AM: So?
CR: So there’s a poem that tells about it being slain by the wielder of the vorpal blade. That might mean “void-carpal,” no one knows. In later science fiction and fan-fics, people speculate that the vorpal blade is an incredibly thin blade that can cut easily through anything. Just touching it, unless your fingers were perfectly perpendicular to its blade, would be dangerous.
AM: All right. A very thin sword, a razor. So why did you call the anomaly the… the snicker-dee?
CR: Snicker-snack. That’s the sound the vorpal blade makes when it kills someone. Why? Because “girl-slicing gore-hole cut in the sky, lensed along the fourth and/or matrixed fifth axis of the extra-dimensional space-time continuum,” doesn’t have quite the same conversational ring to it.
AM: Okay. Snicker-snack.
CR: You saw what it did to her knees. Her arm.
AM: Of course I saw. I’ve watched it many times now.
CR: Do you still believe it was special effects?
(Another whispered discussion.)
AM: Let’s talk about your period-specific, scientific interpretation of the anomaly. Not what you think or suspect now, but what you thought and what motivated your decisions back then. During the months you were monitoring it from the underground station.
CR: Well, now. The rim, see? Like a razor blade, but so much thinner. Perfect.
AM: I understand the vorpal analogy now. But let’s talk chemistry, instrumentation, measurements, observations.
CR: Did you know that the hole rim is precisely one molecule thick?
AM: I did not.
CR: I think you might have read that, Anna. I think I know where as well.
AM: (Deflecting.) One molecule of what?
CR: A very intelligent question. And a trick question as well. The hole is actually elliptical due to gravitational lensing. But the entire rim is in a strict and specific molecular sequence all along the “circle.” Two-eight ten-eight, eighteen-eight thirty-six eight, fifty-four eight eighty-six eight. You see?
AM: Please explain that to me, Alan.
CR: Helium, oxygen, neon, oxygen, argon, oxygen, krypton, oxygen, xenon, oxygen, radioactive radon, oxygen, then declining again all the way back to helium. Gases. Somehow all very solid, held together by an impossibly shaped… I would say sculpted… magnetic bottle.
AM: All of the known noble gases.
CR: In a sequence.
AM: Sequenced by atomic weight, yes.
CR: Yes. I strongly doubt you deduced that on your own, Agent Morgenstern. Begging your pardon.
(More whispered discussion.)
AM: We’re going to shift a little in the original direction of my line of questioning, if you don’t mind.
CR: Does it matter?
AM: Please consider what I am risking by being here.
CR:… Ask away.
(Sound of turning paper.)
AM: Captain Ramsey, what did your daily, or rather nightly, monitoring duties entail?
CR: We worked in shifts of four. One of us watched the screens, one of us the instruments, and two more were behind the one-way reflective tapestry with automatic weapons pointed at our backs.
AM: I’m serious.
CR: So am I. What, didn’t they tell you? Didn’t you read about the four separate firearms incidents on site? One involving me?
AM: I didn’t know the exact circumstance of all personnel while at station, except for the lockdown protocol. But the incidents, yes, I’m aware. Culminating in your altercation with—
CR: I thought I wasn’t supposed to talk about her yet.
AM: You’re right. You seem to get the better of me. You’re a sheer distraction, it seems.
CR: On the fourth date, no less.
AM: Nice try. Now. This is deathly serious, Captain. What else did your monitoring duties entail, this time specifically?
CR: When not operating remote crawlers or attuning the noble gas detectors, I was the primary screener.
AM: The foremost watcher of the anomaly. Why?
CR: Maybe I was the least susceptible to the disturbing movements of the reflections.
AM: Reflections?
CR (TO SOMEONE): Can we talk about this? Just her and I? Recall my conditions to the Commander for this… (unintelligible).
(A gap. Resumption.)
AM: Check. Check. All right, Captain. Continue. Keep in mind much of this next part is new to me.
CR: New?
AM: Let’s just say my security clearance level has been raised.
CR: All right. From the top, then. Do you remember 05:14:57?
AM: I shouldn’t, but I remember it very well.
CR: Tell me.
AM: It’s the time index on the original recording, the exact second when Josie’s left and attached arm appeared to emerge from the… snicker-snack.
CR: That’s right. See now, this bit is important. The length of a sidereal day is exactly twenty-three hours, fifty-six minutes, four point zero-nine-one-six seconds. But hell, we always call it twenty-four hours among friends, which causes severe problems in scientific observation. But every “twenty-four” hours, for years, down to the precise atomic-clocked millionth of a millisecond, one reflection of Josie Presper crawled out of the hole, lost its arm, and crawled toward the cameras. Five-fourteen A.M., and change, but the exact time seemed to vary predictably as I will tell you. But there she was, come to die, every single night that I was there.
(Whispered conversation, this time involving Anna. Then:)
AM: What do you mean, “reflection”?
CR: A translucent, yet physically substantial and fully present, animated and three-dimensional image of Josie Presper in her nightdress. A doppelgänger. Breathing, screaming, kicking the grass, feeling agony, bleeding, vomiting, shadowed by crows, the works. Once, a crow seemed even to fly through her and be snagged inside her for several seconds.
AM: You’re joking.
CR: I’d be a pretty sick fuck if you think I could joke about that.
AM: What do you… I… define “reflection” for me again, Captain.
CR: A… a ghost. Translucent, but still with a lot of blood and screaming. You know, even when the crawler cameras were moved, turned on and off remotely? The reflection knew. Dying, it would charge the nearest active camera, the one that I was always watching her through.
AM: Elaborate.
CR: I’m reading your reaction to what I’m saying.
AM: I don’t care. You’re waiting to tell me the rest. Tell me now. I promise I won’t interrupt.
CR: All right. You see, the time index is crucially important because by the atomic clock, that precise moment meant that the Earth was in the same facing as when she first came through. Forget what you think you know about A.M./P.M. and the silly twenty-four hour day, daylight savings, all that 365 days a year crap from now on. Let me explain. Because of inaccurate time drift in our terrestrial perception, just like that, that twenty-four hour thing we get stuck on? Josie didn’t always appear at the same “minute” from a twenty-three-hour-plus perspective. But after one real year, we had one much more vivid image of her appear for one day. It even tried to scream something different we didn’t catch. See? The Earth’s position in its orbit around the sun, as it was when she first really crawled through that first day on camera. When the Earth was back exactly where it had been the first time, a different and much more substantial image of Josie Presper came through and died before me. But Christ, so many questions. What about orbital wobble? Stellar or galactic reference points? The seasons? Earthquakes? The very slight, almost infinitely small variances in Earth’s orbit each year caused by the gravitational effects of comets, asteroids, the rotation of the Milky Way, the sun? The anomaly never moves a millionth of an inch. Ever. But by the atomic clock, Josie’s always there at the same time.