SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

We let Marty take the master bedroom. He was making use of it with his newfound friends. I didn’t want to look through the bedroom door, but I was compelled to, I had before. My fate was determined. And I did see him, with the two naked girls, on a writhing bed of tentacles, just as I saw in the tank, but I really saw them that time, and time again, and what I’d interpreted as a death scene was some other sick thing.

That’s another weird thing about déjà vu. Something that’s disgusting the first time is still disgusting the next. Marty made that palace of a suite so uncomfortable that we just went back to the floor and made a few million more. Of course, we knew we would.

As much as we did see, there were still things that we couldn’t. Like when I crashed out Sunday afternoon and woke up freaking out. I’d seen myself sit straight up, my t-shirt soaked, the late afternoon light creeping around the curtains. What I didn’t see before is what happened in my sleep. It’d been the same as the tank. I’d seen another week out. No, more than that, two maybe. The diatomic molecules were flop flipping all on their own.

I went to the suite’s bar, poured a tall glass of water, and guzzled it down.

“We don’t need another dose,” Marty said.

I spun around to find him standing at the end of the marble bar. “The diatomic molecules,” I said.

“You’ve got enough to last.”

“How long?”

“Don’t know.”

I misinterpreted the conversation the first time I saw it; often seeing is not processing. I thought it meant that I didn’t need—as in shouldn’t have—another dose. But he meant that I had enough diatomic quantum flop to last me a while. Perhaps a long while. Not from the dose we took the Friday before, or the next, or the next. It was the fifth trip to the tank that made the state permanent. I was there now, in the tank for the third, fourth, and fifth time. I was also at the bar of the suite. I felt a pressure push into the center of my forehead, an invisible thumb pressed up against my flesh, into my pineal. My hair ripped at my scalp, threatening an exodus. The room changed around me, the colors became brighter, the edges sharper.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” I said. “You’re not here.”

“But I am,” Marty said. And he was, but he wasn’t. I was talking to a future Marty.

“Quantum superimposed,” we chimed together. I didn’t know what that meant yet, but I did, because I would soon learn that since the past, present, and future were just different states of the same time; I could willfully traverse them. Absorbing those states into my present mind—the mind that was in the suite—a dizzying echo of the tanks, a flash of surreal.

A long, iridescent blue snake-like eel came up from behind Marty’s back and slithered down around his chest and up behind his arm.

“Do you see that?” I asked.

“Uh huh,” he said. “There’s one on your arm too.”

I looked down and sure enough, a long, thin eel was coiling around my forearm. “Hell!” I yelped, and then time slowed to a crawl. Simultaneously the blue eel slithered through the air and the water glass dropped. The glass exploded on contact with the floor and shattered into countless shards. But I could see each one twinkling, individually rising from the point of impact, blossoming out and away.

I must have seen that glass shatter a dozen times. More than that, I’m sure, because I want to put a number on it. A linear number. But all of those times were the same time and I was viewing it again in a constant, still frame loop. I just processed little snapshots, slow still frames of a grander movie. Is the cat dead or alive? It’s both until you open the box. My observation, my presence of mind, was no longer passive as it’d been a few days before. Observation had become an active process, a superposition of realities . I could see what was happening in the box.

“The riddle,” I said. “It’s a paradox, a mirror.”

“There is nothing that is not known,” Marty said.

“And you, you were the one that told yourself about the diatomic molecules.”

Marty appeared stunned; he was travelling. “I didn’t tell, exactly,” he said, staring off, most likely watching the event. “No. I gave myself the eureka moment.”

And it all made sense to me in a way beyond words. I experienced a new clarity of encompassing time, was aware of my immersion in it, as I never had been before and with all of the knowledge I was yet to learn accessible to me, I immediately possessed the benefits of living in the past, future, and now.

And then he said the most dangerous thing, “We’re gods among mortals.”

And in an epiphany—both physical and cerebral—as if spoken to by a god, there were further revelations.

Marty shared the experience.

He must’ve, because his face lost expression in synch with my realization that with all of the money and the power we could, would acquire, that would not be enough for him, that one day we would confront each other.

And that was the beginning of the chess match. For years, we played our roles politely, evenly matched in forecasting the outcome. Until our confrontation. Until his accident .

A freak accident I suppose he didn’t see coming.

Dave has always had the best handle on the flop. He went to Dharamsala to meditate with the Dalai Lama and learn the advanced tantric of Kalachakra. He shared some with us, then he went to Arizona and opened an Ashram.

Danny Wong used it to his advantage. I guess we all did, but he was creative. He expanded his parents’ restaurant business and turned Wong’s Wok into the national chain it is today. You know the jingle, You can’t go wrong with Wong . Everybody loves their crispy lo mein. I know, Chinese restaurant , that sounds cliché, but keep in mind he had a secondary study in business. You may be thinking he uses the flop for the fortune cookies, and I wouldn’t blame you.

But that’s not what he’s doing.

Ever wonder how they deliver so fast?

He precogs all of the delivery orders each day for the entire chain and has them ready to go when the customers call, actually set them up long ago. He told me that everything has been entered into a computer for years to come. We’re talking zero waste, bulk buying, and optimum staffing. When he goes public, we all make a killing. There’s a tip for you.

And Marty? Marty was bright and would have received his PhD regardless of the flop.

His downfall was his hunger for power, over the world around him, over himself. He alienated everyone with his thirst to know what he couldn’t see and the compulsion to control what he could. In his aspiration to be a god he leveraged everything he saw, but you can’t know what you haven’t seen. Marty was ultimately rejected by the world as a recluse and a fool.

On numerous occasions I’ve caught myself thinking of Marty and wondering how often he visited his inevitable end, if he thought he could avoid it, overcome it, see past it. And then I’ve pondered if Marty’s gone at all. We’ve all seen our mortal end. He has no future or present but his past exists alongside mine. Like the hooded figure on the bridge, he could go forward and backward in time at will, whenever he wanted. Maybe he just traveled back to his youth, or some other time, and in that way is still alive. I would have liked to have asked him, but I never did, and I never do. I wonder if he’d know the answer.

By knowing past, present, and future, we are removed from our lives. We were all cursed, not blessed. We play walk-on roles in a moving picture. No surprises, no unknowns. There are no wives or children, just visitations with our past and future selves. I suppose that’s because life became less interesting. Wash, rinse, repeat.