Consider (5 page)

“That’s a parabola. It works on, like, a mirroring philosophy. See the dot I drew? That’s a vertex. It’s the point of intersection where the two sides meet.”

“So that must be why they call it a vertex. It’s where our two worlds meet. See, Ben. Vertex, not vortex,” she shouts into the kitchen.

Dominick studies the shape for a few minutes. I can tell his head is spinning with possibilities. If only parallel universe time travel were a language-based phenomenon and not a mathematical one, maybe I’d follow along.

Dad returns, and Dominick pockets the paper before there’s an opportunity for criticism. Dad judges what he doesn’t understand.

“I don’t trust it,” Dad preaches, ignoring Mom’s clarification. “Nobody gives something for nothing. Everyone has an agenda. It says we have a choice. Yeah, wait ‘til that thing starts collecting us against our will. Mark my words: it’s gonna get violent.”

I nudge Dominick to follow me and escape for some alone time. On our way out of the room, I hear Dad say to Mom, “Those holograms sound like fucking communists.”

His words are something I can understand; it’s language at its finest. And I know there are probably many other people out there uttering the same thing in their homes, trying to understand the impossible and putting a label on it.

In my backyard, Dominick and I sit in our usual spots on the warped, tan-and-peach-striped patio furniture that Mom found on clearance. The ominous stars blink innocently in the sky, holding secrets in the universe I never even considered before yesterday. For years I’ve sat in the same spot plotting my escape by becoming a lawyer. To be seen as strong. Capable. Determined. I still want that, but I can’t escape the fact that a part of me wants to stay where I am. Change is harder than I thought it would be. How these vertex things fall into my life equation I have no clue.

Dominick’s typing and scrolling frantically on his phone.
Why did he come here if he just wants to stare at his phone?
I bite my tongue. I understand the need for information with everything going on. I’ve been watching the news and texting with Rita for the past hour. She’s freaking out. I invited her to sleep over tonight since I canceled on her earlier, but her parents said no. They are strict Seventh-day Adventists, and their congregation is having an emergency meeting to warn against the holographic prophets.

“Sorry,” Dominick apologizes while still typing. “I’m looking up the math involved with the vertexes. It’s awesome stuff, except it gets way too advanced for me.”

“It’s okay. I don’t even understand what a parabola has to do with traveling through time and space.”

“The basic principle is like this.” He walks over to a basketball in my driveway. “Watch.” He lets the ball bounce on its own. “Did you see that?”

“See what?” I was too busy watching him look athletic. It’s not a normal look for him.

“How it bounces. Watch again.”

I watch. The ball bounces in a series of hills, slowly getting smaller the more it bounces.

“Did you see it? It moves in a series of parabolas, like the drawing. Energy travels in parabolas all the time. It’s even how microwaves and satellites work.”

While I still don’t completely understand what he’s telling me, I totally appreciate how adorable he looks when he’s inspired.

“The fact that they can keep five hundred vertexes open for six months is crazy. Scientists asked the holograms how they harness enough energy to create a vertex and how they calculate the angle needed to reach a fixed coordinate.” Dominick notices my blank gaze. “How they control the bounce, so to speak. But the holograms said the technology is beyond our current level of understanding.”

I love hearing him passionate about something. Even if that something scares me. I walk over and pull him by his shirt, pressing my lips against his.

When we finally come up for air, he asks, “What were we talking about?”

“The vertexes.” I grin.

“Screw it. The vertexes can wait.”

Chapter 4

Day 4: August—4,330 hours to decide

SCIENTISTS DEBUNK HOLOGRAM HOAX; PRESIDENT LEE CALLS FOR BUSINESS AS USUAL

Two days later,
the same news stories play on the same loop. No new evidence has surfaced. Each day, holograms at five hundred vertex sites across the world have repeated the same recorded message. The only thing that changes is the amount of time they say we have left. Scientists have dismissed their prophecy as “pure fallacy.”

All vertexes are currently under guard, and citizens are being kept at a “safe” distance until the governments across the world decide what to do next, which makes me think they’re still worried about radiation. I store the information in my journal and check my skin for signs of mutation every few hours. Okay, maybe every hour. My temperature, too.

They’ve asked everyone to continue “business as usual.” I don’t know if that’s possible. It’s asking a lot of people to pretend there aren’t giant blue circles glowing all around us with weird holographic people not only from the future, but from a whole other dimension telling us the world is ending and expect that we can continue as if nothing is going on.

Other than that, my life has been pretty normal, or as normal as things can be when the world feels like it’s in a temporary holding pattern.

I'm in the
kitchen, deciding on a quick snack before dinner, when Dad returns from his work as the manager at Stop & Shop carrying a huge cardboard box. Mom holds the door for him as he struggles to bring it inside. As soon as I see it, I know he’s up to something. Major changes always start with minor things.

He heaves it onto the kitchen countertop.

“I come prepared,” he announces.

Mom smiles until she flips open the cardboard flaps and pulls out a can of peaches. “Cans?” she questions. “Why did you bring groceries? Our pantry’s full.”

“Canned food and nonperishables are flying off the shelves. Looks like people are stocking up, just in case. At this rate, the supermarket will be wiped out in no time.”

“But we’re on a budget,” Mom reminds him. “Alex is headed to college next year. I’m only working summer hours.”

Mom works as a secretary at my old elementary school. I can still feel the burning humiliation of the days when I had my mom at school with me. Whenever I’d pass by the main office, she’d wave frantically at me until I waved back. The only times I appreciated it were when I forgot my lunch money or felt sick.

Thinking about school reminds me that my senior year starts in a few weeks.
Do schools stay open while the world’s dealing with a supernatural event?
I mean, nothing’s actually happening.

Maybe the vertex phenomenon will postpone my future. It’s a good stall tactic. I wouldn’t have to make any crucial, life-altering decisions.
What am I thinking?
I’ve been dying to start my adult life. Alexandra Lucas for the Defense, Your Honor.

“Survival is more important than our budget,” Dad explains to Mom. “Even if it all blows over, the panic alone will cause crisis in supply and demand. We need to be prepared.”

She places her hand on his shoulder. It’s not a love tap or a warning. I can tell by the way her fingers curl around his shoulder. She’s holding on instead of patting or touching. There’s a difference, and the difference matters.

“We don’t have space on the shelves,” she says. “You’ll have to keep them in the basement.” Her hand relaxes on his shoulder.

I hate when she compromises with him, acting like he’s listened to her needs even though it’s clear to me that he’s about to spiral out of control. Which makes me feel out of control. How can she not see it?

“Good idea.” He lifts the box, gives her a quick peck on the cheek, and heads toward the basement door. My inner alarm blares with warning, like ants biting me from the inside. Someone has to watch him, make sure he doesn’t jump overboard, and that someone is me.

Mom shrugs and gives me a half-smile. “Can’t live with him, can’t live without him.”

Over the next
five days I notice Dad sneaking more and more boxes of food and supplies into the house when Mom isn’t home. I find them stacked in a corner of the basement covered with blankets and sheets. Soon, an entire side of the basement becomes a ghastly landscape of hidden contraband. I know he’s doing it as a precaution, but planning for the worst makes me expect the worst. The possibilities are harder to ignore.

My parents receive
a call and letter from my school advising all students to return to school in the fall and continue business as usual per the government’s request. They’re probably afraid of poor attendance rates lowering their funding.

Like Dominick said, the holograms’ warning gives us until the end of January to leave or perish. If I stay home and it’s all a hoax, then I will have wasted those months instead of finishing the first half of my senior year. I didn’t plan out the course of my life only to have strange beings from a parallel future lie to the world and prevent me from graduating on time.

But what if they’re telling the truth?
I didn’t want to think about it yet, and here it is, staring me in the face.
How do I plan if the world might end? How do I plan for the unknown?

I run to the bathroom and spend the next fifteen minutes sitting on the toilet. Another side effect. When life turns, so does my stomach.

The next day,
the United Nations makes a decision: citizens will be allowed access to the holograms to ask questions. Knowing that the decision may create mob scenes at vertex sites, the UN has built a website to provide a constantly updated list of all the questions asked, along with the holograms’ answers. They’re hoping people will search for answers online rather than seek out a crowded vertex site.

If they are letting people near it, it’s probably safe. I can stop checking and double-checking my body for symptoms of death.

I want to ask more questions. Lots of them. I need to see it again, wrap my mind around its existence so my experience doesn’t feel like a bizarre dream.

Even though my parents and Rita’s parents have forbidden it, Dominick, Rita, and I decide to go see the vertex in Quincy anyway. Dominick can pretty much do whatever he wants since his mother is so busy between work and taking care of Dominick’s younger brother, Austin. She’s lucky Dominick’s such a good kid.

Rita arrives at my house and comes inside to change. Her parents don’t let her wear jewelry or makeup or real clothes, so throughout high school she’s developed the habit of changing clothes in bathrooms. She steps out of my bathroom wearing a black blouse, black shorts, and black flats. What makes the outfit pop is her neon-green beaded necklace and matching earrings.

“Check me out. Alien chic.” She poses in the doorway while I snap a photo of us.

My clothes are anything but chic. Purple cotton tee and jean shorts, gray Converse sneakers. Typical American chic, if that’s a thing. I’d rather blend in than stick out.

We pick up Dominick and start our journey to the site. Rita drives so she can have full rights to the music selection. She brings along a playlist to set the right mood. I have to give her credit—she did her research. We’re jamming to Five Man Electrical Band’s “I’m a Stranger Here.” I’ve never heard the song before, but it’s hilarious with everything that’s happening in the world. A minute ago it was Radiohead’s “Subterranean Homesick Alien” and Katy Perry’s “E.T.” Next up on her list is Will Smith’s “Men in Black” and Blink 182’s “Aliens Exist.”

Rita sings obnoxiously out the driver’s side window. I look at Dominick stuck in the backseat. He’s grinning and looking at his phone. It’s nice to have one loud friend and one quiet one. Balances things out. It’s even nicer that they get along.

Rita screams lyrics at a family crawling past us in a Jeep while her jet-black hair swirls in the wind.

The mother in the Jeep gives Rita the another-wasted-teenager-on-drugs look. Little does she know Rita’s stone-cold sober. Drunk, she’s actually less fun and usually vomits and falls asleep.

“Alex,” Rita says, “remember that night when we slept in the tent in your backyard and told stories with flashlights?”

I laugh. Good times. “Yeah, remember Benji scaring the crap out of us?”

“Yes, that’s what I was going to say! He kept insisting that some flashing lights in the sky were a spaceship, and we totally believed him.”

“He said they would come down and suck our brains out. Then he kept making freaky suction noises all night. Typical Benji, trying to drive me nuts. I had nightmares for weeks.”

Dominick chuckles in the backseat.

“Leave Private Benjamin alone,” Rita says. “I’m gonna marry that boy someday.”

“Yeah, in another dimension maybe,” I say. Benji thinks everything that comes out of Rita’s mouth is petty and gossipy and loud. It’s funny that what makes him dislike her is exactly why I like her.

“Weird that we are actually dealing with something extraterrestrial,” she says. “I just want to look the thing in the eye, see what all the fuss is about.”

“Is your church still freaking out?” I ask.

“Oh yeah. They’ve forbidden any discussion of traveling through them. They believe that Jesus will save us in the Second Coming, not holographic humans from a parallel future. They’d rather us die.”

Same as my dad’s philosophy, strangely enough. Who knew Dad would ever see eye to eye with a religion?

Dominick laughs out of context from the backseat.

“What’s so funny?” I ask. I turn around and see him reading off his phone.

“Sorry, it’s just that people are asking the holograms the weirdest questions,” he says.

“Like what?” I ask.

“Like ‘Can we bring pets?’”

“What’s the answer?” Rita asks.

Dominick scrolls down the screen and grins. “They said, and I quote, ‘No. Although our photosonic filters are prepared to eliminate malignant human bacteria and viruses from the past, we cannot successfully integrate all of the possible animal species from your planet without knowing how they will interact with our ecosystem. We are sorry for any hardship it may cause.’”

“That’s rough,” Rita says. “I can’t bring Dobby.”

Dobby is her feral cat. At least, Dominick and I think he’s feral since he attacked us the few times we tried to enter her house. Despite his behavior, she loves him anyway.

Dominick continues. “Next question. ‘What kind of food do you have?’”

“Ooh, that’s a good one,” I say. “What if they eat gross Klingon food?”

“Blah, blah, blah,
Star Trek,”
Rita whines.

Dominick ignores her. “Answer: ‘We have high standards for optimal nutrition. We provide mostly fruit, grains, and vegetables through rations three times a day. Meat is a rare delicacy.’”

Rita beeps the horn as another driver cuts her off. “My parents will freak that they have something in common with the holograms.”

Rations.
The word carries the weight of desperation with it and hits me in the gut.

Dominick goes quiet as he scrolls through questions.

“You’ll have to read through these later,” he says. “There are so many already. Some of these are awesome. Like this one. ‘What about money? Do you have a monetary system?’ Their answer? ‘We do not have a monetary system. Everything is free and open.’”

“What the hell does that mean?” Rita asks.

“That means anyone who is rich here will never want to live there,” Dominick says.

Dad was right. They do sound like communists.

After being stuck
in Boston vertex traffic for the next two hours and fighting a massive parking nightmare, we still have to walk for another mile to get even a glimpse of the vertex. When neither of them is watching, I swallow a pill.

Soldiers from the National Guard and U.S. Army form a perimeter around the vertex, surrounded by other local police and media conglomerates. The public stands outside a roped boundary. My chest tightens at the sight of the crowd surrounding the vertex. I take a deep breath for five counts, hold it for two, let it out slowly, and repeat. The holograms said it is an individual’s choice whether to go or stay. The government said we could ask our own questions. How are we ever supposed to get close enough through all the hoopla?

Rita is speechless. Even from a distance she’s impressed. By making the vertexes taboo, her church may be inadvertently pushing her toward believing the holograms.

Dominick stays quiet, staring at his phone. I hug his arm. He looks up at me, and I swear I can suddenly picture him as a child. His eyes twinkle with innocence and excitement, like when a kid discovers that baking soda and vinegar react when mixed.

“What is it?” I ask.

“They have a meritocracy.”

“What the heck is a—whatever you just said?” Rita asks.

“Question,” he reads aloud again from his phone, “‘What type of government system do you have?’ Answer: ‘We have a planetary meritocracy. We believe the most qualified person from each field should rule, not the most popular, for the benefit of the planet. We have an elaborate, holistic testing system in place to find the most qualified people in every major field, including creative and more physical domains, to represent the people. Our meritocracy consists of one thousand one members at a time, and they must be reexamined every three years. Anyone can take an exam, at any age, every three years. The top person on each test earns a voting seat.’”

“That’s better than our system,” Rita says. “Remember when Angie beat you for class president? I mean, come on.”

Dominick secures his glasses in place. “Thank you for reminding me of my failures.”

“I meant it as a compliment. If she had to take a test, she totally would’ve failed.”

He grins. “True.”

We move as close to the hologram and vertex as we can manage. It reminds me of the time Rita and I switched seats at a Paramore concert by sneaking closer and closer to the stage. But the main attraction isn’t a hot guy in tight jeans strumming on a guitar, or a girl with multicolored hair belting out a high note while the stage lights up behind her. No, this is just plain weird.