Hannu Rajaniemi - The New Voices of Science Fiction

Instead of each moment of my life shattering into a million living instances of me, what was it like living with so many millions of other people?

By the fourth day I have only have a few air tanks left. Based on what I know of the route, I suspect I’m near the university. But my air will run out well before I find it.

With a sigh, I know what I must do. I’ve known all along I would do this. Maybe that’s why the mists and Momma have been silent. They’ve been waiting for me to make this choice.

I raise my blinder and look.

Around me stands the city as if we’d never left the Days-We-Knew.

Crowds of people walk by me, a few staring in disgust at my smelly suit and strange attire. Most, though, flow around like I’m not there. They step by as if I’m merely an obstacle in their path.

As my gloved hands rise to my helmet, I find I’m no longer afraid. I remember Momma jumping off Empire and, like her, I’m eager to see what happens next.

I twist open my helmet and breathe deep. As the clean air reaches my lungs, a deep pain slams me. A pure white-fire pain. A pain like every muscle in my body cutting away at my bones and blood.

I scream and fall to my knees. I try to beg the mists to help me but words refuse to leave my mouth.

But the pain passes quickly, leaving me gasping and shaking. When I’m again able to stand, I blink back tears and look around.

I stand on a rubble-free sidewalk as cars and buses pass in the street beside me. While I’ve seen pictures of such vehicles before, and touched their unseen remains while hiking the mists, it’s still shocking how big they are and how fast they move.

But even bigger are the buildings. High-rises line the street, all of them gleaming in unbroken glass and metal and stone. In the distance I see Empire State. But not the Empire as I knew her, covered in slugs and missing large pieces of limestone. No, this is the Empire as she was always meant to be. Perfectly maintained and wholesome and taller than all the other high-rises around her.

And the sounds! A moment before all I heard was the air hissing in my suit. Now I hear cars grumbling and people muttering and an entire city speaking at once.

I stumble backward and collapse against the side of a glass storefront. The glass begs for Dry Cleaning. I can’t begin to understand how cleaning could ever be dry.

“A lot to take in, isn’t it,” a familiar voice says. I look up to see Momma standing beside a strange cooking stand on wheels. The man cooking there hands Momma a bottle of what looks like water and some type of a bread and meat food.

Momma walks over and hands me the water and food. “It’s called a hot dog,” she says. “Better than anything we ate on Empire.”

I haven’t eaten in days and I tear into the food, not caring if it’s mist dreams or not. Momma’s right—it’s the best thing I’ve ever eaten. I also drink the entire bottle of water.

Feeling better, I look around. The people passing Momma and me on the sidewalk are purposely not looking at me. I see my reflection in the window beside me and know why. My hair’s matted, my face dirt-streaked, and my suit stinks. Compared to these people’s clean, neat clothes, I’m a wreck. Even Momma looks beautiful, wearing something called a dress. At least, I think that’s what Old Man Douger called the old pictures he once showed me of the clothes people wore in the Days-We-Knew.

The man who’d cooked the hot dog for Momma brings over another, along with more water. He whispers to Momma that it’s good she’s helping me. “If you need anything, let me know,” the man says before returning to his cart.

“He thinks you’re in trouble,” Momma says. “Now that the people here can see you, all they comprehend is a dirty girl in a strange outfit.”

“I don’t understand.” I look around. I need the mists to return. I need my suit’s darkness to protect me from this batty world.

“This a mist dream?” I ask.

“No. You talked with Estelle at the Plaza, right? She told you what the mists are, and what happened when we left the Days-We-Knew?”

“We’re somewhere without the passing of time and the mists are people torn apart by that change. Every moment of their lives somehow came alive.”

“Mostly correct. The people who became the mists gained immense power even as they were torn apart. With those powers they stabilized and created a world for the rest of us to live in. And yes, each little part of the mist is one unique moment in someone’s life. But it’s also much more.”

Seeing that I don’t understand, Momma taps the necklace she’s wearing. The same necklace I wear. She runs her fingers over the dozens of tiny globes, stirring up the curls of mists inside them. “Imagine each of the globes in my necklace is a different time in someone’s life,” she says. “When they’re looped around my neck, it’s impossible to know which is the first or the last.”

Momma reaches around her neck and unclasps the necklace. She dangles it from one end, creating a straight line of globes. “The people you grew up with believe time’s a straight line, like when I take off this necklace. Suddenly we have a beginning and an ending. But there’s a downside to such beliefs….”

Momma grabs the bottom globe and yanks, causing all of the globes to slide off the golden wire and smash into the cement, where the wisps of mist dissipate and vanish.

I grab my own necklace, not wanting Momma to break it. But a moment later the world around us blinks. People who had been walking past are a few steps back from where they’d been. Cars and buses have jumped backward. And Momma again holds an unbroken necklace.

She reaches around her neck and clasps the necklace together so it’s again an unbroken whole without a beginning or an end.

I look around, tricking myself into believing I understand. “Is this a different time from where I lived in Empire?”

“What we’re experiencing is the intersection of the individual times and moments within the mists. You can only come to places like this when the mists merge with your life.”

I look again at the hot dog man and at the people passing me on the street.

“The mists are tricking me,” I say. “This isn’t real.”

“It’s as real as your life on Empire. When the mists take someone, that person becomes every moment of their life. All the time they’ve lived. Each moment of your life coming alive but still held together. Like the molecules of your body joining together to create something larger than themselves. Or these glass globes creating a never-ending necklace.”

I nod. I can feel this, now that the mists have taken me. I feel all the moments of my life. It’s not like remembering my life—not like memories at all—but instead as if I could open up any moment from my past and relive it. Could enter that moment’s separate and unique time and again snuggle with Momma in our slug. Could again feel excitement and fear as I walked that scary girder on Empire and became a mist scout. I can even taste future times I’ve yet to live.

Momma smiles. “You feel the potential, don’t you? But most of the people back in Empire and the other buildings are still limited by their linear view of time. They’re afraid to embrace what the mists could give them.”

I remember Momma pulling the last globe off her necklace and all the other globes smashing to the sidewalk. I imagine the countless different moments in the lives of Bugdon and everyone in Empire doing the same when our building finally collapses.

I look at the people passing us in this city. I look at the hot dog man. Each is their own mist-cloud of time. They’re the same as me. I look across the street and see Rockefeller University. As I reach out with my senses I can feel Estelle inside. She’s about to open her hoped-for portal in time.