Elastic Collisions
One might assume that Arthur is my teacher, because of his advanced age and my relative youth, but we are nothing of the sort. One might guess we are brothers, because of the similar bulge in the tips of our noses, but that is also untrue. He is not my father, nor I his child. Arthur and I are colleagues, collaborators, conspirators, and consorts.
Our fingers dance in practiced rhythm across a great machine. We move gears and press levers, careful not to become tangled in the vicious spinning works. The machine is more ancient than the stars and has also not been invented yet.
Arthur and I have always worked in tandem. His deliberate motions emerge from wisdom while my agile choices spring from the plasticity of youth. We operate in constant tension. I sigh heavily and hasten his languid stratagems. He tsks out loud and overrules my sweeping changes. Together, we tweak the lines of time, moving seats of power, saving future leaders from childhood accidents, and sacrificing villages to save nations.
In the rare instances when the timelines are quiet—after treaties have been signed and bellies are full—we steal an intimate moment to ourselves. Arthur's slightest touch can ignite a fire within me. He knows all the pressure points that cause my brain to short circuit. He anticipates my every desire. I never have to ask.
The machine pings a despot’s initial rise to power, but we linger for one last moment in each other’s arms. Lying in the dark, dizzy and slick, my thumb grazes the stub of Arthur’s torn ear. The edge is a ragged half-circle that looks as if it’s been bitten off by a ravenous creature.
“Time to work,” he whispers into my collarbone.
I’m more exhausted than before our respite, but Arthur’s eyes twinkle with the energy of youth. It hasn’t escaped my notice that he seems younger all the time. His skin feels more tumescent beneath my fingers and his breath comes faster and less laboriously each time we make love.
Back at the machine, I tweak the timeline to undo a global pandemic and save a million lives. Arthur pretends not to notice my flirting. When he executes a deft merger between three alternate realities, resulting in the accidental death of a fascist ruler before he comes to power, I know he’s showing off for me. I lean forward to tell him so and the machine grabs at my robe, drawing my head into its spinning jaws.
Two unstoppable gears catch my right ear between them. Their teeth mash together, tearing away cartilage and lobe. Arthur's face crumples in agony. He yanks me back. I drip blood into the works, setting off a barbarous genocide. I can barely draw a breath through the blinding pain. Arthur cradles my head, allowing pestilence to claim ten thousand while he presses a bandage to my ear. I clutch the side of my head, dizzy and slick.
“You could have warned me,” I gasp.
“You never do,” he replies.
There are no mirrors in this place, so I peel away the bandage and run my thumb along the sticky wound. The gears have bitten out a ragged semi-circle. Arthur watches my widening eyes with patient amusement.
“We’re the same,” I say.
“We are,” says Arthur. “We have always been and always will be. One moving forward, one moving back. So it was and so it will be infinitely.”
I reach out with bloody fingers and spin the gears with a ferocity that escalates a tense standoff into a Great War. Arthur reaches past me and gently undoes the damage.
“Is our labor a punishment?” I ask.
Arthur laughs loudly and the gears wobble on their axes… the genocide ends, a cure for the pestilence is discovered, and ten thousand babies are conceived. “You’ll see,” he says, pressing his cool lips to my burning temple.
© 2021 TJ Berry
About the Author
TJ Berry has been a political blogger, bakery owner, and spent a disastrous two weeks working in a razor blade factory. She now writes science fiction, fantasy, and horror from Los Angeles with considerably fewer on-the-job injuries. Author of Space Unicorn Blues and Five Unicorn Flush. She’s on Twitter @TJBerry.