Newt Run
Auld
The future is contained in the present. This is something Auld has never doubted. For him, time exists as a single point. It is a seed, continually fertilized by the endless and eternal occurrence of events. There is no difference between what is going to happen and what is happening: they are one, and so in standing in the present, he is also in the future.
On the night of the 17th he leans against the wall of the chamber, protected from the coming explosion by a small outcropping of rock. He watches C jump from the edge of the pit, and the two agents from the Institute as they bring their hands to clasps fastened at their jackets: the cavern erupts in a roaring violence of fire and cut rock and blood, but the two of them remain untouched, encased in spherical bubbles of still air.
The chamber settles in a scattering of rocks and the slow, downward drift of orange-tinted dust and powder. A low humming persists in the air until the agents tap their clasps once more, killing it. They begin to pick their way through the rubble, the crunch of their boots loud in the infant silence.
"Look at the vats," says the taller one, pointing to where the row of plastic containers had stood next to the pit. All but two of them are gone, overturned or ruptured in the explosion and sent tumbling into the river below.
"Fuck," mutters the shorter man.
"You think they planned this?"
"Of course they did."
"Do you hear that?" The shorter man tilts his head to listen. A sound like the moaning of an injured animal is coming from one of the overturned vats. Behind it they discover a man lying on his back, one leg pinioned under the weight of a container. The end of a metal brace juts from a deep gouge in his side, and the man gazes up at them dully, a steady trickle of blood seeping from the wound. He struggles to breathe, and coughs, a line of reddish spit dribbling from his chin.
"Who are you?" asks the taller agent. The wounded man attempts to focus.
"Inter-7 A," he responds. The taller agent laughs, but the shorter one frowns and bends down to examine the man's side.
"That's a nasty cut you have there," he says. Taking the brace, he twists it sharply in his hand. The man gasps, his face contorting in pain. He stares at the agents with hollow eyes, his breathing ragged. His skin is the colour of old newsprint.
"What are you doing here?" asks the agent, and he twists the brace again, causing more blood to spurt from the wound. "Do you work for Tanning?"
"Tanning?" the man gasps. "No, I..."
He spasms shortly, his thin lips pulling back from blood-streaked teeth.
"I don't work," he says. "I was using it, to get out, but now... now it's gone."
He opens his eyes then, as if he's only just realized what he's saying.
"It's gone," he whispers again.
"What's gone?" presses the taller agent, but the man on the ground can no longer hear him.
The shorter agent stands up.
"We'll run the alias later," he says.
"Could be his real name," remarks the taller one, smiling faintly. The older agent ignores him.
"What do you think he meant by working with 'it' – the outsider's group?"
"No," replies the shorter man. "You remember that distortion just before the blast?"
"Yes."
"Do you see it now?"
The taller agent adjusts the right lens his goggles, twisting the outside edge by 45 degrees.
"It's gone," he says. "What do you think it was?"
Rather than answering, the shorter agent leans over the pit. Below him there is only darkness, and the distant sound of rushing water. All that's left of the portal they'd worked for months to build are a few ruptured vats and a number of cables that trail from the edge like severed veins.
"What do you think the chances are this river flows into the town's water table?" asks the shorter agent.
"Very good I'd say," says the taller one. "And the chances the outsiders knew that?"
"What do you think?"
The smaller agent straightens up. He kicks a pile of rock and powder over the pit edge and watches it disappear into the gloom.
"You think this was their plan?" asks the taller agent
"His plan, not theirs. Everything that asshole does is mapped out for him. He's just playing out the string, you know that."
The taller agent nods.
"And now instead of a few drug pushers and students – "
"We'll have a whole town that can see the fuckers," the shorter agent completes the thought.
"So what do we do?"
"We count bodies."
"You don't think we'll find him here do you?"
"Auld?" sneers the shorter agent. "Do you?"
Unnoticed by either of the two men, Auld slips from his hiding spot and out of the chamber. He moves quickly through the dark tunnels, coming at last to an old service elevator. The clang as its doors open and the creaking of its gears is enough to make him cringe. His breath comes quick and shallow, and his heart is pounding within his chest. His eyes dart from one corner of the elevator to another, tracking the slow, upward drift of lights bolted to the walls beside the shaft; for the first time since he arrived in Newt Run he is afraid.
The agents were wrong – almost nothing is mapped out for Auld, not anymore. He shuts his eyes, caught in the implacable grip of the present. His foresight is gone, and with it all responsibility. There is only one thing left, the final act that he can still see ahead of him, shining like a pearl of light at the end of a dim passage.
The elevator comes to a shuddering halt, and Auld exits the mines. He moves between the deserted loading bays and company offices to the fence at the edge of the compound. From there, he makes his way down the cable tracks to the woods. He sits down in the frigid darkness with his back to a tree. Within minutes he is asleep.