"We’re high enough to clear the tops of the sailboats, then we just fly over the lake till we’re slow enough to splash down. The monks got scientists to figure everything out."
I strapped myself in and thought about things for a while. "If we go shooting off real fast, isn’t it going to hurt? I mean, the astronauts get all pressed down when they lift off..."
"Jeez!" Muffin groaned. "Don’t you know the difference between momentum and acceleration? Nothing’s happening to us, it’s everything else that’s going weird. We don’t feel a thing."
"Not even wind?"
"The air has the same momentum we do, dummy."
I thought about it some more. "Aren’t the buildings going to get wrecked when the earth stops?"
"They’re going to stop too. Everything will freeze except us."
"The air and water freeze too?"
"In spots. But not where we’re going."
"We’re special?"
"We’re special."
Suddenly there was a roar like roller-coaster wheels underneath us and for a moment I was pressed up against the straps holding me down on the seat. Then the pressure stopped and there was nothing but the sound of wind a long way off. Over the side of the boat I could see water rushing by beneath us. We were climbing.
"Muffin," I asked, "should one of us maybe be piloting this thing?"
"It’s got a gyroscope or something. The monks worked absolutely everything out, okay?"
"Okay."
A long way off to the right, I could see a lake freighter with a curl of smoke coming out of its stack. The smoke didn’t move. It looked neat. "Nice warm day," I said.
After a while, we started playing car games to pass the time.
The sun shone but didn’t move. "If the sun stays there forever," I asked, "won’t it get really hot after a while?"
"Nah," Muffin answered. "It’s some kind of special deal. I mean, it’s stupid if you set up a nice picture of kids playing in the park but then it gets hot as Mercury."
"Who’s going to know?" I asked.
"It’s not the same," she insisted.
"How can we see?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, is the light moving or what?"
"It’s another special deal."
That made sense. From the way Dad talked about physics, light was always getting special deals.
The water below us gradually stopped racing away so fast and we could sometimes see frozen whitecaps on the peaks of frozen waves. "Suppose we land on frozen water," I said.
"We won’t."
"Oh. Your turn."
"I spy with my little eye something that begins with B." Right away I knew she meant the Big Macs, but I had to pretend it was a toughie. You have to humor little kids.
We splashed down within sight of a city on the far side of the lake. It was a really good splash, like the one on the Zoomba Flume ride when you get to the bottom of the big long water chute. Both of us got drenched. I was kind of sad there was no way to do it again.
Then I thought to myself, maybe if we were getting a special deal on air and water and light and all, maybe we’d get a special deal on the Zoomba Flume too.
We unstrapped ourselves and searched around a bit. Finally we found a lid that slid back to open up a control panel with a little steering wheel and all. We pushed buttons till an inboard motor started in the water behind us, then we took turns driving toward shore. Every now and then we’d see a gull frozen in the sky, wings spread out and looking great.
We put in at a public beach just outside the city. It had been early in the day and the only people in sight were a pair of joggers on a grassy ridge that ran along the edge of the sand. The man wore nothing but track shorts and sunglasses; the woman wore red stretch pants, a T-shirt, and a headband. They each had Walkmans and were stopped midstride. Both were covered with deep dark tans, and as Muffin pointed out, a thin coat of sweat.
I wanted to touch the joggers to see what they felt like, but when my finger got close, it bumped against an invisible layer of frozen air. The air didn’t feel like anything, it was just solid stuff.
Down at one end of the beach, a teenage girl was frozen in the act of unlocking the door into a snack stand. We squeezed past her and found out we could open the freezer inside. Muffin had a couple of Popsicles, I had an ice cream sandwich, and then we went swimming.
Lying in the sun afterward, I asked Muffin what was going to happen next.
"You want to go swimming again?" she said.
"No, I mean after."
"Let’s eat," she said, dragging me back toward the boat.
"You can’t wiggle out of it that easy," I told her. "Are we the only ones left?"
"I think so."
"Are we going to freeze too?"
"Nope. We got a special deal."
"But it seems pretty stupid if you ask me. Everything’s kind of finished, you know? Show’s over. Why are we still hanging around?"
"For a new show, dummy."
"Oh." That made sense. "Same sort of thing?"
"We’ll see."
"Oh. Where do we fit in?"
Muffin smiled at me. "You’re here to keep me company."
"And what are you here for?"
"Everything else. Get me a sandwich."
I reached into the basket and pulled out the sandwich on top. It was inside a plastic sandwich bag. "Didn’t we wrap these in waxed paper?" I asked.
Muffin laughed.
Author’s Notes
This is my most reprinted story, based on an idea I’d had for years before I finally found the right way to put it together. Believe it or not, the first time I tried to write a story on this premise, it was a sordid tale about a shipwrecked sailor and a dockside whore. I won’t even try to explain how the one story changed into the other — I like Muffin too much to sully her reputation.
Incidentally, this was the first story in which I decided to have fun with the title. Science fiction stories typically have terse no-nonsense titles... and for a long time, I thought titles like that were absolutely necessary if you wanted to be taken seriously as a writer. Finally, of course, I realized what a ridiculous notion that was — not only did many great stories have out-and-out florid titles, but one doesn't always want to be "serious" anyway. Therefore, I chucked out my preconceptions on what titles "must" be and have felt better ever since.