I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Detained every week throughout 2021. Download links below.

25. Mike

“Mr. Eastman—”

“Shut up. Who’s this?”

Mike glanced at Myra and fought the ridiculous urge to apologize to her. She was, after all, part of the team that had—apparently—stalked them all for months, studied them, come to some terrible conclusions about them based on what seemed to him to be some seriously sketchy science, and then sat idly by while soldiers detained him and the others illegally.

“She’s … part of the—”

“One of them,” Eastman said flatly. Mike felt a kind of mental whiplash; Glen Eastman had been kind of an old duffer, a little paranoid—he remembered what Raslowski had said about his politics—but more or less harmless. This Glen Eastman was cold, harder, somehow. Mike thought about Raslowski, tapping away at his keyboard, apparently altering reality itself, and wondered how far the ripples might go. Raslowski found himself dead instead of wounded, and Mike wondered what else might have changed.

“All right,” Eastman said, using the AR-15 as a pointer. “In we go.”

For a moment he was disoriented; the scene inside the bar didn’t seem to have changed, except for Glen Eastman holding an assault rifle on them as he marched them inside. The soldiers all remained ziptied, sitting on the floor. The place was silent, still smelled like gunpowder, and still had a sizzling energy in the air of recent violence. The bodies still lay where they’d been left. A haze still clung to the ceiling.

But something was wrong, and after a moment Mike had it. “Where’s Haggen?”

Hammond glanced up and their eyes met. Hers was steady and clear. The remaining five members of her team stared down at the floor, and Mike thought they looked suspiciously cowed.

Eastman considered before answering, circling backwards carefully to keep the three of them in front of him. “He went after you. You didn’t see him?”

Mike thought furiously over the last hour. He recalled seeing something flashing in the rearview, he recalled a few distant-sounding noises. Haggen, he thought, following them. It fit; Haggen seemed like the sort who didn’t take orders easily, yet he’d accepted Mike’s instructions without a peep of protest. Mike felt dumb for having simply assumed Haggen would do as he’d been told.

“Where’s Dr. Raslowski?” Hammond said.

“Shut up, you,” Eastman growled. Hammond ignored him, looking in Candace and Mike’s direction.

“Ms. Azarov?” Hammond said.

Mike looked at Myra. The assistant looked stricken. “He’s dead, Colonel,” she said. “He didn’t follow safety protocols, and—”

“He tried to use the field,” Hammond finished for her, grimacing. She looked back at Mike and Candace. “Looks like we’re both responsible for some deaths here tonight.”

He grit his teeth, but there was no time for regrets. He thought about challenging her, arguing with her. Pointing out that nothing would have happened at all if they’d simply been left alone. What would he have done? Had a terrible dinner cooked by Jack McCoy in what was certainly an illegal and uninspected kitchen in the back. Had a few belts of expensive Scotch. Gone home with Candace? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe he would have found a motel a few miles away and slept it all off, headed for Oklahoma in the morning.

Maybe, as Dr. Raslowski insisted, he’d have started off on a path that led to the end of the world. He wouldn’t know, now; even if Raslowski had survived he probably would have to admit his models had been corrupted by recent events. They were all back in the unknown.

He took a deep breath and ignored Hammond for a moment. “Mr. Eastman—Glen—we need to go back there. Jim doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into.”

Eastman snorted. “Jim, huh? No one ever calls Jimmy Jim.”

“Mr. Eastman,” Candace said, taking a half step forward. Eastman brought the rifle up a little, and she froze, an expression of complete shock passing over her face. Mike held himself very still. He didn’t think the old teacher was a violent man, but he thought maybe he was an unreliable man who might do something stupid, like twitch a finger and kill them all by mistake.

“Mr. Eastman,” Candace said again, and Mike thought that was smart, still using his formal name like he was her teacher, reminding him, “Jimmy’s not going to be prepared for what’s over there. I know Jimmy—you know Jimmy. He’s a great guy, but he’s impulsive and he always thinks he knows more than he really does. What we just saw … Jimmy’s gonna do something stupid. We should go get him back so we can discuss what’s happening here.”

Eastman pursed his lips. “What’s happening here? Jesus, Candace, what’s happening here is dead simple: We’ve been assaulted. We’ve been detained illegally. Now you come strolling back here with one of … of the enemy and you want to discuss things? All we’re discussing is getting out of here, and then calling up some lawyers.”

Candace shot a look of silent appeal at Mike, but he didn’t have any better ideas. He suspected that any attempt to explain what they understood to have happened would sound crazy, and Eastman didn’t seem to be in the mood for crazy explanations. And did he even believe it all? Yes, he’d seen something … inexplicable. And there was still that lingering feeling of the world not being totally real, not being the way he remembered it. But he didn’t think he could explain it, or convince someone like Eastman of it. He wasn’t even certain he believed it either, even after seeing Raslowski vanish, and finding him dead in a parking lot a mile away. All he knew was that spending a few hours holed up somewhere was a small price to pay for avoiding a possible disaster.

“All right,” he said softly, putting up his hands. “All right, Mr. Eastman—Glen—you win. You—”

He watched for the moment of hesitancy, the slight relaxation, and then he surged. Use your enemy’s strengths against them, he heard one of his many teachers say. Use your enemy’s weapons against them.

He aimed his hand, palm out, at the rifle, knocking it up into Eastman’s face. The retired teacher squawked, and tried to twist away, but the gun hit his nose with a wet breaking sound. The rifle clattered to the floor as Eastman staggered backwards, blood dripping from his face. Mike dashed forward and picked up the rifle, training it on Eastman, who was leaning back against the bar with both hands clamped over his broken nose.

“Jebus!” Eastman howled.

Mike backed away slowly. “I’m sorry, Mr. Eastman—I really am. I know this all sounds crazy. I agree. But we saw a man vanish into thin air. And I think … I think he altered something, changed something that had already happened. So I think we have to ride this out. Dr. Raslowski said this was all designed to keep us in the bar over night, to change the course of the future. I think we have to at least do that, based on what I’ve seen.”

He turned and looked at Candace. After a moment she nodded, and he was relieved, and surprised at how quickly he’d come to rely on her and to trust her. Having her back him up gave him confidence. He looked at Colonel Hammond.

“Colonel, your mission was to sit on us and ensure we didn’t leave this bar, right?”

After a moment, Hammond straightened up and nodded. Mike admired how unruffled she looked. Despite being ziptied, despite having lost control of her command and lost members of her squad, she looked pin-neat and completely alert, her face impassive, her blue eyes clear and sharp. “Our mission scope was to contain you—specifically Cuddyer, Malloy, Eastman, and Haggen. Satellite assets were to be contained as well if inside upon arrival. At Ten-thirty tomorrow morning, containment would be lifted. You would all be debriefed and asked to sign NDAs, then released.” She shrugged. “That mission appears to be well and goodly fucked at this point.”

The soldiers around her murmured agreement.

“We don’t know that, do we, Myra?”

Myra blinked in surprise, then cleared her throat. “We don’t know, true. Dr. Raslowski’s model encompassed approximately eleven hours at this location, involving the four specifics. As far as I know, that model did not detail anything similar to the events that have occurred.” She shook herself as if waking up, and looked around. “In layman’s terms, what I mean is I think we’re in uncharted territory. If the four of you stayed in for the rest of the night, it might have the same effect. Or we might already be on an alternative timeline. Whether it’s a better timeline I can’t say without running a full model, which would take some time.”

Candace snorted. “So we might still be on course to destroy the world, or not.”

Myra nodded, altogether too cheerily, Mike thought. “Yes. Or we might have accelerated it. Maybe you four are going to bring on the apocalypse even sooner, because of what’s happened.”

“How long to run a new model?” Mike asked.

Myra thought, her face scrunching up, deep lines forming around her mouth and eyes. “Without doing redundant checks and error analysis? Six hours for a preliminary model. Maybe six more for a second run to confirm everything.” She looked around. “That wouldn’t be totally reliable. Emory spent months crunching his model. But the first few run-throughs were basically accurate in the outlines.” She nodded to herself. “Twelve hours.”

Mike looked at Hammond. “It’s close to midnight. If we get Haggen back here and sit on him for twelve hours, Myra can report back and let us know if the world’s still ending or not. If not, we all walk away. If it is … ” He trailed off, uncertain how to finish the thought.

“If it is, we’ll figure it out then,” Candace said.

Mike nodded. “Right. So, Colonel, what do you say? Can your mission parameters be adjusted? Want to come retrieve Jimmy Haggen and then we find a safe spot we won’t be bothered?”

Candace shook her head. “If this mission is right and truly fucked, why not call your bosses, Colonel? Call this project a failure?”

Hammond twisted herself awkwardly around to look at her remaining soldiers. Nothing was said, no one made any overt gesture or expression, but something passed between them. Hammond turned back. “Unfortunately, Ms. Cuddyer, only Dr. Raslowski had the authority to make parameter changes to the mission. Without him we don’t have a chain of command to appeal to. We were compartmentalized because having more moving parts complicated the models. In order to keep the math on a scale that could be processed in a reasonable amount of time, we had to ensure a small team with no possibility of outside influence. So it’s up to us. It’s up to me. We’ll help.”

“Wait a goddamn minute!” Glen Eastman shouted, his voice pinched-off, droplets of blood sparying as he took his hands away from his face and took a step forward. “You’re gonna trust the soldiers who detained us? Who killed Mr. Simms? Jack McCoy? Seriously?”

Mike nodded. “Think about it, Mr. Eastman. Based on what we—”

“Candace!” Eastman said, turning his swollen face to her. His eyes were blacking up, and his nose was a purple cauliflower in the middle of his face. “Candace, c’mon! This is your bar. They came into your bar without any legal authority and they killed Jack McCoy. You’re gonna stand with them? You’re gonna help them?”

Candace nodded. “Mr. Eastman … yes. I saw something that convinced me these people might have a point. And all we have to do is sit here for twelve more hours.”

Eastman shook his head. “Until their bullshit model comes back—surprise!—saying we all need bullets in our heads.”

Mike thought, maybe we do. He thought of Julia. He thought of everything, all of it. Sometimes, he thought he’d gone on this crazy trip just to outrun a bullet to the head that he’d been waiting for ever since.

“Come on, Mr. Eastman,” Candace said, holding a black plastic ziptie in her hands. “Time for a road trip.”

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I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Detained every week throughout 2021. Download links below.

24. Candace

She heard her father exclaiming, How about that! He used to do it as an impression of an old baseball announcer, and it was one of his stock responses to things that amazed him or confused him. If he didn’t understand what had just happened, he bought time by doing his impression.

Well, she thought, a strange feeling of mental paralysis seizing her, how about that?

She didn’t know what to do. She was literally frozen, and for a moment she didn’t think her muscles would obey her even if she tried to move. Every thought trailed off into static. A man had been sitting in a chair, and then he was gone, and she felt the world tilt around her, as if the very foundation of reality had crumbled, turned soft.

“No one move!”

Candace blinked and then then slowly turned to look at Myra. Move? She couldn’t even think. She looked at Mike, but he was just staring into space, the gun held limply by his side.

Myra threw herself into the chair and began working the mouse. “Jesus fucking Christ, Em, what the fuck did you do? There’s no way the array plotted out all possible outcomes in that time frame.”

On the big screen, the cursor moved through the code restlessly. Mike licked his lips and blinked.

“What did he do?”

Myra glanced up, then at the screen again. “You’re both experiencing something we jokingly refer to as Reality Lag. You’re in a precarious quantum state as you have direct experience with a state of reality that is no longer true. You remember something that never happened. It will pass. You’ll be a little loopy for a bit, but you’ll feel better. You might retain the memories.” She sucked in breath and blew a strand of red hair out of her face. “To answer your question, for reasons known only to himself, Dr. Raslowski apparently chose to change an aspect of his reality and it either had exactly the effect he desired, or it had completely not the effect he desired.”

“I thought,” Candace said, struggling with her thoughts, which kept skipping back to the sight of Raslowski vanishing. “I thought you said it only worked in this room? Where could he have gone?”

Myra nodded. “You can only affect things in the field, yes, but everything is connected. The reality in this room is part of the reality outside this room. That’s what the cloud is for—to trace all the possible consequences of a change. You change something in here, and it reverberates. It ripples. And if you’re not careful, those ripples can carry you off.”

Candace shook her head, trying to clear it. It was like a bell had been rung somewhere and it didn’t make any noise but she couldn’t stop listening for it, all of her thoughts fraying.

“The past,” Mike said. “You’re saying that when you change one of the equations, a variable in those equations, you can change the past.”

Myra nodded, eyes glued to the screen. “Time doesn’t flow. It doesn’t move. It’s a continuum. It’s a web of interconnected variables related via mathematical rules. Change a variable in this moment, like I said, it reverberates. It ripples back and forth, spreading out, resetting. If you’re not careful, you can do incredible damage. That’s why we have the array: To make certain a tweak doesn’t turn into disaster.” She glanced at him. “And that’s why we couldn’t just tweak y’all out of trouble. The ramifications were too huge, not even the array could calculate everything. We had no choice but physical, real-time intervention because if we altered a variable connected with you to ensure you went down a different path, we couldn’t be sure we weren’t going to blow the whole thing up.”

Candace shuddered, and felt something … click back on inside her. Like a final connection that brought a power grid back online. Her mind cleared. “When you say the whole thing you’re talking about … reality. The universe.”

Myra nodded, eyes back on the screen. “The whole damn enchilada. I kind of suspect that Emory—Dr. Raslowski—came pretty close to doing just that a moment ago—there it is.” She took her hands from the keyboard and leaned back. “He tried to alter things so he’d never been injured. Whatever happened to his shoulder, he tried to erase it.”

“And what happened?” Mike asked. Candace could tell he’d just experienced what she had—a sudden clarification in his thoughts.

“Well, we’re still here,” Myra said, raising her eyebrows. Candace thought she was entirely too cheerful for the situation they were in. Her day had gone from bad to … weird. People were still dead, and now she knew she’d been a rat in an experiment for months, being watched and observed. All because this ludicrous set of computers had told an old scientist and his entirely too hot assistant that she was one of four people who would somehow engineer the end of the world.

I could have saved y’all some time, she thought, and told you that waitressing at One-Eyed Jack’s is soul-crushing, but not that soul-crushing.

That made her think of Jack McCoy, and she felt tears welling up. Jack hadn’t hurt anyone, ever. He’d never made a pass at her, or gotten mad when the count at the end of the day was off and took an extra hour to figure out, or when she’d shown up hungover and grouchy. He’d been kind, and patient, and if he wasn’t the most evolved man in the world there’d been an essential goodness to him she’d loved, and now he was dead. And in a strange way, she was responsible for that.

“Can you … tweak it back?” Mike asked. “Reset it to where we were before?”

Myra shook her head. “First of all, we don’t know what the ripples are. Sure, we seem to be fine. But that’s the thing, that Reality Lag I mentioned—it fades, and after a while you’re not even aware anything’s changed. You slot into the new reality, and it just becomes reality, the way things have always been. So we’re still here, but we can’t be sure what might have been altered. It might be limited to Emory; he’s a genius and no one understands the math better than he does. But it might not. It might have changed everything and not in a good way. And if I tweak it back but not perfectly, I might make things infinitely worse.” She sighed. “In other words, the fact that we’re here having this conversation means we maybe dodged a bullet. Emory might be out there all healed up and fine, and we’re still breathing. I try to change things back and miss a crucial detail, poof! we’re all dead. Or the world ends. Or, I don’t know, the supeintelligent roaches rise up and take over.”

Candace blinked three times hurriedly. “What?”

Myra waved a hand. “Sorry, a private joke among reality distortionists.”

“Well,” Mike said. “Step one, I guess, is to locate the good doctor. If he’s okay, then maybe everything else is, right?”

Myra nodded. “It would be a good sign.”

“So where do we look?”

Candace sighed. “We start at the obvious spot: Where I shot him.”

Myra nodded. “That makes sense. I’ll—”

Mike shook his head. “You’ll have to come with us.”

Myra blinked and cocked her head, making her look, Candace thought, kind of bird-like. “What?”

Candace looked at Mike. “He’s right. You just showed us you can … well, change things, right? So we can’t just leave you here to tap on that keyboard and then, suddenly, we’re dead, or just disappear, or never existed or something.”

Myra frowned. “That’s not exactly how this—”

Mike nodded, bringing the gun up. “I’m sorry, but you’re coming with us.”

The drive back to the bar was silent. Candace felt strange behind the wheel, even stranger knowing Mike was in the back seat holding a gun, and, for some reason, strangest about having Myra in the passenger seat next to her. The woman was intimidating. She was tall and gorgeous and smart and wore the hell out of her cats-eye glasses, and oozed a confidence that Candace had never possessed.

Seriously, you’re jealous? She thought to herself. With everything that’s happened, you’re hate-crushing on Myra?

It was ridiculous … but there it was. She kept stealing glances at her in the darkness, wondering how you learned to just sit so still, to move so easily.

At the entrance to One Eyed Jack’s, she slowed the beaten-up rental and let the headlights play over the parking lot.

“It was close to the tree line,” she said. “He was … the memory’s a little fuzzy—”

“It’s fading,” Myra said. “If you concentrate you can hang onto it, but it will seem like a dream you had once.”

Candace nodded. “By the tree line. He was just taking a straight line from the bar, making a run for it.”

“All right,” Mike said. “Candace, get out and walk around to the passenger side and open Myra’s door. Then we’ll both get out and follow you to the spot. Myra, there’s a small flashlight in the glove compartment.”

“Very glad to have met you,” Myra said, leaning forward and opening the compartment. “You’re just as sociopathic as I imagined.”

Candace took the flashlight and led them into the darkness. Myra followed, her arms wrapped around herself, and Mike trailed behind. He resisted the urge to glance at the bar, although he felt exposed walking right in front of it. He wasn’t sure if anyone peering out would be able to see them, but he hoped they could get through this investigation without being noticed.

They found Raslowski in the gravel.

“Jesus,” Myra said as they stood there, the flashlight trained on him.

He’d been shot in the back, and the bolt had hit him with such force that he’d been knocked forward, leaving a trail in the stones that had cut up his face and arms. He was face-down and had been dead for a while.

“Did I—” Candace said, her voice cracking. “I mean … I did. I can remember it. I didn’t mean to, I meant to warn him or maybe just graze him. But he turned suddenly, and I shot him through the … oh, fuck.”

“You didn’t do this,” Myra said as Mike put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. Without thinking, she reached up and put her own hand over his. “Well, I mean, you did, but Emory survived, originally. When he tried to undo the injury—I guess so he’d have his strength back, be able to go against you—he moved too fast. Didn’t check all the possibilities, didn’t let the array do its job. One of his variables went wrong, and this is what he got.” She looked at Candace. “What you did was injure him. And then he changed it. Eventually you’ll only remember it the one way, but remind yourself, if you can.”

Candace nodded. She was touched. This woman she almost instinctively didn’t like, who was an enemy as far as she was concerned, had just gone out of her way to make her feel better. It made her strangely hopeful for the next few hours.

“Myra,” Mike said quietly. “If I believe what’s been said tonight, you all have been thinking of us as terrible people for a long time. I don’t understand anything. I used to think I did, but nothing that’s happened tonight makes any goddamn sense to me. But I saw a man tap on a keyboard and change reality. So I guess we take this shit seriously from now on.”

Candace thought he sounded sad. Defeated.

“So, I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to stick with us, Myra. We can’t let you go unsupervised until we have a better grasp on things. You said the original plan was for us to stay put, right?”

Myra nodded, her eyes locked on Raslowski.

“Did that mean in the bar? Or do we just need to not interact with any … outside forces?”

Myra took a moment, and when she answered she sounded distracted, dreamy, and kept her eyes on Raslowski. Candace wondered how long they’d worked together. “The model stipulated in the bar, but I don’t know for certain what the variables read. There may have been a presumption that the easiest thing to do was keep you in the bar, even though the real requirement was non-interaction.”

Mike nodded. “We’ll have to chance it,” he said, turning to look at Candace. “If we stay here, they might come check on us. Send more soldiers. We don’t know what kind of failsafes or procedures they have in place. Based on this,” he turned and gestured at Raslowski, “I’m willing to believe … well, that something is happening. Or will happen. Something I don’t think I understand. So my vote is this: We do as Raslowski wanted, we stay out of sight for the next twelve hours or so. But not here. Do you know of any place nearby we could set up camp—someplace they might not know about? Someplace off-grid?”

Candace thought, feeling his hand on her shoulder. She found herself agreeing with him. The evening had been one head spin after another, and the safest thing to do was probably to find someplace to lay low, wait out the storm.

“Okay,” she said quietly. “Yes. There’s a cabin. We all call it The Sprawl—it’s a long story, the place has history. Not sure who owns it, if anyone does. In country, totally cut off. I go there sometimes to be alone. It’s always been a place for local kids to go and party, but it should work this time of year. We’ll have to drive.”

She was impressed at how steady her voice was.

“My car’s low on gas,” Mike said, and gently pulled his hand free. She liked him. There was no pretending otherwise: No matter how crazy things had been, she was oddly glad that everything had gone off the rails when Mike Malloy had shown up, instead of the week before, or the next day after he’d gone.

“We can take my Trailblazer,” she said, thinking she sounded surprisingly calm. “The doors don’t lock and there’s always a key in the glovebox.” He looked at her and she smiled. “What?” she said. “Look where I live. No one’s gonna steal a twelve-year old Trailblazer.”

There was a smoky smell in the air. She watched him nod and hold out one hand towards her, and she considered how calm she felt. Her life had just blown up. She’d experienced more violence in the last few hours than in her entire prior life, and she suspected more was to come. But she felt fine.

She took his hand and for a moment they just stood there, basking, she thought, in a split second of being at peace.

“Come on, Myra,” Mike finally said, turning away and gesturing with the gun. “Let’s go get everyone else. I’m sorry but we’re going to tie you up for a while. No offense.”

Myra snorted. “Oh, none taken. Like I said: Sociopaths.”

They walked towards the bar, gravel crunching under their feet. The night was suddenly quiet and still, just the soft glow of lights in the bar, and the smell of fire in the air, and doom and the end of all things around them like a heavy gas.

“Hold it.”

They froze. Candace turned and squinted at the dark form standing a few feet from them. He was a large, round-shouldered man, holding what was unmistakably an assault rifle.

“Glen?” she said, staring.

“Shut up,” Glen Eastman growled. “Hands up. No one’s going anywhere.”

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I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Detained every week throughout 2021. Download links below

23. Mike

He looked at Myra and smiled, trying to look friendly. “Not literally.”

She smiled back, and he was aware, dimly, of being uncomfortable with Candace watching him interact with the other woman. He tabled that disturbing realization for later unpacking, when perhaps he wasn’t being accused of someday destroying the world as he knew it.

“Actually,” Myra said, pointing to a black box about the size of a three car batteries tucked under the desk, “we do have the capability of limited direct variable substitution within a controlled field, generated by—”

“Myra,” Raslowski wheezed. “These people are not cleared.”

Myra closed her mouth with a click and looked flustered. Mike looked at the older man, whose fingers were flowing over the keyboard. He glanced at the large screen on the wall and saw what looked like computer code scrolling down. “So let me get this straight: You can decide we’re going to do something terrible in the future, you can violate almost all of our civil rights and kill one of our friends—” he rolled past the exaggeration of calling Jack McCoy a friend of his “—but we can’t hear about the process that initiated this chain of events?”

Myra smiled again, a fleeting, nervous tic of an expression. She looked at Raslowski, who said nothing. Mike sighed and lifted the Beretta. “Okay, then, point of order, but I have a firearm, and if you don’t explain this as best you can in the next ten seconds, I’m going to go back out to the servers and start shooting.”

Raslowski’s hands paused. “Mr. Malloy, I know you don’t yet believe this, but I know you are capable of terrible things, so I take this threat very seriously. Very well. Myra, give them the layperson’s version while I work. I have agreed to analyze the revised scenario before we make any further decisions.”

Myra nodded and smiled, wringing her hands nervously. “Well, uh … in a nutshell, in this room we can … change things. But that’s it.”

Mike looked at Candace and held her gaze for a moment, wordlessly trying to convey are you buying this?

“Your boss said model,” Candace said. “I didn’t make it to college, but model is kind of a passive word to me.”

Myra nodded, warming to the role of tour guide. “Yes, it is! And generally speaking the data sets are too large to map all the possible variables and their interactions. For example, you Four Horse—well, that’s just an unofficial … anyway, you four at the bar. The model clearly showed your path—from this evening forward you would be on a course that ends with catastrophe, worldwide, global catastrophe. No matter what other variables we changed, it happened, and it involved you four—unless we changed your movements tonight. If we kept you in the bar, it all mapped differently.

“But, we couldn’t change that directly. Let me back up: Dr. Raslowski has been working with this for decades, and he’s developed a way of … harnessing the equations that run the universe. The source code of reality. He can even plug in a new value for a variable, or two, or three. And when you change the value of a variable in reality, there’s a ripple effect. The systems here can analyze a limited data set and predict what a change to the variables will do—but only when you’re in this room, because the Raslowski Box generates an energy field that limits the variables. There are only so many possible futures in here, and so the systems can crunch the numbers in a reasonable amount of time. But outside, reality’s too big. There are too many variables and they interact in a far too complex way to track. So, we had to come to your location and physically, well, stop you from leaving. But in here we can tweak.”

Mike frowned. “How is that possible? Even on a limited scale? Even if I accept that you can model reality itself—which I don’t, especially considering the insane prediction your system gave you—”

“Seriously,” Candace said, watching the code on the screen. It resembled every piece of code Jimmy had ever shown her, excitedly trying to interest her in whatever hack he was working on. “You’re like people who drive into lakes because their GPS told them to. This system says Candace Cuddyer, She is Become Death and you scurry over to murder my boss.”

“—all well and good, but actually altering reality? I know you won’t like this, but that’s not possible,” Mike finished.

Myra shook her head. Her eyes were shining, and her cheeks were flushed, and Mike realized she was enjoying herself. Warming to the argument. He supposed she didn’t have a whole lot of people to talk to, with a choice between a bunch of grunts and Dr. Raslowski, who appeared to have the personality of one of those college deans from an old 80’s teen comedy.

“It’s all about scale. The universe—reality—is just particles. In this room, in this limited space, we’ve mapped every particle. Every atom, molecule, element, photon, and everything else. And when we entered, we were scanned and uploaded to the model’s matrix. If you keep the data set relatively small, you can map it.”

“Every particle?” Mike said, racing through his limited physics knowledge.

Myra nodded, pleased. “In a small area, it’s possible. And once we know every particle in an area, we can trace connections, we can extrapolate consequences—and we can change values.”

“Because everything’s math,” Candace said, still watching the code.

“Because everything’s math,” Myra said. “It might imply we’re living in a simulation, a hologram, a matrix. Or it might imply that god is a mathematician. Whatever it means, we’re on the cusp of total control over our environment, our universe.”

She was, Mike, thought, clearly a true believer.

“Mike,” Candace said, pointing at the screen. “I could swear I just saw our names.”

“Names aren’t necessary,” Myra said, still in eager beaver helper mode. “We often used your names as variables in the high-level code, but those are just for operator convenience. You not an individual identity, you’re just a variable—and a variable made up of a nearly-infinite number of particles that conspire together to be your reality, and cooperate with each other to form everyone’s reality.”

Mike studied the screen for a moment, watching the code scroll by. He caught a flash of his own name, Malloy. “I see it,” he said.

“It’s just because you’re in the room,” Myra said. “Those tags are in the system, so you’ve been automatically marked. Again, it’s for operator convenience. No one can keep track of billions of particles, so the system applies easy labels. This,” she gestured at the black box again, “is what makes it possible. It only has a range of a few dozen square feet, but within that cone it can aggregate every particle and trace the values and equation relationships of those particles, and thus within that area, we can alter variables in reality.” She gestured at the door. “We can then use the cloud out there to compute the potential ramifications of those changes. See if something bad or unexpected will happen if we, say, change something that seems innocuous. Early tests, we did things like change the color of a plastic cube. Usually nothing happened. Occasionally there was an … unexpected result.”

“Like a bug in a computer program,” Cadace said slowly.

Myra frowned, then shrugged her eyebrows. “Maybe a little like that.”

Mike leaned down a bit. “There’s a handle on that thing,” he said, noting the sturdy-looking piece of black metal on hinges. “It’s mobile?”

“Everything has to be transported somewhere, Mr. Malloy. When our initial trace-throughs on the Raslowski Equations pointed to you and the others, there was skepticism, of course. Repeated analyses came to the same conclusions forty-seven times. So we decided the best thing to do was move the whole operation here, to be nearer to the Four Ho—you four.”

Mike nodded, straightening up. “But it can be moved.”

Myra nodded. “Of course. And powered on and operated. It would take some time to analyze the new area and generate the Raslowski Field—”

Mike smirked a little. Dr. Raslowski had a fondness for naming things after himself, he thought. But then, if I discovered a way of altering reality itself, he said to himself, I might feel like naming everything after myself too.

“—but it would then be operational, yes.” She smiled. “It’s got a self-contained power source—powerful enough to light up a small city, actually. And it’s designed to be shock-proof and as near to indestructible as we could manage—it’s based on the design of the Black Boxes they put in planes. We could drop it out of one, in fact, and it would bounce when it hit the ground but most probably remain functional.” She smiled. “When you’re messing with reality, it’s a good idea to ensure uninterrupted function. Of course, severed from the cloud array in there, it wouldn’t have the data sets to solve for the ripple effects. That generally takes a long time—for our colored cube experiment, it took the array six days to crunch the numbers just to ensure against Butterfly Effects.”

Candace looked over her shoulder and smiled at Mike. “Sure,” she said. “And even then you had a few unexpected results, you said.”

He grinned, and for a moment he was conscious of a real connection, something he hadn’t felt … since Julia. The thought of her sobered him, but the connection was still there. And now that they appeared to have triumphed over their captors, he was starting to think maybe there was a future there—once they got done with the cleanup. With the prosecutions, the investigations, the lawsuits. He looked at the black box. “Jesus Christ, what do you call it?”

“And if you say The Raslowski Box, I’m going to scream,” Candace added, and he laughed.

To his surprise, Myra laughed too. “Oh no, it has a very technical name, of course, but most of us around here just call it The Transmorgrifier.”

Mike let that hang for a moment. He’d been informed, in short order, that he was one-fourth of the end of the world because of a chain of events stretching twenty-seven years into the future, that the universe was just math that could be changed and molded, and that a humming black box gave Dr. Emory Raslowski the limited ability to alter reality, if only inside a small field it generated. His head ached.

“All right,” he said, turning to look at Raslowski. “You basically collate so much data you can literally model reality. And in a small area you can manipulate that model directly and change things.” He lowered the gun. If there was a secret horde of soldiers in the facility, or if Myra was a Manchurian Candidate-style sleeper agent about to unleash kung fu on them, it would have happened. “It’s a little difficult to believe, actually, Dr. Raslowski. Any chance we could have a demonstration?”

Raslowski ignored him for a moment, his hands swirling over the keyboard. Just before the silence became awkward, he paused and looked at Mike, one hand hovering over the ENTER button.

“Of course,” Raslowski said, and brought his hand down. A moment later, he disappeared.

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21. Mike

There was a moment of silence. Mike looked at Candace. The moment their eyes met, she dissolved into laughter. For a moment, Mike was horrified, and then he couldn’t help but smile.

“So let me get this straight,” she said, struggling for self-control. “Me, Candace Cuddyer, thirty-one year old high school grad waitress, Glen Eastman, retired, kind of pedantic schoolteacher, Jimmy Haggen, layabout, conspiracy theorist, and drunk, and Mike—”

For a moment, she had to fish for his last name.

“—Malloy, millionaire wanderer seeking wisdom—”

Mike winced internally, but decided it did sound ridiculous when you vocalized it.

“—are gonna destroy the world? I’m sorry, Dr. Raslowski, but if you’ve caused all these people to be killed because your computers told you that, you’ve fucked up massively.”

Dr. Raslowski didn’t seem fazed in the least. “I assure you, the modeling was checked and double-checked and then triple-checked. The math is sound, and the math doesn’t lie. We’ve confirmed our ability to predict outcomes and behaviors on smaller-scale subjects. It’s true the data set involved here is more profound, but the math scales.” He glanced down at his arm and moved it slightly, testing the discomfort. “Keep in mind, this is not something that happens overnight. The algorithms go years, decades into the future.” He looked back directly at Candace. “I assure you, Ms. Cuddyer, if left to your own devices, over the course of the next twenty-seven years you, Mr. Eastman, Mr. Haggen, and Mr. Malloy would, through a series of events, come to be responsible for the worst disaster the world has ever seen. Billions will die. Civilization itself is snuffed out.”

Mike and Candace exchanged a look again. Again, she burst into laughter.

Mike looked back at the scientist, who now seemed, if not friendly, at least approachable. “You know … that’s just nuts, Doc. I’m sorry, but … first of all, I just met these folks, and if you hadn’t come crashing in here, I’d have left by tomorrow—”

Raslowski looked pointedly at Candace. “No, Mr. Cuddyer, you wouldn’t have.”

Mike felt himself flush. He felt like an idiot, like a schoolboy. The fact that Candace began laughing even louder didn’t help at all.

“I would have,” he insisted, trying to reassert himself. “And no offense to anyone, but the idea that any of us would be capable of something of that nature—at that scale—is ludicrous.”

Raslowski shrugged, then winced. “Is it? You’re a wealthy man, Mr. Malloy. You have resources and connections. Mr. Haggen is a survivalist; he has a remote property that is off-grid and booby-trapped extensively, he has an arsenal of weapons and a larder filled with rations. Mr. Eastman, you might be interested to learn, is actually very heavily involved in radical politics—secessionists, actually, groups that believe states, cities, even individuals can legally declare themselves autonomous political entities—the FBI has a file on his online activities a mile long. And Ms. Cuddyer—well, I’ll admit Ms. Cuddyer’s role is less clear. Perhaps she’s merely the catalyst that brings you and the others together—”

“Oh, fuck you,” Candace groaned.

“—but the math is correct. If we allowed you to go about your business tonight, the model showed disaster. In twenty-seven years. So I started changing variables—in the models only, of course; using our technology to actually change the variables directly, as I’ve said, would be most likely disaster. I sought something we could change, something we could effect, that would remove the disaster without changing other fundamentals—and without requiring direct intervention, something that could be effected more … naturally. It took some time—and four backup generators—but I found that variable, and it was, I admit mysterious: Keep you here. Detain you for one night. When I ran the model with us securing this place and keep you—all four of you—from leaving, well, the future got much better.”

Mike shook his head. “There’s a glitch. You math is wrong.”

Raslowski opened his mouth, but Candace cut him off. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We broke your experiment, didn’t we, Doc? Don’t tell me your ?model’ took into account all these deaths, our mutiny, your own injury and imprisonment.”

Raslowski didn’t respond right away. Mike felt an overwhelming weariness, and suddenly found himself struggling to stay upright. He replayed Candace saying oh, fuck you to Raslowski and suppressed a smile.

“It’s impossible to say,” the scientist admitted, “without running the models again. Every action has a reaction—the Butterfly Effect, as you called it. So, yes; perhaps Mr. McCoy’s death and the other events here have changed the model. Perhaps. Or perhaps those altered variables have had other effects—speeding up the time frame, perhaps, perhaps we’ll see disaster in five years instead of twenty-seven, or thirty-seven years. Or perhaps the precise nature of the end is changed. It’s impossible to say without an analysis.”

Candace was shaking her head, but Mike chewed his lip. He was thinking about Julia, for some reason. He was thinking about the chain of events that led to her death, to him waking up stiff and hungover, and her on the floor, frozen in mid-crawl. There were gaps in his memory, but he knew the chain was long and complicated: Several places, dozens of people, random strangers. Taxi cabs and bars and restaurants and bathroom stalls and someone’s apartment. He thought about all those tiny variables, and how if he’d been able to see it all laid out before him—if he’d been able to model the events—he might have seen that precise moment when it all went sideways, when one more hit was one too many, when deciding that four a.m. was late enough would have saved her life. And his.

“Analysis,” he said slowly. “An analysis you could do back at your facility?”

In the corner of his eye, he saw Candace look up sharply. He ignored her.

Raslowski looked from him to Candace and back again. Calculating, Mike thought. That was okay; he had to assume that the good doctor would make a break for it, or try something to regain control over the situation. He would do the same in his place. “Yes,” Rasolowski said, looking back at him. “At the facility I have access to the mainframe cloud and … other equipment. I could do a through model run and determine the new outcomes.”

“The new future,” Mike said.

“Yes.”

“Mike,” Candace said curtly. “A moment?”

He nodded and they stepped over to the doorway, turning away from Raslowski.

“You’re not taking this bullshit seriously?” Candace whispered. “Changing reality? All of us just variables in an equation? The four of us—us!—somehow bringing about the end of the world? I mean, c’mon, Mike.”

He nodded. “I know how it all sounds. But, Candace, these people went to a lot of trouble to lock this place down and hold us hostage. There has to be a reason. Say you’re right—he’s bullshitting us, making up a wild story. Okay, why not check it out? We find out it’s bullshit, we might be able to start digging up what’s really going on.” He rubbed his eyes. “Besides, look who’s out there—these are the authorities. If we call the cops, what happens? More authorities show up. I wonder how that will go?”

She chewed her lip. He let her think. He didn’t suppose you could push Candace Cuddyer into much, and suspected any attempt to do so would result in her planting her long legs and getting stubborn as a mule about it—it was just his sense of her.

A sound drew his attention to the dark hallway outside of McCoy’s office. A soft, split-second squeak or scrape. He froze, straining to listen, but it didn’t repeat. He decided he’d imagined it.

“Okay,” Candace said. “Fine. You’re right: We need information. If the good doctor wants to take us to that facility, we should go and at least get some more information.”

He nodded. He liked how she thought: Calm, no panic, and logical. “Come on, Dr. Raslowski,” he said, taking the older man by the arm. “Let’s go to your lab.”

“What do we tell Jimmy and Mr. Eastman?” Candace asked as they walked the scientist down the hall.

Mike liked how she still called her old schoolteacher Mr. Eastman. It said something about her, though he wasn’t sure what, but he liked it nonetheless. “A version,” he said. “I don’t think we should start talking about changing reality and modeling the universe until we know for certain what we’re talking about. Let’s just tell them we’re going to get more information.”

“Jimmy’s gonna want to come,” she said, sounding resigned.

Mike nodded. “We’ll figure it out.”

In the main part of the bar, Mike recognized the stink of tension. Haggen was seated at a table with a bottle of whiskey in front of him, one hand resting on a Beretta as he took a pull. Eastman was seated at the bar, looking, Mike thought, old and tired, his face flushed, his mouth open.

“Keep an eye on our stormtroopers,” Mike said, affecting a casualness he didn’t feel. “Dr. Raslowski has offered to give us the full story back at his facility, and we’re taking him up on it.”

“Dr. Raslowski, you are absolutely prohibited from disclosing any data or information about the project!” Colonel Hammond snapped, surging up from the floor unsteadily, her hands bound behind her back. “Furthermore, you are—”

Haggen surged forward, snatching up the gun and hitting Hammond across the face with it, sending the officer spinning around and crashing to the floor with a strangled cry.

“Furthermore,” Haggen said, sounding drunk, “you can shut the hell up.” He turned and looked back at them, offering a smile that Mike was surprised to describe as shy. “Go. We’ll keep an eye on things here. You go and find out what’s going on.”

Mike studied him. He was surprised that Haggen was taking things so well. Candace had expected fireworks and difficulty, and Mike’s limited experience with the man confirmed that expectation. It felt wrong, but there wasn’t time to sit and contemplate and interrogate Haggen about his motivations. He glanced at Candace, and when she shrugged her eyebrows in a way he suspected was meant to be translated as that’s Jimmy being Jimmy he nodded.

“Come on,” he said, taking Raslowski by the elbow. “We’ll take my Land Rover.”

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20. Candace

“Dr. Raslowski,” Mike said slowly, rummaging in McCoy’s desk for the first aid kit. “Back up and explain this to us like we’re five years old. Let’s start there.”

Raslowski took a deep, shuddering breath and burst into coughs. “All right. Let’s start here: The universe is math.”

“Math,” Candace repeated. It made her think of math class at the high school, which had been her least favorite subject. Numbers always slipped away from her thoughts, and never behaved the way teachers or tutors or her brainy friends insisted they did. And then people got irritated and angry with her when she complained that it was all lies, all this math, that it was an ancient conspiracy going back centuries, going back to the Greeks and the Romans, pretending that numbers made sense.

“Math,” Raslowski said, wincing as Mike probed the bolt, a roll of clinging bandage in his hand. “Everything in the universe—you, me, the air, the planets, plasma, photons—is governed by mathematical relationships. You ever hear the theory that we’re all living in a Matrix?”

Candace blinked slowly. She felt like she’d somehow flashed back to all of the awful dates she’d ever been on, all the guys obsessed with geeky TV shows and video games. Maybe, she thought, she’d hit her head earlier in the day and everything since had been what one of those geeky old dates had called an Owl Creek Bridge Event, just her fevered brain spinning a fantasy while she lay in a ditch somewhere.

Raslowski turned to look at Mike. “The movie? Where the world’s a computer simulation?”

Mike nodded. “Sure. There is no spoon.”

Raslowski nodded, satisfied. “That’s my field. It’s a gross, gross simplification—ah, fuck, be careful!—but that’s where I live. Figuring out the equations that govern the universe. Think of it like this, you know what a variable is, right?”

Candace had a flash of memory and almost jumped in excitement. “Like X=15, so 2X=30,” she said.

Raslowski nodded. “That’s an equation. If you know the equation and the solution, you know what the variable is. You change the variable, you change the solution.”

Mike began wrapping his shoulder and the bolt up in bandages, and the doctor’s voice took on a rough, strained quality as he worked.

“In the universe, the equations I’m talking about—well, think of it this way: Us, all of us, we’re all the product of a billion, a trillion equations. How tall we are, the color of our eyes, our talents and our genetic infirmities, all products of math. And I was working on figuring out those equations and the variables. Imagine if I could “decode” you,” he said, jerking his chin at Candace. “I would be able to see every aspect of your existence. I’d see your past and your future, because it’s all math, it’s all governed by the variables and their values. Even better, I could adjust those variables. Change the value of X to 16 instead of 15, and suddenly you have blonde hair.”

Candace blinked. Raslowski grimaced and his face reddened.

“As I said: A gross simplification. I’m making this easy to understand.”

Mike looked up from his work on the wound, and winked. She found the wink remarkable. It reminded her of her father, who hadn’t met an occasion of any degree of solemnity that couldn’t be lightened with a well-timed fart joke. “He means he’s dumbing it down for us,” Mike said.

Raslowski closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Just think of it like that: Once you know the equations, you can hack the universe. Hack anything, reality itself. Of course, the equations are incredibly complex. We won’t be folding time or pumping gold bricks out of a machine any time soon. We have only a limited understanding of the implications—we can change variables, but only in very limited scenarios, and we’re basically terrified to do it because we don’t have the computing power to truly map out the consequences.”

“No cure for cancer,” Candace said. Raslowski’s eyes popped open and he actually smiled at her, a perfectly natural-seeming grin that transformed him from Evil Genius to Friendly Grandpa.

“That’s right!” he said. “We aren’t there. Not even close. But—ouch, for fuck’s sake, man!—stay with me here, we are at a point where we can sometimes see the variables. Their value, if you follow.”

Mike paused, seeming to freeze. Candace felt the weight of the gun in her hand and put her Bedazzled Smile on her face. She thought Mr. Eastman would recognize it, as would Mr. Howard, her old Algebra teacher. The Bedazzled Smile was a soft, diffuse grin that conveyed a sort of trashy feminine stupidity that worked with men. Boys, too, but mainly men. It was a smile that said, oh, my little girl brain can’t handle all this mayun-ly talk! and then burst into bubblegum-flavored giggles.

The Bedazzled Smile had never been something she was proud of, but it was a tool that had gotten her out of a lot of assignments and pop quizzes. And now, as she used it on Raslowski, she regretted all those previous uses. They’d left her with a sorely lacking mathematical background, and she kind of wished she could have saved up the power of those previous moments and focused them all right here, in order o force Dr. Raslowski to just make some damn sense.

“I don’t,” she said. “Follow, that is.”

“He’s saying they can see the future,” Mike said. “Isn’t that right, Doc?”

“Give the man a prize,” Raslowski said. “We can’t read all the equations, or re-write them. We’re decades, maybe a century or two away from even being able to make the slightest changes to reality. But we stumbled on a cheat, a hack. A way to see what the values of variables in those equations will be. So, we can take a variable—say, the position of a water molecule—”

Candace’s smile collapsed. “A water molecule?”

“As I said, this is complex—think of all the molecules in the universe, each one with an equation solved for it, each one representing a variable in another equation. No, forget that. Just remember this: I have been able to create a computer modeling environment that can take the position of a water molecule in one moment and accurately predict it’s location and state in another moment. Past, future. We can model the position of that molecule from the moment an Oxygen atom and two friendly Hydrogen atoms bonded to the moment that bond ends. We can skip along that timeline like watching a video on your laptop.”

Laptop, she thought. Little did the good doctor know he’d stepped back into 1985 by entering this bar, this town.

“And once we have identified a variable, or a matrix of variables, we can even change their values and see how it affects the timeline. Except we don’t actually do that, because it would be nearly impossible to predict all possible permutations. A single tweak to a single variable could bring reality crashing down, changes reverberating backwards and forwards along a timeline, and rippling outward in a domino effect.”

Candace nodded. “Right. The Butterfly Effect.”

Both men turned to glance at her. Mike was smiling. Raslowski scowling.

“Yes,” he said flatly. “Something like that.”

Candace thought he somehow made the word something mean nothing.

Mike was tying off his bandage work. It looked pretty thorough to Candace, and she knew there would be another aw-shucks smile and a story about shadowing a doctor for three months if she asked about it. “So you can model people—you can track what someone’s going to do.”

Raslowski nodded through a wince. “We can. With enough data.”

Candace forgot to act dumb. “How could you possibly get enough data for something like that? People aren’t a single molecule. They’re—” She paused. “Well, trillions of molecules.”

Raslowski smiled. “More than that, actually, but the modeling was very clever. I was able to scale up to individuals through a compression algorithm. But we still needed data to work with. I had the math, I needed the variables.” He sighed. “You’ve heard about all the scandals surrounding government surveillance, yes?”

There was a moment of silence. “No,” Mike said, working on the sling. “No way. Look, even if the Feds and the Spooks bugged every computer, every phone, every traffic camera, everything, no way you’d get even a tiny fraction of the data you’d need to do what you’re talking about.”

Raslowski nods as Mike slides his arm into the sling. “True enough. Except, remember what I said about compression? There are patterns. All data has patterns. You figure those out, you can guess them, predict them, anticipate them. Like compressing an image file—you don’t need to represent every single black pixel, you just need to know that anything that isn’t another color is black.” He shrugged. Candace thought he looked pale, and figured shock was setting in. She guessed they had a few minutes before he went woozy.

“You’d need a boatload of heavy duty computers to crunch those numbers,” Mike said.

“And we have them, just up the road. We’ve been pouring data in and refining the models for two years. We’ve been running the numbers.”

Candace frowned. “Why here?”

Raslowski hesitated for a moment. “Frankly? Because there’s not much here here. Not many people. Not much happening. A lot less data to chew through. If we tried modeling even one street corner in New York City, we’d drown. But here, it’s manageable, relatively speaking.”

Mike stepped over to stand next to Candace. He crossed his arms across his chest. “Okay, so you’ve been working for two years to predict the future right here. And then you, what—ran the models? Got some output? And came running over here guns blazing? Why?”

Raslowski was sweating lightly. “The models worked. Green across the board. And when they spat out their results, we saw that you were going to destroy everything. You were going to cause the end of the goddamn world.”

Mike and Candace glanced at each other. Then Mike leaned forward slightly. “Who’s going to end the world?”

Raslowski sighed. “All of you.”

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