CHAPTER SIX
Eric
YEAR: 2099
Eric pulled into the parking lot on his hoverbike and looked up at the large sign broadcast above the stout building. Mapiya Public Library. Not the place he’d normally let himself be found. He slid the bike up on a curb and reined it in to a stop. He pressed a large black button by his knee to shut the bike down, gently lowering to a rest on the grass. Wiping the sweat off his forehead from the summer heat, he slipped the pack over his back and trotted off to the library entrance.
The library was one of the last places Eric had expected to be at today. He stopped at the entrance. “Looking for something?” The librarian — thin, blond twenty-something — approached him.
“Well, I guess I’m not sure what I’m looking for,” he said, gazing about the room. Living in the post-digital age, the library consisted mostly of computers for reference and research. On one side of the library they still had several rows of books. Despite popular preference for eBooks, physical printed books still had their niche in society.
“You don’t come here often, do you?” the librarian said, though not condescendingly. He shook his head. He could count the number of times he had been in the city library on one hand, and all of them were when his parents had brought him, back when he was too young to object.
“Well, I can help you out. What do you like to read?”
He shrugged. “I’m not really a reader.” Not that he had anything particular against libraries or those who liked to read and research, it just wasn’t his thing. He played wide receiver on the Mapiya Moonbacks, the high school team, though he wouldn’t call himself a typical jock, either. “I’m more of a doer, you know? I’ll do the science experiments, not read about it as much.”
“So what are you doing at a library?” she asked, the corner of her mouth turned up in a knowing little smile.
“My teacher told me I could find information here about the 2012 Mapiya Event.” The assignment was to research a scientific event of their choice, actually. She probably expected him to pick the invention of electricity, the discovery of radioactivity, or the invention of power cells that replaced the need for fossil fuels. But they lived in Mapiya. Eric was sure he wasn’t being unique in investigating the incident that had replaced half of their town, suddenly, with charred remains and twisted metal.
“Sure. Follow me.” She stepped around the corner and led him down to the aisles of books, looking up at the numbers and letters on the end of the shelves. They stopped at the one labeled C-2 and turned down that row. “Looks like we have, hmm,” she said, running her hand across the spines of the books, “about five books here.”
She walked past Eric and grabbed a computer on a stand at the next row. Clicking hurriedly, she soon pulled up a list of items. “We also have some archived magazine articles and some newspapers.”
“Newspapers?”
She nodded. “Yep. On macrodisk. That was the medium of the time. They called them CDs, or Compact Discs. I’ll go grab them from the back for you.”
The librarian returned in a couple minutes with a few large disks the size of his hand. “Find any computer in the lab in the back and stick one of these in the side of the monitor. The technology is half a century old, though, so the screens will be flat.”
“Thanks.” He took the disks and headed to the back.
Minnesotan Suburb Disappears in Freak Accident was the first headline to come up. He read on. On the night of December 3rd, 2012, the southern half of Mapiya disappeared. It was commonly believed to have been an explosion, as all that remained was foundations and parts of a couple old brick buildings, the South Campus high school among the few buildings still standing. Few human remains could be found.
But it was also too sudden to be an explosion. Eyewitnesses reported that one moment the town was there, the next moment it just wasn’t.
Residents of Mapiya nowadays knew about The Event; half the town was gone, so it was kind of hard not to notice. But not many were interested in digging deeper. As his parents had always told him, no one really knew what happened, and that hadn’t changed in the last 90 years.
“I thought that was your bike outside.” Eric twisted in his chair to see Chevelle walking, more like gliding, down the aisle to his computer, sporting her large round sunglasses. She plopped down next to him. “You’re researching for the assignment?”
“Yeah.” Chevelle was beautiful, stunning, but her presence was just... captivating. Eric knew it sounded lame, even in his head. They had been friends since kindergarten, but lately he was wondering if they could be, well, more.
“Imagine that. Eric Farrell, wide receiver and hidden nerd,” she chided him with a smile.
“Miss Gross said we might find something here that we wouldn’t find online.” It was about five years ago, just in time for High School, that they passed the Federal law for year round schooling, hence school and research in the middle of summer. He’d much rather be out throwing the football around right now, or taking a swim in the lake with this heat.
“Found anything interesting so far?”
He scanned forward in the newspaper articles. The Mapiya Event Linked to Quantum Mechanics Experiment? “This is interesting.”
Chevelle read over his shoulder, and Eric wished nothing else but that she’d lean in closer. “After nearly a decade of research and experiment,” she said as she read, “rumor has it that Quantum Physicist Motega Wilson was close to proving by experiment his thesis on Quantum Entanglement, a discovery that could have proved monumental in all areas of society. The reporter checked on the government grant that funded his project but all reports were classified.”
“I wonder if they ever opened those files,” Eric said. “Maybe one of those books...”
“Yeah, sure,” Chevy said with a grin. “So, guess who invited me to the Summer Dance this Saturday?”
Eric shrugged and feigned interest. “Jack, from that rock band? What’s their name? Dirty Toenail?”
She shook her head excitedly. “Blayze Clay!” Another reader glanced over at them from behind a computer monitor.
“The quarterback?” he said quietly, trying to hush her.
“Yep! So, what do you say we get out of here and you can take me over to the mall so I can get something to wear?”
Eric hesitated. It would mean getting to spend more time with her, but time spent buying a dress for another guy. “Sure,” he said with a nod. “Let me just print out a couple articles here.”
***
So they went shopping at the mall. Afterward, he dropped Chevy back at her house and went home.
Eric pulled in and checked the time on his phone, squeezing his left hand just so to make the holographic phone screen visible. 7:30. He set the bike down and hurried inside as a yellow bus hovered past their street with a loud hum.
“Hey,” he said when he burst into the house. The entrance led right into the kitchen where his dad’s nurse, Beth, was making dinner.
“Hi, Eric,” she said, stirring a pot of sauce. “Did you get much done at the library?”
“Yeah,” he said. He walked past Beth and tossed his backpack on the table. “Found a few newspaper articles on The Mapiya Event.”
“Oh, you’re researching that?” She wrinkled her nose. “Why not something where you could learn something, like the Quantum Mechanics breakthrough of the 70’s?” 2070? Eric did the math in his head. Yeah, that would make Beth about 15 or so. The experiments vindicating Quantum Mechanics and bringing it closer in line with Einstein’s relativity came out about then. No wonder she would be interested in that.
“Sorry I’m home late. How’s dad been?”
She stopped stirring the sauce and stared into it. “He’s been getting worse.” Beth set the wooden spoon down and leaned on the stove. “He wasn’t so good today.” She glanced over at him. “You should go talk to him.”
Eric left the nurse as she checked the bread in the oven and stepped out into the living room. His dad, Gene, an old portly man in his 60’s now, just sat there like a bump staring at the television set. There was nothing on but a blur of digital static.
“Hey dad. How’re you feeling?”
Gene rolled his eyes over to Eric slowly, getting ever so slower as the encephalitis carried on. “So tired,” he breathed out. “Just tired.”
He rolled his head over and, with what seemed like extraordinary strength, brought his hand up, reaching out for his son. Eric stayed where he was. “Son, I’m proud of you.”
Eric looked away to hide a tear in the corner of his eye. “Dad, don’t start talking like that again.” It was like his dad had given up; like he knew at any moment the infection eating away at his brain would win.
“Okay, okay,” he agreed, bringing his hand back down to rest. “Just...”
“Look dad.” Eric interrupted him and turned away. “I’ve got a lot of homework still to do tonight. Beth’s almost done with dinner. Don’t give her a hard time tonight when she puts you to bed, okay.”
Eric felt a sting of regret, talking to his father like that. He grabbed his backpack and ran up to his room. He closed the door when his phone rang. He squeezed his hand to bring up the holographic interface to his phone to answer the call. “Hello?”
“You’re not asleep yet, are you?” It was Chevelle.
“No. Just got upstairs. The nurse is making dinner.”
“How’s he doing?” She was asking about his dad. He ran his fingers through his hair.
“Not so good. I’m trying not to think about it,” he said. He tried to keep the tears out of his voice. “I just wish my mom were here.”
THE EVENT
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?”
“It was my idea, silly,” Chevelle said, slapping Eric’s shoulder. Eric slid off his bike and looked across the swamp at the fence and the wasteland beyond. “Now, you sneak across while I go distract the guard.”
I can’t believe I’m actually doing this, he thought to himself.
The swamp ran right up alongside the road, distinguished by its tall cattails. A few cattails had burst open, the fluffy seeds floating across the road in the wind. A single stretch of road connected the two parts of town. North of that road the town remained intact after 2012. Everything south was involved in The Event.
He gave Chevelle some time to walk out to the guard station. The FBI had locked down South Mapiya after The Event, he had read in the newspaper clippings he printed out. Should have brought those with me. The clippings and the macrodisks were back at home.
To this day South Mapiya was fenced off with barbed wire, though they had lowered the security to a single guard. Officially it was still restricted, but not much effort was put into keeping people out. From time to time over the years there had been protests or requests gone out to the government to build some sort of memorial on the grounds, but they always quietly but firmly quelled any such behavior. Like Area 51, South Mapiya was now surrounded in government secrecy and conspiracy theory. Unlike Area 51, security was slim.
Eric put a foot out tentatively, then step forward into the swamp. The mud gooped up over his foot, but he wore his waterproof winter boots. Carefully, he stepped across the swamp, tugging hard with each step to pull his foot from the mud. He could hear Chevelle flirting with the guard now. Why try to keep people out, anyway, if there was nothing there? Well, officially there was nothing there, but then, why cordon it off if it wasn’t still of some interest to the government?
Perhaps something was there that they just haven’t found yet. Eric tossed his jacket up over the barbed wire on top of the fence and glanced back at Chevelle and the guard once more. Just great. Now she was kissing him. Well, a distraction was a distraction, he supposed, though he wished that could be him kissing Chevelle right then. He quickly climbed up the fence, over his jacket, and dropped down on the other side.
Now, to actually find something in this mess. One of the books at the library had tried to chronicle the last known activities of everyone in South Mapiya when it disappeared. It mentioned a Motega Wilson and Alina Bol who were preparing their science experiment in Quantum Mechanics. Finding something about that would certainly be interesting for his report.
Eric trekked across the bare ground. He passed an old car, from when they used to make them out of metal and used rubber tires. The car was melted and twisted into a grotesque shape, fused to the ground. He continued on. A few places there still stood, wrapped in on itself, the tall iron structures that held power lines back then. Here and there grass and trees were trying to come back amidst the ash.
According to the map, which he cursed himself again for leaving at home, the building was somewhere in this area, straight south. He glanced back to the north. No sign that anyone pursued him. And what would he do if they had? He was picking around in an area that was placed off limits by the FBI, which was now called the Internal Investigation Agency. That meant the Federal government. He was just a senior in High School, average nobody.
Eric gazed west. It looked like most of the school was still standing, amazingly. Back then there had been two High School campuses for Mapiya. North Campus on the north end of town for grades 11 and 12, and South Campus down here for grades 9 and 10.
Sure, technically this was half of his town, South Mapiya, but ever since it disappeared almost 90 years ago it was under investigation by the government. Not that they ever found anything, or at least not anything they’d tell normal citizens. It wasn’t too long before they stopped looking, anyway; they told everyone else that it had been an accident, an explosion, and maybe that’s all it was. Well, that’s why he was here, wasn’t it? To see if there was something to be found.
Eric kicked off a decently large rock and stepped down with a solid Clang! He looked down at his foot. There was steel under here. Bending over, he quickly tossed aside a few more rocks to see what he had found. A steel door with a plaque that read “Motega Wilson”. That would fit, if the lab was here.
Motega Wilson worked with his assistant, Alina, on a government grant. The public records didn’t say much more than that. Motega had previously published papers on Quantum Mechanics. In particular, Quantum Entanglement, the phenomena where two particles could become entangled so that a change in one instantly caused a change in the other, no matter how far apart they were. So it made sense that his lab was right about here, from what the book said. Eric lifted the door up, tossed it aside, and started grabbing other chunks of concrete and brick to push or throw away.
Eric didn’t understand it completely himself, but it was just this kind of strange science that could cause a town to disappear like this, he figured. Motega and Alina both disappeared in The Event. His chest started tingling with anticipation. He felt so close.
He lifted and overturned a large piece of brick wall that lay down flat and Eric stumbled back, eyes gaping wide. The wall had been covering a stairwell. Feeling a bit too giddy, he rushed down the stairs. Something was here. Something whole! The stairs showed little sign of being caught in an explosion. And who knows whether the government found it yet?
When he reached the bottom of the stairs he saw the place was a mess. The stairs led to a short corridor that ended in a pile of rubble. One door at the base of the stairs stood intact.
Every noise was louder now. He noticed every thump of his heart and the wind blowing by outside. Somewhere above he heard a bird peck among the barren rocks.
The door opened to a small room. It was dark down here. With no windows open to the outside the only light filtered in from up the stairs around the corner. Across from the door a desk faced him. To his right, another door. And to his left, behind an open door, stood a machine.
The device was about as wide as himself, shorter by a foot. Encased in glass on top of the device sat a couple of green gel packs. There were a couple of small dials, but the largest feature was a bright red switch. And... Eric gasped. It’s still on! All these years the device was on, self-powered, probably atomic fueled, or perhaps it needed only a small amount of energy. But what was it doing? What would happen if he just...
Eric flipped the switch off. The device sighed as it powered down. Nothing else seemed to change. He was ready to shrug it off and go home when he heard a shuffle of feet behind him.
“Who are you?”
Eric spun around. Behind him stood a tall, Native American man wearing a white smock. A woman with thick, black hair at the desk jumped out of her seat, and another woman stood to his left.
“I...” Eric was at a loss for words. He didn’t have time to chat, though, for a loud noise hissed outside as a rush of wind tunneled down the stairwell. Eric rushed out the door and bounded up the stairs.
The first thing he noticed was that the rubble was gone. The building above was restored. He pushed his way outside, letting the door bang against the wall behind him. The city was back! Everything was back, like a normal, early 21st Century town. It was cold, though. Very cold. And the street was covered in a fresh blanket of snow. In the middle of July...?
Clouds rushed into the sky above and swirled together, forming the beginning of a tornado. A girl sat in the middle of the street on a motorcycle. He couldn’t believe what he saw. It was the old kind of bike, with rubber tires and a gas-burning engine, humming like new. The girl just sat there in shock, watching as a tornado formed above her head.
“Hey!” he called out, but she didn’t look at him. Eric ran out with a huff, taking only a moment to see the tornado stretch farther to the ground. He grabbed her by the arm and tore her off the bike. The action broke her out of shock and she ran with him, back to the doorway.
Feeling somewhat safer with something over their heads, he stopped and looked back at the tornado. A man pushed past them roughly, holding a phone to his ear and wearing a gun holster across his chest. Standing in the middle of the street he finally noticed the tornado and brought his hands down, staring up in awe. The tornado twisted to the north before finally touching down.
“Can I use your bike?” Eric asked the girl, and wondered if he would even let her say no.
“What?”
“I’m parked up north, past the bridge. I need to...” He looked up at the tornado again as it started ripping into buildings, throwing debris in the air. Hopefully that wasn’t his block. “I need to follow that.”
“Sure, come on.” They ran out to her motorcycle, picked it up off the ground, and she handed him a spare helmet. “Just promise not to fall in love with me.”
Eric blushed, caught off guard. “Isn’t that what girls might say when they like a guy?”
She shrugged. “What can I say? You’re cute.