Paul Hughes - Broken - A Plague Journal

and all broken tomorrows: bracketing those dead to us, delineating the forms and histories of our desires, in a breath, in tears, in the pattern two opposing collections of striation compose in the catalytic reaction of palm to palm, all physics are bent, and all probabilities, all convenient presuppositions and extrapolations of futures not yet lived are erased: all we have is now, this moment, this beautiful, fragile moment, and

He inhaled.

“Storm’s coming in.”

“You sure this is him?”

She nodded. Across the gulf, lightning licked at waterspouts. She brushed the fine salt spray from her cheeks.

“Specifics?”

“Pattern confirmed. Subject is Fourteen-Seven When intact. Age twenty-three… twenty-three years and thirteen hours. REM signature confirmed; this is the author.”

“What’s a kid from the sticks of New York doing alone on the Gulf Coast on his birthday?”

“The library’s empty.” The mathematician shrugged. “Watching the lightning. Getting high. Running away?”

West nodded. “He wanted to die down here, away from everyone he knew. Tonight was the night.”

“Shit, he’s got another fifty years before—”

“That’s why we’re here.”

“It’s all there, everything we need?”

“It’s there.”

Benton sighed. “Hard to believe this kid caused it all.”

“Wasn’t really his fault.”

“What if we—”

“Hope, I’m disappointed.” West took a handful of sand, let the grains sift through his fingers. They danced with the wind. “You of all people should know that killing him wouldn’t stop this.”

“I’m just a mathematician.”

He scoffed. “Our best quantum X theorist.”

“Just a maths egg.”

He wiped his hands of the beach. “You ready?”

“Guess so.”

“Unlock the When.”

Benton tapped the subdermal in her throat. A halo sparked to life around her head. “Agents West and Benton, Fourteen-Seven When, request immediate unlock on my mark. Play.”

nav fix on your position. jog to play in three, two—

And I knew somehow that on that night in Lincoln, Nebraska, Abigail wasn’t sleeping well. Thoughts of tomorrow’s flight to Vermont, the uncertainty of a future spent mostly between airports and stages, behind cameras, and I knew that a baby was born, and his parents would name him David for his father, Smith for his mother’s side. The family lived three blocks east of Abigail, one block west of the recording studio where Lullaby recorded the album I couldn’t get out of my head.

All I saw was silver: in the lightning, in the waterspouts, in the sand. The stillness between stars.

“Paul?”

He jumped.

West studied the tension of muscles, hardening of jawline, narrowing of brow. Eyes lost somewhere between green and gray and mud went to one, went to other, went to one. Even in shadow, he saw the boy’s nose was sunburned.

“Eri—?”

“No.” She bent, extended her hand. Shake. “Benton. Hope. And you’re Paul?”

“Yeah.” Something crawled behind his eyes. Heartbeat and suspicion. Names of people and places and scents and tastes; this was…. This was. “Have we met?”

“No…” Benton looked to West.

“What do you want?” He stood; he brushed sand from cargo shorts filled with bottlecaps and cigarettes, golden discount cards to the strip’s most popular clubs. “I don’t have any money, and I’m not into—”

“We’re not here to hurt you. We’re just—”

“Spring break?”

“No.” West regarded the thousands amidst light and sound behind them. There was such stillness in the impending storm. “We’re here for you.”

The author stepped back. “I don’t know you.”

“You do, though.”

“I’ve never seen you be—”

“You have.”

Black coat flapping in the breeze over black uniform, burn fresh on temple. Gray eyes.

He smiled. “Great. So you’ve read the book, right? You’re a big fan. You tracked me down and want my autograph, right? Listen, this is flattering, but—”

Benton grabbed his arm. He looked into colorless blue eyes. “You know that’s not true. You know who we are.”

“I—”

“You see her in me. You’re right; she’s a part of me, but you knew the character wouldn’t be purely her. I’m a combination of many. The name Hope because she loved it, the name Benton because of that band. You feel it behind your eyes. You—”

He shrugged her off. “Don’t touch me.”

West pulled the pack of Marlboros from Paul’s chest pocket, withdrew one. Lit.

“They were right.” Exhale. “Every possible world that ever could have existed will someday exist in perfect emulation in machines. Every possible you that ever could have existed will.”

“Will you—”

“You’re carrying a virus. A contagion. You can feel it. You know it’s there. That’s why you write. You have the silver. You write about things from pasts and presents and futures that you shouldn’t be able to see.”

Paul was silent.

Benton squeezed his hand. “There are holes all over this When. You’re making it all fall apart. You’re ending so many worlds with each breath, and you have no idea. We’re here to take you out of this. We need you.”

“You aren’t real.”

“We are now.”

He took out a cigarette. West smiled.

“Let’s go out to the pier.”

I’d gone to the edge of the world and thrown myself against all that I knew: safety and solidity and the past. Life became a fluid somewhere out there in the thousands of miles between the stagnation of home and the brilliant, beautiful uncertainty of the edge. Life became metaphor: I walked wearily to the ocean after the long and dangerous station wagon journey across the country, just standing there in the sunshine and the gulf breeze, feeling the cleansing grit of sand beneath me, working its way into every pocket of my clothing, every hair-covered limb, underneath contacts and between toes and fingers and scouring the gold sheen from my Zippo. The sand worked its way into me, making me feel at once totally alien to that place and an integral part of the landscape. The sand would eventually blister my feet, itch my scalp, grit every last exposed bit of flesh with its silicon scour, but not before I’d simply stood there for a while to appreciate its exotic warmth.