On the floor of that vast space was a machine the size of a battleship.
Farley felt sudden vertigo at the unexpected vista. The railed platform seemed precarious and insubstantial. He pressed back against the opened door.
Beside him a voice said, “Here.” He looked to see a woman pushing a wheeled chair into the doorway. Wennda? What was she doing here? He hadn’t seen her in years. No, that wasn’t right. He had just been with her. Where had he been with her?
Wennda left the chair in the doorway and Farley stepped away from the door. It swung and stopped against the chair. Wennda stepped out onto the platform and gasped at the view. She clutched the railing and Farley grabbed her shoulders. They looked down upon the great machine.
It seemed to float above the flat stone acreage, an island unto itself. Countless components, disks, rings, cables, pipes, a band of something like giant pegboard set with evenly spaced staples the size of goalposts. The whole conglomeration forming a series of nested cylinders telescoping horizontally out into this vast space. The larger end was surrounded by a vertical octagonal framework set with jointed silver ducts banded with bright orange and wound around with miles of bare copper wire like an electric hub motor. The enormous octagon did not touch the cylinder at any point, and Farley saw nothing supporting it. It seemed to float before the huge machine. The green glow that now suffused everything was painfully bright in the empty center of the octagon, though from where Farley stood the nested cylinders blocked its source.
Wennda pointed down the stairs. Far below them a lone figure descended.
Motion made Farley glance at the door. He saw Wennda push a workstation chair into the doorway. He saw himself let go of the door. Saw the door stop against the chair.
Farley shook his head. What the hell?
At the rail he pulled Wennda closer. The smell of her hair. She turned her head and pointed down the stairs. Far below a lone figure descended.
Wennda motioned that they should follow. Farley nodded. Neither of them spoke. As if it were too loud to talk. He set a hand on the rail and went down the stairs as fast as he could. Wennda’s steps behind him. There was no wind but Farley felt he faced into a howling gale. He slowed. Was he climbing? It felt like he was going up.
Far below Yone continued his descent.
Farley looked back at Wennda. She pointed down the stairs. The door stopped against the chair. The smell of her hair.
Farley halted and grabbed the rail and closed his eyes and took a deep breath. I’m here. I’m Joseph Farley. Wennda is here with me. We are trying to get our friend Yone back so we can leave here.
Pounding on the diamondplate steps. Farley opened his eyes to see Wennda catching up to him. Her eyes wide in surprise. “Joe?” she said. Not asking if he were okay. Asking if it were really him. How long has it been for her just now?
He heard himself say, “We should go back.”
Near the bottom of the stairs Yone vaulted the railing. Farley watched him from far away on the field-sized floor, aware of the mass of the machine behind him. On the narrow staircase higher up stood two figures. One of them was Wennda. The other was Joe Farley.
When did we get down here? How did we get ahead of Yone? Of—ourselves?
“What’s happening?”
Farley turned at Wennda’s voice. The machine loomed like a metal cloud behind her. Cradled by a gantry that could have held a zeppelin. As Farley watched, the entire machine seemed to come apart like an exploded-view drawing. Millions of pieces and no two touching. Farley felt drawn thin. The pieces came together. The door stopped against the chair. Yone vaulted the rail.
“It looks like a dynamo!” Farley told Wennda as they hurried down the stairs.
“I don’t know what that is!” Wennda shouted back.
The green light was so much brighter here on the floor of the cavernous space. It flickered in the center of the octagon that floated at the wider end of the machine. Power. Distortion. Intent. Here was the source.
Farley looked for Wennda but she was gone. The machine was gone. He stood alone on the floor of an artificial cavern that was larger than any building he had ever seen. No pipes, no beams, no staircase slanting down the cliff of wall. Just green light and empty space and one man. And a sense of immeasurable time, brittle decay, inert dissolution.
“Wennda?” Farley said into the dark.
“Here.” Wennda pushed a workstation chair into the doorway. There was no wind but Farley felt he faced into a howling gale. “Joe?” she said, but did not seem to know him.
Joe. My name is Joseph Mayhew Farley. I’m right here. We should go back.
The green light strobed and Joe Farley shielded his eyes and leaned into it as he struggled forward. Yone vaulted the rail. The door hit the chair.
Something touched his arm and it was Wennda and he loved her and he was an old man lonely without her all these years and he told Shorty how he saw the woman that he wanted painted on his bomber and he sat at the controls at the end of his long life and wondered if there lived still in the air some path that could lead back to her. “I’m a memory of the future,” she told him. “An echo across time.” And then the sun came on.
A small man stood before him. Scabbed face, limpid eyes, filthy jumpsuit. A weak man to all appearances, and yet Farley knew otherwise. He did not seem to see Farley but stared at some point past him, tracking something moving like a cat seeing a ghost. Farley turned to look but there was nothing there. Green light and an empty cavern and a sense of brittle time.
“Where are we?” Farley asked. “Where’s Wennda?”
“We are at the heart of the locus,” Yone said. “I am so glad you found me.” He started to walk but Farley moved in his way.
“Why did you come here?” Farley asked. He waved to indicate the vast and empty space.
“I was called.” A religious fervor on his injured face. “We were called here.”
“You said they made a god.”
“Did I? How embarrassing.” He did not look embarrassed. His eyes were bright. “I believe I was not entirely in my right mind. The locus seems to be affecting us. Our brains. Maybe reality. How would one know which?”
Farley held up a hand. “Just help me find Wennda so we can get the hell out of here.”
To Farley’s surprise Yone put both hands on Farley’s arms and bowed his head. “My friend,” he said, “there is nothing in this world that I want more.”
“But how do we get back?” Farley asked, glancing around the featureless space. “Where did everything go?”
Yone stepped back and looked up. Farley thought of Wennda looking at the artificial sky and shouting I want more time! He looked up at the cavern sky and closed his eyes.
You can’t prepare yourself. There’s no deep breath to take, no armor to put on. Whatever god you pray to when the flak begins to burst can hold no jurisdiction here. Here the time is all a box of jumbled letter blocks. You must hold on to your sense of sequence, distill If A then B. Connect effects with causes to discern the proper order. The time fragments, reality fragments. You fragment. A bunch of chemicals organized into cells. A jumble arranged by the movement of time. Alive and aware and affecting. Actions matter every bit as much as chance. Hold onto that. To you. To Wennda. Your sense of her. Her face on the ship that brought you here. You are connected.