Tal Klein - The Punch Escrow

Lifting my wife by the chin, Taraval held Sylvia’s head to the console’s biometric sensor. Thankfully, nothing happened. “Open your eyes!” he yelled at her.

No more words. Time for action .

With his attention off me, I jumped up toward the dangling crane magnet. It took a few tries, but I managed to snag it, my fingers barely gripping the slick metal edge of the nearly two-meter-wide disc. As I pulled myself up, my biceps straining, I could see Joel 2was nearly at the conductor’s booth. I clambered on top of the heavy round magnet, thinking I could swing it closer to the console and grab Sylvia. It was the only plan I could think of. At the same time, Joel 2reached the top of the ladder. I nodded to him, hoping to convey that Taraval was preoccupied. And then I saw it.

The grenade .

In my mind, I felt relief, not concern. Had I been privy to Pema’s lecture about the danger of the grenade to its wielder, I would have likely tried to dissuade Joel 2from using it. But at that moment, as he and I made eye contact, the pride I’d felt for him earlier returned. There was no longer any jealousy, no existential worry over which of us was the real Joel Byram. Right then I would have been proud to be either of us. Proud that there were two of us, and we were both doing what it took to save our wife.

With the wind picking up, I tried to swing the magnet back and forth like a pendulum. I did this by running from one side of the magnet to the other, but it barely moved. The metal disc on which I was standing and the steel cable attaching it to the crane must have weighed over a ton. Hoping my impromptu trapeze act would at least distract Taraval from Joel 2, I put my back into it, letting out a mighty roar. Surprisingly, the magnet actually started to swing slightly.

Unfortunately, the yellow lights on the crane and in the portal beneath us started flashing at the same moment.

Shit, she opened her eyes .

I reached toward the railing with one hand, leaning into my momentum to increase the arc of the magnet’s swing.

Here we go .

My fingers grazed one of the railing beams as the alarms started blaring.

Focus. Don’t let go. You can do this .

“Sylvia!” I yelled. “Jump!”

Both she and Taraval looked down to me. Then Joel 2pulled himself into the booth and stood up. He was now at eye level with Taraval.

Seeing my doppelgänger, Taraval looked back and forth between me, swinging on the magnet three meters below him, and Joel 2, holding a prototype teleportation grenade a mere two meters away. “Fool me once!” Taraval said, wagging a finger. “Fortunately for me, one is all you get.”

Taraval stretched a finger toward a green triangular icon on the console. He was about to press it when Sylvia knocked him sideways with her hip.

Joel 2grabbed her by the shoulders. “We’ve got you,” he said, kissing her quickly on the forehead then pushing her out of the conductor’s booth.

“Joel!” she screamed as she fell downward.

The magnet, with me on top of it, swung back toward her. Everything you’ve gone through, your entire life, has been about this one fucking moment, Joel. Don’t fuck it up! Now—catch!

I caught her under the arms, the sudden weight yanking me into a sitting position. The steel suspension cable cut into my shoulder, but I hung on. Gritting my teeth, I struggled to lift my wife onto the magnet with me. To anyone watching the maneuver, I’m sure it resembled a disastrously executed circus act. But I felt like Superman. Slowly, Sylvia’s body came over the edge of the disc, until she collapsed across my lap. I exhaled a sigh of relief.

Suddenly the TC alarms stopped blaring and the shipping yard went dark. The only light came from the moon reflecting off the raindrops.

Taraval laughed. “Did you idiots seriously think cutting the power would be something I did not account for?” he said to Joel 2.

“No,” Joel 2responded. But he wasn’t talking to him. His eyes were focused on me and Sylvia. Again, I have no idea what he was thinking. Maybe he’d done the relationship calculus and realized there was no plausible future for the three of us as a “family.” Maybe he thought he needed to be punished for killing Eduardo and hacking Julie. Maybe he just felt the glacier calling to him. All I know is what he did, which was move his right hand from behind his back and reveal the grenade. He pushed in one of the two gray buttons on its side without looking away from me and our wife. The grenade’s opaque metallic surface instantly became transparent. It looked as though Joel 2was holding a weighty bubble in his hands.

Taraval recoiled, clearly recognizing the grenade for what it was. He was scared. “You fool,” he said. “Use that thing and you’ll merely kill yourself their way instead of mine.”

Three meters below the booth, Sylvia looked at me in abject horror. She, too, realized what was about to transpire. “He can’t!”

“He already has,” I told her, and pulled her off the magnet.

We fell to the container below, striking the metal roof and knocking the breath from our lungs. As my wife and I struggled to inhale, the bright overhead lights blinked back into service. The yellow caution lights resumed flashing, and the alarms revved up their blaring. Taraval snorted a brief “Ha!” and quickly turned back to the conductor’s console. Without hesitation, Joel 2ran toward Taraval at full speed.

Fuck. We’re dead. Even if he does get there, we’re all dead .

I turned to Sylvia, uttering a forlorn “I love you.” But she didn’t acknowledge it. Her attention was not on me.

“No!” she screamed as the light emanating from the grenade in Joel 2’s hand became whiter and brighter, until it was as if a million strips of magnesium ignited all at once. I was forced to avert my gaze.

“Joel!” Sylvia cried.

There was a loud thunk , and the shipping yard went dark again.

Moti. He must have cooked up a contingency for Taraval’s contingency .

Sparks flew from the TC console. The crane’s magnet became untethered, falling toward us at a quick clip. I rolled sideways, trying to drag Sylvia with me—

But the one-ton disc hit the container, crushing the thick steel as if it were tinfoil. The sound of the impact echoed off the nearby freight containers. Then all was silent, save for the patter of raindrops on metal.

“Joel,” my wife said in the darkness. “Joel, I can’t feel my leg.”

“Hang on.” I stretched out my hand, my eyes straining to adjust in the darkness. My fingers found Sylvia’s shoulder, then looked down to her torso. Her left leg was pinned underneath the magnet, but her eyes were on the conductor’s booth. I followed her gaze. The discharged grenade lay where Joel 2and Taraval had stood, a green light blinking on its surface.

The two men were gone.

“Joel,” Sylvia whispered. I knew which one she meant. Her face was streaked with tears and rain.

Is he really gone?

Without the high-intensity lights polluting the night sky, constellations of stars began to appear. Their twinkling above was cold comfort. Sylvia stared at the space where her resurrected husband had stood just a moment ago, then she began to weep. A deep, soul-purging wail of despair that reverberated off the containers, until it sounded like a choir in a funeral procession. I put my arm around her, too shocked to join in, my eyes also fixed on the empty booth. Knowing—as only twins do—that my other was truly gone.

ALWAYS SOMETHING THERE TO REMIND ME

ONCE THE PARAMEDICS ARRIVED, they immediately set to work on repairing Sylvia’s left leg. It had been crushed, nearly severed just above the knee. She refused to teleport to the hospital, so they flew her in an ambulance drone. She allowed them to staunch the bleeding, but would not discuss a prosthetic replacement. She kept saying she deserved to have a piece of herself missing.