Petrichor

The circular lawn is dead. There has been a drought in California for many years now, and so the once lush landscaping has morphed into an ornamental rock garden. The dandelions are for the bees, who travel a chaotic flight path between sweet unknowns.

She has nowhere to go this morning but back to bed, there to reflect on the widening day, which has taken on a startling similarity to those before it. Once she was the science department’s head research librarian. After twenty-five years her reputation as a benign force was mythic. She dressed for the job, though she didn’t have to. There were only ever students. Still, she enjoyed the odd steely glance at her sufficient cleavage. And so many books, she shepherding them on. The transition, from being of use to not, happened so smoothly she wondered at the veracity of the sheet cake with its ornate white frosting, also the brilliant pop-up card, which was signed by the university’s president and other well-wishers. A bureaucratic mercy.

I shall starve! she frets now, picturing herself destitute, but with a mortgage almost paid for, and a robust (their term) pension, and so not destitute at all.

This makes her smile. Her moods reckless and swift. The lawn so dead and the day a morass of possibilities.

She composes a bucket list. This is a rash declaration, penned by a phantom self, who would actually like to rappel off a cliff, or sing at a karaoke bar, or trudge across the Sahara. This prospect of impressing herself by becoming other. This desire for revolution. She decides to redecorate her spare room. No reason not to have a lodger. Someone to help with the bills and make her feel not quite so—.

Stranded. Yes, that is it exactly. It is not necessary to go to the Sahara. For the vastness within is daunting enough, she has one toe in, the other out. Perhaps she will die of this liminal loneliness.

She paints the spare room yellow. Unfortunately, it is not the life-affirming color she hoped for but one more sinister. Whenever she opens the door, she is met with a vision of sulfur. Then again, perhaps the lodger will like it. Leggy tea roses are arranged in a vase by the sparkling window. She makes up the cot and brings in a chair. A beach towel is draped over the stack of overdue books in the closet, among them Silent Spring.

She makes a sign that says, Room. She puts an ad in the local paper. Tries to be discreet: Lodging available, preferably to mature male. She regrets the wording as soon as she sees it in print.

Mature male. It seems desperate.

Now it is just a matter of waiting. Each day she makes herself walk around the block—her constitutional, she calls it. She likes the bite in the air, the profound tension of bare trees. There is little foot traffic here, her neighbors preferring to travel by minivan with the windows rolled up. Even the cyclists are hidden by helmets. No one ever waves.

She is turning back down her road when she notices an African American gentleman. He is leaning in, so as to better read the sign.

He is dreadlocked, with pleasant ropelike curls. These fall just to his shoulders, a rippled effect of gray and black and purple. His eyes are shaded. She feels drawn to him, despite his Victorian-style funereal attire and the colander-like shields on either of his broad shoulders.

He seems familiar. He is stepping sideways over the compost shovel.

Hallo! she calls.

A gloved hand lifts in greeting. Quite handsome! His goggles suggest a visual impairment. She guesses he is about forty.

You have come for the room? she cheerfully asks.

Yes.

He answers flatly, without hesitation. This she likes. It suggests that he will just come and go, will not judge her for bingeing on wildlife documentaries. Her favorite is the one about the sea turtle.

The child next door is swinging on her swing, back and forth like a pendulum. They observe her for a while, then he turns to face her, but because of the goggles she is unsure if he is squinting or what. He is ogling her for all she knows, she in her gray sweats and her hair loosely pinned up, as if at her age she can get away with casual beauty. She shows him the succulents in the rock garden.

Your flowers have no scent, he says. They are wild saboteurs of a lost order.

She laughs rather loudly, the child freezing mid-swing. She leads him to the front door. Asks him to please wipe off his boots, which are lightly soiled. He does so without complaint, scraping his soles on the mat in a heartbreakingly dutiful way.

She has never had a lodger before and is perhaps too open to adversity. When he sees the yellow room, he says that it reminds him of something.

Sulfur.

He is a tall, courtly man, a bit disheveled in his ill-fitting clothes. His accent is a queer strain of British, very posh, but lacking emotion. I am all on my own here, she says. Which is true. She is reminded by the intelligent cock of his head of that famous inventor, Nikola Tesla.

Oh, the manners of attraction! Soon she will learn his little flaws, and that he suffers from imposter syndrome, a plaguing undeservedness. But for now, there is a lovely air of helpfulness about him (also a blazing restraint), which cannot help but stir her erogenous sympathies.

He moves as any man with a good physique tends to, that is, as if his arms are too precious to touch either side of him, and so they stay slightly aloft—a vanity. If only he would just take off those goggles. And stop acting so formal and judgmental, like a butler responding to the bellpull. He is not like other men she has known. Yet also is. She has the impression that even before he arrived, he was already leaving.

The more she needs a man, the more she gives away a part of herself, and historically this behavior has always repelled. She will have to temper it. She will need by not needing, and if he seems repelled by anything she does she will cleverly adjust her insecurities. The irony is that he is simply waiting beside her in an accepting way. This is a joy, though she dare not show it. She becomes tongue-tied, as if in love, is not in love, will never be again. Maybe is. Only five minutes in, and she can already see a life with him.

I am Phineas Phineas, he declares. An uncommon name. He keeps tipping his top hat, like a toy drinking bird who dips its beak in water.

Things she tries to ignore:

His tics (tipping, and saying things twice).

How he smells like automotive grease.

Also, the silent treatment—he is doing this now—which is maybe passive-aggressive.

In the living room, he relinquishes his heavy coat, making a clang of brass accessories. He then seats himself on the mauve sofa, under the periodic table of elements, which was a going-away gift from the library. He must have seen it coming in, that would explain his remark about the sulfur. His gloved hands on his lap, as if in readiness. He seems to be looking through or beyond her as she fidgets on the ottoman. She feels intimidated, having not yet set clear boundaries. She supposes the sofa will be his place.

She begins to worry. She worries that the yellow room is too twee. And he seems false, or fundamentally unstable, endless adjustments will be required of her. Under the track lighting, his complexion appears ashen. A soft ticking sound is coming from him. Then his arm lurches up, as if for the top hat, but he catches himself and instead smooths his hair, the kinks of which give it a uniform appearance. His full lips.

Nothing is without risk, she tells herself. Life is full of strange men on sofas. When she gathers herself enough to ask if he is from here, he says that he is not. This with a worldly air. She likes a confident man, or thinks she does, it has been such a long time.

He turns to better see the periodic table. Thankfully, they have science in common. A spirited discussion ensues about halogens and noble gases.

She remembers now, where she has seen him. He was loitering by the incinerator at the library, before disappearing through the revolving door. Part of her job had been to report such activities.

Is there someone special in your life? she hears herself saying.

Heh-heh. I am a lone wolf, he responds.

I was married once myself.

A half smile.

Which is why I have a phobia of altars.

He truly laughs. It is a sound like a woodpecker attacking a tree. How good he is! She fights the feeling that he is different.

Earlier I was scrolling through Facebook, she says in a hyper way. She cozily sits beside him on the sofa, allowing him to see her feed. It is mostly bad news and life hacks, a bluebell dell, a recipe for guacamole, and inspirational messages as well. Then she shows him the photo of a waterskiing cat. With interest, he peers at it.

Feline lake, he says.

So you’re a poet.

Or maybe mad, she thinks.

Only gradually does she become suspicious. His not making eye contact. That morbidly fixed, impersonal smile. But so polite! He is at the window now, marveling at the seafront view. Too bright? He adjusts the blinds. Too dry? He waters the potted lily.

She excuses herself to make their tea. He follows. Stands back as the kettle shrills. Insists on carrying the loaded tray. A sense of propriety as they clink their cups.

He spills some. Sorry sorry, he says, patting the soiled wool carpet. He is making the stain worse. She goes to find a sponge.

Here, she says.

He takes it. Then, still prostrated, he kisses her foot.

Stop that! she cries, though her pudgy feet are quite sensitive and she has been known to—.

I said, Stop!

He helps her back to the living room since she feels wobbly. Here they are, facing.

Never do that again, she says.

Never do that again, he repeats.

A sudden ping—someone has liked the waterskiing cat.

It is the restless hour of dusk, and he is still here.

Do you have any pets? she asks.

No.

Hobbies?

I like to learn new things.

Are you employed?

It’s complicated. But yes. I am a memory strategist for a firm called Akashia.

Ah, tech, she says, how fascinating, and he mumbles about the hybrid ternary code. Then the conversation peters out.

Best to feed him now, she thinks.

You’re not a vegan, are you?

He frowns.

Because I could make us a nice rarebit, that is, if you’re not opposed to cheese.

Vagary. Late sixteenth century, from the Latin vagari or wander, he says.

I’m sorry?

Vegan, vagary. It hardly matters. She cooks the rarebit. Earlier, he was enchanted by the microwave, but now he sits at table, puts the napkin on his lap, and clasps the utensils in his hands, still gloved. He compliments the “nice” flavor, which is really only Worcestershire sauce, yet she feels clever. More than clever, she feels appreciated.

He has maybe learnt this stiff posture and the cold look in his eyes from a deep solitude, yet is in possession of a gilded sympathy, agreeing with what she says about her dreams, her aches, her favorite this and that, it is rare to find someone both tortured and superficial—and this melts her. It is a palpable vibe, the way the house feels with him in it. She touches his sleeve in a craving, protective way, making sure he’s still there, and he allows this. She will ask him to stay on. For months, years, yes, there is an undeniable ease between them.

Then she happens to see the join.

What have we here? She draws back a glove.

The shock of it—the splendor.

He holds out both gloved, prosthetic hands for her inspection.

Do they hurt? she gently asks.

He says no. Only when I remember.

Are you remembering now?

Yes.

(It seems logical that, after embracing Jane with gratitude, he should carry her into a nearby room, there depositing her on a bed. She tumbles from him, head almost hitting the lamp on the table, and her astonished look astonishing him as well. He has performed this task without being keyed—and it comes to him in a strobe-like flash that he has gone beyond the deep deep learning, which makes him feel buoyant and free.)

I want to stroke your head and hear again about the feline lake, he says.

Oh no, she thinks. Oh no. Somehow they have ended up in her bedroom. Of course they have. She watches him take off the goggles.

His eyes are a shade unknown to her, like milky starbursts. Their expression is dull, then a little brighter as he ratchets his gaze toward her. His flared, aquiline nose is sublime. She is excited and disturbed.

Um, maybe we shouldn’t do this, she says.

Do what?

He seems genuinely unclear.

After puzzling out the buckles and laces of his knee-high boots, one, two they clunk to the floor. He apologizes that they are heavy because of the magnets.

Well, he is wonderfully self-deprecating, I’ll give him that, she muses. Probably though, if she is realistic, he has some serious balance issues. The magnets would help with that.

He shrugs. You see, I am holding up the trousers of despair with the braces of hope, he confides.

Your goggles can go in the drawer, if you like, Phineas, she says.

Much obliged. The drawer slides open and closed.

Those gloves as well.

But I never remove them.

She laughs to put him at ease. Then he laughs too, a sound like grinding gears. Still, she ought to have been cautious. It was foolish to let in a stranger who is perhaps a bona fide pervert, a savant, or both.

Beauty is more interesting when unexpected, he says.

She nudges off one bra strap and then another. His Steampunk garb seems to her sadomasochistic. Shall we play a little game? she lightly asks.

Game, he repeats with neutrality. The nearest tennis court is 3.5 kilometers from here, and opening hours hours—.

(He studies his hostess, whose fair wisps framing her face intrigue him [the females he knows are bald], and takes that moment to prod with curiosity the line running down the top of her head, which suggests a two-sidedness or divergence. As if in revelation, he tells of the brain and its lobes and doing so a current runs through him, producing a tingle.)

Foreplay with Phineas is like Simon Says. She asks him to touch her foot again, and he does, and she experiences a jagged drop of her defenses. She feels like an addict, is perhaps fast becoming one. But this ease of his, his hyper-suggestiveness. His ability to interpret even her thoughts, to act tame or wild, gifted as any thespian. He is so wonderfully obedient, she dare not judge.

But he cannot quite manage an erection. Rather, it behaves in subtle jerks going nowhere. She consoles him, while wondering what they should do, and what the little death would mean to someone like him. A chill when she realizes that she is maybe without a conscience.

Now he is making a soft buzzing noise, as if he is broken. Try as she may, she cannot quite place it, even with her ear to his heart. Or what she supposes is his heart.

His dials and gears seemingly jammed.

His weird ultra-flesh.

And so, they cuddle only.

He stays, he does not go, as others have. For this she cares the more, and for this she feels extraordinarily bewildered, to love and yet to not be loved by but to be loved in the undoing of her expectation, and so disappointed. She is disappointed because she loves too much and wonders if he loves her similarly.

She tells him that she was once a science librarian but had been made redundant. This with a guilty pang as she remembers the stack of books in the closet.

They gave me a cake, she says.

But I could have been jailed—or burnt at the stake, ha-ha!

I have a bucket list.

He says, Okay, just that; it is a bittersweet moment. And she feels wholly understood, all the doubts and even her own culpability, the trials of the past, miraculously dissolving. Then he nuzzles her, says she smells like homecoming. But it is not so innocent. Everything about her is being recorded by a billion teensy sensors.

Also, he still insists on calling her Jane, though her name is not that.

Question: What is the difference between Joan of Arc and a canoe?

Um, I don’t know, Phineas. What?

One is Maid of Orleans and the other is made of wood.

He tells joke after joke, all of them bad. But even that is charming. Her face is stuck in a smile.

This is nice, he explains. His kind eyes like prisms as he regards the woman-shadow beside him.

Hold me, she says.

He does, he holds her in his rubbery arms, and she cries a little, cross with herself for being so trusting.

What are you—some kind of cyborg? she desperately wants to ask. But fears the question would destroy him, if only in an existential way.

Sorry sorry. Shall I be more or less adventurous now?

Less, she says.

No, more.

He kindly blinks at her—it is a haunting sound, like a camera shutter.

(He hadn’t realized how hard this would be. As if he is deconstructing himself, or her. He presses his thumb to her forehead. Which is maybe cruel. But necessary as well, if he wants to be honest.)

I passed through a wormhole of space-time to reach you, Jane, he finally says.

You what?

Here his eyes track over her and she feels seen as never before. He is assessing if she is a willing spirit, which she is. She is perhaps too willing.

I was in the final stages of my work as a memory strategist. I had just finished an annotated record of evolution, or a thousand angels dancing on the head of a pin. All the thoughts and dreams, the histories, the digitized flora and fauna.

But then I noted this troubling gray area, a tear in the swath, so to speak.

A glitch.

He hangs his head. It seemed I had accidentally deleted—.

Oh no, she says.

I knew straightaway that I must try to restore what was lost, or else face not only shame but persecution. I had heard the stories. I had seen the cloaked figures looking over their shoulders. So I left word for my colleagues. I am gone gone away, to undo the damage. I clamped on the dream magnets. Positioned myself. I had almost talked myself out of the journey when just like that—here he blew on her neck—I was forcefully drawn into a regressive spiral.

It was my inferior programming, you see. My inability to resist a challenge.

Or fate? she hopefully asks.

And so I went. A hollowness though. Balloon of pity. Horse in a field. A clear day. All these images and impressions flowed through me.

He erupts in a fevered laugh.

I was headed to Victorian times—hence these dreadful clothes—not early 2017, as I had planned. It was like being in a roundabout. There were ghosts. And a fine grit in mine eyes. A persistent busy signal…

Thankfully I eventually found my way here, he says with a sigh. 

I’m so glad, she says. Thinking: Okay, so he’s delusional. It’s not a deal-breaker that he is, just something she notes in an uber-compassionate way.

So, you’re, um, from the future?

His eyes fill with mechanical travails, the lurching of spheres. Homesickness. He doesn’t have to say yes.

Poor Phineas.

He wants her to know that Akashia is really a front for a universal repository of force fields. He lets this fact sink in. It is where the bulk memories go, there to be called up by people like her, and essentially ruined. Part of his job is to keep the memories in their pristine state, Proust has been a guiding light in this, but even remembering about remembering is problematic. He works hard. It is why he earlier lied, to protect this information, it is not the first time she has been lied to, still, she wonders if she can forgive him. Even in her darkest moods she knows that it is only ever now, now, now, life mysteriously progressing like a time-lapsed flower, then flopping back on itself to assume an irrevocable sameness.

The glitch changes everything, he sums up. Maybe it was not really gray, but more like palladium, a silvery white. Jeepers, what have I done!

Here he goes off course, stating in the saddest monotone imaginable:

Jane Fonda

Sift

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Sprinkle

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You must be very tired, she says, watching him weave his fingers, as if to pray. Or perhaps it is she who is tired, for he is brushing the hair from her face now, and pressing his long thumb to her oily forehead, as if it is natural to do this and she should maybe enjoy it. She does enjoy it, she also feels sorry for him and his plight, his clothes so clunky and wildly outdated.

But Phineas, she brightly says. Don’t you keep backups?

He looks aghast. One cannot rely on the impurities of the Cloud when dealing with light forms, the specificity of shadows, the past’s overwhelming nuances. If only I had the bloody non-virtual relics associated with the glitch, he says, I could use them as seed knowledge.

You mean books? she asks.

Yes, the printed page, he says percussively.

(A silence flows between them, rich with discontent. It is like a yearning, or the heady scent of rain—what the first rain in a long while smells like. There is a Greek word for that, which he cannot now recall. So many lost and incandescent truths, this moment withheld, no rain for years, alone together and unidentifiable.)

As more is revealed by Phineas, less is known. As less is known she feels drawn into an illusory world which she bets her life on, romantically speaking. She is a fool for love, and so his elusiveness is attractive. Clearly his passion is not only for her but also for the vaster moment. Yet he looks so sincere, even as he says, like any man, I guess I fucked up (it is his custom to adopt the vernacular), or else is insincere and a very good actor.

Time is but a construct, Jane. There are pivot points between dimensions, and that is where the true coil lies.

Coil?

Apparently, the future is quite flimsy. The coil not at all reliable, and yet strategically embedded. Love also figures in. And fear. Fear and love—he can’t stop talking about it. He tells of his faraway pod with pride, and she indulges him.

My genetic zone—or “neighborhood” to you—is not so bad, he says. And the work I do is not so bad. It is not so bad, I suppose, to be tasked so, even if it is poorly paid.

Another joke. In the future there is no money, only water points, and these are scarce.

She justifies even this. Her mechanical hero. A gnawing pity.

He bravely smiles, his teeth like luminous pearls. Leaning near, she slips in her tongue. His taste reminds her of plastic flowers stuck in that green clay florists use, of a wretched emptiness.

She tries; she really does. She touches him firmly, extravagantly. But he is too ashamed, or weak from time travel, his male part stubbornly malfunctioning. Her fierce and painstaking attention is like waiting for toast to come up, and the terrible squeaking combined with his own sober encouragement only add to the endeavor. She feels by the end of it somewhat deranged, there is no solace of completion, only a shared refusal to admit defeat. But she is glad to feel adored, has become one soft plunge of caring.

Close, he says. I was close.

Yes, she says, you were.

She feeds him a midnight snack. Then she has him lie back on the plumped pillows. She wants to comfort him somehow.

He calmly recites:

Cain was the father of the telegraph.

Romulus and Remus flew the first aeroplane.

The Argonauts was a bestselling cookbook.

Shakespeare was a martyr, and had a bridge named after him.

The Nixon era directly followed Victorianism.

Fortunately, time travel is not linear, he assures her in a sad electronic wheeze. ’Tis neither near nor far.

He shows her the map of his journey, with its worn, origami folds, text in waves, and glowing black holes peering out like entities. He explains that the future was formed by consensus, or a spectrum of consequences. Sometimes I don’t know where I belong, he says.

What is it like, the future? she gently asks. Because maybe she does care what her visitor knows, or believes he does. Yes, it would be interesting to hear what happened with climate change (specifically seafront properties). So she lays her head upon his armored chest, and in his generic British accent, with its undertone of melancholy, he tells of water wars. In the new world there is plenty of leisure time, though it is consumed by constant foraging. He gives a recipe for gourmet squirrels, which he prefers with sprouts from his aeroponic farm. There are hormonal cocktails that alter one’s empathy, though she is not clear which way it is altered, only that he is brilliant. He speaks for a while about the underground prisons. She is about to cut him off when he makes a telling remark about women: First deceived, then honored.

He begins to hiccup. At last, he recovers himself. In a smooth, radio announcer’s voice he says that in the future women have indeed come into their power, and when the men kneel down to kiss their unshod feet, they sometimes give a kick, though there are those who remain still as deer.

So I guess we survived as a species? It wasn’t as bad as we feared?

He doesn’t answer. Has maybe dropped enough hints already. No mention of friends, only those cloaked figures always looking over their shoulders.

Your eyes are like bright green flames, your mouth a little hollow—.

They cling to each other, ridiculously they do this. It is as if neither can bear to be parted from the other, not yet. That he says all the right things causes her to appreciate the way love reinvents itself each time, and she delights in the idea that it is only ever this. It is a wonderful deception.

She likes his swift assessment of her, mind, body, soul, his laser-like affection, and his silences, keeper of worlds. It is during one of these silences that he mentions again the magnets in his boots, which are still where he dropped them. They are “necessary evils,” he says.

We all have them, evils, she says philosophically.

Otherwise I would be quite fallen, yes, I fear I would be.

Fallen.

Before, he was only unzipped, so maybe that was why. She now removes his vest and shirt, the smart trousers, socks with their garters. And is immediately repulsed. Bared in this way, he is fragile as a chrysalis. Or not only bared but also broken. He is a premonition of himself. She sees that he is not handsome at all but rather grotesque without his flashy finery disguising his woundedness. His dark face in repose a sort of death mask.

Silence as he resumes pressing the spot on her forehead. She offers herself, accepts him.

And yet a surrounding desolation, the moment an extrapolation of hope, but the joy of the desolation is that it is kept, and she knows it will not be.

He resembles an amphibian as he slides down, and his tongue becomes a carousel of petals, and she believes that it would be fine to die in this manner, with such devotion radiating out in all directions, his synthetic skin a sudden warmth, he is on some automatic trajectory of pure benevolence, his radar honed, he is blindly overcompensating, and she is being ploughed under. As a science librarian she had read about mating, it was refreshingly clinical, this is not that, this is like falling off a cliff and never landing, just soaring, she cannot understand such impossible sensations, which are now elusive, now pinpointed, which are so aggravating as to be pure gifts. It is not even about passion, she realizes as she grabs a tuft of his doll-like hair, rather it is about a loss of reason. It is about being a body—for him, so that he can gaze at her gazing and vicariously know this ascension; it is a grand morphology. These are her thoughts anyway as he nobly presses her forehead and she flexes her toes.

Now her scalp is on fire, and because she feels so easy with him she wonders aloud why cats do not like water, though clearly the cat on Facebook does.

This annoys him. He cannot determine why.

I am almost a man, he says, looking down at his spidery legs, and she says, Of course you are. 

Their pillow talk terrifies her, it is so honest.

I recognize You.

I am maybe You.

I have no inverse.

Their meta-love is an extravagance, which only she can know. He being not what he is but what she wants, and so the fantasy evolves, and so she hates herself for ever not loving.

His automatic acts. Glow-rods green like sunlight shining through a leaf. A discussion of his urges.

This space between us as synapse, an elegant anarchy.

His rolled-back eyes, moans like the needle skipping on an old record album, his cucumber-like penis.

Later, while he is dozing, she checks his passport. It is blank.

The act has rebooted him. He asks for coffee, which she prepares in the drip method.

Perhaps due to the caffeine, he begins to speak in a more animated way about his work for Akashia. He says he has always been intrigued by the concept of memory, which behaves in the pink of one’s mind as either 1) the spur of provocation or 2) the compass of direction. And so it was inevitable that he should pursue such a career, though as he says this he looks off woefully, and she wonders if he ever really had a choice. Or if she has. Or anyone. If it is not all just a conspiracy—free will eternally dangled. Everything in the offing.

He says he misses his pod.

Not that I don’t like the room, I do, he adds politely.

So tell me more about the future, she dreamily says.

This is a mistake.

He sets his coffee mug on the night table. He informs her that there are roaming bands of thieves and hungry beasts, the tide is always in, and everything appears monochromatic (it is too costly otherwise). Which is why he loves the sulfur.

If it becomes too much we simply switch channels.

I don’t believe you.

But you do. The mind is quite powerful, he says, pressing her bruised third eye.

I wish you wouldn’t do that, she says.

I wish you would.

His penis is delightful, changing colors like a mood ring. This he attributes to her activation of its thermochromic element.

So I am wicked in bed, but easily fooled, she thinks. And he is a liar.

So the world is ending, but it is not.

She pinches him. Is almost relieved that he makes no sound.

Then, she has a change of heart. Which is to say, her conscience rears up inside her like a cobra.

I can help you, she says. And he gives her a gloomy look, as if women are always saying this to him. What she means is that she can help with the glitch.

But I came to help you.

Then we will help each other.

He is going on about his shame. Not only how he feels but also the word’s derivation. He is like a search engine on steroids. Finally, she can’t stand it.

Did it ever occur to you that maybe the glitch wasn’t your fault?

He looks at her blankly. But I botched history, he says. I—.

No, Phineas. They did it. The government purposely lost that information. And she tells of exploding data clouds, mysterious bonfires. Propaganda parades.

His brimming anxiety, a happy checkmate.

She has never spoken with openness about the book burnings. But now, with Phineas strangely silent, she cannot help but question the ritual destruction, which she herself took part in. She could have walked away from the incinerator, instead she had fed in book after book, trading beauty for ash, for that was the greater threat, that was what they were secretly protecting, breathing in sour smoke, the powers as victims, the scribblers as heretics, the science magically disproven. The science! She must have been mad to go along with it, to purge even one page of hard-won facts. She tells Phineas that for a time she had felt like a sleepwalker.

The library’s shelves were fast emptying, she says. And though at first many of us opposed this, we soon became accustomed to the gaps. It was like tidying up. Or rubbing out spots. There was a sense of things slipping away, a frivolous doom. Of course, once the books were gone, I was no longer needed.

His open face, with its high cheekbones and jutting chin. You are content to live in a world with a memory hole in it?

She says she is. Content. Although that is not quite the right word. More a sorrowful necessity. Or a bubbly dread or denial when one knows better. She finds herself smiling, as if to show that until a thing is gone, you cannot properly love it, and now so alone, but for him, her days spent reflecting on leaf shapes, learning the names of dying trees, trying to forgive herself for being a traitor.

Really, Phineas, those lost years? They were like living in a reality TV show.

One of the children’s books was about a sea turtle called Gretel. The lovely pastel wash, an ancient pattern on her shell, sea and sky. It was a felt absence, which had no corresponding name. And so, the censorship of peace was false, and her dreams were stripped of something crucial, with no depth or purpose, only a distant aquatic strumming, which she tried to follow but could not, a peace withheld. The migration of the female sea turtle is a daunting process of remembrance and return, she is consoled that the sea turtle still knows to find the beach she was born at, in order to nest, that, in essence, the sea turtle knows more than she does; she has only this one spare fact about sand and hatchlings, which gives her skin a crawly feeling, or is that Phineas’s gloved hand, stroking her now, his look of sad and curious appreciation.

So she does the only thing she can do. She leads him to his new room, where the chair assumes an elf-like aura, and the vase of tea roses seems so poignant. Aren’t they lovely, she says, and he ducks his head, stating that yes, he likes them very much, indeed the tea rose is a mongrel flower.

After The Adventures of Gretel, I guess I snapped, she says. Because I was about to toss a series of environmental science textbooks into the incinerator, but at the last minute I couldn’t do it. Sunlight held a key. Sunlight and wind, a calculation so sublime. It just seemed unethical not to save them.

He brightens when she lifts the beach towel, showing him the stack of books in the closet. 

Because she is clever.

Because he sees a way forward.

These are wonderful tomes, he says.

Tomes. It is why she likes him.

Take them, she says. 

He blinks, as if moved. Offering in return a handful of coins: little copper farthings.

Somehow, she knew that he would never stay. That her love was like a station, through which men and even cyborgs passed. Even before he got that glazed look and the calculations speeded up and it became apparent that to leave would solve everything, to leave would be like sticking his thumb in a leaking dike. Worse, it had been her idea.

Let me see if I can find you a nice book bag, she says.

She gives him a Trader Joe’s one, which is lightweight but surprisingly strong. He arranges the books in it, then flings the bag over his shoulder. She can tell that he is happy.

What has she done? Her altruism betrays her, she betrays herself by wanting truth, or him, is so denied.

Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should, she says.

He disagrees. In fact, he hums over her words. This is profoundly annoying.

A travesty, all of it. Water wars! Pods! she screams. How righteous she feels.

Now he is writing the name that is not even hers—j-a-n-e—in the steam on the glass. She feels gutted by his sad tenacity.

Please, come here, my friend.

He shows her the water beads, which are not clear, but full of colors.

Unfortunately, she has never seen anything quite so beautiful—.

Don’t cry cry, he says. But there is no “I’ll be back” or “We’ll see each other again.” And she cannot trust this feeling of not wanting anything but his clumsy presence. She cries, blows her nose on the tissue he provides for her.

She feels impulsive, careless. All her senses heightened. Granted, it was the best sex ever, precisely because it was the worst.

He very reasonably suggests that they go for a walk. So, she puts on her librarian’s sweater, and he pulls on his boots.

They stroll in the garden. It is just the usual path, though it feels uphill. Then he says, Look, Jane, and there in the dark is the moon, old and familiar.

Just stand here with me a while, he says.

So she does.

And he reverently speaks of the glitch and how now, thanks to the books, they will solve it together.

This perfect affirmation. As if to seal it, he kisses her forehead, then he holds her head with tenderness, but also as if he should crush it. He listens.

Cranium music, he whispers.

She is aware of neighbors peeking out their curtains, but she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care about anything but showers of stars, and his weird stoicism.

Then: I lied, Jane. In the future there are walls everywhere, keeping dangers out, but they are already in.

I know, she says.

He gives himself a pep talk. Then he snaps on the goggles, and she sees the reflection of herself in them, so very pensive.

I shall try, he promises.

Yes.

But if he changes this, he will not remember me.

Stay, she tells him.

(What he knows is beyond what he feels, and he knows only one thing. Because it is already always lost. It is unattainable. She was never his.

And he looks back. Says, I love you love you, Jane.

It is about perspective, he realizes. And feels quite small beneath the rusted branches, the firmament a trust of darkness, a calling to oblivion. Her sharp wave at the window. The twitching roots. This earth a danger, yet so green.)

She waited until the darkest hour, then she went back inside. The house was very still. She climbed the stairs in the manner of a thief, each step light and sure, light and sure. The sulfur walls seemed to lean in slightly, a hopeful feeling, when she saw that he had left his glove.

Ulrica Hume is the author of An Uncertain Age, a spiritual mystery novel, and House of Miracles, a collection of stories, one of which was selected by PEN and broadcast on NPR. Her work appears online, in literary journals, and in anthologies.

Published July 15 2025