John Wray - The Lost Time Accidents

From that point forward, it was as though two movies were being projected onto the interior of my skull — both the climactic conclusion of the Timestrider trilogy and a spectral companion piece, flickering in and out of focus, made for a purpose I’d grasped only one thing about: my family was both its audience and its subject. In that final hour, surrounded by Coke-slurping strangers in that oversold, sticky-floored theater, I felt what paranoid schizophrenics report experiencing during pyschotic episodes: the suspicion that the actors were speaking directly to me.

Psychiatrists refer to this phenomenon as “delusions of reference,” Mrs. Haven, but there were no delusions in play in the Mohawk 6 that afternoon. I’d heard my own father reciting the actor’s lines, after all, less than twenty-four hours before. There was a riddle in that, a mystery I was still too young to solve; but I had no doubt that I’d crack the code in time. As a twelve-year-old boy, I saw the world of adults in precisely those terms — as a series of time-coded, self-solving riddles — and in this particular instance I was right. I didn’t have to wait longer than the closing credits.

* * *

I rushed from the Mohawk 6 back to Buffalo General as fast as the NFTA bus would carry me, bursting at the seams with self-importance. Orson was having something done to him involving gauze and electrodes when I got there, so I was forced to cool my heels out in the hall. I kept my back to the wall and my eyes on the floor, struggling to choke back my excitement. For whatever reason — urgency? fear? an adrenaline spike? — my senses were as sharp as a raccoon’s. I heard the nurse’s crepe-soled shoes against the crackling ancient vinyl and saw and smelled things that I’d rather not remember. Finally Orson’s door opened and the nurses filed out. I found him wide awake and restless.

“Well, Waldy?” he gasped. It seemed to me now, in my paranoid state, that he was gasping on purpose, on the off chance that the premises were bugged.

“I did it,” I whispered.

“Good boy. What have you got?”

“The Insurgency won, Orson. Just like you said.”

He gave a sigh and let his eyes fall closed. “That’s wonderful, Waldy. Huzzah for the cosmos. Is that all?”

I held back for a moment, aware that I was toying with my father. I was savoring his attention — his desperation, really — knowing all too well that it was temporary. His chest rose and fell under the papery hospital sheets; a vein in his neck twitched in time to his heartbeat. I had the sudden conviction, feeling my own pulse quicken, that if I stared long enough at that vein it would explode.

“I’ve also got this.” I laid my notebook on the bed beside him.

“Show me.”

I flipped to the relevant page and held it up. Printed there, all in caps, was the very last line of the credits:

SPONSORED BY THE U.S. CHURCH OF SYNCHRONOLOGY

Orson glanced at it quickly, then pushed it away. It was obviously what he’d been expecting. I remember feeling vaguely disappointed.

“As soon as I get out of this organ-harvesting center,” he muttered, “we’re going to pay a visit to your aunties.”

Monday, 09:05 EST

This entry may turn your stomach, Mrs. Haven, but the possibility no longer worries me. I’m still writing for an audience of one, still bearing witness, as I’ve done since the beginning; but sometimes I wonder. Someone will read this, I’m certain of that. But my audience might not be you — or “you”—at all. It could even be the Timekeeper himself.

My relief at his disappearance didn’t last longer than a single sleep cycle. Once it registered that I was alone again — more alone, if possible, than I’d been before I found him — the old heaviness dropped down on me at once. The singularity was tightening its hold, taking advantage of my discouragement; but I knew the heaviness was just a symptom.

The cause of it was clear to me. I missed him.

This isn’t as perverse as it sounds, Mrs. Haven. I feel no sympathy for my great-uncle, let alone love. He’s a sociopath, a criminal, a monster — I have no doubt of that. But I was possessed of two ambitions before being banished to this place: (1) to arrive at a reckoning of my family’s crimes, by finishing this history; and (2) to reckon with them, perhaps even atone for them, by whatever sad, belated methods I could find. And I can no longer deny, Mrs. Haven — not now, having met him at last — that Waldemar holds the key to them both.

My strength gradually returned as I reviewed chapter XXI, and I began venturing, slowly and tentatively, back into the Archive. But not once in a half-dozen forays — two of them as far as my aunts’ bedroom — did I find the slightest trace of Waldemar. It was as though all evidence of him had been deliberately erased: no imprint on the bed, no bantering notes, no mnemonic triggers left out in the tunnels. I never would have thought a place so packed with junk could seem so empty. I had nothing but my history to keep me company, and my history wasn’t enough: not when the Timekeeper himself might be in the next room.

Finally, on what I’d resolved would be my very last pilgrimage to that claustrophobic chamber, I found him waiting for me on the bed.

He was sitting with his back against the headboard and his legs splayed in a V across the sheets, unpacking a grimy olive-colored satchel. Its contents seemed as random as anything out in the Archive: a bicycle pump, a length of wire, a tarnished old key, a handful of cherry pits in a cracked glass beaker. He took no notice of me until I cleared my throat.

“There you are, Waldy,” he said absently, holding the satchel upside-down and shaking it. “You have some questions for me, I imagine.”

I hadn’t been aware of having any questions. Nothing came to my mind.

“What was that, Nefflein ?”

“Are we the same person?”

Again he seemed barely to hear me. He was more corporeal than when I’d seen him last, but also tighter-skinned — somehow inflated-seeming — as though his viscera and flesh were pressurized.

“Those things you did,” I said. “At the Äschenwald camp.”

He set the satchel aside. “What about them?”

I hesitated. “Am I like you?”

“What a curious question. In what sense do you mean?”

I did my best to hold his milky gaze. “If your theory is right — if chronological time is a hoax — then why should your guilt have been passed on to me? Why should I care what happened at Czas, or Vienna, or anywhere else? Why can’t I forget?”

I’d expected him to react with surprise, perhaps even anger; instead he cocked his head and grinned at me.

“I’ve been wondering what brought you here, Nefflein . Now I understand.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“The past is a torment to you, the present is grim, and the future — from what I can see — scares you out of your wits. Is it any wonder you’ve excused yourself from time?”

I opened my mouth and closed it.

“Here’s a piece of advice, Waldy. If you’re looking for causes —”

“I don’t want your advice. I want you to answer my question.”

“No need to shout!” He held up both his hands in mock surrender. “It’s important to keep in mind, first of all, that Äschenwald was a means to me only. The end —as you well know — was otherwise.” He shifted indolently on the bed. “If you’d had my reasons … then yes. Perhaps you might have acted as I did.”

He coughed twice — loudly and hackingly — into his fist, then waited to hear what I would ask him next.

“What were your reasons?” I said, as he’d known that I would.