Mark Jeffrey
Age of Aether
One: Twice Upon A Time
THE DAY Benjamin Bantam had waited for all his life was here at last.
And what a day it was! Crisp navy-blue skies were filled with marbled clouds that drifted in small whirls here and there — with just the right amount of sun-soaked wind keening off nearby Mirror Lake.
Ah, perfect. It was exactly as he recalled.
As Bantam sat on the park bench, he glanced over his shoulder at the massive Army base behind him. Fort MacLaren. Somewhere beyond the barbed wire was the top secret Gaultier-Ross Supercollider. It would be charging by now, he thought. The very thought made his scalp tingle.
No, he corrected himself: it would actually have been charging for weeks at this point. Remember?
He laughed at his faded memories. Ah, well. That was inevitable for a man of his very advanced age.
Somewhere very close, but beneath the ground, a great circular chamber several miles in diameter was purring with enriched tachyon energy, building up to release a Volzstrang Wave in a single massive detonation…
«Excuse me. Is your name Benjamin Bantam?»
Bantam looked up. A young woman in her early twenties stared down at him. Even though her Facebook photos had prepared him for the resemblance (which was obvious, even beneath her surgical mask), he had never heard her voice before. It was uncanny: she even sounded the same!
For a long moment, Bantam simply could not speak. His mind tumbled with split-second jabs and cross-cuts of another time, another place. Emotions that he had assumed were long-forgotten suddenly came rushing to the surface. They were an overwhelming geyser in equal parts love and pain. Or aether and iron, as she would have said.
Still, he didn’t dare falter now. Not with so much at stake. He couldn’t afford to spook her, have her run away.
Bantam stood and held out his hand. «Yes, I’m Benjamin. Thank you for coming.»
The girl recoiled from his outstretched hand. Ah yes, Bantam recalled. Germs. The phobia was understandable, of course: the BlackPox had savaged off a third of the planet by this time.
‘The Shadow’, as the BlackPox was commonly known, was an especially violent strain of smallpox. The fleshy boils it produced were huge — and black. They also soiled the blood of the infected, turning it from bright and healthy red to dark ink. The dead would have a viscous flow from their mouth, as if they’d vomited oil right before expiring.
The Shadow was extremely lethal and contagious: whole continents had been depopulated within weeks. China had been especially hard-hit: endless miles of ghost cities now existed, without a single soul occupying a single building. India was likewise nearly empty. And in the United States, the Shadow had wreaked a trail of black blood from Washington State down through Oregon. In San Francisco, the death toll had been in the high eighty percentile figures. Texas and Florida were also hit hard. The Northeast was largely spared — but there was as of late a fresh bloom of outbreaks in New York City, and another eruption of death was expected imminently.
Bantam nodded with a tight smile and dropped his hand. «Sorry. I always forget. So hard to get used to … again.»
Now she seemed embarrassed. «Oh, no that’s okay,” she said. «I’m Sabine Portis. But you already knew that.»
Bantam surveyed her face. Unlike her, this girl was a Goth. She’d dyed her hair a rare shade of midnight with a pencil-thin streak of blue. Several silver crosses hung from her too-white neck. And a sunken, surly expression creased her face.
«Please. Have a seat,” Bantam said. She did.
They sat on the park bench, just staring at each other for a moment.
«Well … uh. I came. Like you asked.» She fidgeted. Her eyes darted around.
And she’d only come because Bantam had offered to foot the bill for her entire college education. Out of nowhere, this benefactor had shown up, just when she’d needed the break. She didn’t really know him or anything. He’d just started messaging her on Facebook, saying that it was imperative that they talk.
And now, she noticed him staring. «You don’t like the way I dress. I know. Neither did my Mom. It’s okay. ‘Be the strange you wish to see in the world’, as I always say.»
«Ghandi?»
«The Joker,” she replied.
Normally, there was no way she would have come to a weird meeting like this. But the Pox had taken both her parents, leaving her destitute. Sure, she had a boyfriend, but his parents were amongst the Pox-slain as well and his meager savings were also about to run dry.
But she didn’t like this, not one bit. She didn’t like being somehow indebted to this stupid Crypt-keeper, sitting here in his semi-hip suit and black Converse All-Star sneakers.
Sensing her unease, Bantam handed her a check. «You needn’t worry: I’m keeping my promise. Not only will your college be paid for, but you will be taken care of financially for the rest of your life. You can share what I’ve just given you with whomever you like, of course.» Bantam head-nodded to her boyfriend. «There are no conditions, no strings, save one: that you listen to the story I have to tell you.»
Sabine gasped when she read the amount on the check. «Is this … real? Will this …?»
Bantam chuckled. «I’ve done very well in the stock market over the years, Miss Portis. I’m a very wealthy man. I bet on Apple when they were nearly out of business in the 90’s. I was one of the first angel investors in several well-known Internet companies. I’m a limited partner in several of Silicon Valley’s most respected venture firms — Sequoia, Kleiner-Perkins, Accel — you name it. Of course … that was all before the BlackPox came and blew the market to hell.
«But the check you hold in your hand is good. And it’s all yours.»
Sabine was shaking. «And all I have to do is … listen to you?» Bantam nodded. «Why?»
Bantam nodded again with a small smile. «Because I assure you, you won’t think I’m telling the truth. At least, not at first. You’ll think you’ve wasted your time. But you’ll stay, because of the money, because of that check you hold in your hand. And by the end, it will all make sense, and you’ll realize absolutely everything I’ve told you is true»
She nodded slowly, glancing up at her boyfriend nervously. «Okay. I’m listening.»
«Great!» Bantam nodded. «Well, let me get the recorder going first …» Bantam pulled out an iPhone and opened an app. «Going to tell this once, and once only … want to make sure I get it all down …»
Sabine smiled a bit at that. «I didn’t know someone your age even knew how to use an iPhone.»
Bantam looked her straight in the eye and said, «Oh, I grew up with this. Do you know what it was like, waiting all this time for iPhones to be invented again? Going back to paper maps? No GPS, no nothing? Egads, it was insanity. And I actually had to use rotary dial phones again. With no call-waiting! I’d forgotten what a busy signal even sounded like.»
Sabine blinked.
«See? There we go. This is what you’re getting paid for,” Bantam said. «To sit there and think I’m babbling. At least at first. What would you say if I told you that you and I were the exact same age?»
«Um …»
«We were born in the same year, anyway. Right now, I’m twenty-four. In real time. Do you know that I’ve never been past the day that is today? And I’ve been waiting for it all my life. Isn’t that interesting? This whole time, I’ve known exactly what was going to happen in the world, every single day. I’d wake up and say, Oh! Today’s the day Kennedy is shot. Or today’s the day of the Challenger explosion. Or the dotcom meltdown.
«But tomorrow — I have absolutely no idea what happens tomorrow! For the first time ever! I’m terrified by that — and I love it — and I’m terrified! I’m not used to surprises these days. Tomorrow is an absolute mystery. But at least I’ll actually move forward in time for the first time in —”