Advance Copy

by Kyle R. Garton

The book was a tightly-bound secret, worthy of envy from every odds-maker, astrologist, consultant, and boardwalk fortune-teller; worthy of the envy of all the pompous struggle to wrest back some illusion of control over the blind cosmos. When I received it, the book made me giddy with delight. But this envy, and my delight, pure naivety.

My office at Taporia University was a tiny sanctuary where rainbow rows of books pushed each wall a bit further inward. Sitting there, I examined the book. The table of contents listed several writers of whom I had never heard. Being a long-time professor of literature, this unsettled me. Then, I checked the copyright page. The publication date was thirty years from now. Strange. Even stranger, the collection’s title story claimed to base itself on catastrophic events which happened three years prior to the publication, twenty-six years from the day I received it.

The story went roughly like this:

One day in a mid-sized city, countless sinkholes suddenly opened up, swallowing people and buildings. Green clouds formed in the sinkholes and threads of bile rained up, unnaturally out of the ground. They scalded the skin of anyone who passed through, pooled in the sky to form misshapen ovals that, in time, evaporated back down into the chasms. Fighting through his own trauma and delirium, the protagonist helped as many people as possible leave the city, but not before sustaining serious injuries and losing his mother and sister. After total devastation, the green vapors vanished without explanation, leaving a deeply pockmarked landscape.

The story, albeit devastating, was not grotesque. Beautiful imagery, rigorously restrained prose, precious little shock value. Its grandest meaning came through its hero’s furtive efforts to live afterwards rather than the disaster itself.

It was a masterpiece.

There was an editor’s note: The story that catapulted Farad Ayaz into literary fame, “Of the Depths” was inspired by the Agony, which devastated Ayaz’s hometown of Westmoor, Iowa, and resulted in the death of his mother. This story has been celebrated for its moving prose and criticized for sensationalizing an already extraordinary disaster. Its fantastical elements boldly dramatize human combinations of strength and vulnerability.

My mind reeled. What was—or, more properly, what would be—the Agony? Which parts of the story were “fantastical,” and which were really going to happen? Surely this book can’t be what it seems? Could this be an elaborate joke, or a bizarre misprint?

Online searches of names of writers and editors came up empty. The book was called The Norview Anthology of Short Fiction: Tenth Edition, but the publisher’s website showed the current edition as only the third.

Then I looked at a hand-written note tucked into the inside cover. It was from someone named Stacy Brash. She wrote,

Every other publisher falls short. We send excellent titles to outstanding teachers, providing many a great course option for new offerings yearly—our best editions yet, promoting possibilities for today’s innovative educators, driving courses ever-higher.

I called Norview’s customer service line and asked for Stacy Brash, only to be told they had no employee by that name. “But if you’d like to make a return, Dr. Tolliver,” the rep’s bland voice said, “you can simply mail back the defective copy, and we’d be happy to replace it.”

“Don’t trouble yourself,” I said. “I think I’ll hold onto it.”

I tore off a part of one of the blank back pages, brought it to Jordan Villanueva’s engineering lab, and asked them to examine this piece of paper for anything unusual. They swept their hair out of their face and adjusted their glasses to look at the sample. When they asked me what or where the paper was from, I told them that I didn’t want to bias their investigation.

A few days later, they told me that the materials seemed perfectly normal when viewed under high magnification. “But, Landon, when I tested it with chemicals that would normally cause mild embrittlement or discoloration in paper, none of these substances had any effect on it. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s not fully reactive to its environment, like it’s coated with some kind of invisible buffer.”

“What could have made it this way?”

“Beats me. If you could say more about where it came from, that might help. In fact, something with this much durability could have commercial applications.”

“I’d like to keep this between us, at least for now.”

The Agony. The moniker portended a large-scale, even global, catastrophe. Normally, I would simply research a story’s background, delighting in how the author transformed life into art. But this oxymoronic future relic threatened fiction’s retroactive relationship to the amorphous inscrutability of time in real life.

In the volume, various stories specifically referenced the Agony—always as a tragedy, and always assuming the reader already knew what it was. Altogether, the stories named eight affected cities, two of which were major population centers. Looking for other clues, I saw a corporate logo on the book’s back cover that I didn’t recognize. It was a green diamond, the right half chiseled out to make a letter P. I showed a facsimile of it to a professor of marketing who didn’t recognize it but thought it was a great logo.

With no clear leads, for a time I went on with my life as best I could. I lost myself in my work. I did my job well, although student evaluations sometimes described me as a bit jumpy, and I broke into an abject panic whenever an unexpected package came in.

But then, it happened. The name Stacy Brash appeared on my course roster. I could barely keep my composure on the first day of class. I had abstractly feared the future for so long, but now, all my anxiety was embodied in this eager, small, sandy-haired student sitting in the front row. Worst of all, after class, she came right up to me.

“Hi, Dr. Tolliver,” Stacy said, “I just wanted to say that I’m really looking forward to being challenged in this class!”

“Wonderful. Welcome to Taporia University,” I choked out and hurried back to my office, the smallness of which had begun to feel less like a sanctuary, more like a cell. I took a closer look at the publisher’s note in the Norview Anthology:

There was no picture, so I couldn’t confirm if the woman I just met was the same Stacy Brash of the note. The note didn’t even suggest that she knew me, which was why I paid it little attention at first. It wasn’t even very well-written; the style was terse and stilted. What kind of a job did I do educating her?

And yet, Stacy quickly established herself as a standout student. She took risks. Her essays made compelling arguments that, more often than not, transformed the reader’s doubt into astounded conviction. Her wiring was like a circus acrobat miraculously twisting suicidal leaps into perfect landings. A part of me hoped that she would simply maintain a standard of quiet excellence and allow me to mostly avoid her. But I had no such luck. She participated eagerly in class discussions, came to my office hours regularly, and took my courses at seemingly every opportunity. A mind of many talents, she double-majored in English and Physics, equally enamored of Newton and Nabokov. She was the type of student I would relish having if I weren’t so terrified of her.

I worried that my secret hindered my ability to teach her, so I overcompensated by being as gracious and supportive of her endeavors as I could. “Whatever I can do to help, just ask.”

The truth was, I was the one who needed help. I finally resolved to show “Of the Depths” to Shanice Weathers, our departmental specialist in Caribbean literature whom I had helped to hire. She was brilliant, and I was desperate. Maybe she could show me constellations where I only saw stars.

I gave her a digitized copy of “Of the Depths” with the author’s name changed. This story, I told her, came to me under unusual circumstances which I had to keep confidential. Could she read the story and tell me what she thought of it?

A few days later, Shanice ducked into my office and settled her taut, wiry frame in a chair. The keenness of her gaze suggested that, no matter how little space she occupied, no force could move her from it.

I asked, “Given the textual evidence, what sort of disaster would you imagine the Agony was, and what might have caused it?”

“I’m not sure, but whatever it is, it doesn’t affect everywhere equally,” she answered. “If these editors felt the need to mention that this event ‘devastated’ this writer’s hometown, that implies that there were other places that were not devastated. What’s more,” she went on, “his hometown was ‘devastated,’ but not ‘destroyed.’”

“That’s something,” I said, “but we need to figure out not just the scope of this tragedy but also its precise nature and cause.”

“And why is that? This seems to matter to you a great deal?”

“There is nothing more rewarding than the practice of interpretation.”

She gave me a sideways glance. “Well,” she offered, “what do you think are some of the author’s greatest influences? If we can compare this author to ones we know, maybe we can imagine that he turned truth into fiction along the same lines as his role models.”

This made sense. “Based on the style, I’d say the great Modernists who wrote of war. They gave brutal, unflinching portrayals of trauma and violence.”

“Perhaps. But it’s not only modernistic. Look at the narration’s keen attention to the natural setting, the moving portrayals of community resilience, the prose’s lack of self-indulgence. This is someone who has spent a lot of time reading magical realism.”

This gave me a glimmer of hope. “Writing the impossible as if it were ordinary—but still understood, in the end, as fantastic,” I obliged.

She looked up. “What if the story’s fantastical elements are not an exaggeration of something that happened but an allegory for it? What if the Agony isn’t primarily a geological disaster but something else, like a psychological disturbance?”

“That’s an intriguing idea,” I said, trying to remain calm.

“Well, don’t be so intrigued,” she said on her way out, “that you’re late to the department meeting again.”

Near the end of Stacy Brash’s junior year, I took refuge in the thought that the upcoming fall would be the last where I would have to be around her. But I did not enter that summer unscathed: Stacy needed more internship recommendations.“What companies are you looking at?” I asked her.

“Well, there’s this one program with Atlantis Marketing, and then there’s Bracket Science Publishing. Oh, and this one’s really exciting: it’s with the publisher of the textbooks a lot of my classes have used: Norview!” Flecks of coffee flew out of my mouth and sprayed across the top bookshelf where the red anthology sat.

“Dr. Tolliver, I’m so sorry, is something wrong?”

“Grits in my coffee. Someone needs to take a look at that blasted machine. Anyway, whatever I can do to help, just ask.”

A month later, when Stacy joyfully announced that she had accepted an internship with Norview,

I said calmly: “Congratulations. And who knows? You just might have a future there.”

After her senior year, Norview offered Stacy a full-time position in marketing and strategic partnerships. Now that she had moved away, I felt more comfortable keeping in touch with her, and I thought it might give me useful information. When I wrote to her for an update, the part of her reply that really got my attention said: Things are going great at Norview. My proudest accomplishment so far is getting Norview to work with Paragon Technologies. They have a lot of capital, and we have a bookish image that they want to associate with. As a liaison, I’ve been dividing my time between the Norview and Paragon offices. My science background really helped me function in this dual role. In fact, the people at Paragon have even asked me to help them do some lab work!

I wrote back a hasty, perfunctory congratulations and got to thinking. The name Paragon Technologies didn’t sound familiar, but it reminded me of something.

The logo.

I scrambled back to the bookshelf and grabbed the anthology. I jumped on the computer and searched for Paragon Technologies, and sure enough, their official logo was the same stylized P that adorned the bottom of the Norview Anthology’s back cover. Now, just what sort of technology was Paragon working on? Their website was heavy on hype but light on specifics. Engineering the future. Making the impossible. Revolutionizing communications, transportation, and shipping. Press releases and feature articles said a bit more: large-scale room-temperature superconductors, teleportation, long-range wireless solar power transmission. But none of this mentioned time travel or anything that sounded like it related to the Agony.

I took another look at the note tucked into the anthology and suddenly recalled a certain story by Nabokov that had been a favorite of Stacy’s in class, one where the first letter of each word in the very last sentence spelled out the answer to who committed a murder and how. Could Stacy’s seemingly bland, impersonal note have used the same trick? I wrote out the first letter of each word. Gibberish. Just as I was about to throw up my hands in despair, something about the first sentence of her missive caught my eye. Every other publisher falls short. What if the message gave the key to its own code—every other word? I wrote out the first letter of every other word, starting with the second sentence.

The letters said: “S.T.O.P.A.G.O.N.Y.B.Y.P.T.E.C.H.”

Now I knew: this book had not come to me by mistake or chance. And if Stacy wrote to me in code, she had reason to fear that she could not write openly. She sent this book back in time herself, undoubtedly without permission, but with a note that, if discovered, she could plausibly pass off as part of some sanctioned project. Somehow, Paragon was the key to all this. And, as inadequate as I felt, Stacy had somehow decided that I was the right person to receive her message. I held Stacy’s note in my hand. “Whatever I can do to help,” I whispered to it, “just ask.”

So far, I had paid yearly visits to Jordan for them to test a new paper sample. After the second year of doing this, their grumbling over my reticence got the better of me, and I gave in and showed them the book. They surprised me with their bemused acceptance. “Well then, let’s figure this out,” was all they said. And, through the years, they did figure something out: the rate of the paper’s reactivity slightly increased with each measurement. With several data points, they made a function that fit the data, and extrapolated it to predict when the book’s paper would reach a state of normality. No doubt this would happen in the stated copyright year. But Jordan, with astonishing confidence, had calculated the exact time of the book’s normalization down to the day, hour, and minute. Though I still didn’t know what the Agony was, at least I now knew the precise moment Stacy sent the book back.

One day, feeling ambitious, I decided I would call Stacy’s office phone directly. Maybe, if I asked her for another update, she might mention things that she would not have put in writing. Any interesting tech updates? “Well, our small-scale teleportation tests have had their first successes. Finally, not just another mug chalked into dust. Oh, the possibilities. Within limits, though: it seems like only non-organic matter can handle our specially-buffered movements through fourth-dimensional space at effectively faster-than-light speeds. But we’ve been able to transport objects as large as books. Some of them—the ones that didn’t turn into confetti—are still readable after transport.

“I was thinking that, if this tech becomes reliable someday, we could do a cross-promotion where Paragon would teleport some of Norview’s upcoming releases to select professors. I mean, who wouldn’t assign a book that came to them through such an amazing method?”

I grimaced. “Who indeed?”

After we hung up, I considered Stacey’s words. Was there a connection? What could teleportation have to do with time travel? Although better-informed minds than mine had surely pondered this, some reflections seized my mind. One was that H.G. Wells said that time itself was the fourth dimension. If so, could technology used to send objects through fourth-dimensional space also be used to send objects to different times? And, if an object moved faster than light, as Stacy said, wouldn’t it move backward in time?

It struck me that Stacy must have discovered this loophole and used it to send the book back in time to me, even though this was not Paragon’s intended purpose. In warning me of the Agony, Stacy became time travel’s illicit inventor.

Another few years later, my inner alarm sounded when local media announced that Paragon Technologies, in concert with other firms, had selected a spot downtown to build one of several wireless power antennas. I quickly looked up the locations of the dozen or so other towers rising across the country. But there was very little overlap with the cities that I was certain would be affected by the Agony. Could this be another one of my many dead ends? Or was I missing something? This time I invited both Shanice and Jordan to my office. Now I had to show Shanice the physical book too.

Her guarded response: “I’m concerned about both of you.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Think what you want of us. Right now what we could use are your ideas, not your faith. Look, we both study fiction. So, why not take a page from our field and suspend your disbelief, just for now?”

Shanice turned to Jordan. “I already had my doubts about Landon, but are you down this rabbit hole too, trying to prevent this ‘Agony’?”

“I’ve kind of been Pascal’s Wager-ing it,” Jordan suggested. Not a vote of confidence, but also not the worst thing they could have said. Shanice didn’t say anything, but she didn’t leave, either, so I hoped for the best and went over the references with them, listing the names of the seven other cities afflicted with the Agony besides Westmoor. Shanice asked me to pull up a map and compare the locations of Paragon’s towers with the affected cities.

“I already thought of that,” I said. “They’re not in the same places.”

“Humor me. What do you have to lose?”

I brought up a digital map, marked each tower with a green X, and marked each affected city with a red O.

Looking at the scattered marks, I complained, “Like I already said, they don’t coincide. Many of them aren’t even close to one another.” Jordan squinted at the screen for a minute. “Draw a circle around each tower with a fifty-kilometer radius,” they said. I did but still no pattern. Square one again. Then Shanice suggested, “Expand the radius to one hundred kilometers.” When I did, we all stared blankly at the result: every affected city the Norview Anthology had mentioned was within 100 kilometers of a tower. And Westmoor, the worst-affected city, sat nestled within the tiny sliver of a grim overlap, just barely within 100 kilometers of two towers. What was more, multiple intersections between other towers’ radii encompassed major population centers not even mentioned in the book. If this was a map of the Agony to come, its wrath would blight the map of civilization like a vile pox.

It was the year of the Agony. The newly-finished Paragon antenna stood on a commercial street in downtown. It looked like a radio tower with a giant astronaut-training gyroscope on top. I often looked up at the tower at twilight to watch one ring or another whir to life unpredictably, a Russian-doll of spasmodic eyeballs rolling in every direction. Month by month, I watched for some sign of trouble. Paragon conducted several successful tests of wireless power transmission that they publicized to great fanfare. But it was only May, so there was still plenty of time left in the year for an ordeal to run its dark course.

I took Shanice with me to Jordan’s machine-strewn lab. “It’s crunch time,” I said. “We need to figure out: Could these towers cause geological damage? Could they emit some sort of destructive energy?”

“No, not really,” Jordan said. “The technology is too refined for that”

“But something is going to happen, you know it,” I pleaded.

Shanice spoke up. “What about neurological damage? The brain uses electricity to function. Could a machine transmitting electricity interfere with brain activity somehow?” Somehow, she was still willing to think along with us, even if those thoughts came with a heavy dose of side-eye.

Jordan looked thoughtful. “That’s a bit out of my depth. But maybe Karina Minhaj in Neuroscience—”

Before Jordan could say another word, I was out the door. I hurried across the building to the Neuroscience department. Now more than ever I was thankful for being an academic, one of many books in a human library, where expertise on any subject was at my fingertips. I burst into the open door of the office of my colleague in the department, Dr. Minhaj. “Yes?” a startled voice.

“Could exposure to wireless power transmissions cause brain damage?”

“…Excuse me, who are you?” Minhaj asked.

“I’m doing, um, a thought experiment. Let’s say something goes wrong with, I don’t know, the Paragon tower nearby. How would the electricity it spreads affect brain chemistry?” She answered begrudgingly, impatiently: “Electrical currents don’t directly affect the brain at a distance.” I felt stupid, chastised. “But,” she added, “the electromagnetic radiation used to transmit electricity wirelessly is a different matter.”

I perked up. She continued: “Prolonged exposure to such phenomena could affect neurotransmitter function.” Her eyes searched her memory. Then she said, “Now that you mention it, I think there was a recent study on mice that tested the effects of exposure to transmissions roughly similar to what Paragon is using,” she said.

“What happened?”

“It took days for the full effects to come. Some mice weren’t affected at all. Some ran around in circles. Some huddled in a corner and shuddered. Some tried to eat their own tail. Some banged their heads against the walls over and over. Since an adverse impact was established, they euthanized the mice before the effects wore off. Still, It was a very informative experiment. I imagine results like that would lead Paragon to put extra effort into safety measures, like making sure the transmission beams are focused away from humans.”

After giving hasty thanks, I hustled back to Jordan and Shanice. “It looks bad,” I said. “If the towers transmitted radiation outside their intended parameters, it would be mass hysteria. Mass agony.”

“Well,” Jordan returned, “That’s why the towers have dampeners.”

“What could damage those dampeners?” asked Shanice.

“I suppose a sudden burst of energy could, a power surge or something. But that can be protected against through standard safeguards.”

Shanice pressed the point. “What if it wasn’t?”

“Well,” Jordan shrugged, “I guess if everything somehow went wrong all at once, electromagnetic fields could radiate from the towers into larger areas.”

At this point a clear image started to form in my mind. I spoke with my hand on my temple. “Okay, picture this. Paragon performs a large-scale test of their long-range power transmission. Something goes wrong. Radiation leaks. The full effects wouldn’t be felt for weeks. Just a handful at first, then thousands, finally millions of people afflicted with all manner of mental anguish that might never fully subside.”

Jordan nodded their head. “The staggered timing and varied effects would make it virtually impossible to trace back to Paragon. Unless someone somehow connected the dots.” Jordan didn’t know about Stacy Brash, but they had the right general idea. “So,” Shanice reflected, “That’s it. That’s the mental Agony that Farad Ayaz chose to symbolize as earthquakes and inverse clouds of poison.”

“Now, I have a feeling Paragon is going to proceed aggressively regardless of outside input,” I said. “They wouldn’t accept any external warnings, and trying to do that would tip them off. But if someone could predict when a test would go wrong, could the operation be counteracted by something…external?”

“Let me think,” Jordan paused. “Well, Paragon’s tech is very clever, but it has subtle vulnerabilities that even their people don’t seem to fully appreciate. Their transmissions don’t just carry power; they also carry instructions. Instructions that could be corrupted if the transmission itself was damaged. But in theory, a foreign transmitter with just the right calibrations could sneak in some information of its own. It could add more fail-safes that would offset the effects a power surge might have for, say, about six hours before anyone would notice. You wouldn’t even need direct physical contact. All you would need to do is get close enough to one of the towers, which would then pick up the antidotal current and interface with all the other towers.”

“Wait a minute,” Shanice said. “Now this isn’t just talk. You’re planning high-level industrial sabotage.”

“Simmer down,” Jordan said. “This is all just theoretical. At least, for now. Which means that, before anything escalates, any bystander could just leave now and plausibly deny that they knew anything.”

Something about the way Shanice strangely walked out backwards, with her face still turned toward us as she went out the door made me think that she was still a co-conspirator, even if a reluctant one.

“So anyway, where were we?” I asked. “How close would I—or someone—have to get for this transmitter to work?”

“If it was powerful enough, thirty meters. Based on where the tower is, someone could just run the transmitter on the sidewalk right outside their facility for five minutes.”

“That sounds promising. Can you do it?”

Jordan’s face lit up. “I’ll let you know when it’s ready,” they said.

Two days after seeing Jordan, NASA announced that there would be a solar flare in seven days. That must be it, I thought. I knew this solar flare would coincide with Paragon’s biggest series of operations yet. I barreled over to Jordan’s lab.

“We don’t have much time,” I raved. “In less than a week, Paragon is going to run a massive test, and this upcoming solar flare is going to trigger the Agony. I need the device by then.”

“Landon, it would take, like, a month to build.”

“We don’t have that much time!”

They sighed, “Alright, there might be some workarounds I could rig up.”

“You’re the best, Jordan. I’ll see you in six days.”

On the day of the flare, I stopped by Shanice’s office on my way to Jordan’s lab. “I have to run an errand of some importance,” I told her. “It’s related to what Jordan and I have been talking about, but it’s better if you don’t know the specifics. If it doesn’t go well, it could make some people upset and place me under scrutiny. Please know that, whatever happens, I have good reasons for my actions.”

Shanice rolled her eyes. “Landon, you shouldn’t go. I have listened to you; I have thought with you. But now you’re taking this too far. You need to know truth from fiction. Take a step back and look at yourself. Do you want to put yourself at risk?”

“I have to do this,” I said.

“Fine,” Shanice said, getting up. “Then I’m coming with you. Might as well keep you from botching this operation.”

“Thank you,” I said, stunned by this turnaround. “But like I said, it’s better if no one else is involved. You need to stay.” I walked out, feeling Shanice’s pondering eyes following me long after I turned away. When I entered the lab, Jordan had deep bags under their eyes. They looked even more disheveled than usual. Without a word, they reached under their table and pulled out a lunchbox-sized cube. It was silver with rounded corners and had a series of dials and buttons on one of the sides. Then they said, “It’s not as polished as I’d like. It might make some noise. But here it is.

“You are spectacular.” I reached for the transmitter. Jordan pulled it back at the last second.

“I cannot officially condone any unauthorized use of this device for non-academic purposes,” they said.

“I understand completely. Whatever happens, you will not be implicated. I am a lone actor.”

Jordan nodded. “This is highly sensitive equipment. I sure hope nobody takes it to use for their own reckless ends and then destroys it to conceal the evidence.” They put the box back on the table, then turned around. “I had better not forget to keep this cutting-edge machine under lock and key.” I took the device, put it in my bookbag, and walked away without another word.

On my way there, I had a bad feeling that our plan may have underestimated obstacles. As I arrived, I saw that, sure enough, the Paragon facility had expanded its perimeter, just for today. Neat lines of orange traffic cones blocked off the sidewalk in front of the fence outside the tower. Everyone who walked by stepped around the cones. If I was going to do this, I had to step inside. I reached into my bookbag and switched on the transmitter. Then I walked through the cones, stood in front of the fence, and looked at my phone, trying to act casual. I started the timer. In less than a minute, a man came out from behind the fence and walked toward me. He wore glasses and a plaid, collared shirt. I hoped he was a tech worker who would be reasonable, not some thick-headed guard. “Sir? Sir. This is a restricted area.”

I tried to act confused. “What do you mean?”

“Sir, the cones clearly mark off this area. We’re temporarily closing this section of sidewalk off for special operations.”

“This is a beautiful sidewalk,” I said, idiotically.

“Sir, are you feeling okay?”

“I just really like being here right now.” I was an utter moron. I had no idea what I was doing or what to say to help myself in this situation.

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“What do you mean? Why?”

A static noise started coming from the bag. Just what I needed.

“Hold on, sir. What’s in that bag? We need to see it.”

As he reached towards me, I froze. “It’s, um, uh—”

“Excuse me, sir, but do you have a search warrant?” a voice behind me asked. “Personal property cannot be searched without due process.” I turned around and there was Shanice. I looked at her blankly, trying not to reveal our association.

“Ma’am, this matter is not your concern. This man, like you, is currently inside a restricted area. If you could just go ahead and use the other side of the sidewalk.”

“Sir,” Shanice replied, “I’m not sure I understand. This sidewalk is public property. Do you have the authority to restrict access to it?”

“This is a restricted area.”

“So you say. Do you have permission from the city to enforce this restriction?”

She and the man went back and forth like this for a couple of minutes. As their exchange grew more heated, the man gradually stepped closer to Shanice. She did not move. I subtly ducked behind her and said nothing.

After a while, he started to lose patience. “Miss, if you don’t walk out of this area now, I’m afraid I’m going to have to call security.”

“Security? What have we done? We are not entering your facility. We are in a public space.” The man reached behind his ear and pushed a button I couldn’t see. In less than ten seconds, two blue uniforms burst from the door and started advancing grimly toward Shanice and me. My pocket vibrated. The timer was up. If Jordan was right, the transmitter had done its job. The Agony would not happen. I threw my hands in the air. “Look, I don’t want to cause any more trouble. I’ll just leave,” I said.

The guards narrowed their eyes at us. The first one barked, “Miss. Sir. We expect not to see you on these premises again.”

“Of course. Yes. Goodbye,” I said. Shanice and I walked away in opposite directions.

At the end of the block, I turned a corner and went back in the direction Shanice had gone. In about two blocks, I caught up with her. I was winded. “I have to thank you for what you did back there.”

Shanice kept up her pace and didn’t look at me. “Like I said, someone had to keep you from botching this operation.

“I suppose you’re right. “I was hopeless back there. You seemed to be very poised when talking to those guards.”

“It takes practice,” she said. “At least this way, I could simply be a concerned bystander. Who knows what might have happened if those people had caught me loitering inside that perimeter instead of you?”

“Indeed. Best not to think about it. In fact, just to be safe, perhaps we can agree that this little excursion didn’t take place either.”

“Perhaps,” she said.

I thought I saw a glimpse of a smile.

The year came and went, and there was no event in the news that had been called the Agony. On the day of my stop at the tower, the annals of science recorded that a large coronal mass ejection caused minor disruptions to some GPS systems and was otherwise without serious incident to humankind.

What should have been the publication year of “Of the Depths” came and went, and, as expected, no such story appeared. As I slowly gained confidence that the Agony had been prevented, I Reread “Of the Depths,” and, free of fear, I was able to appreciate its beauty even more. This story was no longer a dark omen but a distant echo of a forgotten nightmare. I dusted off my bookshelves and put a ficus in the corner. But my entanglement with this story was not quite finished.

I tried to find its author, and Ayaz was not hard to get ahold of. Up-and-coming writers are eager for contacts, and he readily agreed to a holo-meeting. The image of the writer whose tale had haunted me for so long now loomed translucently across my desk; he had no idea how doubly-spectral his presence felt to me now. When I asked him about his upcoming projects, he was coy, but intimated that his interests had started to move beyond the confines of realism. He said, “I have felt the pull of the fantastic for the last couple of years, but something is holding me back. I fear if I pursue this direction the literary establishment will no longer take me seriously. It is quite the dilemma.”

“How has this ‘pull’ expressed itself?” I asked, trying to seem interested but neutral.

“At first it was just loving stories that spoke to the extraordinary. But then I had unusually vivid dreams of someone fighting against giant clouds of green gasses. It sounds ridiculous, I know. But there was something about that vision I just couldn’t shake. So I outlined some story ideas based on that image.”

“You know, this dream of yours could be worth pursuing. I, for one, see great promise in you. Trust your instincts. If you see this through, I think you can triumphantly cross genres in ways few ever could.” I didn’t want to seem too pushy, so I ended by saying, “Why not simply try it and see what happens?”

Ayaz stroked his bearded chin. “Maybe I will revisit that story.”

A year later, “Of the Depths” came out, and to great acclaim. But the story, while it had the same title, was not the same as the one in my red book. The greatness of the original story had been its eerie fusion of beauty and wreckage. This one instead joined mysticism and melancholy in a more contemplative register. The sinkholes less pervasive, and troublesome vapors less deadly, than in the other version. No dead relatives. The main character helped others by learning to ride these strange currents away from danger.

What Ayaz wrote instead still stood quite apart. I was not Ayaz’s friend, nor could I be. But I could see both versions of him behind either story, past and present. I decided that the new story was the other’s equal—maybe even better.

A few months later, near the end of my second-to-last semester, Jordan and Shanice were sipping tea in my office, waiting for the exact moment Jordan had calculated years ago. I had arranged to get the Norview Anthology’s counterpart delivered to me via teleportation at the same time, and I wanted them both to see it arrive. I held up the old red book, the one that once gave me so much dread. “I won’t be needing this version anymore,” I told them. “I’m sorry it’s the only copy in existence, so I can only give it to one of you.”

“You’re the book person, Shanice,” Jordan deferred. “You have it. Being part of the puzzle is enough for me.”

“No, I can’t keep it. In fact, none of us can.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Shanice took a deep breath. “I don’t think that once the book catches up to the moment it was first sent back, it will simply continue to exist normally. This book is like a chrysalis thinning out for the moment when the butterfly bursts forth. When it catches up to the moment that it was sent back, it will then be past its own time. The butterfly will vanish once that instant passes.”

“Beautifully put,” I said, “but I'm not sure I understand.”

“I think I do,” Jordan offered. “If the anomalies I saw in the book were actually caused by time travel—which I didn’t know at the time, thank you very much—then its particles probably won’t just normalize. The trend I saw will keep going: the rate of decay will increase. And even a slight uptick in that can completely wreck an object’s integrity. What took years to progress before could take just seconds.”

Shanice nodded at Jordan and said, “The chrysalis will crumble.” Then she looked at me. “You called us here to give us this book. But none of us are this book’s keepers. We’re its companions in hospice, here to be with this strange thing in its last moments.”

Could that be true? Years ago, I had made digital copies, of course, but what would those bundles of words mean if the unique artifact they came from was gone? At last I said, “It’s all right if this book doesn’t last. This wasn’t just about papers and words and thought experiments. We did something. At least, I think we did. Do you think so after all, Shanice?”

All she said was, “I believe it was T.S. Eliot who wrote, ‘The past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past.’”

Noon struck. The school’s clock tower started playing The Westminster Chimes. The new book, a paperback with blue trim and a pear tree in full bloom on the cover, appeared on my desk. One last favor from Stacy, whose teleported-book promotional idea finally had the tech catch up with it. The book quivered into being, its waving edges resolving into straight lines like a harp-heralded dream quickening into focus. Then we looked at the red-trimmed book in Shanice’s hands.

As the sound of the last chime died out, the book started to warp. The words on the cover became smeared. Its shape rippled as if wet. Then the book got smaller and sank lower into Shanice’s hands. It hissed out into curtains of dust that seeped between her fingers like sand through an hourglass. In less than a minute, Shanice’s cupped hands were empty, and a pile of ash sat on my desk. Jordan was stunned, but Shanice remained calm. She said, with a steady voice, “I will get a fine urn worthy of these cremains.” Trying to compose themselves, Jordan timidly asked her,

“Could I just get a tiny sample first?” Jordan asked. Together they left, leaving me to sit with my boxes and half-empty shelves.

I took my new advance copy of the Norview in hand, turned back to my desk, and took a deep breath.

Advance Copy - Kyle R. Garton

Advance Copy

by Kyle R. Garton