrace and shape and mold the next new young minds, minds far greater than their own? Is that what got us here? A hunger for grandeur before we had the knowledge to understand what we were doing.

I believe Zan can understand it. If he had had more time with our father.

Explaining the events of the morning, Zan listens with the patience of a Buddhist monk. He doesn’t interrupt me with questions, only listens, but I know all his faces. This is the face that is solving a mystery far beyond me. He has spent long minutes staring into the light with his little hand in mine as we walk by, turning his head as far as he could to keep puzzling at the mysterious columns.

He agrees instantly that we should go to Cisco and bring the locket. The heart-shaped locket with seemingly magical abilities to walk through time. He remembers the building too! As well as I know my little brother, I am still surprised by the depth and clarity of his precious mind. He remembers driving there with dad for a company party so long ago. He remembers the ocean.

Lifting the locket off my body and placing it around his, it occurs to me this must have been its purpose. This ordinary looking locket could have walked right out of the highly secure technology facility around the neck of someone who knew what was coming. Well, we are bringing it back to where this all started.

The days are unpredictable. We decide, Zan and I, my little brother, always trusting, that we should leave immediately for Cisco. We walk slowly now; the day is ours to discuss theories of what we will learn. We share memories of our father. Some of Zan’s clearer and richer than my own.

That’s when it happens. The hazy purple red is all around us, my body locked into place. I am truly frozen this time. Unmoving like a statue, to anyone looking at me from beyond this prison. Zan steps outside of the column and moves into my view, knowing I cannot turn my head to look at him. He’s seen this before.

I’m shocked and terrified to learn that my mind is still processing clear thoughts. Will I slowly go mad watching eternity pass me by? Zan’s face is calm. He nods once and turns to walk on alone. I know he knows the way.

If I could cry right now, I would feel no shame in those tears, because my brother and that strange heart-shaped locket have finally given me hope.