Surfacing (Spark Saga) (2 page)

             
My dad clears his throat.  “You were caught in a storm.”

             
My voice is beginning to find itself.  “Did I got struck by lightning or something?”

             
“Inconclusive,” he replies.  “Lightning struck nearby. You’ve been out for eight days.”

             
I hear another familiar voice, from further away, a girl’s voice.  My dad motions his hand, and I sense that someone is coming forward.  I look up, and it’s a teenage girl with long blonde hair.  She comes up to the side of my bed and stands there with a nervous half-grin, moving her eyes back and forth between me and my mom, as if she’s not sure what to do. 

My dad says, “Tess, Dani’s here.” 

Dani. 
My best friend?  But who is this? I raise my hand in something like a wave and smiles.  “Hey,” she says.  “You look good.”             

             
“Yeah,” I say with a pitiful laugh.

             
“Do you need anything?”

             
My mom answers for me.  “No, thank you, Dani.  I’m sure seeing you is just the medicine she needed.”

             
I nod, wanting to say more, but knowing that I really can’t.  My tongue feels nine sizes too big for my mouth and I am in major pain from the neck down.  I hear one of the doctors say something about getting me up, which I have already decided is a ridiculous idea.  I can barely move my hands!  Nope, I’ll just stay right where I am, thank you.

             
Dani whispers something in my mom’s ear and my mom tells her it’s ok.  Then Dani walks out of the room and returns in a few seconds with a tall, dark-haired guy that is so handsome, I actually feel self-conscious.  I remember what I look like after sleeping one night—imagine what I look like now, after eight of them without a shower! 

             
“This is Zach,” Dani says.  “Tess, you remember Zach, right?”

             
My head is starting to hurt and I don’t want to look at anything or think more than I have to, so I just close my eyes.  Maybe, I think, they will stop looking at me if I just pretend to go to sleep.

             
I hear my mom say, “Maybe she just needs to rest now,” and I almost want to laugh. 
I’ve been out for days, Mom.  I think I might be rested up.

             
Dani clears her throat.  “It’s ok, Mrs. Turner.  We’ll come back another time.”  Then, I feel her come over and touch my hand.  “See you soon, ok, Tess?  You get better.”

             
I keep trying to place the name Zach, but nothing rings a bell.  I assume he’s her boyfriend.  I mean, seriously.  Dani’s a knockout and this guy is hot.  They look like they just walked off a movie set. I imagine them all tan in their swimsuits on a beach somewhere, white teeth everywhere, tossing a Frisbee back and forth, wind ruffling their hair.  A carefree sort of movie—not the sort, incidentally, that one watches with her dad on Christmas Eve.  Then I try to imagine my own life as a movie and all I can think of is how tragic, some poor girl just wakes up from a hospital bed and doesn’t know what the heck is happening—sort of like that poor sap in
It’s A Wonderful Life
—except everybody seems to know what’s up and I’m the only one confused.  A mental case, maybe.  No one in their right mind would want to star in that one.  Only losers with nothing better to do on a Saturday night would bother to watch it.

             
Lucky me.  Well, at least I still have sarcasm. All is not lost.

             
Maybe if I go back to sleep, I will wake up and discover this has all been some crazy dream.  I will wake up in my bed, back home, with my favorite quilt and my stuffed cat collection, seventeen in all—one for each year I’ve been alive. 

Zach
             
I drive around for about fifteen minutes, my head in a fog, a lump in my throat.  It would be good to cry, but I really have no right to, and anyway, it won’t do me any good.  I have to keep my head about me, try to figure out where things went wrong.  Memories have been erased from Tess’s chip.  That much is certain.  If she had awoken and recognized me, it would have been enough to convince me that she’d retained at least part of her memory.  But clearly, she had not.  The fact that she didn’t recognize me at all is an indication that nothing is there.  My mind scrambles to make sense of the fact that she had still, perhaps, been a subject in my father’s research.  The chip had been implanted, and everything had happened—between us, in another place in time.  Still, her actions had likely erased all of that from the chip.  Thus, she had woken up with a blank chip. 

             
The sun was beginning to set when I find myself pulling into the parking lot at Fuller Park.  I pull into a spot, sit idling for a while, and then cut the engine.  I glance down at my phone and notice a missed call from Dani, from about five minutes ago.  There is no voicemail.  She must still be at the hospital.  I fight feelings of jealousy that Tess had recognized Dani.  Of course, why wouldn’t she?  They had been inseparable. 
Inseparable. 
That is what I’d hoped for—for Tess and me.  And now I realize, with a pang in my gut, that we are not, in fact, inseparable.  We are apart, separated by time.  We are separated by something that has no mass and is really just a concept to define something ongoing within which we must ground ourselves by the notions of past, present, and future.  Time, itself, is nothing.  And yet, it is powerful enough to separate two people whose love cannot be placed on any timeline.  My head begins to ache with the enormity…the irony of this entire situation. 

             
Surely, there must be some remedy for such a scenario.  I mean, if time travel exists—and I know it does—there must be a way to make things right again.  Surely my father had not put his entire life into something that was a dead end.  Of course.  Time travel makes all things possible.  Circumstances cannot be changed, but decisions—actions—can, thus changing outcomes.  But what?  And how?  There is a clear end to my father’s research.  And he is gone.  There is no section in his files—no manual—for rescuing lost love.  I will be on my own, that much is apparent. 

And the most pertinent piece of information I need right now is whether or not there is a computer chip inside Tess Turner.  Finding out will not be easy, I know.  But it is absolutely necessary.   If there is a chip, things can be restored.  If not, things will be immeasurably more difficult.

              In my mind’s eye, as I sit there, darkness approaching, I can see Tess’s thin, willowy figure, standing across the park, the wind lifting her dark hair, blowing it across her face.  She is not looking at me, but I can see her eyes anyway, because I know them—I feel them, with everything I have.  There is a spark, deep within them, like two perfect stars.  I imagine watching her intently for several minutes, soft music still playing on my car stereo.  If she were here, and I could reach her, I could simply run my fingers across her head to the spot where I know the chip would be—the subtle, small protrusion that no one except one looking for it could discern.

             
If I could simply touch it…know it is there, I would have hope.  And everything good begins in hope.  I am reminded of H.G. Wells’ time traveler, again…in my father’s book.  I’ve read it many times, and each time, I have learned something I’d missed the time before.  Upon seeing the future world as a virtual paradise, still, the traveler is overwhelmed by the strangeness of what he sees.  It is unfamiliar.  He can’t understand it.  He is confronted with the thought:  “…like a lash across the face, came the possibility of losing my own age, of being left helpless in this strange new world.”  He wonders, as most would, if he will get stuck here and not be able to return to what he knows.

             
To be honest, I’m feeling a little bit like that now…only, I’m in the here and now, and it’s far from paradise.  It’s reality.  The future, as well as the past, always appears lovelier than the here and now.  And yet, what I wouldn’t give to be stuck somewhere else—anywhere, in fact.  Anywhere that Tess is mine.  What if I am simply stuck
here
with no possibility of ever being with the one I love?

             
My heartbeat speeds up and I feel a flush across my face.  I grip the steering wheel in something of a state of resolve—and yet, I have no idea what I am going to do with that resolve.  If it were within the realm of sanity, I would race back to that hospital, go right up to Tess’s bedside, and find that chip.  A crazy thought crosses my mind then.
Maybe I can sneak in, after everyone has gone home, find her sleeping, and take my opportunity.
  My face flushes even more with the ridiculousness of this thought.

             
The chip must be there, I decide, as if my conscious acknowledgement of it made it true.  My heart nearly stops when I remember the wireless updates.  Of course, why didn’t I think of it before?  I can simply update her chip and all will be good.  I smile uncontrollably to myself.  My hands start shaking with excitement. Hope is alive and well.  With a few keystrokes, Tess Turner will be mine again. 

I am so excited that I go directly to the lab and pull up the Project Zero folder on the computer.  Inside I find the file I
had discovered earlier that explained the process of wireless updates.  It occurs to me that, since the updates are automatic, something must have gone wrong with the connection when Tess entered the lightning storm—which is puzzling, in itself, since lightning is the catalyst for all this to begin with. 

Not sure what to do next, I open up my email account, and find a rather strange message:

August 14, 2012

TO:                            Mr. Zach Webb

FROM:
              E.G.W.

SUBJ:
                            Greetings

By now you have discovered my letter and the chip.  As I have no way of knowing where exactly you are on the timeline, I can only assume that you are in some measure of confusion at this point.  Rest assured, son, that I am well aware of this, and I am here to help.  Please respond if you have received this message, and I will reply with further details.

E.G.W.

Wait—
Son? 
What the heck?  I re-read the email, my eyes locking on the initials,
E.G.W. 
Edwin G. Webb.  My father?  My heart starts racing, my brain scrambling for footing.  My initial thought is,
Ok. Who is playing games with me?  Who else knows about this research?  About Project Zero?
  And then…a tiny thought flickers deep inside me.  What if?  What if my father didn’t die at all but ended up somewhere in the future, a future where he has access to everything that is happening to me right now.  I grip either side of my head and gasp with the possibility and impossibility of it. 

And then—the
next big question.  Should I respond?  If it’s someone who has obtained knowledge of the research, he or she might use it to manipulate me or blackmail me for more information.  After all, this is a fantastic discovery, one that has the potential to change everything we know about our world.  I must be careful.  In the hands of the wrong person, this could go terribly wrong.  On the other hand, if I really is my father, I have the opportunity of a lifetime—something people only dream about, to talk to a lost loved one.

August 14, 2012

TO:
                            E.G.W.

FROM:
              Mr. Zach Webb

RE:
                            Greetings

Dear Sir,

I have received, and am intrigued by, your message.  As you may suspect, I am in a tenuous situation which you have indicated you may be able to remedy.  Please understand, however, that I must have definitive proof of your identity.

To my surprise, an immediate reply
appears:

August 14, 2012

TO:
                            Mr. Zach Webb

FROM:
              E.G.W.

RE:
                            Greetings

Dear Zach:

On page 87 of H.G.
Wells’
The Time Machine
, you will find the information you are seeking.

E.G.W.

Immediately, I start rummaging through my backpack for the tattered copy of the book that I have carried around with me for years.  I
find page 86 and turn to the next one.  Glancing at the bottom, I find it is page 89. Pages 87 and 88 are missing. 
Funny, after all the times I’ve read it, I’d never noticed it before.
  Frustrated at the publishing error, I close the book and stare at my computer screen, debating my next move.  With a sigh, I grab the book again and open it to page 86.  As I flip the page back and forth, I notice the feel of the paper between my fingers.  Somehow, this page seems heavier.  When I investigate, I find that the two pages are indeed stuck together.