The Power of Un (7 page)

But everything he said seemed to float past from very far away. “You’re acting like Rainy Frogner. Sometimes you have to take risks. I know what I’m doing.” I punched the 8 because it was in the middle and it was just as good as any other number. An eight appeared on the display screen, opposite the
H
. I punched the 4. Now the display said 84. I pressed the blue MMODE light; it went on, and the yellow HMODE light went off. I punched 6. A six appeared on the display under the 84 and just to the left of the bold
M
. So I was right. H MODE, M MODE, and S MODE. Whoever made the labels just left out the spaces. But what did the numbers mean? What was I programming the unner to do?

It was Ash who saw it first. “
H, M, S
. Eighty-four hours, six minutes, no seconds. Stop now. Please!” He sounded desperate.

I looked up at him. “How can I? There’s no ‘clear’ key.”

A little vein popped up on the side of Ash’s head. Before I realized what he was doing, he reached down and switched the unner off. “That’s how.”

A bird in the tree overhead sang a little song. I probably wouldn’t have noticed, except it sounded obnoxiously cheerful and reminded me of the first few notes of “Where, Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone,” which seemed just too ironic.

I turned the unner back on, then stabbed the
SMODE button and the first few numbers my fingers landed on—121, as it happened. Then, before Ash could stop me, I hit the big red
ORDER
button.

I
closed my eyes, waiting for something major to happen. Maybe unning would feel like skydiving or standing beside the tracks when a fast train passes. Maybe my hair would stand on end and my skin would ripple, or maybe I’d go unconscious and wake up with amnesia.

But no. I didn’t feel anything except stupid. After a few seconds, I opened one eye. Nothing was different. I was sitting in exactly the same place in the woods with the unner in my hands. Ash was crouched beside me.

I groaned.

“O.K., let’s stay calm,” said Ash.

“Oh right, that’s what you always say,” I retorted. “What a ripoff! This thing’s just a hunk of junk.”

But Ash was still staring at the unner as if it was
the most fascinating object on the planet. “We have to do this scientifically,” he murmured.

I snapped at him. “You already said that!”

“Said what?”

“That we have to do this scientifically.”

He rolled his eyes. “I did not.”

I stared at him. “You did, too! You said we have to do this scientifically, but when I asked about a hypothesis, you didn’t have one.”

I doubt Ash could have looked more skeptical if I’d told him the woods were full of talking purple dinosaurs. Under my sweatshirt, the hair on my arms rose slowly as it came to me that when I’d punched the big red button, Ash had been standing up, not crouching.

I looked at the unner. It had stopped humming. The word
RECHARGING
flashed on the display screen, then went out. I’d punched in 121 in S mode. If the unner worked, and if I guessed correctly about the
way
it worked, I’d just undone the most recent hundred and twenty-one seconds of my life. What exactly had happened during those two minutes and one second the last time? I strained to remember every detail. The same two minutes seemed to be happening all over again, except for a few minor differences, most of which originated with me.

I looked at Ash, then down at the unner again. As the truth sank in, a prickly feeling started at my toes
and traveled upward till it got to my head and made me dizzy. “It worked!” I said.

“If this is supposed to be funny, it’s not,” said Ash. “How could it work? You haven’t done anything except turn it on.”

I grabbed his arm. “Listen to me. I punched in a bunch of numbers and hit the red button. It worked. You don’t remember, because …” I swallowed. I felt like I had sand in my throat. “Because it hasn’t happened yet.”

Ash stared at me for a very long moment. He breathed out shakily, maybe because he understood what I was trying to tell him or maybe because he thought I’d gone completely bonkers. I couldn’t tell which. “That doesn’t make sense. If I can’t remember, then how can you? Come on, Gib. Stop joking around.”

I felt like screaming. “This isn’t a joke! It must have something to do with the way the unner works. I mean, there must be some theory to explain it. It’s like the unner moved me backward in time—but only me, the person who was holding it. For everybody else, that little chunk of time hasn’t happened yet.”

Ash squinted at me, his mouth half open. “Gaaaahhh!” I said. “I’ll prove it to you!”

I slid the power switch and hit the square green SMODE button again.

Ash leaped to his feet. “Don’t be a moron, Gib! This is way too dangerous,” he cried.

I laughed, probably a little hysterically. After all, it was like watching an instant replay of life. I remembered what I’d said before, and I liked it, so I said it again: “You’re acting like Rainy Frogner. Sometimes you have to take risks. I know what I’m doing.”

This time I keyed in 35. Just before I punched the
ORDER
button, the same bird in the same tree whistled the same four obnoxiously cheerful notes. They still reminded me of “Where, Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone.”

    I kept my eyes open this time, which turned out to be a mistake, because I saw the world jerk like a movie about to be eaten by its projector. For a second or two, I thought I was going to barf.

Ash flipped into a crouch beside me with impossible speed, though he didn’t seem to notice.

“See?” I shouted. “Now do you believe me?”

But instead of shouting “Yes!” as I hoped he would, he stared at me for a very long moment, exactly the way he had half a minute before. The scene I’d already experienced twice now began to replay itself like a videotape. He breathed out shakily, and I found myself thinking all over again that maybe it was because he finally understood what I was trying to tell him, or maybe it was because he thought I’d gone bonkers.

“You’re not making any sense,” he said. “Are you O.K.? I mean, seriously, you don’t look so good.”

“Of course I’m O.K.!” I shouted, which was a lie. I’d never felt so far from O.K. in my whole life. My sister was practically dead, my best friend thought I was nuttier than a Snickers bar, and the unner just seemed to be making things worse. How could I ever get Ash to understand what was happening? Was I going to have to do this entire thing on my own?

“Maybe we should go home,” he said. He looked scared. Of me.

I shut my eyes and sucked in a big breath of crisp air.
Stay calm
, I told myself.
There has to be a way
. Then I remembered the bird and its stupid repeating song. It was like the moment when you suddenly understand fractions.

“Are we friends?” I asked. I had to concentrate hard to keep my voice low and steady.

“Yeah. You know we are.”

“Then you have to trust me. This is the truth. I swear it on … on Roxy. In a few seconds, a bird right here in this tree is going to whistle four notes that sound like the beginning of ‘Where, Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone.’ Do you know how I know?”

Ash shook his head.

“I know because the unner works. I’ve already lived these few seconds. I’m living them over again, right now, because I’ve already used the unner, and it works, cross my heart and hope to die. You’ve got to believe me.” I grabbed his sleeve, cocked an ear toward
the tree, and held my breath, hoping to high heaven that I hadn’t accidentally done some little thing during the past thirty seconds that would keep the bird from singing this time.

Too tweet dee tweet
, sang the bird.

After a beat or two of stunned silence, Ash wrinkled his nose and said, “How’d you do that?”

“I didn’t do it. I mean, I didn’t make it happen. I just knew it was going to happen, because I’ve already lived it. Three times now, as a matter of fact.”

He pressed his lips into a line, still not really convinced. I could see he was trying to decide whether I was telling the truth or just messing with him.

“O.K.,” he said slowly. “Prove it. Tell me what’s going to happen next.”

I sighed and closed my eyes, then opened them again. This was beginning to feel like pushing a car uphill. “I can’t,” I said. Which, unfortunately, was true. The thirty-five seconds I’d unned were over. I was living life just like everybody else again, uncertain what might happen in the next instant.

A tide of angry red crept up Ash’s neck into his cheeks. “Oh, right,” he snapped. “You can’t? Pretty convenient, isn’t it? You know, this stinks, Gib. You tell me to trust you, then you jerk me around and lie to me. I don’t even know why. Is this your idea of fun? Because if it is, you sure picked a stupid time for it.”

My heart thumped against my ribs. Who could blame Ash for reacting like this? My story would have seemed lame to anyone for whom time had been moving along in its usual orderly path. There was only one way to convince him.

I held the unner out. “Here,” I said. “Take it. Try it yourself.”

He glared at me. Heat flickered in his eyes like candle flames. I could see I’d hurt him, and it made me feel bad inside, even though I hadn’t meant to do it. After a long moment, he took the unner from my hand without a word.

Only Ash knows what I did next in some chain of events that he later unned. From my point of view, it was all very simple, though surprising. Suddenly, Ash wasn’t mad anymore. He looked at me, grinning as if he’d just gotten the birthday present of his dreams. His hands shook as he clutched the unner.

“It works! I can’t believe it! It works!”

I whuffed out a gigantic sigh of relief. “What happened? Tell me!”

Ash looked confused for a second or two, then smiled again and exclaimed, “Oh yeah! You don’t remember, because it hasn’t happened! Now I totally get it.” Then he told me how I’d given him the unner and shown him how to use it; how the two of us had decided how much time to punch in—nine seconds; how he’d hit the big red button, still convinced I was
trying to make a fool out of him. Then the world seemed to stop. And when it started again, I was back in the middle of handing him the unner and saying,
Here, take it. Try it yourself
. That’s when he knew at last that I was telling the truth.

One thing seemed clear. The only person who could remember what was undone was the person who punched the
ORDER
button. For everyone else, it was as if the unned time had simply never happened at all.

Ash handed the unner back to me. “What now?” he said. “Are you going to do it? I mean, un everything that’s happened since … you know?”

“Since just before the accident? Yeah. I don’t think there’s any other way to fix it.”

Ash pushed air out softly between his lips. It was almost a whistle but not quite. “Scary,” he said.

I nodded. “But then, so’s living with Roxy’s accident for the rest of my life.”

Ash nodded in return. “Stinks,” he said. “A bad choice or a worse choice.”

I stared at the unner in all its shabby glory. I thought about the wild-haired, limping old man. I thought about the smell of lightning, about how very weird time is and how little we really know about it.

I’d never again be able to look at time as a straight line with an arrow at one end. What I saw instead was
a maze more tangled than the roots of an ancient tree—a zillion possible wiggly paths taking off from every single thing I’d ever done in the past or might ever do in the future. I knew if I kept thinking about it I’d probably never be brave enough to use the unner again, and I might go crazy besides.

I wondered why the old guy had gone to the trouble of finding me, Gib Finney, and giving me—of all the millions of people who messed up in any day, in any hour even—a chance to correct my mistake. Maybe in some mysterious way, Roxy’s accident was even more important than it felt. Which was just one more reason to follow my heart and use the unner, no matter how scary it seemed.

So I said, “I guess it’s better than no choice at all.” And I got down to business. I found a twig, and I smoothed a spot on the ground where I could write with it. Then I began trying to figure out exactly how long ago the accident had happened.

I’d forgotten to put on my watch when I got up, but Ash was wearing his. It was 9:15
A.M
. Neither he nor I knew for sure what time it was when Roxy and the truck’s bumper had had their fateful meeting. But we knew we’d started for the carnival around 7:30.

Ash ran his fingers through his hair absently and squatted down beside me so he could see my dirt scribbles. “I remember it was about 9:15 when the ambulance left the carnival,” he said.

“So the accident happened between 7:30 and 9:15 last night,” I replied, chewing at the inside of my cheek. “If we said 8:30, would that be safe?”

Ash squinted at nothing. “Eight might be safer.”

“So how long has it been since 8:00 last night?” I felt a little panicky. I hate word problems, and this was the most awesome word problem of all time.

“I dunno. Count backward?” said Ash, looking like he wasn’t too sure himself. “Let’s see, 8:15
A.M
., 7:15
A.M
….”

“Wait,” I said. “Twelve hours ago would be 9:15 last night. So 8:15 would have been thirteen hours, and 8:00 would have been thirteen hours and fifteen minutes.”

Suddenly we heard someone calling from the direction of the street. “
Gi-i-i-b
! Gib, where are you?” My mom!

“Hurry up!” said Ash.

I turned on the unner and pressed the HMODE button, but it didn’t light up. “What the! …” I cried. Nothing happened when I pressed any of the number keys.

“Hurry!” Ash said again. “Try MMODE!”

“All right, already!” Like I really needed him to remind me I didn’t have much time. It wasn’t helping me think.

The MMODE light came on when I pressed it. But minutes … how many
minutes
had passed since
the accident? Sixty minutes in an hour. I scratched rapidly in the dirt. Sixty times thirteen plus fifteen …